165whp low for me?

[Fernflex]

After a year building most of my car today I went to the dyno, the first run was 160 after the 4th run I got 165whp and 168 of tq but I think is reading low for my mods and I know I still need to add some parts to really get my engine at the max. The a/f was always above 13 to 14.8

My mods: ( the one I remember)
I head ported, 1+mm bigger valve intake and exhaust and valve springs.
I engine block shaved 3mm, I pistons, pistons skirts deleted.
E rod and crankshaft.
e36 fuel injectors, stock fuel pressure regulator.
Header, (2) 2.25 exhaust tubes with (2) resonator and muffler
Intake, Big bore 64.5 TB
Msd blast coil, Msd 6al, 8.5mm spark plugs cables.
Lightweight flywheel.
173 Ecu with jim conforti chip for 2.5L.

I know I need megasquirt to really tune this car, maybe a adjustable fuel pressure regulator, bigger exhaust, 19lb injectors and remove the amf.

The adjustable FPR that I have seen are bavauto, bmp, miller, vac, bwsport from bimmer world.

What do you guys think?

[Danny]

Sounds about right.

[lolcantturn]

Yep thats right.

[nando]

tuning and a cam could get you another 10-15whp no problem.

but it really doesn't sound so bad for what it is. when you do MS ditch the AFPR and go back to the stock one. :)

[jlevie]

Those are pretty good numbers for what you have, especially when using a 173 DME. What was the A/F during the dyno pull? That will tell you where the tune needs to tweaked.

Without a WAR chip or MS there fairly simple things that you can do to affect fuel delivery. Reducing the clock spring tension in the AFM will richen the mixture below 5k. Fooling the DME into thinking the engine is a bit colder than it is will by adding some resistance to the ECT richen the mixture across the entire band. But understand that twiddling things external to the DME will be fighting the DME's programming. It uses data from the O2 sensor to adjust fuel delivery to try to keep the engine running at 14:1. A WAR chip allows you to change the maps for both fuel and ignition timing, but as far as I know it doesn't affect adaptaion and learning. To really gain control you need MS.

[Fernflex]

I also have a 288 cam and Im installing a cam gear soon!

Nando so my next step should be the MS and forget about the afpr.

Jlevie how is the 173 can affect the numbers? I got a couple of other ecu's I can swap. I have to see the dyno chart but the car was running 14.0 - 14.3 afr.

Also is it better to stay with the e36 injectors or change to the 19lb.

By the way thank you very much know Im a little bit more calm. :D

[Luis325]

Fern i still think that with the 288 cam you have the numbers are a bit low...
Those are numbers for cars without cam...

[nando]

tuning is still going to make a big difference, I wasn't giving a lot of weight to the cam by itself.

basically there is no possible way an off the shelf JC chip, which was designed for a totally stock M20B25, is going to work with a stroker, cam, BBTB, and larger injectors. I'm actually impressed you're making that much power with zero tuning.

as far as injectors, if you have standalone (MS) then what you have now are just fine.

[Luis325]

Nando so the first step should be the tunning and afm removal?

Also i think the exhaust is killing his ho also..
He has the ebay headers to a 2.25 dual exhaust with 2 18" bullet resonators to a dual in/out 24" magnaflow muffler... All in 2.25..

[jlevie]

Jlevie how is the 173 can affect the numbers? I got a couple of other ecu's I can swap. I have to see the dyno chart but the car was running 14.0 - 14.3 afr.

Note that what follows is from personal observation and what tidbits I've gleaned from various on-line sources. I know of no authoritative source about the inner workings of a Motronic DME.

It matters not which Motronic 1.1/1.3 DME you use. The engine ran at ~14:1 because that is what the DME is supposed to do. As far as I know, you can't change that behaviour of the DME with a chip. You can fiddle with the maps, but the DME is going to learn what fuel trim is needed to get to 14:1. In a like manner you can increase fuel pressure or fit larger injectors and temporarily richen the mixture, but after the engine runs a while the DME will drive the A/F ratio back towards 14:1.

For best performance you want the A/F ratio to be 12.8:1 to 13:1. I can achieve this on my Spec E30 below 5k by reducing the clock spring tension in the AFM. I went through a bunch of ECT sensors and found the one that had the highest resistance. The out of spec ECT sensor I found makes the DME think that the engine is running at 150F when it actually at 170F. That richened the mixture above 5k to about 13.5:1. Not as much as I'd like, but better than 14:1. I'm also using an aged O2 sensor. An aged sensor indicates a leaner condition than actually exists. The aged sensor decreases the amount of fuel trim towards the lean side.

If I reset the DME it starts operating that way, but even during a race weekend the engine spends enough time at part throttle for the learned adaptation to have an affect. The one time I dynoed before (with a DME reset) and after a race weekend the A/F ratio below 5k had wound up at about 13.3: and the ratio above 5k was about 13.8:1. So it looks to me like learned adaptation applies to part throttle and WOT operation, which makes sense.

You don't need larger injectors unless the injector are maxing out to 90% or greater duty cycle and the top end A/F ratio is leaner than desired. This would presuppose total control of the maps like you can achieve with an MS. There's a slight advantage to the E36 injectors, not so much for flow rate as for better atomization of the fuel.

All DME's, even amoung the same part numbers, are not equal. While the guts of DME are digital and not subject to aging, the A/D and D/A sections are analog and component aging can affect operation of the DME. When we set up a Spec E30 we take a half dozen or more DME's to the dyno. The first thing we do is to make a pull with each to see which ones run the richest above 5k. We'll keep the the best couple of those for the car and return the others. It isn't unusal to see a DME run rediculously lean below 5k, which implies a bad AFM input circuit, or lean across the entire band, which probably means a bad ECT input circuit or bad injector/spark output circuits.

On the subject of tuning, I've never seen an improvement over the stock configuration by a high output coil, MSD or fancy ignition wires. In a like manner, no CAI that I've seen exceeds the performance of the factory airbox. When the engine has been "tweaked" a bit more spark advance helps with power, which is something the Spec E30 rules don't allow me to do. But I have played with that just to see the affect (favorable). The plugs used do make a difference. On a mostly street car NGK ZGR5A plugs make more power than the Bosch equivalent. For a track or race car Autolite AR53 plugs are the way to go. But they are probably a bit too cold for street duty.

As a point of reference, the race built engine in my Spec E30, using OE or equal parts, tolerances, and procedures, made 162hp on a DynoJet on a 100F day. If would probably make around 165hp in cooler weather.

[nando]

you can change the target map on the chip to run richer. but doing things like fiddling with the AFM or coolant sensor and leaving the stock maps, it will try to revert back to the orginal AFR.

is it legal in spec E30 to disconnect the O2 sensor? since you're racing it's not really needed. Motronic won't go into any limp mode, it will just run open loop.

[jlevie]

Disconnecting the O2 sensor would not be legal in a strict interpretation of the rules.

I haven't done enough playing around with a WAR chip to see if adaptation is still in affect. I suspect it may be since that behavior would be an integral part of the DME's code.

[nando]

right, but what I'm saying is you can change the target map that the DME is looking up when it makes corrections. I don't know if the WAR chip allows it but there are guys that are hacking the original ROM's and changing all sorts of stuff, including the AFR targets.

[Fernflex]

[nando]

oh wow, very lean up top (not dangerous, just not poweful).

The best thing you could do by far is to tune it. There's a MS2 PnP kit out there somewhere calling your name...