Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Hello all,

I just had a quick question i would like some opinions on.

I have a 26/30 in my Vl calais and it is running twins at 18psi. A haltech 500sprint is the Ecu that is running it all.

Just quickly because i get any responses about talking to my tuner about my issues, I have done this and am in the process of continuing this, however with the new year upon us things are a little slow on the response end and i just wanted to get a few more opinions so i don't feel like a total useless twat when talking about whats going on.

So basically whats happening is that the car is running a bit rich (i was told by my tuner) as the haltech does not have a pre mapped cold start function (told by tuner). Now the car keeps fouling the plugs. I have changed the plugs 3 times in 500kms. Admittedly i dont drive it very often. Initially i was told that my car alarm was draining my battery and the haltech doesnt run well off lower voltage so that was causing things to malfunction. Now that i have a trickle charger in the car the battery is always topped up, but things are still amiss. Also another thing i have trouble with, is that the car stalls under deceleration. When i change gears from 3-2 or 2-1 in town it stalls between gear changes. Unless i keep the revs up.

The car idles at 1250 rpm when warm, however i had to up this a little because it was idling at 400rpm when cold.

My question to the forum is:

Is this all related to the tune? AF ratios and so forth?

or could there be something else im missing???

The engine is pretty much brand new. every bit in and on it are new except the rods which are off the dirty 30.

Thanks in advance

If i have left out any info just tell me what i might need to add to give you gurus a better idea on things.

Cheers

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/462000-engine-troubles/
Share on other sites

I find it hard to believe that a haltech sprint wouldn't have a cold start function. I had a fuel only haltech in the early 90's and even that had cold start. Premapped? Your tuner should have set this up. If the issue was only related to cold start, everything should be fine once warm, clearly its not. It sounds like you need a better tuner. Sorry I couldn't be of any better assistance.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/462000-engine-troubles/#findComment-7660937
Share on other sites

Basically the tune is not finished. It sounds like the tuner has tuned it at operating temp but he hasn't done the finishing touches like cold start, idle control, and your decel issue.

Depends on what you agreed on with the tuner. However, if he is blaming the ECU for not being able to do something that is a bad sign - setting up cold start is something the tuner should normally sort out for you and there is absolutely no reason why any modern ECU can't be set up to run properly when cold.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/462000-engine-troubles/#findComment-7661052
Share on other sites

The tuner may be right to say it doesn't have a "pre-mapped" cold start function but that just means he has to set it up himself. You will have to leave the car with him overnight so he can start it from cold.

What plugs are you running?

Have you got the best tuner in Tasmania (no point in cheaping out)?

And out of interest what power does it make?

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/462000-engine-troubles/#findComment-7661201
Share on other sites

Thanks for the advice guys.

For privacy reasons i dont want to publicly complain about anyone and what they do, if you really want to know who has tuned my car i have no issue in letting you guys know via pm.

I have had the car looked at by Confidyne also, and they said that the tune looked ok at the time before i got the car back. Having said that, the car was only there for about 30mins to an hour so i imagine that it was a glance from Confidyne.

KiwiRS4T - I am just running NGK plugs and they seem to be doing the job fine. I just cleaned them again the other day and it starts again now. The car makes 310rwkw on bp98 @18psi. Its running -7's

my tuner is happy to check the tune again, I just have to wait till hes free again. Hopefully that'll be end of Jan start of Feb.

I just hope its all resolved once and for all :)

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/462000-engine-troubles/#findComment-7661509
Share on other sites

Most tuners ask for the car to be left overnight, they do the dyno tune on day one and the first thing they do on day 2 is the cold start, they then may go on to touch up the day 1 tune.

Yes it does have coolant temperature correction......

