When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
An eventful but at the same time, disappointing weekend.
I started bright and early on Saturday with wrapping up reassembly.
I threw the KPower exhaust on first.
Fitment with the butterfly brace is good. The exhaust tip is stuck over to the left side of the cutout, I am not sure how to fix that honestly.
I blew the flock dust off the dashboard and got it all ready to go in.
It looks okay in the sun, looks meh up close but #racecar
So I stuck the dash in...
I will be straightforward. This ******* sucked. I did it solo, and I am weak, and the dash is extremely cumbersome. It probably took me 45 minutes of straddling the transmission tunnel and swearing and grunting and sweating before I got it to this point. It was extremely frustrating, definitely way worse than pulling it out.
Hooking everything back together wasn't bad, climate control cables, plugs all pretty simple. I tested the radio, climate controls, and dash buttons, all seems good.
Lining up the bolt holes was really annoying too, even though I had all my center bolts in, when I went to do the sides at the doors I had to shift the whole dash up and forward an inch to get the bolts to line up with the mounting points. The center one up top took me forever because I forgot about it until I had already tightened everything else, and even then, the dash was like a quarter inch over to the right and wouldn't line up with the hole until I loosened everything again.
When attaching the steering column bracket back to the firewall, I dropped one of the nuts. No idea where it went, it is forever lost in my pedal box. Oops.
And we've got power to everything including the glowshit gauges!
Note my new to me pre owned Windows laptop because I didn't have any windows laptops to run the Kmanager software on.
I threw the seats back in, accidentally bolted the USB cable for the Hondata under the passenger side bracket so I need to fix that later, and then called it a night.
I started back up Sunday with reinstallation of the front suspension.
No pics but threw the hood back on, it still latches shut with no trimming (so far).
Started the car up, went to throw it into reverse and...
Oops, forgot to adjust the clutch, car doesn't go into gear. Quickly remedy that
Few turns on the clutch adjustment rod and... car still doesn't go into gear? Clutch circuit was never opened, I know the clutch actuates because we tested it as soon as I bolted the slave back up.
I crank on the clutch adjustment rod a few more times and finally the clutch grabs but only all the way at the top of the pedal throw, and the pedal feels very weird.
Get back under there and find this:
Oops, looks like I adjusted the clutch so far that the rod came out of the pedal.
Let's just quickly thread that back in.
Ah.
It looks like in my unrealized detachment of the clutch pedal rod and subsequent pedal presses, I went and completely buggered up the threads so bad that nothing threads together anymore.
I removed the entire pedal (which surprisingly was just 1 not terrible nut and bolt once you reach this point) to evaluate the situation. It looks like just the base of the threads are fucked up. Too late in the day to get tap and clean it up, push rod looks like it needs a cleaning as well.
I ended up just buying a new (to me) clutch pedal assembly with the push rod because it was the same price as buying a tap and die and cleaning all the threads or buying a new push rod.
Stupid mistake on my part but it sucks to have a set back from something as small as the clutch adjustment. I know getting the pedal back in is gonna be an absolute blast. There's a spring on there and I have no idea what it attaches to, I just kinda jammed a screwdriver at it until it popped off and the pedal came out.
A different way to look at is is that the car moved under KPower today.
I will be straightforward. This ******* sucked. I did it solo, and I am weak, and the dash is extremely cumbersome. It probably took me 45 minutes of straddling the transmission tunnel and swearing and grunting and sweating before I got it to this point. It was extremely frustrating, definitely way worse than pulling it out..
You want to go back and delete that?
I am about to start reassembly of my dash, solo. I did not need to read about your fun time.
(although I did pick up that it would be good to leave all bolts loose until I am sure I have them all)
I think you just need some more practice with dash removal/install. I've got mine down to a science. About 5 mins to remove and 10 mins to toss back in.
Lost one exhaust nut on the first drive, found a couple more coolant leaks from somewhere amongst the nest of hoses and tightened a few clamps as a result. I could hear the belt slipping when I would get on it so I added a thick washer to the alternator to try and space it out but I can still hear it doing the same thing, need to investigate.
