That thing looks a little spicy to drive in the current configuration!

Seems like a pretty solid lap time for how much you were having to chase the rear. A little more compliance should really improve things. It is amazing how much pace NCs have with just basic suspension/tires/alignment...

 

Thanks, Roda! Yeah, if nothing else it was a great exercise in maintaining control lol. Hoping the softer sways make some sort of noticeable difference. If not, I might grab a set of 11/7k springs to run until the car gets aero and big boy tires.

In unrelated but related news, I finally got the self-tuning feature in ECUtek to work. I messaged ECUtek support (who are incredibly responsive) about my issue with the tables not showing up and they simply told me that I had to pull the menu out of full screen mode in order to see the tables pop up. Dumb but simple fix. All the tables show up fine now. I think I can work with this, the only strange thing I've found is that fuel tables are expressed as AFRs and not raw VE numbers. I'm assuming that the AFR numbers entered just scale the "VE cells" up and down and then the fuel trims adjust for target AFRs from there. Just a guess, though. I'm not gonna tinker with it this week, but might mess with it next week if I get some time. From the logs I took, it looks like the tuner added around 5-6 degrees of ignition timing across the board at WOT and leaned the mixture out (obviously). A couple of the factory base maps are shown below, as well as parameters for auto-blip which I enabled on a copy of the factory tune. Should be fun to play around with and see what I can mess up.

Edit: looks like photos aren't uploading right now. I'll post the screenshot later I guess.

 

Quick peek of a few of the stock base maps (not including the AutoBlip map) in the ECUtek program. Thing's got multiple different fuel and ignition maps for open/closed loop and low/high detonation detection. Lots of other strategies I'm not familiar with either. I'm sure this will be plenty of fun to mess with in the coming weeks.

 

silly q - is engine load throttle input? if so i can see how half throttle, 3500rpm looks a bit lean

 

More or less, yeah. Engine load won't directly correlate to throttle position but yeah, the higher the number, the more throttle and load. 1.0 will be full throttle for a naturally aspirated car. This is just the OEM base map, though. I think the lean spot you're referring to is actually a rich spot because the tables are inverted for load (higher up is less load).

 

Nice driving dude! Damn, it does look quite playful but you killed it. Seems quite quick from my monitor.

I haven't played with an NC or ND yet but in the OEM applications I've played with the load is an airflow calculation using the MAF+MAP+BAP (when available), so it is calculated and doesn't use throttle like in an AlphaN tune. Of course throttle directly affects load, I'm just saying it isn't referenced in the tables. Notice the Load axis says g/rev, that means airflow, so there are likely a few compensation tables to calculate that Load axis. @Z_WAAAAAZ on that same note, airflow tunes are normally calibrated by adjusting the MAF scaling. In the GM and DSM world there is a "frequency vs load" or "MAF Scaling" that you change to adjust the fueling based off MAF readings. Sometimes there is a VE table as well that is used as a smoothing factor, so maybe that's what you're seeing? If so definitely odd that it uses AFR. Very interesting.

Any chance you could post one of your logs as a CSV? I would love to peek through it

 

Yo dude, thanks! I found that if I was able to just keep the car relatively straight, it would hold a decent pace lol. Hopefully my video from this coming weekend will be a little smoother with the smaller sways.

That makes sesne regarding the MAP + MAF calculations. We have a couple Ford models at my work that utilize both a MAF and MAP sensor. I've noted the vehicles will go into limp mode if either sensor fails, showing that the MAP sensor isn't just there to track EGR functionality or something like that. That's about where my knowledge base on the topic ends haha.

BAP refers to Barometric Atmospheric Pressure, yeah?

I definitely saw at least one available map for MAF scaling on the ECUtek program. Don't have my laptop with me but I can post a couple screenshots later. Would be stoked if you could help me make sense of some of the maps that are available haha.

I have a couple logs from last week from before the fueling at WOT figured itself out. Can post one now and some more recent ones later. Did a couple pulls on the way to work this morning and WOT AFRs are still holding good at 13.0-13.2ish. I figure the ECU must have just needed a handful of pulls to adjust fuel trims or VEs at WOT, because it rectified itself at the track and has been good since.