  • Like 1
Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/462000-engine-troubles/#findComment-7661526
Share on other sites

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

    • Yep super expensive, awesome. It would be a cool passion project if I had the money.
    • Getting the setup right, is likely to cost multiples of the purchase price of the vehicle.
    • So it's a ginormous undertaking that will be a massive headache but will be sorta cool if pulled off right. And also expensive. I'm sure it'll be as expensive as buying the car itself. I don't think you could just do this build without upgrading other things to take the extra power. Probably lots of custom stuff as well. All this assuming the person has mechanical knowledge. I'm stupid enough to try it but smart enough to realize there's gonna be mistakes even with an experienced mechanic. I'm a young bloke on minimum wage that gets dopamine from air being moved around and got his knowledge from a Donut video on how engines work.]   Thanks for the response though super informative!
    • Yes, it is entirely possible to twincharge a Skyline. It is not....without problems though. There was a guy did it to an SOHC RB30 (and I think maybe it became or already was a 25/30) in a VL Commode. It was a monster. The idea is that you can run both compressors at relatively low pressure ratios, yet still end up with a quite large total pressure ratio because they multiply, not add, boost levels. So, if the blower is spun to give a 1.4:1 PR (ie, it would make ~40 kPa of boost on its own) and the turbo is set up to give a 1.4:1 PR also, then you don't get 40+40 = 80 kPa of boost, you get 1.4*1.4, which is pretty close to 100 kPa of boost. It's free real estate! This only gets better as the PRs increase. If both are set up to yield about 1.7 PR, which is only about 70 kPa or 10ish psi of boost each, you actually end up with about 1.9 bar of boost! So, inevitably it was a bit of a monster. The blower is set up as the 2nd compressor, closest to the motor, because it is a positive displacement unit, so to get the benefit of putting it in series with another compressor, it has to go second. If you put it first, it has to be bigger, because it will be breathing air at atmospheric pressure. The turbo's compressor ends up needing to be a lot larger than you'd expect, and optimised to be efficient at large mass flows and low PRs. The turbo's exhaust side needs to be quite relaxed, because it's not trying to provide the power to produce all the boost, and it has to handle ALL the exhaust flow. I think you need a much bigger wastegate than you might expect. Certainly bigger than for an engine just making the same power level turbo only. The blower effectively multiplies the base engine size. So if you put a 1.7 PR blower on a 2.5L Skyline, it's like turboing a 4.2L engine. Easy to make massive power. Plus, because the engine is blown, the blower makes boost before the turbo can even think about making boost, so it's like having that 4.2L engine all the way from idle. Fattens the torque delivery up massively. But, there are downsides. The first is trying to work out how to size the turbo according to the above. The second is that you pretty much have to give up on aircon. There's not enough space to mount everything you need. You might be able to go elec power steering pump, hidden away somewhere. but it would still be a struggle to get both the AC and the blower on the same side of the engine. Then, you have to ponder whether you want to truly intercool the thing. Ideally you would put a cooler between the turbo and the blower, so as to drop the heat out of it and gain even more benefit from the blower's positive displacement nature. But that would really need to be a water to air core, because you're never going to find enough room to run 2 sets of boost pipes out to air to air cores in the front of the car. But you still need to aftercool after the blower, because both these compressors will add a lot of heat, and you wil have the same temperature (more or less) as if you produced all that boost with a single stage, and no one in their right mind would try to run a petrol engine on high boost without a cooler (unless not using petrol, which we shall ignore for the moment). I'm of the opinnion that 2x water to air cores in the bay and 2x HXs out the front is probably the only sensible way to avoid wasting a lot of room trying to fit in long runs of boost pipe. But the struggle to locate everything in the limited space available would still be a pretty bad optimisation problem. If it was an OEM, they'd throw 20 engineers at it for a year and let them test out 30 ideas before deciding on the best layout. And they'd have the freedom to develop bespoke castings and the like, for manifolds, housings, connecting pipes to/from compressors and cores. A single person in a garage can either have one shot at it and live with the result, or spend 5 years trying to get it right.
    • Good to know, thank you!
×
×
  • Create New...