Project Midnight Sun, a saved project

In reply to Shavarsh :

2021 has not been the best of years for me, getting back to work on this has been a very gradual process as things improve. I started watching Junkyard Digs (and Mook!) on YT, helped a bit to see people working on cars without lifts, full shops, and all sorts of time. On a few episodes they work to just get an engine to make some noise, feeding off that, that resonated with me and got me back out working at it. The IAC thing is the latest in a long line of, probably, electrical gremlins but I have the option to just disable it so it's not slowing me down from going across town this weekend to do some track day focused work. 

I found this: https://forums.hybridz.org/topic/117215-no-success-with-gm-iac/

I'm not the only one having a problem with this, looks like I probably need to spend more time with TunerStudio but I'm getting a little tired of these constant hiccups so it may well get bypassed for a while.

She made it across town, stinky and stumbly. Got a second set of more experienced eyes on 'er and confirmed what I was suspecting in that the rough "20 cell at a time" blanket adjustments to the VE are not good enough to get a smoothy running engine all through the VE table. Shucks. The last IAC unit was definitely giving me a vacuum leak, the fuel numbers dropped consistently all afternoon until things started to come together and the light began to shine through the end of the tunnel. An old electrical problem reared up again, the fans were staying on when I shut everything down. Long story short, the fans were getting straight 12V from the battery and killing it, not the dash like I originally thought. Easy fix and a not-inconsiderable weight off my mind. I haven't drive more but really need to, this past weekend was a social weekend that left me no time to slip out and tune. At the least I'll have drive time this coming weekend, going over to use the QuickJacks to put in the tow hitch and pick up the trailer. A likely addition will be some brake bleeing. May also, depending on scheduling and vibes, put in the front strut tower brace and realign.

Robling in a month and I still need to:

-Rebuild my interior switch panel, the prototype has served it's purpose.

-Battery box, not even worried about relocating rearward as long as it's secured somewhere

-Maybe a horn?

-Definitely a fuel gauge, gotta send a couple back to Summit and swap for the AutoMeter piece that will fit a 2-gauge panel in the center vent with oil pressure.

-Also, a question for Patientzero, where do I start looking to figure out why my GPS speedo isn't working on TunerStudio? I did what I thought was basic setup and haven't had the time to sit down and address it yet.

Lastly, I was perusing this article series over the weekend and discussing it with a new perspective. With a similar direction of building it looks pretty reasonable to point at a ~3800+ start to the power band, just under where I was previously capped by limp mode. It really is gonna be a new driving experience. https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/1503-how-to-get-384-hp-out-of-a-4-8l-engine-mini-mouse-part-1/

I haven't used TunerStudio.  I'd have to look into it.  I assume your GPS speedo has a 5v output that you're feeding into the MS or is it a PPM situation?

If possible try to download a stock 4.8 VE map from HP Tuners, set up your table axis in the MS to match the GM tables and transfer all the numbers over.  This will get you in the ballpark.  It's the same way I did my LS3, timing table too.  You just need to make sure the unit of measure matches.

I tuned a early 2000's Silverado with a 4.8/4L60.  With just a cam and headers it made 325whp.  

Well, it's 2022 and I still haven't been to the track. In short, it was rainy when we left late for Roebling. Hit I-4 and I could see and feel the auto tune working, hopes were high. Then I had gradually increasing trouble maintaining speed with no real power, so I moved for an exit. I see that the voltmeter is below 10. Then 9. At the bottom of the ramp I got lucky, there was no traffic when the battery died. The local AutoZone didn't have any 75 series side post batteries, they were only about half-stocked, so I bought a top post and cable ends. I didn't want to get a battery that wouldn't fit in the battery holder, at this point I still had some hope of being able to continue. It was pouring rain when I crawled into a fogged car and changed batteries and cable ends. We didn't get much further before I called it, I had no real acceleration and was having trouble maintaing a minimal highway speed. Then it got worse. Orlando-Daytona round trip time of 6 hours and 2.5 tanks of gas. Had a minor exhaust headache the next day.

So, I learned:
My air filter was massively clogged.

My autotune works.

I need to be diligent with my cutoffs to avoid killing this battery.