Base map seems pretty safe, idles a little high once warm.
Started off the weekend by getting up earlier than I do for work and taking the car to a local cars and coffee up in Lafayette, Colorado. Large event, was there by 7:20AM and parking was starting to get limited.
Car was still very filthy and dusty, hadn't been washed in 6 months, wiring sitting on the passenger floor, etc.
Car got a lot of attention, a lot of "Wow! He put an S2000 engine in there!" and similar remarks. Most people thought it was K20 for some reason.
I put another 90 miles on the car Saturday running around the Denver area. Besides typical base map bullshit tuning stuff, it was pretty well behaved, no temperature issues in stop and go traffic, found the fan shroud to be rattling on the radiator a little bit, and the exhaust fumes inside the cabin with the windows down were pretty strong. I was still getting the squeal noise from what sounded like a belt despite adding a washer and it feeling well tensioned.
Had my first casualty due to city streets:
Guess it was bound to happen eventually.
Finally went and washed the car alongside my buddies FR-GTRZ-86-S, it was much needed. Took three tries to get the wheels mostly cleaned.
I did a pull to 8,000ish that night and found that 1) whoopee this is quick and 2) wow that's a lot of vibration from the shifter. At the same time, I decided to add more washers to the alternator belt, now at 3x washers, to try and up the belt tension. I found it's actually easier to just remove the idler pulley and alternator and install the washers that way, as opposed to trying to pry on the alternator and wedge in washers and then line up a bolt with them and having the washers fall down and get stuck in a crevice formed by the alternator and WP housing.
I also altered some tune parameters. Cold starts were a little rough with a low idle after starting so I added 10% to the cranking fuel. This seems to have helped cold starts but made my hot starts even worse due to vapor lock I assume. I need to see if KPro has some kind of CLT based cranking fuel adjustment like Megasquirt.
Sunday, after the typical mother's day activities, I went back up to the car to put some more miles on it and investigate the vibration, exhaust smells, and belt.
First thing I did was throw it on jackstands and do a quick visual check on the underside. Found 2 more radiator hose leaks and tightened those clamps.
I fired up the car and sprayed soapy water on the exhaust joints searching for a leak but did not see anything. Hmmm, smell might just be due to the pig rich base map tune and general low pressure zones and turbulence when driving.
Threw a sticker on so all these minivans know what they're dealing with when they see me pull up at the light and proceed to dust me.
I finally decided to clean up the wiring mess in the footwell, at least temporarily. You know when you're a kid (or an adult for some of you losers) and your mom tells you to clean your room, so you just shove everything into random drawers and the closet so it appears clean? We're gonna apply that philosophy to a car.
I present "A Mechanical Engineer's Guide to a Clean Wire Tuck"
First, a quick before view:
Step 1 was taking the KPower relays and jamming them somewhere in the dash where there was ample space so they will definitely rattle. Make sure to zip tie the wires together to keep them clear of the climate control cable.
For step 2, you literally just take all the wires, and the ECU itself (wrapped in several layers of blue disposable shop towels to reduce rattles) and stick it on the passenger floor beneath the carpet and insulation, against the firewall:
Finally, zip tie any dangling wires out of the way of where a passengers feet might be, and throw the OBD2 port and tuning USB into the glovebox:
Finally, ta da! You have a clean (appearing) passenger footwell, until someone presses their feet against the floor and crushes the ECU and all the wiring.
For my final task of Sunday, I did some testing to determine if the drivetrain vibration is anything related to the PPF angle, as I have my transmission as high as possible at the back for hood clearance.
I cannot comment on my methods, but I can conclude that the car in 6th gear at 100mph is butter smooth, so the vibration must be stiff-mount-balance-shaft-deleted-screamer-engine vibration and nothing to worry about.
