Page 1 of 2

Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 12:47 pm
by benvw
Hey guys,

need to ask a favour of someone. We are trying to sort out a mistery problem with my car with detonation. We would like to rule out a few things withouyt spending a fortune on parts that may have nothing wrong with them. Specificaly, I wouold like to ask a huge favour of anyone in Brisbane with a B4 that might lend me their car for a day with my mechanic to exchange some sensors to try and rule of a few problems. Can anyone please help?

Cheers

Ben

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 4:27 pm
by natho
what sort of trouble are you having?

mine was pinging a bit even after an ecutek2, and even on cool days, and when not heat soaked! eventually got an OBD2 cable for datalogging and found that the cam position sensor was malfunctioning. replaced that about a week ago, and the advance multiplier sitll hasn't dropped from 16 - before it was down to 11 on days like today. still not certainy it's the only problem but it seems to have contributed somewhat.

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 6:25 pm
by Jaz
Pinging is a factory trait of B4s. That's why there's so many of them with ruined big end bearings. Pistons in this case pass it on.

I wish you well. What RPM and load (gear, accel) is it pinging?

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 9:17 pm
by natho
what do you mean by "Pistons in this case pass it on"

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 11:00 pm
by Boxer
natho wrote:what do you mean by "Pistons in this case pass it on"

Pistons in the B4 motor are forged units. Therefore instead of simply putting a hole in a piston or breaking a ring land, the extra pressures and stress of detonation is transferred through the conrods to the crank and ultimately bearings

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 10:29 pm
by west_minist
Once your MAF is cleans and no boost leaks, including in the header to the turbo's, a simple retune takes care of all pinging.

I have a lot of experience tuning them, outside of ECUTek. If you are interested and have the tactrix cable, viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7415 pm me.

Here is some of my work I posted:- http://www.xtremeracingtuning.com/forum ... m.php?f=88

I worked on a b4 that use to work so bad in Montserrat, Caribbean on bad gas. That car is now working extremely well.

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:34 pm
by natho
hi west_minist,

my MAF is clean and as far as i'm aware there are no boost leaks. are there particular places the b4's are prone to leaking, in your experience? and wouldn't a leak cause it to run rich, rather than lean?

mine pings once or twice almost any time that boost builds, either the primary or secondary, if the ambient temperature is anything more than about 20 degrees C.

i've even used SSM to remove more timing globally (as mine was tuned with ecutek) and it helps the pinging but it eventually does anyway.

will be going back to the tuner soon hopefully but i'm doubtful pulling timing is going to be enough to fix the problem.

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 5:37 pm
by west_minist
Pulling a heap load of it will fix it.

Interesting enough, header leaks under boost seems not affect AFR in big swings you may like to expect, but can cause pinging issues. We typically see this on WRX's.

In all the B4's I have come across, its the stock tuning on the gas that is an issue. It seems these cars have higher gas requirements than any other model of Subaru. If pining was music, these models would win that contest.

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:09 pm
by west_minist
Take a peep here:- http://www.xtremeracingtuning.com/forum ... f=40&t=350

Below are two Legacy B4's show driving stats. The last two graphs were horrible and driving the car, sounded like Steel Pan, a music instrument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steelpan

http://www.steeldrumtech.com/soundclips.html

Lol. The owner made the statements above and he was correct!

Image


Image


Image

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 8:25 pm
by natho
gee that's pretty shocking. the IAM is down to 0 in the last set of logs, and it's pinging absolutely everywhere.

my tuner got my car on a 39degC day and said the IAM was down to 7. i only drove the car for a week with the stock tune, it pinged everywhere so i booked it in for a tune very quickly.

he mentioned that in the areas mine was prone to pinging, he's pulled a total of 7 degrees of timing over the factory tune. normally it's only 5.

it seems a little strange to me now. last week on a 36 degree day i go stuck behind a truck on a freeway, going uphill. i spent enough time in the load ranges where it pings, but without it pinging, for it to re-evaluate the IAM from 13 back to 16. then as soon as i put my foot down to overtake (30% throttle, 3rd gear, 2500-4000rpm) it pinged enough for the IAM to go back to 13 again.

today was 37 and i did an ecu reset and drove with the windows down. every time it came on boost it'd ping once or twice, usually at the moment my foot goes down on the thottle.

here's the dyno report from the tune. they did a good job getting rid of the VOD i think.
Image
Image

and some learning views

this one is from a drive recently where the IAM dropped to 13. note that in hot weather i don't ever come on the secondary. i figure pinging in high revs/high load is going to cause more damage than low load & revs pinging
Image

here's one from a hot day last week, obviously i've driven a little harder here as you can see correction in the higher load/rev ranges:
Image

and finally here's one from a much cooler day only a few days after an ECU reset:
Image

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 10:37 pm
by west_minist
You will always get some pinging every once in a while. If road tuning was done completely, then 99% of the pinging is removed.

Good luck!

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:00 am
by west_minist
In your tuning, your car made 211WHP. I have not check to see if it was a Manual or the 4EAT, but in my tuning, my B4's make at least 240whp+, thats 180KW to the wheels in 3rd gear for a Manual. The same goes for the 4EAT.

Sometimes I am very happy to see my cars doing very well over EcuTek. I say sometimes, because, its sadden me to see Ecutek customers not at a good potential.

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 3:10 pm
by benvw
HI guys, sorry for not getting back to you all, I have been without internet access for some time thanks to Telstra. Will have a look at all the posts.

Cheers

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 3:14 pm
by benvw
natho wrote:what sort of trouble are you having?

mine was pinging a bit even after an ecutek2, and even on cool days, and when not heat soaked! eventually got an OBD2 cable for datalogging and found that the cam position sensor was malfunctioning. replaced that about a week ago, and the advance multiplier sitll hasn't dropped from 16 - before it was down to 11 on days like today. still not certainy it's the only problem but it seems to have contributed somewhat.


How much was the sensor? and how hard was it to replace? How many hours etc...? I have been having problems with the car detonating under load - i.e. steep hils. On the flat it is fine with no audiable detonation. Up hills is completely different. I put octane booster in the other week and this made a huge difference, although didn't remove all detonation but was much better.

Re: Help - anyone live in Brisbane with a B4?

PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 3:16 pm
by benvw
Jaz wrote:Pinging is a factory trait of B4s. That's why there's so many of them with ruined big end bearings. Pistons in this case pass it on.

I wish you well. What RPM and load (gear, accel) is it pinging?


Generally from 4000rpm up. So secondary turbo is on at this stage. Happens in second and third gears mostly. Speed ranges but if I floor it in third whilst going up a hill it starts at 60km/hr.