I need to repatch the hole in the floor for the 3-link shafty thing. (Technical term, I checked)

The car has been parked since the aborted track trip but I have been making time to go out and keep things moving. I have avoided the dreaded "horizontal space creep" that would convert it to faux-temporary storage. I have to pull the tongue off the trailer and roll it around to the side yard but the car is minutes from cranking. That has been my goal the last 2-months, to not let it slide onto a back burner while I work to prepare for the next wrenching weekend with cleaning and planning. To that end, I'm pencilling a shake down cruise for the 22nd at The Firm and I should be able to pen that in and book it after this weekend. To that end, the main points are:

Over the holidays I pulled the air filter out of the wheel well and cleaned out 50g of sand, rubber, and pebbles. The filter was 500g dirty, so 10% of it was road stuff. There was also no hint of red. The filter is, obviously, clean now and oil arrives tomorrow with an IAT sensor and pigtail. The new sensor will let me remove the GM MAF housing and the plumbing to fit it, shortening the assembly to put the filter inside the engine bay. Longer term I would like to draw up an intake box but this is already a big improvement. The fender liner was previously removed as a road hazard, unintentionally exposing the air filter to grit and water. A flash-on snapshot of the filter upon removal. Can I plead a "live and learn"?

Also arriving tomorrow are Hawk DTC-60s for the front calipers. Having driven The Firm a few times and been caught short of braking each time, I am not going to go up on the same pads with more power. I considered the Blues but I prefer the friction curve of the 60s and they were only $17 more on Summit. I'm still planning on HP+ pads in the rear for this trip, they should handle balancing fine.

I have an extra piece of sheet metal, I'm going to make a large version of 3-link shaft thing cover and give it a bit of a hump to prevent the travel of the rear end popping it loose.

Arriving Saturday I have a set of QA1 sway bars, I plan to have the rear bar added before The Firm with a front strut brace. This is planned to be the heaviest work before a shake down at The Firm but I might put in the front sway bar if I get carried away. This should also make for some good photo ops to add some content.

When I bought my last 98 M3, it was so weak kneed it couldn't light up the rear tires.  I was baffled.  Then I checked the air filter on the end of the cold air Dinan intake.  I've never seen a K&N air filter so plugged up!  Cleaned it, lightly oiled it, threw it back on.  Car felt like it'd gained at least 75hp!

Track pads are hard to find these days, it seems. Not an expert but it looks like supply chain issues have been hitting performance brake pads. The DTC pads I ordered are HB111G.660, 2 piston pads. They should be HB183G.660, 1 piston pads if they were going to fit my car. I hunted last night and my best bet is that Carbotech has some XP10 or XP12 stock on hand. Otherwise, my best best might be some ST43 Raybestos pads that don't seem much better than the HP+ pads that I already have. Once I factor in the $309 price tag, the HP+ I have on the car are a no-brainer for being better. I checked Wilwood brake kits and Porterfield shows a front set for only $1640. Yikes.

If I go up on HP+, I will cook them. They are just, simply, not up to handling The Firm unless I seriously limit myself to the point of being an obstacle. If nothing else I will drive them, cook them, and bleed them out at the end of the day during tire swap. Not ideal by any means but might be the best of some bad options. 

Well, it's been a month but I did get the QA1 rear sway installed and it was as straightforward and simple as you'd expect. Not quite as easy, though, as one side (passenger for me) of the bar was a very slight bit larger in diameter so the blocks didn't slide freely. I wound up having to take it off and fight with it a little but nothing too crazy. In the end, it tucks up quite nicely and the black finish is real nice to look at if you're down there. I haven't gone out driving, Orlando traffic and all that, but I'm looking forward to eventually getting out and letting her run. 

I did not get to The FIRM and I'm not sure if I will get any track days this year. Work is depending on me to pull off a 4 month sprint and there's a lot to be done at home, not all of it expected. If it takes another year, though, the Mustang will just be that much more polished. Next on my list is weatherstripping, so I can get the GTI in for a brake leak diagnosis without worrying about weather, and the front strut brace and sway. 

I'm sure you're a much more experienced driver than me but I wouldn't completely discount the HP+.  I know they are not ideal but I don't see any reason you can't run them just to shake down the car.  I used them on my last track day at Topeka and ran at Spec Miata pace in my first time in the car and only second time at that track with no issues.  I was still able to lock up my 295 A052's.  

