BEE*R guys, is this normal?!

[vereshchak]

So I have had my BEE*R in my TT for a while now. It does everything it is supposed to do but I have one issue with it, after I lay on my limiter but engine misfires for a short moment and then straightens itself out. Ill hit my limiter a couple times and then the car kinda bogs out and sounds like a Subaru with unequal headers. Even when Im sliding around and hit limiter to keep my wheels spinning the misfire and change in power causes me to spin out sometimes. Ive seen videos of BEE*R's and theyre a lot like mine just without the misfire afterwards... Anyone have any insight on this?

[vereshchak]

bump

[evildky]

Well the stock system cuts fuel when you hit the rev limiter, the Bee*r cuts spark, offers no performance enhancement, it's just to make a show. So to have the least impact on performance you need it to activate before the stock fuel cut, unless you bypassed the stock fuel cut, could also be tripping the knock sensor, unless you've bypassed that too, basically it's a good way to shorten the life of your engine and turbo's.

[vereshchak]

I understand its mainly novelty but in my opinion its safer on the engine but its a killer for turbos for sure. The stock fuel cut would mean the possibility of leaning out in higher rpm in a higher power range. Id rather have fuel dump and run a little rich, and maybe have a light show haha.

I highly doubt fuel cut would be the problem because I have it set just under the factory limiter. I didnt consider the knock sensor though. When the knock sensor goes off and the ecu goes into the knock map i couldnt imagine it causing a misfire or two for a brief moment. I'm not sure what happens to my ignition system

[evildky]

You have to understand that you are intentionally spitting unburnt fuel into your exhaust with the intent of igniting it inside the exhaust tract with no control as to when or where in the exhaust it's gonna ignite, definitely bad news for your turbo.

The stock system cuts fuel because if there is no fuel there is no combustion event and therefore no knock, no damage to anything.

Yes I suspect you're tripping the detonation sensor, which retards the ignition timing and limits boost.

[vereshchak]

I understand why the fuel cut is implemented and I understand how it works. When you have a high output engine, especially turbocharged, It is beneficial to run a tune that is more prone to run rich as opposed to lean out. When you are in higher RPM ranges, especially on boost, a lean AFR can cause catastrophic failure. When your ecu cuts fuel under boost there is a very likely chance that you'll lean out and ruin internals. There will still be fuel in the cylinder from raw fuel residuals, and because its port injector there will still be raw fuel in the plenum. Spark goes off with insufficient fuel. I would rather cut spark, dump extra fuel, run rich, and ruin a turbo before my internals. That's just my opinion, but to each their own.

I've never heard of the BEE*R tripping anyone else's knock sensor, but I see why it could potentially. I notice that if I hit limiter while im driving (under load) it still bogs but straightens itself out faster as opposed to free revs (without load). Would the knock sensor switch back from the knock maps quicker under load?

[evildky]

I'm no expert tuner but I've built, installed and yes even tuned a few stand alones and most of them use fuel cut, as does the OE. People have been making big power for many many years on these very engines with the fuel cut, it's proven effective for the past 27 years on this particular engine alone. So let's not lie to ourselves, the reason to install this is that people think it looks cool to shoot flames. And

It's also possible that your intentional backfire is stalling the turbo. If you are using this in conjunction with atmospheric bov's causing additional rich condition this could also be contributing to your problem. OE style recirc valves and exhaust with no cats and straight through mufflers will reduce the effect of the backfire on your turbo's, assuming the fuel makes it past the turbine before igniting. If you insist on using this thing maybe you need to start datalogging, I'm guessing you are on a stock or chipped ecu so that means an aftermarket system or converting to nistune or some other engine management.

[vereshchak]

I plan on running recircs as long as I have the engine! Im planning on converting to nistune this spring but for now I am just on a chipped ecu. I tried to do a little more general research and im thinking Im probably just fouling my plugs? Fuel dumps in and fouls the plugs causing them to misfire until they get back to self cleaning temperatures? Im thinking thats why it straightens up quicker under load? I have a pretty free flowing exhaust except for the stock downpipes... Im just waiting until I get new turbos since theres no point in getting 4 bolts dps when i want a bolt turbine

[evildky]

Fuel fowling is certainly a possibility when doing a spark cut. One more reason the standard is to cut the fuel.

