Well )
Car is running. Not finished everything that I wanted, but I drives and functions )
Now has two fan override switches for both fan speeds, remote logger "on" switch wideband and EGT gauges installed, MapDCCD and wiring mess behind pretty nice center console pannel )))
Bad thing is I couldn't finish it on time to get to start of the event, and when I drove there to catch at lease second session, car died on highway with no fuel pressure... I thought that it was fuel pump and called for toe truck only to find out later in the evening that I ran out of fuel
That happened because I still didn't managed to fix my temp and fuel gauges after ECU swap and I was 100% sure that I filled it two month ago. with only about 60 miles max driven since then, I was sure that it was not an issue... Also I had new fuel pump laying around and replacement was planned for a while, so when car died I was hooked on idea that it finally died... Also didn't helped that OEM pump is very quiet, so when I tested it on highway i was seeing 12v on a plug but couldn't hear it over highway noise... And lack of sleep for past few days was not helping either.
Well... Sort of "meh" story... Happy that i's finally running and running well... Definitely going to the racing event in untested car that just was started for the first time hour ago was not a great idea... Everything I done works... surprisingly... But that was a stupid mistake not to fill the car before the trip. After all the effort put in the car for the last few days and knowing that gauge is not working...
Good advice. I have only small one, but still I'll probably fill it up and keep with me on trips like that... But this time car was stuffed with tools and supplies since I was working on my apartment's parking lot and used car as a storage for a while )
So when I decided I was ready to go - fastest and safest way was to gather stuff around, put it in the car and go )))
The major contributor to this situation except for sleep deprivation was the fact that I usually keep records of all fuel stops in app on my smartphone. It shows real fuel average, running costs, nice graphs of odo readings over time... I just save mileage, price and total cost while pump is running..
And this time before I left I checked this log and I saw full tank filled in March which seems to be right. I just didn't noticed that it was march 2015)))) and my actual recent fill-up on this car (not included in my log properly) was for like 10-15 liters because I didn't wanted full tank because I PLANNED TO REPLACE FUEL PUMP ))))))))
I remembered it all clearly after I had some sleep yesterday )))
I did the same thing to myself the other day. I'd been driving around tuning and *did* have a working fuel gauge, but it was behind the tablet (showing sensor readouts) mounted in front of my stock gauge cluster. The car went lean on the freeway and I was like "Well, I guess I killed it. FML." Only minutes later did I realize I'd just let it run dry about 2 miles past a gas station. I did not feel clever.
Well, it turns out I had working fuel gauge as well. How? I just filled it up and it showed up ))) All this time... That hits hard ))) what a shame...
Aaanyway... At least my temp stock gauge IS properly messed up! There's the wire going from the dash to ECU sensors ground that has 12v, and disconnecting it allows car to run and see all the sensors, but that stupid gauge is not working... need to check diagrams and see what it wants...
Another issue with my ECU swap that I found out reviewing logs is that ECU can't see signal from VSS2. It seems from manuals that my V4 ECU wants to see 12V square wave from sensor on gearbox and sends out signal to the dash, but my car's dash being V2 receives speed signal via cable from gearbox and sends square wave to ECU which I thought I'll just use instead of gearbox signal, but.. It turned out that it's only 5v and ECU is not happy. I have proper gearbox sensor but in this case I install it, I will loose speed on the dash so I opted to try to get a workaround and amplify voltage using optocoupler. We'll see how it will turn out when parts arrive.
Other than that, I try to drive the car to develop fuel map but living close to office doesn't help much. Also got a bit frustrated by some of the settings of my ESL ECU but it seems to be solved, so now I mostly need to spend some time mapping it. At least car is running...
Another disappointment was being unable to log my Innovate EGT gauge signal as I planned. Don't know if I got wrong version of the gauge or they all like that but it seems that it only can be logged via serial in their software which I don't like and never used except for setting up the gauges... hopefully I can figure out the way to integrate it in CAN stream later on with proper ECU. Still will require some adapters and expensive stuff...
On mechanical side of things, car probably needs to be raised a bit and front wheel arches need to be rolled because left wheel catches on the inner edge when loaded in turns and tries to rip it out... Seat is waiting to be installed - need to find a welder to modify the adapter frame. Installed quick release on front bumper after seeing it done on one of the cars here and it works great!
Can't wait to test it on the track!
Did you ever had this srange thing when car fixed itself? A lot of stuff happened recently and if I was keeping up with this journal, it could probably be a couple of pages of self-contradictory posts.
So, here you'll only get end result as it is now. Although I'm not sure that there will not be any new findings that will completely change my perception of stuff happening.
