Any 1.8t experts in the Reading / Maidenhead area?

Right interesting and frustrating morning

Couldn't get the thing started this morning. Pulled the plugs in the end as I was sure the plugs were fouling. Similar to the way it was running cold on Sunday. Changed the plugs in the end to NGK BKR6E's and it fired up straight away. No misfires etc. but I need to test these at full throttle. I suspect thay may be a touch hot when at full chat but I'll see later today. It certainly did not like the BKR7EIX's but I suspect part of the problem is down to my low revs issues. Here's the plugs when I pulled them. Wet and Black



Ok with new plugs in here's the idle at cold. The low revs are probably down to a little bit of hunting. AFR's are super rich.



Here's the Ignition map. The 20 at 800 revs stands out as a bit odd to me but the ignition correction on the Live adjustment screen is -1 deg



here's the Injection map.



AFR target map


Here's the idle when warm. Now on LPG by the way but the problems are the same. Injection correction at 27deg whatever that means



Now following what you said yesterday about retarding the ignition timing I had a little play with the fuel and timing, slowly and carefully. The results were good. I got a nice idle and AFR's much much better. However, are those timing numbers OK? Ignition correction on the live screen is -27deg for whatever reason.

And now after with AFR's much much better it seems and the idle speed is good and steady

 

20 deg, does seem a bit high. This could be to help cold idle. But in the next row along it goes to zero and thats where the engine sits at warm idle. Don't know the reason for it, I would expect to see some numbers in there. Usually idle advance is set between 6-10 degrees. Can't think why it has to reduce to -7 unless there is some different reference setting not sure you should be using the trim either as the map number is still at zero. Also noticed that coolant is a bit low to start adjusting the settings. Should be nearer 85 deg.

The injection correction % is probably trying looking at the injector correction page an is adjusting according to coolant or air temp. It looks like its that page where the warm up fueling is done.
The lamdda is set to adaptive and looks to be trimming the fuel by -7 to target 14.2 AFR. Which means it is probably a bit too rich on the map. Your map is showing 32 and the lambda is trimming it to 25. You may want to lower your map number at this point.

 

Not quite.

That's me manually trimming those ignition and injection numbers down not the ECU. The Adaptive corrections are on another page. I actually checked the injection corrections after this and there were no corrections in there. I'll double check as I've noticed that things shappen when you switch on an off. Plus by trimming it as I have done I've got the AFR very close to Target and the idle is smooth. Had I done it on fuel alone it wouldn't have been so steady.

I was also expecting the ignition to be somewhere in the 6deg and higher range. I'll delete that 20 deg value and see what it does but I'm not expecting much and I'm bamboozled by what I saw this morning. I've a chance of a decent run this evening and I'll repeat what I've just doen on petrol to be consistant. I'll also have another look around the set pages to see if anything jumps out at me.

 

Just to overload the info on this thread.

Here's the idle control page



And the Injection correction page in the map

 

Maybe have a look at the other "pages" in additional maps - specifically the MAP compensation table if you are using MAP.

 

Cheers Jevvy

I just had a look at that but I wouldn't know if anything was out of place.

The table stared with a MAP Pressure of -1bar, injection correction -47%, and Ignition correction of 0deg advance.


Interestingly though the engine idles at -19in/HG or about 0.64 bar by my sums.

At that value of -0.6bar and -0.7bar it's asking for an injection correction of about -30% and an ignition correction of 6-7deg advance. Does that mean that th ECU will set a 6-7deg advance at idle?

 

The main tables are alpha-N tables with an correction multiplier -/+ from the MAP compenstion.
The injection row with the greatest load site can represent WOT no boost and if exported into excel would imitate your engine torque profile for this condition. This is then compensated for via the MAP sensor for and increase and decrease in load.
Spark profile starts off at smaller numbers at WOT just before det or MBT) and then increases advance as the engine speeds up, limited by det or MBT. Fast burns starts to retard i.e. ( boost) speed site 5, load site 15 and 0.7bar comepnsation and slow burns (cruise) you advance i.e speeds site 6, load site 2 and -0.7bar compensation. The map compensation in a crude fashion, approximates for the increase or decrease in load, similar to the "injection" TPS vs Speed tables.

I have said enough...

 

I was wondering if that is running on LPG or petrol. Does the LPG system have a separate ecu.

 

Yes it does but it slaves off the Emerald system so it will only chuck in what the ECU is telling it to. The trick at set up is to get them balanced, which they are.

I've got slightly better idle numbers on petrol now but it's hunting a little. Not quickly but it isn't steady. The idle on LPG when warm is honestly sweet as. Here's some screen shots again.

Petrol idle when warm I can tweak the igntion to 6 deg with little difference. Still no correction sat this speed from the adaptive mapping either. It works in other areas of the map.