Was "encouraged" to go in to work today and it was due to rain so I opted for the Mustang over the CB500. It did not rain. Handling is even better with the rear sway, not that I was doing anything spirited but even at low speeds it felt better. The bad is that my mower has more get up and go, more low end oomph, and it's a push mower. Off the line accel is abysmal and no amount of tuning is doing much good. It is a 4.8L, reportedly they love revs, but the engine doesn't rev under load either. Also, the power steering pump will stall the engine at idle. In conclusion, I think that a major component of the problem is the 92mm throttle body. So I'm going to go hunting for a smaller (75-85mm) cable throttle body or, if that fails, I'll have to pick some brains here about how to get some guts back in this car.

I'm in no rush, I don't expect to be on track until next year at the earliest, but it's always something with this car. When it comes to spending money, the GTI is going to have to take precedence. The smart thing to do might be to trade in the GTI on something bloated, ugly, and new but I don't know if I can bring myself to trade a happy car for something fake. Ehh that's a can I'm going to kick further down the road.

In sum: Unhappiness continues and circumstances are dictating that the Mustang is likely to attain 'shelf' status for a while.

Thinking more on it, the last time that I had the car out with extra eyes and brainpower for some tuning notes we found that the MAP reading maxed out around 60% throttle and was not as low as expected. The engine also revs fine under no load but has no oomph under load. Thinking way back, with the stock ECU and electronic throttle body (smaller), it could get up and go. While I plan on fully proving out (or being wrong) that it doesn't improve with time AutoTuning, I'm also thinking that if the problem is slow moving air in the intake then the answer is to make the air move faster. A quick perusal of intake manifolds for LS engines leads me to believe they're engineered with platforms like the LS3 in mind, like the intake on the car already. So if I can't easily swap manifolds to resolve the issue, why not work from the other end and just give the air a push on the way in? Like with a modest boost supercharger :D

Seriously. Am I off base anywhere here or would that seem to solve the issue? Assuming, of course, that I'm not prematurely concerned and the engine just needs more AutoTune time.

If I'm not nutso, what search criteria would I want to keep in mind while perusing a suitable supercharger? Ideals would be wallet friendly, relatively, and just enough to get the air flowing properly at the low end.

Edit: One thing I will do before anything else is dial up the idle speed. It sounds really cool at ~875rpm but it doesn't handle load well. If it needs to be moving faster for load then it stands to reason that bumping the idle up will both make a more efficient idle and give me a head start on revving for power on acceleration. I still have the IAC disabled, since it wanted to move in reverse and the simplest answer was to unplug it, so I'll just open the TB a little for the desired speed.

Couple of points...

Boost is always good.  However, don't put boost on an engine that isn't running well to begin with.  You will mask the issue and be frustrated.

2nd, air velocity is probably not an issue.  The piston moving down creates a massive vacuum and will pull the appropriate amount of air in regardless (assuming you have enough non restricted volume).

I didn't read everything.  Do you have a wideband o2?  If not, borrow one.  Find out what is going on before just throwing ideas at it.

Good luck!

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

Fully understand the point of not throwing boost to mask a problem, was thinking of throwing boost to resolve a problem. Still, leaving the door wide open to being wrong and just generally asking questions/learning.

I do have a wideband, the megasquirt is pulling from it to run the autotune feature on Tuner Studio. That's why I'm going to log some more drive time before even pulling the parts cannon from storage. However, this has been a persistent problem that hasn't really shown signs of improvement. So far, AFR's are pretty happy across the load range for conditions but it has no power. Like I could out accelerate it on a Husky. Won't really be able to get out and do some tuning driving until the weekend, when I might be working, since I won't go out in weekday traffic on these roads. Folks around here only slow down for Chik-Fil-A and they drive like they're Mad Max, not sure I'd survive.

Id look at timing curves. If afr is happy and it doesn't rev under load well, it almost has to be timing....

Throw 10 degrees across the board at it and go for a run. See what happens. 

Dusterbd13-michael said:

Id look at timing curves. If afr is happy and it doesn't rev under load well, it almost has to be timing....

Throw 10 degrees across the board at it and go for a run. See what happens. 

Or, throw a timing light at it first...

But, yes.  If afr is happy, check timing.