I put another 40 or so pretty fun miles on the car, a lot of 8k pulls just to see how it feels. I still am hearing that squeal that sounds like a belt, despite it feeling pretty damn tight now. It only happens when I step on the gas pretty quick, and that jerk on the motor makes it squeal. It stops after I let off, and it also stops if I stay in it? It doesn't last very long, just a little chirp, can even hear it on blips. Unsure if its belt or something with the intake whistling. The fact it doesn't continue as I accelerate and only seems to happen lower in the rev range is what throws me off.
Nice big update! MT.net must have been amazing, when there were updates like this every day in the build threads from various people. I really enjoy detailed and pic-heavy posts like this.
For 5000+ft elevation the car is very quick, didn't expect that. Will be interesting what it can do on the dyno.
Do you have a VSS wired to the Kpro? Without it, you need to specify a designated speed, usually one that still allows VTEC to work. It's like 40 or 60mph or something like that. What that does however, is disable idle ignition control, which increases/decreases ignition timing with RPM. This, I expect, would really help with cold starts, however I haven't had an opportunity to play with it on any of the customer car's I tune. I just enabled a VSS once to finally figure out why my ignition timing was locked at 8 degrees, despite plenty of authority. It also seems like your idle target is your target for any coolant temp, I haven't found a temp referenced RPM target offset, so 950 or whatever it's set to is what you'll target even when stone cold.
Car got a lot of attention, a lot of "Wow! He put an S2000 engine in there!" and similar remarks.
Get used to that S2K remark, apparently its the only motor Honda produced.
Ironicly most of the track S2K guys are K swapping now so... Not *completely* wrong?
Do you have a VSS wired to the Kpro? Without it, you need to specify a designated speed, usually one that still allows VTEC to work. It's like 40 or 60mph or something like that. What that does however, is disable idle ignition control, which increases/decreases ignition timing with RPM. This, I expect, would really help with cold starts, however I haven't had an opportunity to play with it on any of the customer car's I tune. I just enabled a VSS once to finally figure out why my ignition timing was locked at 8 degrees, despite plenty of authority. It also seems like your idle target is your target for any coolant temp, I haven't found a temp referenced RPM target offset, so 950 or whatever it's set to is what you'll target even when stone cold.
VTEC works, I think it’s set to read 49mph in the software. I was doing some digging and I thought I saw that the NB Speedometer sensor spits out a sawsooth signal and the KPro is asking for pulses per minute so I’m not sure if I would need to build a circuit to convert it to a square wave before it reaches the KPro. I need to figure out what the pulses per mile is as well. I do have an oscilloscope that runs off a laptop I can use.
Anyway, I took the car to the dyno last week after work. The dyno is a Superflow, which read identical to a Dynojet 246 in Denver, so interpret that as you wish.
The car made 187whp/158wtq on the base map, which isn't bad. My tuner said it was a little learn everywhere, so he spent the next several hours tuning the fuel maps. I don't know much about tuning, so I am glad I didn't attempt to do it myself because once I realized there was something like 10 fuel tables and 10 spark tables to figure out, I mentally checked out.
He got through the fuel tables on high and low speed for 0,10,20, and 30 degrees. It was getting a little late so he started playing with ignition.
We ended up here after around 4 hours of relaxed pace tuning.
The only issues we ran across were a throttle body screw backing itself off, so those all got tightened, and I was slightly concerned at the amount of smoke that came off the breather on the valve cover but I was told that quantity of blowby was normal. The entire shop was filled with magical honda pixie dust, which we later realized was the KPower muffler packing blowing apart, as I have been told they do.
Here's some dyno pulls if you wanna listen to honda noises or whatever.
So anyway, on the drive home I did a few pulls, content with my newfound power. The first two pulls were fun, and then as I got to around 6800 on the third pull my check engine light started flashing like crazy, which would indicate knock sensor readings. I did one more pull and verified it was real before taking it easy on the rest of the way home. I found the area where it was knocking and added 2 degrees to the spark map there (I was later told I was supposed to subtract 2), and did some more driving the next day and didn't see CEL flashing but the knock count still slowly would tick up during pulls by around 10-20.