Log below

 

I think where you may be confused is what tables the ECU uses for closed and open loop... If it's anything like older GM ECU's (which I have no reason to believe it isn't), the vehicle uses the MAF for closed loop fueling. During closed loop, the ECU needs feedback from the narrowband o2 sensors (hence the CL name) to adjust fueling via fuel trim %. I suspect the long term fuel trims are referencing the AFR targets in the closed loop fueling cells. In an ideal world, your MAF scaling would be adjusted such that it hits your targeted AFR without any correction (trimming). To calibrate the MAF, you'd need to disable closed loop from engaging (not sure where that setting is here)

If the GM strategy is true for this ECU as well, at some in MAP load or throttle position (or combination of the two), the ECU will switch from closed loop fueling to open loop fueling. Open loop fueling is exactly what we are all familiar with in Megasquirt. You have airflow (load) vs RPM and the VE values you enter in that table correspond to whatever AFR you will achieve. To calibrate the open loop tables, you'd need to disable the closed loop from engaging (not sure where that setting is here)

Closed loop is commonly used in low load / low rpm / idle situations as it controls fueling much more accurately across varying external temp, altitude/pressure, and humidity. It generally makes general drive manners and idle stability much better in my experiences. Open loop (and its associated open loop VE table) is common in WOT conditions where your narrowband sensors (used for closed loop fueling) aren't useful as your engine is operating at an AFR richer than they can read. If your MAF fails, it is common for the vehicle to reference the open loop VE.

I suspect your car is driving on low throttle loads (closed loop) just fine and you're likely going to want to search for more open loop tables and how open/closed loop tables are activated/disabled for WOT/track behavior. More screenshots may help here...

 

Yo Pad, thanks for chiming in. Glad to have so many guys on here who are thoroughly versed in this stuff.

I'm familiar with OL/CL fueling modes but just wasn't aware of where/when the MAF/MAP sensors played into the equation on a system equipped with both. Most of the vehicles I work on are either MAF or MAP only.

As far as Fords go, the ECU will run the vehicle in CL as soon as the upstream O2s are up to temp, at nearly any load except WOT. You bring up a really good point, I don't know what load the crossover from OL to CL happens on this car, though. I'll have to go through all the available datalogging parameters. I'm sure there's a PID in there somewhere that shows OL/CL mode. I'll take some more screenshots when I have my laptop handy and report back.

Another note that might make some sense of this... So there's five fuel tables total. OL/CL low det. OL/CL high det. Then another one (pictured in the bottom left of my screenshot) simply named "Fuel Map Mode 1". The AFRs I've seen at WOT on the stock tune most closely mirror this map. Given this info, I think the other four maps might only be used if detonation IS present, instead of the "Low Det" maps being used in absence of detonation like I first thought. Guess I really just gotta take a few more logs and try to draw some conclusions from there.

I could also message ECUtek support with a few questions but that would be much less fun.

 

I don't want to derail this good volley we're having about OEM ECU strategies but I've got an important and pertinent confession to make, guys...

So when I installed the Xidas, I cranked down both sets of front and rear upper control arm bolts while the car was still in the air at full droop. Never even crossed my mind since my last car was on poly bushings. With all the droop the coilovers have, those bushings were probably preloaded almost 30 degrees with the car on the ground. I lifted the car this morning to do a tire rotation, and loosened all the upper control arm bolts then neutralized them with a pole jack before cranking them down.

The suspension actually goes up and down now. I can actually compress the car under my own body weight and the front ride height dropped about 1/4 inch.

I'm an idiot but the car should work much better this weekend!

 

hmmmm yeah that's a tricky one to confirm. low det vs high det tables are usually there for the variable of if knock retard (KR) is present. The ECU will operate in one of them with KR. without KR, it will default to the other table. The formula for how it decides which table to reference heavier has always been a bit of a mystery to me in majority of ECU's....sooo.... In a huge majority of cases you'll see people set the high and low det tables match so that you always know what is being commanded. You simply would have to log for KR and if you see some in a certain cell, you adjust as necessary to both high and low det tables simultaneously.

I'm not sure if this ECU is flex capable, so the high and low det table COULD also be to enable flex fuel where the high table would be for high octane (E85) and low octane would be your 91/93 octane map. the flex sensor input would dictate what table (or ratio between the tables) to select for accurate fueling/timing... something to consider at least if you see that option somewhere in your list of tables. Majority of my experience has been on the GM ECU side, so I'm sure there are some similarities to this.

