Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Well its known that adjustable cam gears on a 26 increases power, but most ppl here have done some sort of ecu tuning at the same time to achieve good results.

It was seen that Beer Baron made about 26kw by tuning cam gears alone on a 26 that already had a pfc fitted but the tune left untouched.

Is it possible to make this kind of gain with a STOCK ecu runnin stock turbos, 3" catless exhaust, intake pods and 13-14psi (R33).

Thanks.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/271922-rb26-adj-cam-gears/
Share on other sites

You can increase high end power by sacrificing alittle midrange, or get more midrange sacrificing alittle top end. I think the usual setup is 4 degrees on the intake cam gear and 2 degrees on the exhaust cam gear.

Edited by Moodles2
You can get gains on the stock ECU.

You can usually get around 240-250rwkw out of the stock ECU on stock turbos.

Cam gears need to be set for the car, there is no 'golden' setting as such.

So cam gears is a must to get this 240 - 250rwkw with the supporting mods i mentioned previously???

Also if Beer Baron could jump in, i would like to know if when the gears were fitted and tuned , did affect your afr in any way?

it will affect the tune a little. personally I wouldn't do them on a stock ecu. if you're starting with a bone stock GTR my order of mods would be:

exhaust (cat back and good cat at least, front pipes only if you really want to)

pods or high flow panel filter

ECU and EBC together. (power FC is good, cheap and easy to get tuned, and the hand controller is a handy monitoring tool) set boost to 14psi or whatever you're comfortable with.

Cam gears. best idea is get the ecu, ebc and cam gears all together and get them tuned all together that way if it does affect your tune it can be compensated for.

after that I'd add:

nismo fuel pump (piece of mind, all GTR pumps are 10+ years old)

some kind of hard pipe kit (stock piping set-up is pretty average)

oil cooler (very good idea on any tuned RB26)

then leave it there and enjoy 260rwkw without having broken the bank. That whole lot could be done under $5,000 inc labour and give you about 80rwkw gain over a stock 180rwkw 32 GTR. and it will be nice and responsive. :/

yes it's possible to get your 240 or so rwkw but the stock ecu could well hold things up. Look at getting a nistune (apparently they can adapt a 32 GTR ecu to run your 33) or a power FC. they are the options I'd look at. second hand 32/33 power FCs often go as low as $800 or $900 which is a bargain. the biggest gain of the cam gears is midrange not top end. :)

well there are base settings to start from (advance inlet a few degrees, retard exhaust a little) but it's one of those things you really need to do on the dyno so you can see the changes and get the result you want.

some settings will give you more top end with no losses anywhere.

some will give more top end with a loss in mid range

some will give more mid range with a loss of top end

some will give you less top end and less mid-range power

and the money setting will give a decent midrange increase and a small top end increase with no loss anywhere.

you really just have to test and see. every engine responds a little differently.

it will affect the tune a little. personally I wouldn't do them on a stock ecu. if you're starting with a bone stock GTR my order of mods would be:

exhaust (cat back and good cat at least, front pipes only if you really want to)

pods or high flow panel filter

ECU and EBC together. (power FC is good, cheap and easy to get tuned, and the hand controller is a handy monitoring tool) set boost to 14psi or whatever you're comfortable with.

Cam gears. best idea is get the ecu, ebc and cam gears all together and get them tuned all together that way if it does affect your tune it can be compensated for.

after that I'd add:

nismo fuel pump (piece of mind, all GTR pumps are 10+ years old)

some kind of hard pipe kit (stock piping set-up is pretty average)

oil cooler (very good idea on any tuned RB26)

then leave it there and enjoy 260rwkw without having broken the bank. That whole lot could be done under $5,000 inc labour and give you about 80rwkw gain over a stock 180rwkw 32 GTR. and it will be nice and responsive. :)

yes it's possible to get your 240 or so rwkw but the stock ecu could well hold things up. Look at getting a nistune (apparently they can adapt a 32 GTR ecu to run your 33) or a power FC. they are the options I'd look at. second hand 32/33 power FCs often go as low as $800 or $900 which is a bargain. the biggest gain of the cam gears is midrange not top end. :D

To tell u the truth i love the idea of getting a pfc along with the cam gears to make for a more or less stock good working 26 but.......That's the reason i swapped out the 25 for the 26 to start with,so i could get decent power without using any type of engine management.

U see where i'm from there are few ppl who are capable and whom i trust to tune my car so i basically do everything my self ,so i would prefer to just get the gears done using the stock ecu,profec b @14psi, (intake,exhaust and fuel pump already done)

So it all comes back to if it would make sense to fit the gears on stock ecu with all the other supporting mods.???

My objective is to get boost on a little earlier (geeze...i miss the 25) and a fat a$$ midrange...... screw top end :/

sure, you can still do the cam gears on the stock ecu. like I said it's not ideal, but it should still work. definitely do it on a dyno though so you can measure any changes in afr and it's much easier to listen for detonation on the dyno too.

change your timing belt when you do the cam gears too. and if you don't have a timing belt I'm selling some genuine ones cheap. so buy one off me. :/

nope, they didn't make it knock. it's just wise to be vigilant when making any tuning change that's all. and make sure they remember the difference between crank degrees and camshaft degrees. :/

Well just need to sort out my boost control and then look into sourcing some gears.