[vereshchak]

Alright... Well I'm here for information on why I'm having this problem and how to correct it. There are plenty of others who are running the same set up do not experience the same issue..

[elecfus]

first of all, do you have a genuine unit? there are fake models.

this is completely normal and intended. you really should just throw away the Bee-R away, it will only damage your vehicle. gimmick and nothing else. the purpose of a rev limiter is to do the lesser of two evils and break the combustion cycle so that it doesnt exceed the physical limitations of the engine in terms of the mechanical hardware like the stiffness of cams, rods and the crank shaft or melt bearings and journals. disrupting the combustion in such a haphazard way is really bad for the engine, using either spark or fuel cut but not as bad as the damage a few seconds over revving can do. good pedal control will actually be better than this nonsense for launches.

now take a look at the marketing claims. they claim that the same technology is used in racing applications. it's not. the same mechanism is employed, ignition cutting, but it's a sophisticated interplay between different ignition and fuel components and it's only used for keeping the rev limit below the legal 15krpm. automated launch control is not allowed in any FIA event. This isnt a launch control system either, it's just an extremely basic rev limiter, which without all the other parts is useless. it uses a really primitive mechanism to just cut spark, not control combustion. they shouldnt be used just like any bolt on instant "upgrade".

the misfire is probably caused by a range of problems caused by flooding your engine with fuel. wet and carbonized plugs, fuel in the turbos and exhaust, carbonized valves, seats and piston tops, bad o2 sensor readings and the ECU trying to correct the fuel maps when it sees whats happening without knowing something is messing with the ignition. the z32 ECU will fall out of sequential injection mode if it senses a fault which is what it sees when the spark cuts. use a consult cable to log your O2 reading and EGR solenoid duty cycle when it kicks in.

another reason that vehicles are tuned for a richer map at higher revs is because the injector rate is usually considered to be linear by the ECU when flow rates relative to pulse width are not linear but slightly curved, this may seem like a rich map as if the stochiometry is being adjusted out of optimal but its a basic hack for compensating for this drop in flow at a longer pulse width. if it's tuned even more slightly rich and only run at higher boost and rpm for short periods this is ok because the engine will self clean deposits formed by the unclean burn. if it's consistently rich it will have the opposite effect and carbonize areas in the combustion chamber, causing hotspots and premature ignition, negating the apparent advantage of avoiding knock with a rich fuel map.

[vereshchak]

Under normal load conditions and street driving my AFR stays around 13~15 which isnt excessively rich. High load my AFR will drop to around 11 at about 12 psi. I have a boost leak right now coming off the driver side turbo (Im assuming inlet pipe gasket) so im assuming thats where the "extra rich" mixture comes into place. The season is practically over for me since frost warning is slowly coming in for me, but I'm looking into getting Nistune in order to tweak and data log. Tripping the O2 sensors while flooding the plugs would definitely cause a misfire like im experiencing.. I wonder if using O2 bung spacers will help with the erratic readings. And yes I do plan on fixing my boost leak but It is seriously impossible with the engine in place, next season I'm going to upgrade my turbos and fully delete my egr. Hopefully itll help straighten me out

As per my Bee*R Unit: The unit is genuine as far as I can tell! The number dials are black (i heard ebay are blue), and the retaining screws on the back DO NOT make a perfect rectangle (i heard the screws are perfectly aligned in a rectangle on the back if its fake). If theres anymore information on how I can check if it is authentic or how to test that its delivering proper output would really be appreciated!

[elecfus]

that's really odd because usually the ECU will limit boost to 7psi for the next 50 startups if the knock sensing sets off the boost safety mode. each turbo feeds one side of the block so when you get a boost leak in one hose, one bank runs lean and the other runs rich as the ECU bounces back and forth adjusting cam timing/fuel/spark. the system works, I guess they just thought it would be too expensive to run six separate exhaust pipes and mess with the volumetric efficiency. one cylinder runs rich, it thinks they're all running rich, then one runs lean...

what's usually recommended when you're increasing your exhaust temps is to move the sensor further down the line so that the exhaust temperature will be in the correct range for the o2 sensor to self-clean and operate properly. a spacer will help with the eratic readings. by giving false readings.