Warm LPG idle but odd ignition number


And of course when cold (damn cold this morning!) it's pretty poor and gutless to be honest. It will cut out. I tried reducing the cold running enrichment values by 4% this morning to see if there was any noticable change. Not a lot really

 

I think when cold it needs a bit less enrichment, might make it a bit more driveable. I think it needs nearer a 20% Reduction.

As I thought, there seems to be alot more tables interacting with the map.

 

That's an understatement if ever I heard one lol lol

I agree that it still needs more leaning out when cold. I'll give it a go. Do you happen to know roughly what kind of AFR's I should be getting on initial start up when cold? I think I'm getting closer though.

I would certainly like to know why I can pull back the ignition on LPG at Idle like that though. It doesn't feel right at all. With a slower burning fuel more advance would make sense to me. Might have a fiddle with that too.

In addition I've also been giving some thought to why the idle is so much nicer on LPG vs petrol. On gas it's butter smooth while petrol is a little lumpy and has a much deeper tone for sure. I've still got some reading on plugs to do. The copper BKr7e's were the best thus far for sure.

 

When cold and without isv i used to get a smooth idle in the low to mid 12's. But that was at around 700- 800 rpm. Now i have an isv and the idle is higher when cold, this makes leaner in the 13's due to more air. cold idle is is 1200-1300rpm now and reduces as coolant temp increases.
This obviously this is dependant on spark advance too. But i have some cold advance that helps it run better when cold.

Your engine may have different requirements, so you adjust until it feels right for you.

 

Thanks again

12's sound sensible to me and I'm way below that at 10 or even lower on occasion. I'll lean out those temperature enrichments some more I think.

I might look at this idle control valve business. I've seen plenty on it all over the Emerald ECU pages

 

I'm thinking if there is some form of map switching as surely there would be need to optimise on the different fuels.

 

There is manual map switching. I'm going to sort the auto switch between petrol and LPG later when I get it running right. The LPG ECU will automatically switch to gas when it's reached temperature. It will also switch back to petrol when it runs too lean for a given period. I'm going to wire in a relay that will automatically switch to the LPG map when it switches itself over

I'm still not there. I suspect I have another boost leak somewhere at the moment. It's gone back to it's coughing under load.

I've reduced the cold start enrichment by a fair chunk on one petrol map and it may have helped a little but nothing massively. I suspect there's more to it somewhere.

A good long drive last night whereby I made some new observations.

1. On LPG it runs very rich (AFR <10) on over run. It seems to run well though. It's better (smoother) on gas than petrol but crazy rich on over run.

2. On petrol and on over run the AFR's will bounce and it'll backfire / pop in the exhaust. The tail pipes are black which confirms that it's been running rich a fair bit recently.

I'm happy with the way the ECU is looking after mapping side of things when on the throttle there's just all this other stuff to address. Hopefully the better weaher tomorrow will give me a chance to look for leaks.

 

Do you have an overun fuel cut setting in the software ? You should be able to reduce overun fuel by reducing fuel numbers in the load site 0 at the speed sites that are too rich. This is as long as you mean with no throttle presssd on Overrun

 

yes it's there. I'll look.

I've definitely got a boost leak somewhere but couldn't nail it down over the weekend in between the soakings I was getting from Mother Nature. I need to put together a better leak tester as well. I did find some oil around the T piece on the breaher though. I've never been happy with that so I'll be looking into that over the next few days.

Despite this it rather oddly prefers Bkr6e plugs at the moment. The 7's just foul up far too quickly. Any short journeys are just plain impossible unless I get it up to temperature.

Anyway breather and this boost leak first.

Just a quicky

Is the hose from the lower PCV off the oil filter bracket up to the inlet manifold actually necessary? I've seen a couple of threads on other forums where people have deleted it while fitting a catch can.

 

hello all and a happy and prosperous new year.

Wow that break did me good but the weather was a little poor (at best).

Anyway to get this back on track I've had some progress over the holiday.

I've completely re-built the breather system and that has made a considerable difference but we're still not 100% there. Much closer though.

I really just have some cold start issues now. While running BKr7eix plugs it will start and idle ok but the plugs will foul eventually and it will back fire from excess fuel in the exhaust if I'm not careful or don't get it up to temperature. If I run a Bkr6e plug I get sneezing and coughing when flooring it under high boost.

I do need to revisit some of idle settings and then have a look at the cold start / running side of things. AFR's appear quite rich when cold. Fine when warm though with the adaptive mapping doing it's thing now.

 

You can reduce the fuel at cold startup once hot idle is close. Reduce the numbers by 20% as i mentioned before, it shoyld help the fouling. I wouldnt be using adaptive too much. It would probably change constantly.

 

Agreed. It's probably time to switch that off to be honest. Time to get the laptop hooked back up again.