First start advice?

[turbski]

Just mated transmission to engine this afternoon and was hoping for a couple quick pointers.
build is a turbo 2.7 seta block all fresh bearings new pistons rings rebuilt head. Bore is 84.5 stock 2.5 cam. Running off ms2. Turbo is a holset wh1c 14cm exhaust housing. I have had this car for a bit and started the rebuild almost 2 years ago until an accident with my dirtbike put me down with a broken neck.
1. Are ngk bpr8es plugs acceptable?
2. If I try to fire this before it goes to the dyno what needs to be done to the tune before I hit the key.
3. Clutch is brand new south bend stage 2. Anything special to be done?

[JehTehsus]

Use the MS to test spark, fuel pump (check pressure at rail) just to make sure there aren't any little issues. Ensure TPS and wideband are calibrated.

I would also manually prime the pump with a drill and extension socket setup.

[turbski]

Good point on priming. Added to checklist.
anyone have advice on the other areas? Plug choice and tune?

[turbski]

All the oil lines are now good to go. Oil pressure sensor and oil feed plumbed in and tight. Just gotta torque this rather intimidating crank bolt and put a belt back on the water pump and hit the key.
any words of wisdom are appreciated.

[turbski]

Update: crank bolt tight, plenty of oil pressure (lol) hit the key and got a few coughs of life, tried again and it will start but very rough, almost like a dead miss. next step will be double check the CPS gap to the toothed wheel and change all plug wires out, and try again. will hook laptop up also and reset required fuel and see if i can get it to idle on its own without throttle input. gonna double check for any signs of vac leak.

1) how would one go about getting the rings seated on a fresh build if its in need of being re tuned, or i guess a better question would be what next after sorting out initial idle and getting it through a heat cycle?
2) what are turbo guys seeing for vacuum at idle on a fresh build? valve cover is vented to atmosphere atm.
3) anything else i should add to the checklist. as always the help does go a long way, very few people around my area with a setup like this.

[JehTehsus]

Update: crank bolt tight, plenty of oil pressure (lol) hit the key and got a few coughs of life, tried again and it will start but very rough, almost like a dead miss. next step will be double check the CPS gap to the toothed wheel and change all plug wires out, and try again. will hook laptop up also and reset required fuel and see if i can get it to idle on its own without throttle input. gonna double check for any signs of vac leak.

1) how would one go about getting the rings seated on a fresh build if its in need of being re tuned, or i guess a better question would be what next after sorting out initial idle and getting it through a heat cycle?
2) what are turbo guys seeing for vacuum at idle on a fresh build? valve cover is vented to atmosphere atm.
3) anything else i should add to the checklist. as always the help does go a long way, very few people around my area with a setup like this.

In terms of ring seating I would definitely say it is tricky with a new ECM/untuned etc.

I found for myself, I did a warmup cycle (checked coolant hoses, etc), made sure it wasn't crazy rich or lean, changed oil and filter, then just took it out as it was and banged on her for half an hour. Not really ideal, the best case is having a known good tune and just being able to hit the road, but my car is still running (lol). Not sure on compression at the moment, will likely test in another 1000km or so.

*edit* Also, WRT your vacuum question, off the top of my head I am seeing around 50-60kPa @ idle. I can check my ms logs later for actual data. Also running open to atmosphere.

[turbski]

So.... Reset cps to roughly .060" from the toothed wheel. Double checked plug wires to firing order. Those look good. Replaced oil filter out of concern. Removed wide band sensor to calibrate and getting a sensor failure code on lc2 module.
with the tune I have on a dyno and the ego authority set to zero in my ms2 from the dyno what is the wide band controlling besides a readout for afr? Will order another sensor in the morning either way.

Still won't idle without throttle. (Possibly wide band)?
Vac reading at -10 while loping but as soon as throttle is applied snaps to closer to -20 30 range.

[turbski]

50 to 60 kpa? That would be into positive pressure? Or is that 50 mmgh?

[JehTehsus]

Here is a log snapshot of recently when I was screwing around with idle tuning a bit. Red/top line is RPM, white/bottom line is manifold pressure, absolute, in kPa. Apologies for the confusing units, up here in the great white north of canadia it is just a mess. I never deal with mmHg up here. All my logging is setup to measure pressures in kPa, and unless I explicitly say otherwise they are all referenced to 'true vacuum', so for example before startup when the engine is off the manifold pressure would read the same as barometric pressure, ~100kPa, and drop as the vacuum pressure increases (i,e, 50kPa idle MAP pressure is 100-50, 50kPa vacuum pressure, 20kPa manifold pressure is 80 kPa vacuum pressure). If I was running boost (which I will be, but not yet) manifold pressures would be above 100kPa while under boost. Hope that makes sense, I am working through my morning coffee.

Anyway what we are seeing is an average of ~860 RPM (with a min and max of 770-940 RPM) over the course of ~ a minute (50 seconds). Manifold pressure is between 56-62 over that range, with an average of 59.5 or so. Atmospheric pressure (as measured by the MS3 barometer) is 100.7kPa, which sounds about correct because I am approximately 30m/100ft above sea level.



