R33 Hypergear Highflow - What Boost To Run?

[colourclassic]

Emailed Stao after getting and fitting the turbo and never got a reply. I also think its best to get some real world information before approaching a tuner, hence asking for all your opinions.

And on that, do we think that Power FC is the best/ a good approach for tuning an R33 to be a reliable street car (with all the various needs and functions of a street car; cold start etc etc) or are there other popular brands/models to consider?

I have the same setup you mentioned in your first post being controlled by a PFC. Car runs like factory, including cold star and air-con. Unless you want the ability to switch between ethanol and pulp simultaneously, the old Apexi units are good affordable options.

[ausdrift]

Thanks colourclassic, looks like powerFC is top of my list

[Trex]

^ and I have a map you can use with your stock injectors, and a hypergear turbo which is good up to 1 bar (maxes out injectors) lol

you didn't happen to do one with the std turbo did you? from memory you used an ss2 which timing and fuelling would be very different.

i only ask because the adapt base map is very retarded and rich from people i have spoken to.

[zoomzoom]

The base maps were virtually unusuable on my stagea. Too lean off boost, far too rich on boost. The whole timing map is about 7-8 degrees retarded from where I am now. One that they sent specifically for the stagea was horrendous. It was probably idling in the 9:1 afr range. I gave them feedback about it, though I dont think it made any difference.

Pity, their customer service is usually very good, and very helpful. But the base maps are terrible. You have to be prepared to do a lot of self tuning.

Edited June 30, 2015 by zoomzoom

[Cowboy1600]

The base maps were virtually unusuable on my stagea. Too lean off boost, far too rich on boost. The whole timing map is about 7-8 degrees retarded from where I am now. One that they sent specifically for the stagea was horrendous. It was probably idling in the 9:1 afr range. I gave them feedback about it, though I dont think it made any difference.

Pity, their customer service is usually very good, and very helpful. But the base maps are terrible. You have to be prepared to do a lot of self tuning.

Perhaps they sent you a base map for an S2 Stagea?

And really a base map should pretty much allow you to start and drive the car to a tuner, shouldn't it? To expect to plug in a tune and happily boost around the place without concern is pretty far fetched. Your base tune sounds very, very safe, lots of fuel, little ignition, which is what I know I would expect.

[zoomzoom]

This is going to be speculation, but they surely can't be getting maps from a single source. When tuning a volumetric efficiency ECU, the fuel map should be reflective of the breathing characteristics of an engine. Which is why its puzzling that the fuel maps look so different from the stagea base map, r33 base map and my current fuel map (which matches the AFR targets very closely)

I have seen at least 1 tuner get their desired AFRs by just tuning the VE fuel map, where as the calculation takes into account both the target AFR and the VE for the current load/rpm. This act of tuning "your way" rather than the way the ECU is designed to be programmed makes for unintended results later.

I know that the R33 base fuel map will be lean missing below atmospheric load, and rich coughing above atmospheric load on my vehicle. But I should have the same engine as an R33, hence the mystery.

The timing map is safe enough and able to run the engine. But as for starting and getting to the tuner? Well it took me ages to figure out it was injecting hardly any cranking fuel, but then running like a coal powered train at idle.

Perhaps there should be an adaptronic sticky for sharing tuning tips. I have almost fully tuned my ECU back to stock levels of smoothness and reliability (eg cold starts, transient throttle, throttle transition etc), but its been 6 months of work.

[Kinks]

The stagea base map sounds unusual. I would have thought you could load in an R33 base map.. unless there's something different about the Stagea motor. My R34 GTT adaptronic plugin fired up first time and idled OK. Needed some tweaks to the closed loop idle parameters to stop it from hunting. But there was nothing stopping me from driving it straight away. Mixtures were a little bit off, this will ALWAYS happen in a MAP-based ECU because FMIC, exhaust, turbo etc affect VE substantially. But you won't kill a motor running lean at vacuum. Besides which, turn on closed loop using the factory EGO sensor and it'll auto correct the mixtures at cruise. Do that, drive to tuner, sort it out. I had a wideband and wanted to tinker. The base map was perfectly acceptable starting point for me though.

I self-taught over a period of months. I deliberately took it slowly to make sure I understood what I was doing. It didn't take me long to match the factory driveability. Of course I then took it to a tuner and in a couple of hours it was running WAY better. That's expertise for you. Taking you 6 months isn't the ECU's fault in any way, it's just that you're learning as you go. Same as me, I think it was about 6 months before I went to a tuner as well. Mark @ MRC Castle Hill (if you're in Sydney). He was great, explained everything he was doing and why he was doing it. That's the kind of guy who knows exactly what he's doing, and isn't afraid to share it because he has been doing it for 20-30 years and is much faster than you. Besides which, he has all the equipment (dyno etc). When you see tuners who act like it's some secret special sauce, run away. Unless you're tuning serious power, it's not rocket science.

If there's one minor criticism about the Adaptronic it's that the ECU manual hasn't kept pace with the software. I am a tweaker and fiddler, I want to know what EVERY checkbox and option does. There are several that aren't documented but searching the adaptronic forums usually turned up the info I needed. The ECU manual has the basics about how to set up the idle control and PID gains and so on, so it's good enough to get you started.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

you didn't happen to do one with the std turbo did you? from memory you used an ss2 which timing and fuelling would be very different.

i only ask because the adapt base map is very retarded and rich from people i have spoken to.

the map I put together should be ok for a standard turbo, however best to pull off about 2~3 degrees around 0.8 bar to be safe...

the base adaptronic map is only for starting your car and rolling it to the tuner haha.. it's really rough, whereas a Haltech map is more similar to a factory timing map. I based my map on the Haltech map with a mixture of the Nistune rom.

[STATUS]

Perhaps they sent you a base map for an S2 Stagea?

And really a base map should pretty much allow you to start and drive the car to a tuner, shouldn't it? To expect to plug in a tune and happily boost around the place without concern is pretty far fetched. Your base tune sounds very, very safe, lots of fuel, little ignition, which is what I know I would expect.

No a base map should run the car enough for it to be checked for leaks.... NOT TO DRIVE TO A TUNER... there is so much needed before its deemed safe to drive (ignition offset angles, latency etc) just those 2 alone could bore wash or melt an engine in a simple drive.

[Scott Black]

The r33 base map is very very rubbish will barely get the car started. Infact a flat 85ve map is alot better than the adaptronic base map, timing is just as shocking too

Edited July 2, 2015 by Scott Black

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

attached is a pretty sedate map (which is heaps nicer than the factory Adaptronic map)... of course don't use this map and thrash you car expecting it to be perfect....

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK...

It's for stock injectors and other stock stuff and a Hypergear SS2.. of course you can use it for other turbos but best to drive the car off boost till you see your favourite tuner that knows how to use an adaptronic ECU & software.. make sure you learn the TPS at 0% and 100% as each car is set differently.. then check your base timing, make sure it's synced at 15.

Stock Injectors on 98: http://www.adaptronic.com.au/forum/index.php?topic=5753.0

[Pr0x1mity]

Never had any issues with Nistune on R33 here. Been running Rb20 ecu setup for Rb25 with feature pack since it's early days and it hasn't skipped a beat. It's a daily running a GT3076R @ 18psi for the moment and a bunch of other things.