Sam's build thread

[sambb]

I may do it again. E85 is tempting but I drive the car all over the state and it might not be practical that way. So it'll be 98 ron + water if I ever want to push things. Doing it again it'd either be pre comp boost pressurised (if I'm still running an undersize turbo) or direct port. For a car that still had the side mount and only had a dump pipe 190g/s (240hp flow crank based on the maf flow) was pretty solid. Pure water too, no meth as srutineers dont like that in a road reg car.

[Sydneykid]

I've been running cars on E85 for over 10 years and yes trips do require a bit of planning in advance. There is also the 25% or so reduced range on a tank to consider. These days we pretty much only use United E85 and their find a store app comes in very useful.

Find A Store | United Petroleum – 100% Australian Owned

Before you make the call to go to E85 I'd strongly suggest looking at where you travel to and then see if there are outlets on the way. For example on my way to Bathurst there are 9 servos with E85.


Cheers
Gary

[metalhead]

Coming in late here. Sucks you had such bad luck. While Canberra is a great little track (I'd never been there before), the weather was horrible, and no one was near their normal times. I don't think it reached 14C all day, and there was an icy wind as well. I don't normally feel the cold, and I was wearing a jacket with hood over my driving attire and feeling frozen.

I was happy with how I drove, considering I'd never been there before, and was running new tyres and brakes for the first time, so the car was quite different. Unfortunately I seem to have cracked a header, and after the first two runs the car was way down on power and fluffing badly, as the o2 sensor was reading lean and pumping way too much fuel in (kinda the opposite of your problem Sam!).

[simon k]

Unfortunately I seem to have cracked a header, and after the first two runs the car was way down on power and fluffing badly, as the o2 sensor was reading lean and pumping way too much fuel in (kinda the opposite of your problem Sam!).

Sam should've kept going... you could have made 1 good car out of the two

[sambb]

Yeah I should've at least had breaky there and watched the first runs.

I sorted out why the car wouldnt go into closed loop. I knew the N249 delete could affect fuelling if its solenoid wasn't resistered properly. What I didn't know was that the same is true for the SAI delete. Id thought that If you had the SAI delete as part of your tune that there was no need to resistor the solenoid so I'd left it unplugged/ open circuit. Well doing that means that the o2 sensor for some reason never gets full readiness as seen in VCDS block 030 - you need the last digit to be a '1'. O2 sensor mixtures will appear ok in block 031 which is commonly logged for power runs (which made me think everything was ok), but these values become just read only and do not update fuel trims because you are permanently in open loop. So if you've deleted the N249 and SAI then check that you've resistered BOTH or youll be locked in open loop. One the resistor went in, short term fuel trims started changing immediately and once the car hit about 70 or so degrees the long term fuel trims started compensating for the extra fuelling.
I'm just waiting on some 380cc injectors before a proper 3 bar tune for the K03s gets done, but now at least in the mean time I can use uni settings/lemmiwinks to tweak the fuelling for the 4 bar FPR now that I'll have long term fuel trims to work off.

[sambb]

some footage of the event that I missed: YouTube

[simon k]

I sorted out why the car wouldnt go into closed loop. I knew the N249 delete could affect fuelling if its solenoid wasn't resistered properly. What I didn't know was that the same is true for the SAI delete. Id thought that If you had the SAI delete as part of your tune that there was no need to resistor the solenoid so I'd left it unplugged/ open circuit. Well doing that means that the o2 sensor for some reason never gets full readiness as seen in VCDS block 030 - you need the last digit to be a '1'. O2 sensor mixtures will appear ok in block 031 which is commonly logged for power runs (which made me think everything was ok), but these values become just read only and do not update fuel trims because you are permanently in open loop. So if you've deleted the N249 and SAI then check that you've resistered BOTH or youll be locked in open loop. One the resistor went in, short term fuel trims started changing immediately and once the car hit about 70 or so degrees the long term fuel trims started compensating for the extra fuelling.

that's good to know... there's so much conflicting information about the N249 and SAI delete. I'm leaving mine on there until I have an actual reason to remove them - like when the SAI craps itself

[sambb]

Yeah the SAI pretty much has to stay put until its written out in the tune. The N249 does help though. The ECU actually uses it with other control measures like throttle cut, timing pull etc to keep things as per the tune. What you find though once you are tuned is that the ECU gets pretty active at activating the solenoid to allow the vacuum stored in the canister to pull the diverter valve open as a boost limiter. In a stock tuned car its a non issue though. The N249 system can be removed though. The solenoids plug gets cut off and a 330-380 ohm 6watt+ resistor soldered across the wires. Then the hardware can be turfed and the DV run straight off the vacuum line that will now only run to the SAI solenoid.

[metalhead]

Sam should've kept going... you could have made 1 good car out of the two

Haha... The real bummer was that I also forgot to throw in the fuel injection handset, so I couldn't lean out the targets to compensate.

Glad you found your issue Sam.

I've chucked up some videos as usual too. You can see the black fuel smoke billowing out in the video where I'm warming the tyres...

[sambb]

Yeah yours did look like it was chugging in the burnout area in that vid. Next round is Kempsey yeah. Now that the championship as a whole is a bit compromised I'll just do rounds closer to home - Tamworth will be the exception though, I love that track. Kempsey + the VW Nats in the same month was going to lead to divorce so maybe its better this way and my Yoko softs will live to fight another day. VW Nats allows other makes! are you brave enough to rock up at a hot hatch festival in a chevy!! Otherwise we'll cross paths at Tamworth, Ringwood or Huntley or Wakefield I suppose. I'll check out the vids.

Car is going better by the minute. Now that it can actually read the mixtures and adapt the ECU is dialling it all in and the car feels great. I've pulled the timing right back yet it did a 182 g/s (MAF) run which is only a whisker off the previous cars best and its still running rich everywhere and has no timing in it. Just a stop gap though before the proper tune with left foot brake, linear throttle, maybe launch control etc. Have to start getting Nefmoto logging happening.

Seriously considering E85 for when I get it tuned if I stay K03s turbo OR if a K03 hybrid turbo pops up real soon i'll do that on petrol. I have E85 down the road and half way to/from work so the urban side of things is ok, but need to find out about its availability up the freeway towards Newcastle and out to Tamworth etc. I'll have to hit up Louis and find out what parts of the fuel system need to be sorted to run E85 long term.