by dr20t » Sun Mar 15, 2015 3:43 am
A warning in advance - this is a long post as it covers alot.
So I've been doing some extremely thorough digging in my (limited) spare time, and feel I have come to a very important finding which explains a hell of alot.
As many would know, ive been playing with my dual avcs settings in an attempt to improve overall driveability, off-boost response, turbo spool and (least importantly) top end power. Without going into a ridiculous amount of detail which I've covered a million times before, my turbo spool was suffering, even with a 0.63 housing on the gtx3076. In 2nd gear, it would hit boost threshold (1psi) at 2000rpm but not make full boost until 4400rpm. That's a long time and laggy when experienced on the street as a driver or passenger in an auto. In 3rd gear boost threshold was same but full boost at 4000-4200rpm depending on how hot the headers were (ie two or three consecutive pulls in a row would make it spool faster on the third or fourth pull).
This was with the 0.63 housing that I put on around September/ October last year. Was worse with the 0.82 housing.
Above 3500rpm the car was great to drive, but below that in any gear other than first was a dog.
So for a couple of months now I've been working on the tune myself with the 0.63 housing. Optimizing my avcs helped. And I could brake boost to 21 psi and pull four wheel 20metre burnouts when I did it. But it was still taking too long for my liking at 7-10 seconds on the brake. Something still didnt seem right as my engine flows a shit load of air and should not be this laggy with the 0.63 gtx3076.
However once on full boost, this engine is truly amazing. So was Jekyll and Hyde and too far skewed to Jekyll for usable street power being subdued.
Another thing I kept hearing from multiple "experts" on ej207's is my car can't really be making the power it is with stock heads, cams and block. I kept shutting this out as "hate" and also because I knew the v10 ej207 is a freak of a motor. Plus with my cams and heads, i was happy that it was a solid engine and that other ej's weren't as special (bias much)
I tried multiple settings with the avcs and then ignition timing and got it running better. However it was still too laggy from what it theoretically should be and what my gut was instinctively telling me it should be for this setup.
I also found with the 0.63 housing that the top end suffered a little bit from when the 0.82 was on there and from what i liked. So last weekend I switched back to the 0.82 and was determined to getting the cam timing right to get it to spool.
I made the required adjustments to the tune then started optimizing cam timing for the 0.82 housing. The car was definitely laggier again (something I didn't miss) but above 4000rpm the torque is insane. Absolutely insane and pulls all the way to redline very strongly. Which got me thinking. The jump from 0.63 to 0.82 on a 2.0 litre with this turbo should not be as great as it is. If it was a larger turbo that was being restricted by the 0.63 housing then I would understand. But a 2.0litre doesn't choke with a 3076 and 0.63 housing.
Continued to play with cam timing and still not getting spool right as I want it. Alot better than before but still not right. I've done to death the check for exhaust leaks and cracks and heat being retained and everything else bar unicorn fairy dust being misplaced.
So today I embarked on a mission to test a theory out. I set my exhaust avcs advance (yes advance not retard) to something substantial, dropped my ignition timing and added fuel. Low and behold, spool improved but I was getting little torque. So off boost driving was a shit. Played around a little more then had a lightbulb moment.
Pulled timing covers off today (an absolute bitch with engine in car) and checked my static cam timing. Took me a couple of hours to do properly cos my brain wasnt registering and then it clicked. My exhaust cam on the left hand side has been installed retarded 15 degrees, and the right side 12 degrees retarded.
It all now makes sense. The lag, the feeling when running "normal" avcs settings that ignition timing is retarded. The fact that no amount of ignition advance was helping and that my antilag setup wasn't working as it should.
Effectively this means the exhaust valves are opening and closing 15 and 12 degrees of crank rotation later. Meaning overlap is high and causing reversion with normal avcs settings.
This would also explain why my car makes alot more power up top and is a bit of a "light-switch". Retarded exhaust favours top end power, and this further explains why the 0.82 housing made such a difference up top to the 0.63, because the engine breathing characteristics are skewed toward the top end so when a more "restrictive" exhaust housing is presented, and the avcs settings aren't adjusted to suit, then its as if I've released a whole heap of backpressure off the engine.
Thankfully, my avcs adjustment range is -50 to +10 on the exhaust side (50 degrees of retard and 10 degrees of advance). This means with the advance I can effectively remove most of that -15 and -12 of static cam retard with the tune, so no need to remove and reset the cams at this stage thankfully.
Didnt get time to optimise the tune with this new knowledge, but I'm going to also check the intake cams before making a play with it.
Wil keep this thread updated and I'm actually excited to see the difference with the results.
Mick