If that happy, check iat and cts...

Solid points. Glad that I asked, timing didn't even cross my mind. Doh! Thank for the solid responses y'all

Yes, I know that uploading a picture is not the best way to do this but it's prime posting time so here's a placeholder until I can go pull the dash and download the ignition table. I really need to put a USB extension in, that might be a quick project to knock out right quick. 

4.8L, LY2, LS3 intake and cam, as per the PO. Hoping Patientzero has some LS3 input on this but, in the meantime, I'm gonna try and download the table and do some research. One thing that I have picked up is that I want to add some spark advance on the left most, lowest RPM, column to help prevent stalling and hunting idles. 

I doesn't look too bad really.  You can throw some more timing in the cruise/mid-rpm range but I would expect it to be driveable as is.  Can you clarify what you mean by "maxing out" at 60% throttle?  Like going off the edge of the top of the map?  I would double check for vacuum leaks.  Is your IAC blocked off our just disconnected?

I agree with checking timing with a timing light just to confirm what the computer says is accurate.

In reply to Patientzero :

I was afraid you'd say that. It is not very driveable. So the day in question was late last summer but I recall that the MAP stopped falling at approx 60% throttle, per the TPS. I need to go for a drive and get that logged, going from memory like this is very sub-optimal.

-I've double checked for vacuum leaks but a triple check can be done. It revs out fine in neutral, it's just falls on it's face under load. Low on power, though, even in neutral as turning the wheel will stall the motor. I'm hoping that I can fix that last bit with a higher idle speed and a bump in timing on the left. Similarly, when I check timing I'll see about triple checking for exhaust leaks.

-I believe that I ran the IAC shut and then disconnected it. I'll double check that to ensure that I didn't have a brain fart and run it open before disconnecting. Call it 95% confidence that it's shut and disconnected. 

-I think I can get a look with a timing light this weekend. I'll have to check but that garage is pretty open to me.

AFRs are decently happy, considering that it's still tuning cells, but it smells rich. I'm running batch fire and wasted spark, it won't run sequential and COP because it gives me an error saying I don't have a cam position sensor. However, it wouldn't send fuel and spark if it didn't have crank and cam position so I don't know what it wants. I've read that some batch fire setups like to run in the mid-upper 13s, could my target AFR table be set too high? The only things I've done since the engine had power are swap computers, throttle bodies, and O2 sensors. That's a lot of just but one of those is likely the culprit. The throttle body opens and closes, not much to see there, and the IAC is both a quality module and not a factor. The computer is running autotune for VE and the timing you've seen, I don't know of anything else that would be a factor. O2s give all indication of being accurate but if they're fouled or a voltage is wrong...

Also, thank you for the input.

The distributor in my C10 is locked at 38° all the time.  You could trying setting your whole timing map to like 30 or 35 degrees as an experiment, obviously don't go full throttle with that much timing but you can try it out just to see how it reacts.  It will probably pull your idle higher and might hunt for an idle but it will run like that.  Just as a rule of thumb because every motor likes different things, for highway steady state cruising I'm targeting 14.4 AFR, light throttle, around 13.2-13.5 and WOT is 12.7.  This will get you in the ballpark.  Depending on your cam sometimes they like to run a little fatter.  More timing and more fuel will smooth it out.  

I tuned a 4.8 in a 2005ish Chevy truck.  With a small cam (220/224 I think) and headers it made 300whp through an auto transmission.

I don't know the specs on the cam, when I get some down time I'll dig through the receipts that came with the car and see if there are some details. Would have been a Summit/Jegs LS3 cam but that kinda doesn't narrow it helpfully. 

I have Friday off and I need to get my bike up in the air to pull the wheels so they can be reshod with actually treaded rubber. That means backing the Mustang out and probably attempting some garage cleaning. Anyone know a Hummer guy with too much cash and a desire for 2 Humvee seats with harnesses? Lol  The point of mentioning that is that backing the mustang into the driveway will give me easy access around the engine bay to open up the Cam Position Sensor splice and insert a 1k pull-up resistor. I went back at the error messages it throws when I try to run sequential/COP and dug some more and realized that I don't recall a 1k resistor on that circuit. It should be the 58x cam with a 12V circuit so it needs a pull up or it doesn't actually get a usable signal that would allow it to run sequential and COP. Just running those should help but I wonder what other trickle effects a lack of cam position would do to the logic. Probably nothing helpful. I'll do that before messing with timing. 