For reference, here is another snapshot - this is showing throttle position in green. This is just sitting in the car not moving and tapping the zoom pedal a bit. You can see manifold pressure plummeting to a lowest point of 11.6kPa after letting off the gas when the engine hit ~5500RPM. Less of a punch on the throttle (up to 3700RPM) resulted in 18.5kPa manifold pressure, and a little love tap up to 2500RPM dropped the pressure afterwards from the ~60kPa idle to 25.8. Note that generally speaking though, when getting on the throttle, the immediate pressure difference relative to atmosphere will decrease, obviously, since more air is coming into the engine as it starts to speed up. For example, on the big punch up to 5500RPM (last white spike in that graph) I get on the throttle, at 25% TPS we see a maximum manifold pressure of 85.5 kPa, 0.14 seconds later I reach peak throttle position (30.9%) but because engine speed is climbing and my throttle opening rate has slowed down, manifold pressure has actually dropped to ~81kPa. Then, as I am letting off the pedal (another 0.13s later) peak RPM is reached. Not even totally off the throttle here, sitting at 8% as the pedal is being released. The engine starts to slow down, because less air is getting in, but momentum keeps it hauling ass for another 0.266s which is when we hit 'peak vacuum' of 11.6kPa MAP pressure (~90kPa vacuum pressure, and the actual engine speed at this point is 4600RPM). As the engine continues to slow down vacuum pressure 'drops' and the manifold pressure comes up to ~60kPa idle with some juicy oscillations in there because my tuning skills are garbage.

I had wideband issues as well my first go around. In fact, when I did my break in drive I am pretty sure my wideband was fubar, but just using my nose it wasn't super rich or anything on the default map so I ran with it. I ended up having to totally recalibrate my lc 2 (pull from exhaust, power cycle with sensor disconnected, etc. as per their calibration procedure) then, after that was done, go into the megasquirt and reset the O2 calibration (again) to the LC2. After that it seemed to work great. Remember as well with the widebands they can be sensitive to moisture shock - you generally don't want the sensor to be running unless the engine is running and exhaust is moving (although for warmup enrichment tuning I have manually overridden the sensor, because the LC2 needs ~30s or so to startup). If you run your wideband for 10s of seconds before every startup it does significantly increase the failure likelihood.
With no EGO correction I don't think the wideband matters at this point.

For idle, once you are happy you have broken the motor in a bit (maybe get a few hundred kms on it before spending a few hours playing with idle, definitely at least try and ensure the rings are mostly seated), I ended up doing the following:
-Warmup the engine
-Completely disconnect the IAC valve, as in unplug it
-Engine may stall right out, so open up throttle plate a bunch using the set screw and restart motor.
-Engine should run steady state (when warm) with no IAC valve by just setting the set screw - by steady state I mean don't be turning fans on/headlights and shit.
-After getting engine idle as low as I possibly could (for me around 800ish with quite a bit of lumping variation) using just the screw I shut it off and reconnected IAC valve.
-Turned screw another quarter turn or so so that engine borderline would stall out on its own without IAC valve
-Played with idle/warmup in open loop. Just mess around with the numbers, the bosch IAC I have seems to like around 28% for the idle in the above graph. Running open loop it isn't super stable, as you can see, but it is functional.
-Once open loop idle is good, start playing with closed loop control, which I am partway through. You could leave it open loop, but closed loop is nice because fans, headlights, etc. won't stall out the motor at a low idle since the IAC can correct for it. With aggressive enough settings I can even prevent the car from stalling up a gentle hill when slowly letting out the clutch (but same aggressive settings tend to cause oscillation, so probably a bit too much)

Note that with idle tuning you can also play with spark a bunch, and at least on the MS3 there are a number of additional correction layers/tables for things like idle VE as well, which makes the process complicated. Generally speaking, get it tuned to cruise around first before worrying too much about fixing shit idle.

[turbski]

Ahh i see what you mean, i wasnt reading vac from ms but rather on a mechanical gauge. I think tonight after work will be replacing plug wires, gapping plugs and trying to get through a heat cycle to test the system. might pull a log for everyone to review and then the car will sit until the dyno apt on the 30th. Also thinking rather than letting it run on a timing table for the last motor i will set it to fixed at 10 degrees, double check with timing light and see if it makes a difference.

[turbski]

Reset the required fuel, calibrated the be 02 sensor. It starts every time but requires throttle input to stay running. Afr on MS readout has it well rich. Pegged the guage at 10. Guessing the fuel table from last motor is far far off from this. Also replaced plug wires just in case.
or I have a cylinder not firing. Will also test spark tomorrow

[JehTehsus]

An afr of 10 is quite extreme, you can try generating a new table in tuner studio and then basically get the autotune running to bring the engine to 14.7 across the board, which should be fine to get you to the dyno or do some break in cruising. Also good to verify plug wiring, which you are doing - you don't want to wash a cylinder.

[turbski]

Lessons learned for the day...... Repeated all of above steps to be sure I missed nothing. Everything checked out.
re generated a fuel table based on engine specs.
Set ignition table to fixed at 10 degrees btdc.

Fired car again.... Same results for first 30 seconds. Afr pegged super rich. Continued to run car with throttle input and tuner studio running auto tune..... 35 seconds later wide band reads afr well above 17. Auto tune off and started manually inputting 've tables based on afr value. After 3-5 minutes of screwing around temp came up to 180 190 and was able to let throttle off. It idled fairly smooth without my input. Temps dropped to 180 185 and gauge in cluster stayed below half way by a small bit.

Wondering if wide band needs to heat up before reading?
was I being impatient or just nervous due to the money spent on the block ?

Either way I found a small coolant leak at lower hose corrected that and am waiting for it to cool for a head re torque

[JehTehsus]

The LC2 takes at least 30 seconds to startup, from the time the key is turned on. Before turning on it will read ultra low AFR (IIRC the MS usually defaults this to ~7). After 30 seconds and it turns on it should be reading normally, you can look at the LED on the LC2 controller, which will be solid green when reading.

[turbski]

Should have caught that when calibrating.... Prob read it 50 times and it never clicked. "Leave lc2 powered on for a minimum of 30 seconds while sensor pre heats" clearly in my own way. But the learning curve is steeper than I thought lol. Will keep updating as we progress.
thank ya .