Since I took the car to the office to test the tune I decided to quickly familiarize myself with some of our equipment.
If you are wondering, full KPower ultimate swap kit, 3" exhaust, supermiata radiator, depowered steering, no AC yet but there is an AC condenser installed, full carpeted interior/dash/all climate controls with clearwater speakers, sparco sprints, hard dog hard top single diag roll bar, FM gen 1 butterfly brace, soft top, spare and jack in trunk, 15x9.5 freeforms and 225/45 RS4s, 2/3ish tank.
I have since removed the OEM spare and jack because I realized the tire is original and not that much younger than myself. That is probably 25 lbs gone.
Anyway, my tuner told me to come back sunday and see what we can fix so I decided to take the car back up to "my" shop and get some other things started.
On the drive up I got caught in heavy traffic and realized the low speed drivability was ****, constant bucking, random idle surging, very difficult to drive smooth, was really pissing me off. More on all this later.
Threw the new 863 bushings in my new Moog FUCAs. Bushing removal wasn't too bad, I did accidentally press them into a socket so I had to hammer them out after removing. I spent a few hours organizing the supermiata kit into the full assembly for each bushing, tied them together and then put them in labeled ziplocs, hopefully that should speed up install.
Anyway, I took the car back to the dyno Sunday afternoon and we got started by trying to improve low speed drivability. We adjusted the throttle cable as the TB was slightly sticking, and then we set about capping off the IACV because it seemed to be the root of most of the issues. The car stopped randomly idle surging, so I'm not sure what was going on there but I guess the IACV was the issue. We set the idle around 1000 with the throttle body stop, and then I ended up opening up the idle adjustment screw a bit later because it was idling at 600 while cold.
My tuner threw on a new, much safer spark map and we did some pulls and found the knock count was still increasing by 3-5 per pull. We put it on the dyno and saw the same thing, so he retarded the timing 2 degrees and it was still showing the same thing, leading us to believe that the knocking is just noise and we need to recalibrate the sensor, but we didn't have det cans to check it. Can't hear or feel anything odd, just see the knock count ticking up. Working on borrowing a set of det cans to verify this theory.
So with the much safer spark map, we started again on the power pulls just by changing the cam angle. We made the bottom end cam angle 40 degrees and then started tapering it from 35 to 20 degrees between 7700 and 8100. We ended the day at 195whp, up 10 from the first pull. So basically the car had the same powerband as before, but this time we made it with safer spark timing and cam angle. Knock sensor was showing 3-5 per pull.
This evening my tuner sent me a new tune to try and datalog. It has a bit different cam angle timing and more aggressive spark it seems. I think the cam timing is a little off on this one, as it only gets down to 30 deg at redline. Butt dyno doesn't tell me much, but while doing pulls I saw the knock counter increase by 30, so I can't tell what to make of the knock situation or if we're overreacting.
Anyway, I am looking into hooking up a VSS. I saw a facebook post that suggested I can just splice in the miata speedo signal and feed it to the KPro and it'll just work, but some people were suggesting using a standalone wheel speed sensor which would run me about $100.
Here's the high speed cam angle map and the corresponding high speed spark map if anyone wants to give any input. Take note that the highest MAP I see is around 87kpa.
Your ignition and cam tables look good from what I can see, although typically I end my cam tables around 20 degrees, not 30. I also have ignition around 26, not 28, but I've never tuned one of them at high altitude.
Yes Hondata does it a little strangely. I've tuned Motec, Megasquirt, Link, Haltech, AEM, Holley, and I'm sure one or two others. They all operate similar, where you have a fuel table, a spark table, and a cam table. Changes in cam does change the VE of the engine, therefore you need to fueling and ignition. However in my experience, you can get a fuel and ignition close, then tune your cam table, then go back and change your fuel and ignition tables to see if it makes a major difference, and you're done.