So… I was trying to tune the car and it all was nice except when I hit throttle fast to WOT it had wild misfires and was looking kind of flooded (to me). First AFRs were going down while car was loosing all the power but slowly developing some boost. At the same time rpms were at the same level or even slightly decreasing and AFRs jumped to 15-16 which I considered being due to misfiring…Since my ESL ECU has quite a limited number of tables available compared to full standalone, after a post on UK forum where most of the users of this ECU are and quick chat with pro guy who tuned my other car on this ECU few years ago, I came to the conclusion that those 850cc injectors are just too big for this ECU to handle without being able to tune tip-in throttle, dead times etc.
I managed to revive my old 440s… one of them appeared to be stuck even after cleaning so I had do some extra DIY efforts to get it working:
After confirming that all injectors are working I installed them and for some time it seemed that everything was fine, problems solved…
But wait, there's more! Working further on new fuel map with smaller injectors I kind of found the limit where I couldn't get more fuel on higher loads, so I finally decided to finish long overdue stuff with some electrical gremlins and extra sensors for datalogging.
I installed and wired to datalogger fuel pressure and brake pressure sensors.
Remember that stuff I wrote that VSS square wave was wrong? Don't know where I got that, both ECUs need 5v signal, but!!.... before I found that I made small transistor circuit that provided that 12v square wave to ECU and guess what? It didn't start with it.. investigating further I found out that it's not 5v square wave that ECU needs, vss2 signal it's rather a switched ground that pulls down 5v signal that comes from ECU. Figuring that out I checked dash, confirmed that built in VSS does just that and returned all my custom wiring back to starting position. and it worked! Miracle. Also, that one ground wire from instrument cluster that I had to disconnect from harness to get car running which resulted in temp gauge not working - I checked all respective diagrams, confirmed that it has to be there, plugged it in and everything just works! What was the problem before - who knows…
Anyway. I took car for test drive and what I saw was this:
Basically, my fuel pump failed to provide any pressure above 2.5 bar in fuel rail during moderate and high loads...
Lots of swearing and one new wallbro fuel pump later:
I know, I should have done this from the very start… that was really stupid… my bad.
So yesterday I was thinking that my fueling issue was due to bad fuel pump from the very start, so I swapped back 850cc injectors and it seems fine. Fuel map is still rough, but the main issue I had is not there anymore, so I'm keeping 850s and working on further development of fuel map for this setup.
Together with this finding I kind of noticed that my intercooler is not working at all. IAT increases from ambient to 50..60 deg C (around 140 F) during one 3rd or 4th gear pull… and that even during night runs, can't imagine what it will be on a hot day. That means pulling like 6 deg of timing, so not good… I believe that's because I had to remove intercooler shroud from the scoop on the bonnet because I installed larger ver4 intercooler and it interfered. Now I'm working on custom solution to seal airflow from scoop to the intercooler. I'll post the results when I have something.
I was tuning car before the event and noticed that IAT was climbing really fast while in boost. I decided that intercooler needs to be ducted because my early version 2 bonnet and V3-4 intercooler never ment to work together from factory and stock ducting was removed.
I found this to be good occasion to practice my cad skills and 3d printed.. It did not went smooth and I couldn't print final version in time because i kept having issues with my printer...
Model came up nicely:
As plan B I made another model to make duct from sheet metal, but couldn't get aluminium sheet to make it...
So there came plan C to make the duct from salvage of failed prints of different iterations..
And it works!
I need to find logs of IAT before and after, it's just night and day.
also got washer fluid tank with two pumps and wired one of them to spray the intercooler via switch on the dash and 6 psi pressure-driven relay.
it sprays a bit too much, draining half of the tank in 10 min session, but end result is great.
regarding the situation with the diffs.. It appears that it was on this car from the very begining.. When I bought it, it was swapped with V2 STi engine, but gearbox was from early 2000s WRX... By the code it should have 4.44 ratio and viscous center..
Since i swapped in DCCD ceneter and installed MapDCCD I never actually tested the car on track and frankly never drove it hard on the street as well..
So when I got on the track, swithced on MapDCCD in agressive map, whenever I got any lock loud noises came from the transmission.. something was definately wrong.. So I jacked the car up, got it in first gear and tried to count revs of front and rear wheels on fully locked diff and it appears that fronts turn slower ((((
Probably old viscous center was blown long time ago and car was driving like this who knows how long..
It was effectively free diff with bias towards FWD due to higher reduction in front...
So, this trackday was a disappointment in a way, but still a big WIN in my books because car finally hit the track first time since 2015!!! )) That's great )
Need another rear diff now to match the front.. Suspension is also way too soft for these tires - without DCCD control i can't apply any throttle on corner exit - one wheel just spins..
Also I got really nice logs of brake pressure - it's really cool and gives nice insight on corner entry. Will try to write post about it soon.
there where couple of really nice cars on the track.. too bad I spent most of the time dealing with my problems, should have get more pics..
Noob tuning question... What is the best safe way to check knock feedback of my ESL (stock based ECU).