Vacuum leaks are highly improbable as I the only thing I did in that region was a throttle body and it's on tight. Exhaust leaks are much more likely but I can't hear anything and if I can't find obvious evidence I don't know if it would be causing such major problems. Still gonna pull the exhaust and replace the gaskets with a gasket and sealant sandwich, for good measure. If a pull up resistor doesn't fix everything like magic then I'll pursue a timing angle but my hope is that it will, at least, get me off batch and wasted spark. 

Really hoping to get this thing on track this year, preferably when Go_Gators has his LS1 Kart at The Firm. 

Well, it took a bit but tonight I found my 1k ohm resistors (hiding in plain sight in one of my toolboxes) and I put together a little length of wire with a pull-up resistor for the cam position sensor. Spliced it in, selected Fully Sequential and Coil on Plug, and it still won't RPM sync. Funny thing is that I don't even have to spin the engine for it to know that it can't RPM sync. I'm at a bit of a loss, more than a bit really, and kinda fed up. Would it RPM sync on batch/wasted spark with just a crank sensor? Could I have my cam sensor wired wrong and that's the real problem? All I know is that this car is starting to look like a ground war in Asia that I should have never gotten into.

Edit: I knew that all this was feeling familiar. I practiced my goog-fu and was doing some reading and when I stood up I flashed to the last time I installed a pull-up to try and fix RPM sync. IIRC the real fix was getting the crank wiring right but I'm a little fuzzy. GM did this neat thing where they made a little harness to get the wire around the timing cover and they crossed the outside wires over the length of the harness for no good reason. Neat! So I suppose that the next step is to go out, verify I'm feeding it 5V from TPSVREF and then switch my 5V power and signal wires while adding a pull-up resistor.

So I popped the hood Saturday and put a 1k pullup on each of the cam and crank lines. TunerStudio showed that it lost RPM sync, RPMs over 65k (not running). Both are being fed from MS Vref line that also feeds TPS. 

I had gone in looking to swap the power and signal wires on the cam but saw that signal was solid blue and power was blue/white. This matched the crank with signal on solid purple and power on purple/white. I hoped that GM was capable of being at least that consistent but the pullup experiment leaves me doubting. 

My thinking is that I blew up the cam position sensor feeding it 12V up the wrong side in my initial wiring debacle. Dum-dum move on my part. To prove/disprove I am going to cut the pullup on the crank and work through logging some combinations.

What baffles me is why the 58X crank sensor, fed 5V, fails with the pullup specced by the MS manual. 

Well, I got red sauce going on the stove and had a little of the "leftover" pinot (best part of making this sauce) and decided to go out and capture a few logs for troubleshooting. What I found will shock you!

Clickbait aside, I got distracted by the logger settings and wound up playing with the search bar and then the I/O screen. It turns out that, so far as I can tell, the reason that I can't run COP/Sequential is that my Cam I/O is unused. Can't run sequential if you're not even looking for a cam signal, dontcha know. I am not sure how to correct this but the mosquitoes came out so I came in for research purposes. It's a possibility that MS3XCam doesn't mean what I think it means, as I didn't see a mention of Crank, but this would explain a lot.

Picture of a screen, I know.

Interesting.  I have a guy here at work that just put a MS on his 5.4 SN95 and he can't get the widebands to work.  I'm thinking I'm going to steer clear of Megasquirt in the future.  I know it can work fine but it just seems like a huge headache to make work.  I'll be interested to hear the outcome of this.

I didn't have much trouble with the wideband, at least the first. The second doesn't display but I know that that is a minor problem stemming from a lack of effort on my part. In the tune setup portion there's a section for O2 sensors, that's all I had to do. Best of luck to your coworker!

I'll have to sit down with the manual and do some reading. May go over to the MS forums but this is something that I feel I should solve by learning the old fashioned way, with a PDF on my phone. To clarify, I didn't get any logs. I didn't see a clear way to log cam/crank and that's how I wound up on the I/O screens. There is a tooth logger but I didn't see any activity on it when I hit the starter. It's entirely possible that I failed to set it up properly but, again, that's something that I want to read into.