I'd suggest going for the haltech or a complete aftermarket ECU that your local dyno is familiar with. nistune is a good product, expensive...but nah its really not that great. after market ECUs have higher bit precision and response giving you tighter control over ignition and injection. I know the haltechs do offer a good deal of continued support for their products. if you want to change the MAF to a larger unit, nistune can sort of manage but it still only has a 16 bit map. if you want to install a wide band O2 sensor, nistune requires that you take your narrow band sensor out, put the wide band in, have it connected to a laptop then swap it out again when you want to drive it while an after market ECU will let you leave it in and actually use it. if you want to double your injectors, nistune wont help and you'll need to throw on a piggy back. if you want to add more sensors that actually affect the engine in realtime, nistune wont help. the nistune tends to be a false economy because once you've done the initial tune, its job is done. really no more benefit than taking it to a dyno and having them flash a 2$ eprom. if you want to save money and people do this, you can hook up your own wide band sensor, adjust the injector multipliers and expand the fuel maps and kill that ridiculous exhaust reduction plateau they put in along with the smog pump that barely got it past emissions. there's even a hack i've done for the 27C256 EPROMs where you can use the next chip up, a 27C512 and add a switch to toggle between the two dies it's made of so that you can switch tunes or use the 29F series because you can easily rewrite them without a UV lamp. I just say haltech btw because Australia and that's what people use here but i have no idea what other brands there are in the US.


just for a comparison between a typical nistune job and a professional job, this is a DIY nistune job. you can still see the EGR plateaus that they've tried to smooth out a bit but they're still fairly extreme.



this is a mines tune I extracted from a stock TT engine tune that I posted in the first thread i made. feel free to ask any questions about electrical. except for the race work he does, his philosophy was more about making a better all round casual car for all weather conditions. so he was very popular with casual owners. I mean to say that he definitely improved their vehicles but he didnt push them. his AFR was set for 10.88 at its richest(also interesting is that he wrote the same maps for the knock maps on the timing and fuel values essentially bypassing the knock reduction scheme).



I couldnt quickly find a z32 map for a modern 32 bit controller but this illustrates the biggest difference.



the 16 bit ECUs can only have 16x16 bit maps. the 32 bit MCUs in modern ECUs have 32x32 bit maps. which is 4X the accuracy. as the vehicle moves through ranges of values, it refers to the memory in the EPROM or emulated memory in nistune which still has the same limit. until it reaches the upper or lower threshold of each value, it doesnt adjust its output values. for each square in the 16 bit ECUs, the 32 bit ECUs get 4 making the tolerances tighter and giving you finer control. there are other differences as well, like the better modern DACs for turning the voltage values of sensors into digital values it can understand and instead of polling the sensors, checking the values in order every so often, they use layered threading for near realtime processing which means it ignores the sensor until it gets a signal telling it that a sensor value has changed and almost instantly responds to it. And OBD2.

and another point about deleting the EGR system. it effectively reduces displacement by partially filling the combustion chambers with inert gas which is really important for a stock setup and even more important with larger injectors if you want to be able to idle in traffic. the AIV will hunt and it will run very lean without it and get hot. also the AIV cant really compensate because it injects air in a different position while the EGR injects exhaust right infront of the throttle body so it mixes with the incoming air. you can get around it by adjusting the throttle position sensor out of the reference values to raise the idle speed, preventing it from cutting out when the vacuum overcomes the engine at lower revs. but it also means having a stronger clutch because you'll be starting at higher revs or a torque converter with a higher stall point in an auto. And you'll need to adjust your turbo spool so they dont kick in at the lights or when you turn the aircon on.

[elecfus]

about the bee-r. have you tried turning that GAIN knob? apparently that fixes it.

[vereshchak]

Sorry, Ive been really busy with school lately! Thank you very much for all that information about standalone ecu's vs nistune! Really rethinking that nistune software now... I'm going to have to learn a lot about tuning standalones but I always knew I would have to. I plan on fully deleting the EGR system and AIV system, and my TT is manual.

Turning the gain dial on the BEE*R only changes the speed of the ignition cut, it doesnt fix my issue