Before increasing boost and getting my slightly retarded timing tables back I wanted to make sure that knock control features of my stock ECU are working correctly to keep is safe(ish).
Up until now i was running 0.9 bar boost with peaks around 1-1.1 bar plus quite rich fueling and knock event counter in all my logs was sitting on static number. although I can see it was changing between logs, but never during the logs. IAM always stays 16..
I have DIY det can in form of Bosch wideband knock sensor connected to my laptop in mic in, and I can hear different mechanical noises very clear, I listened couple of normal and knocking noise examples and what I got sounds similar to normal... I tried to increase the timing around 2500-3500 RPM in load area before boost comes up (up to 100kpa absolute press) and listen for knock in det cat, but I can't hear anything that sounds like knock, and ECU did not register anything either... At which level of load/RPM/ignition advance I definitely should get (SAFE ENOUGH!) knocking to confirm it is being detected in ECU?
Knock sensor is new 1-wire sensor that is correct type for my ECU, det can sensor is connected on the back of the block quite near to stock one...
So, I did it.
Wisely decided not to go for Time attack event last Sunday, but went to practice on Saturday.
On Friday evening i managed to get to the friendly shop to change the diff. 4.444 ratio was correct and DCCD now not binding on the straights...
Managed to make 4 sessions with 3 of them mostly used for logging and optimizing fuel map, and on fourth one I finally tried to set the baseline time. Due to hot weather it was first fast lap out of the pits.. The result - 1:14.8 is whole two seconds more than my PB on narrower tyres (215 vs 235), but I made couple of mistakes and PB was in late October evening session with around 10 dec C colder ambient conditions. Looking at GPS logs of both runs, it's safe to say that car has very close pace and capable of doing 13.xx laps as is..
Unfortunately next day on time attack event I saw that to get to top 3 cars in my class I have to do something closer to 1:10, so still a lot of work ahead..
Those cars running 265 semi slicks and big turbos, but still... original plan was to use the driving skills, not muscle )))
By the way, got Greddy T518Z from a friend and sent it for rebuild.. Not sure when I will try to fit it on, current VF29 has some potential too, probably will try to find it.
Also, probably interior is coming out to rip all the speakers and audio wiring as well as electrical part of ABS. Thinking about leaving wheel sensors wiring to restore it and somehow use wheel speed sensors in future, but most of it needs to go.. Also need to remove sound insulation and seriously approach to baseline suspension setup.. I believe changing diff messed up my alignment, so it needs to be re-done anyways...
Some logged data from the day that I found interesting:
Log of my AFR.. I made some changes based on this, adding some fuel at to the bottom right..
each 24 units of load is roughly 100kpa, so 24 is atmospheric pressure, 48 is one bar of boost... Time to raise boost! )))
Next one is MAP and DCCD plots over Lat and Long position, gives you visual representation of boost and DCCD lock on the track. That MapDCCD is working hard!! Probably should tweak the map and remove lock on speed over 100 km/h.
TPS and RPM give rough idea of how gearing suits the track and when i'm able to open throttle.. Probably need to make some smart math channel with TPS, boost and RPM, will think about it..
This was my study of braking zone on big straight.. I thought that my heel-and-toe downshifts are not good enough and I unsettle the car during braking trying to blip the throttle.. Well.. accelerometer and brake pressure channels on bottom graphs are saying that it's ok... I just generally suck at braking, braking too early and not using brembos and tyres on their full potential...
And this is g-forces plot with TPS overlay on the left and my effort to map math channel that should represent total acceleration in m/s^2 on the right...
Looks nice and smart ))
Now I need to figure out how to use all this data to shave couple of seconds of my lap time ))
This is mostly the progress of my srp 2001 L coupe, but also some 98L and 2018 brz stuff.
Backstory:
I got the car in August 2011 with 100,500 miles. It was my first car, and it had lots of problems at the start. Almost sold it a few times, but once I read about all the swap stuff, I...
This is the second member's journal that I'm making, in part because nobody here pays attention to non-swapped RS journals, and partly because this really is the second phase of this car.
The old member's journal can be found here: Razor7's homebuilt 2000 RS
I also want to document an...
The next phase for my car is a Aegean Blue 96 Impreza L Coupe. I have swapped shells over from my 95L getting ready for the carbon Aerosim kit(I couldn't bring myself to install the carbon kit on a salvaged title car).
Picture of the 1996 L coupe the day I bought it.
Current picture...
So..
picked me up another chassis. $600 and it runs, mostly!
Still have the ej20g, gearbox, RobTune and iWire harness, stance coilovers (I had just bought to replace my godspeed crap) and lots of other parts... so here we go again!
From the ashes, she will rise!
past build for...
A forum community dedicated to Subaru Impreza GC8 and RS owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about performance, modifications, troubleshooting, turbo upgrades, maintenance, and more!
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