Like i said i'll be doing it my self so when the time comes i sure i'll need some advice then. :/

And about the timing belt..... i don't think it would make sense to pay for shipping to the next side of the globe!!! Thanks anyway.

there is nothing wrong with using cam gears on the stock ECU if you are dialing in on a dyno.

they are not 'needed' for 240-250rwkw on stock turbos, they will just make it a little nicer

IMO hard pipe kits are bad and a waste of money, especially with larger turbos and the very well documented issues surrounding turbo surge due to hard pipes.

The stock pipes actually stop/alleviate the surge due to minor flexing, so their purpose is very good (like a lot of Nissan OEM gear)

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • First up, I wouldn't use PID straight up for boost control. There's also other control techniques that can be implemented. And as I said, and you keep missing the point. It's not the ONE thing, it's the wrapping it up together with everything else in the one system that starts to unravel the problem. It's why there are people who can work in a certain field as a generalist, IE a IT person, and then there are specialists. IE, an SQL database specialist. Sure the IT person can build and run a database, and it'll work, however theyll likely never be as good as a specialist.   So, as said, it's not as simple as you're thinking. And yes, there's a limit to the number of everything's in MCUs, and they run out far to freaking fast when you're designing a complex system, which means you have to make compromises. Add to that, you'll have a limited team working on it, so fixing / tweaking some features means some features are a higher priority than others. Add to that, someone might fix a problem around a certain unrelated feature, and that change due to other complexities in the system design, can now cause a new, unforseen bug in something else.   The whole thing is, as said, sometimes split systems can work as good, and if not better. Plus when there's no need to spend $4k on an all in one solution, to meet the needs of a $200 system, maybe don't just spout off things others have said / you've read. There's a lot of misinformation on the internet, including in translated service manuals, and data sheets. Going and doing, so that you know, is better than stating something you read. Stating something that has been read, is about as useful as an engineering graduate, as all they know is what they've read. And trust me, nearly every engineering graduate is useless in the real world. And add to that, if you don't know this stuff, and just have an opinion, maybe accept what people with experience are telling you as information, and don't keep reciting the exact same thing over and over in response.
    • How complicated is PID boost control? To me it really doesn't seem that difficult. I'm not disputing the core assertion (specialization can be better than general purpose solutions), I'm just saying we're 30+ years removed from the days when transistor budgets were in the thousands and we had to hem and haw about whether there's enough ECC DRAM or enough clock cycles or the interrupt handler can respond fast enough to handle another task. I really struggle to see how a Greddy Profec or an HKS EVC7 or whatever else is somehow a far superior solution to what you get in a Haltech Nexus/Elite ECU. I don't see OEMs spending time on dedicated boost control modules in any car I've ever touched. Is there value to separating out a motor controller or engine controller vs an infotainment module? Of course, those are two completely different tasks with highly divergent requirements. The reason why I cite data sheets, service manuals, etc is because as you have clearly suggested I don't know what I'm doing, can't learn how to do anything correctly, and have never actually done anything myself. So when I do offer advice to people I like to use sources that are not just based off of taking my word for it and can be independently verified by others so it's not just my misinterpretation of a primary source.
    • That's awesome, well done! Love all these older Datsun / Nissans so rare now
    • As I said, there's trade offs to jamming EVERYTHING in. Timing, resources etc, being the huge ones. Calling out the factory ECU has nothing to do with it, as it doesn't do any form of fancy boost control. It's all open loop boost control. You mention the Haltech Nexus, that's effectively two separate devices jammed into one box. What you quote about it, is proof for that. So now you've lost flexibility as a product too...   A product designed to do one thing really well, will always beat other products doing multiple things. Also, I wouldn't knock COTS stuff, you'd be surprised how many things are using it, that you're probably totally in love with As for the SpaceX comment that we're working directly with them, it's about the type of stuff we're doing. We're doing design work, and breaking world firsts. If you can't understand that I have real world hands on experience, including in very modern tech, and actually understand this stuff, then to avoid useless debates where you just won't accept fact and experience, from here on, it seems you'd be be happy I (and possibly anyone with knowledge really) not reply to your questions, or input, no matter how much help you could be given to help you, or let you learn. It seems you're happy reading your data sheets, factory service manuals, and only want people to reinforce your thoughts and points of view. 
    • I don't really understand because clearly it's possible. The factory ECU is running on like a 4 MHz 16-bit processor. Modern GDI ECUs have like 200 MHz superscalar cores with floating point units too. The Haltech Nexus has two 240 MHz CPU cores. The Elite 2500 is a single 80 MHz core. Surely 20x the compute means adding some PID boost control logic isn't that complicated. I'm not saying clock speed is everything, but the requirements to add boost control to a port injection 6 cylinder ECU are really not that difficult. More I/O, more interrupt handlers, more working memory, etc isn't that crazy to figure out. SpaceX if anything shows just how far you can get arguably doing things the "wrong" way, ie x86 COTS running C++ on Linux. That is about as far away from the "correct" architecture as it gets for a real time system, but it works anyways. 
×
×
  • Create New...