Hondata wants you to lock your cam into 10 degrees, and tune fuel and ignition. Then lock it into 20 and do the same. Then 30, then 40, then 50. Then go back and tune your cam, since all your fuel and ignition tables are "perfect" no matter what the cam. Oh, and multiply all these tables x2, since you have high low speed versions of each of them.
Don't get me wrong, it works, but holy hell is it a lot of time to do properly.
I will say, it looks like you have a fairly smooth VTEC transition, so he at least tuned that well. I don't like how your pulls start at 3500rpm, you're not taking off from a stop at 3500rpm, are you? It's also really hard to tune the first ~500rpms on a dyno pull, since there's some bucking, accel enticements, and you're quickly flying through your MAP range. So really he's only starting to tune around 4000rpm. But obviously you're not going to screen shot those runs, so maybe he did this.
As for the knock, just disable it. These engines are near indestructible, and if your ignition maps are even close to sane, like they appear to be, you won't have issues. I've found the knock sensors show a lot of noise. Loud aftermarket injectors and aftermarket cams make it worse.
Don't get me wrong, it works, but holy hell is it a lot of time to do properly.
This is 100% the reason I brought my car into a prominent Honda tuner.. by time I even attempted to do every table myself on the street (which has its own downsides/compromises), I'd spent half as much money in gas as I would have in the full tune.. haha
Tuner had my car done in 2hrs, most of which was waiting for the car to cool down between back to back pulls for the sake of consistent numbers.
Thanks for the kind words, it's definitely fun so far, I'm excited to get the bushings and brakes done so I can take it to the track. All it needs now is a set of Xidas
Originally Posted by curly
Your ignition and cam tables look good from what I can see, although typically I end my cam tables around 20 degrees, not 30. I also have ignition around 26, not 28, but I've never tuned one of them at high altitude.
I will say, it looks like you have a fairly smooth VTEC transition, so he at least tuned that well. I don't like how your pulls start at 3500rpm, you're not taking off from a stop at 3500rpm, are you? It's also really hard to tune the first ~500rpms on a dyno pull, since there's some bucking, accel enticements, and you're quickly flying through your MAP range. So really he's only starting to tune around 4000rpm. But obviously you're not going to screen shot those runs, so maybe he did this.
As for the knock, just disable it. These engines are near indestructible, and if your ignition maps are even close to sane, like they appear to be, you won't have issues. I've found the knock sensors show a lot of noise. Loud aftermarket injectors and aftermarket cams make it worse.
I have a tune with the cam table ending at 20 degrees and I think it feels better than the one ending at 30 degrees. It also doesn't record any knock so maybe the sensor is legit? I'm gonna borrow some det cans and check it out next time I'm on the dyno to figure it out once and for all.
He starts in 1st gear and runs it through 2nd and 3rd, usually doing the pull in 4th, sometimes 3rd.
He did do the fuel tuning by locking out the cam angle and running it through everywhere, so he definitely knows that stuff.
P.S. curly since you mentioned VSS, have you wired a stock Miata VSS into the KPro and gotten it to work?
Yes, there's a chance that means your knock is legit. But cam angle typically doesn't cause knock, more common to see that with ignition timing. But again, with the 30 degree cam table, you're also running a different ignition table, so you have to look at both.
I haven't added a VSS yet, no. The first 3 swaps my shop did were physically done by me, then tuned by another (although I've since gone back and retuned 2 of them after changes), by the time I got to do my first tune on an E30, the guy was already in it ~$35k, so he opted to live with it for now. But I've seen the two miatas and the e30 return to idle and just sit at 8 degrees timing. When I switched off the constant VSS (can't run like that permanently), idle ignition started working and it ran much smoother. No idea where that 8 degree figure comes from.
Xenocron is an option I have heard of. It's a DIY rear wheel speed sensor kit for Hondas, but I have seen someone put one on the front wheels of a RWD car and pick up the rotor hat bolts.
Fortunately my new hubs have ABS rings in anticipation of a potential future Teves MK60 install, so that is always an option.
05-02-2022, 12:40 AM
1
