Knocked out part of my to-do list, plenum job, VC gaskets....

[qsiguy]

Must have been a good weekend to dive into some major Q work. Read about a few others that have tackled the plenum over the last two weeks. Job went relatively smoothly. Friday started at about 10pm, had the plenum out by about 1am. Got started Saturday morning around 8am worked all day and into the night and had it running at around 1am Sunday morning.

Replaced all the hoses and knock sensors.Cleaned the AAC, IAC, EGR, etc.Pulled both valve covers and changed gaskets.Cleaned the valve covers, too bad you can't really see them.Installed new spark plugs.Ohm tested the fuel injectors, all at 11.5 ohms.Installed two new power steering hosesRemoved power steering reservoir, cleaned, sanded, and painted.Installed methanol injector in throttle body, ready for meth injection system.Installed new fuel filter.Installed wideband O2 meter.

It all went pretty smoothly. I have to admit I was pretty intimidated by the time I got the plenum off wondering how I would figure out how it went back on but like Wes said in his write up, it was somewhat easier to install than to remove. It is such a relief to have that all done. It's been long overdue for over a year. Definitely not a job for the novice, you could really screw things up if you didn't know what you were doing. Going to take a few days for my hands and lower back to recover I think!

Road tests were highly successful and also managed to do a little tuning with the wideband and I'm a little lean at around 13.5/1 under WOT acceleration. I've put together a new tune and am heading out to do another road test in a few minutes. Should be plenty rich now, then I can find some middle ground. Boost is set at 6 psi for the time being, trying to tune for that. Might push it to 7 if I get my AFR's down where I want them.

Still a long list of to-do's but the plenum was the most daunting of the list, now that's done. Now it's on to the cali customs springs/tokicos, steering boots, 4.08 rear diff, methanol injection, and more!

Took a few pics, I'll post later.
Modified by qsiguy at 2:05 AM 4/7/2008

[tmorgan4]

Where did you end up installing the wideband? I welded a bung into the driver's side manifold but I want to move mine further downstream where both banks meet in single tube so it monitors both banks.

[qsiguy]

Spoke to a lot of people including the Zeitronix guys (where I bought my unit) and decided to put it after the turbo which, I assume you know, is clear in the back. There is only about 20" of pipe after the turbo so it's about 10" from the turbo and about 10" from the end of the exhaust. As long as I don't have any significant leaks in the exhaust it should be pretty accurate. So far it seems to be working well. At cruise it's reading right around 14.7/1. So far I have it wired to log TPS as well as RPM. This system hooks to my laptop.

[qsiguy]

Here are a few photos of the work done this weekend.

[qsiguy]

I was also pretty successful in my tuning tonight. I got my AFR's down to the 11-12 range at full boost. I still want to back off on the timing in a few spots but it's doing pretty well right now. Actually if I get the methanol injection installed I probably wouldn't need to adjust the timing but I'd prefer to get it tuned without using meth injection.

Here's a screenshot of the Zeitronics program during a WOT run.

[Haitian_King]

Wow. I saw those pictures of the VH sans plenum. I don't think I ever want to touch that thing. At least, not without proper supervision. When's the next time any of you really good Q guys coming out East?

I haven't inquired about the the existence of a Senior Tech at Holman Infiniti yet, but I've been thinking of taking my Q there for a detail. Do they do things like that there? Or is that reserved for cars on the lot or cars still under warranty?

[elwesso]

Looks good Shane... What tuning in the ECU did you do? Did you add more fuel and reduce the timing, or what?

[qsiguy]

Well for the run from the screenshot above I had just increased the K value on a bin I got from Jeff Taylor which increased the AFR across the board. His bin as he sent it was still lean for me. I was at around 13.5 during WOT/full boost runs. Increasing the K value was a simple fix to see where it would put my AFR's. It worked for the WOT/full boost but made it too rich during cruise and kept going in/out of closed loop at highway cruise speed. It would surge every 10 seconds or so, weird. With the current tune it goes out of closed loop at about 68 mph in "D". If I slow down 1 mph it will go back into closed loop. I'm still a bit rich in the lower load areas of the fuel map. The K value is still a bit over stock so I may drop it back down when I get the maps figured out.

Since then I've moved back the K value and started tweaking the higher load area's of the timing and fuel maps. I'm getting close but it would be nice to have a romulator so I didn't have to keep changing chips . Made another change last night but it was too late to try it. Will install the new chip tonight and do a few runs.

Even the rough tune I've done so far has made a nice difference. I've got it running at 5-6 PSI and it likes to goooo!