Newer Ford ECUs (specifically EcoBoost stuff ones) are their own monster. They are nearly always in closed loop (as they have factory wideband o2's to enable that) and have equations with adjustable coefficients for nearly every variable you can think of to calculate how varying that specific aspect affects net air into the engine. Very basically, you command a torque, the ecu calculates how much boost, throttle and timing it will need to attain it. It then calculates a proper WGDC to hit that boost. There are then a number of safeguards that keep it all in check. Combustion stability, LSPI, Load Limits, tip-in limits, airflow limits, compressor and temp limits, drivetrain torque limits. Ford really considered a million possibilities when they designed the powertrain and they nearly all have their own adjustable equation which is both awesome as a calibration engineer and incredibly daunting for the DIY enthusiast like most of us. The nice thing about newer Ford ECUs in general is they run at borderline knock. The system will automatically advance timing if no knock is detected and run at the threshold of knock, which is different from most older ECUs that typically only will retard timing.

 

Yep. Barometric Absolute Pressure. That "A" likely gets changed depending on who you ask, but same difference.

Post more screenshots of the available tables and I'll be glad to give input. I'm sure some others will have info as well. Is there a PDF or some other documentation on the available MAPs or logging variables. That would demystify all of this

I took a peek through it but you weren't logging the target AFR for WOT, which we're guessing is the Mode 1 table (I do see one of the fields in the log mentions Mode 1). As Padlock said, there is likely a table that decides what thresholds enable that target table, and otherwise it will use the Close loop targets. In GM lingo that's usually called Power Enrichment, and here we call it open loop. It's all confusing but means the same. I do find it interesting that the Engine Load in the logs is closer to Pressure Ratio than it is to my (admittedly barebones) calculated g/rev, so either I calculated that wrong, or the ECU does many more compensations than I did. It ultimately doesn't matter, but I just want to understand how it gets calculated. Any thoughts?

Regarding knock tables, I'm used to seeing an Octane number (0 to 100, and 100 is no knock) that gets updated based on knock count. Then there are the High Octane and Low Octane ignition and fueling tables and the octane number is used to interpolate between them like we're used to seeing for flex fuel. Here they seem to call them High Det and Low Det, and I'm not sure what the "Octane" number is called as I don't see it in the logs, but look for something similar.

Oh yeah, things get pretty wild with the newer ECUs. Have you seen the Dodge ECUs that use "Neural Networks"? That seems extreme and near unnecessary to me, but pretty much all the modern performance cars use a torque demand based system like Padlock mentioned.

 

The ECU and software are both Flex-capable, so that might make sense. Flexfuel can be added as an input via the CAN and ECUtek supports it as well.

I remember learning about the max ignition timing before knock when I was back in Ford tech school. I always thought every modern knock sensor-equipped ECU did this and was surprised to find out that this isn't the case on many vehicles haha.

In reference to the bit about how complex the fueling strategies are, I posted a datalog from an EcoBoost mustang at cruise on OptionXIII's (or Redursidae's?) build thread maybe six months ago. I noted that the fuel trims didn't change at all when the EVAP purge valve opened and closed. He confirmed that purge duty cycle is factored into the fueling calculations as well. Pretty amazing to say the least haha.

Ahh shucks, I sent you one of my later logs where I simplified the PIDs used. The earlier logs had target AFR shown as well. I'll try to get one of those up later on. Weirdly enough, target AFR in the PID shown never changed from 14.7:1 during the whole log? Again, I'll try to post later.

 

Another stellar weekend! Holy hell, I'm still tired but I could not have asked for a better last two days.



I rolled out to the track Friday night as per usual and knocked out at around midnight. Saturday morning I was joined by my buddy Ricky and two of our other friends who were in HPDE. Ricky instructs for NASA and races his base model Ford Fiesta in TT6 class and the Gridlife Sundae cup. He's got an S550 coyote Mustang that he rips as well, but he's been tracking only the Fiesta all year. I've never seen a base model Fiesta spend less time on four wheels going around a track before. Ricky and I would each have a student to instruct both days, and would race TT together as well.



NASA ran the CW14 configuration on Saturday and CW13a configuration on Sunday. Both layouts were new to me, but still very similar to the usual CW13 layout. CW14 eliminates the Bus Stop and creates a very long high speed back straight, and also changes out the Off Ramp (turn 2) for the longer, more roundabout "A-Section". CW13a is the same configuration but retains the Bus Stop. Neither course required much learning to be done, but both were a nice change up from the usual CW13. Here's a lap on CW14 from Saturday, chasing the head TT official, John Magnusson, in his TT5 ND.
Unfortunately, I left my Insta360 cam at home and had to use my GoPro Session, which mounts directly behind my rear view mirror obscuring a lot of the view. Sorry bout that.


It's hard to tell in the video, but the car is so much more compliant with the softer sway bars and my UCA bushings no longer preloaded to high hell. It's still oversprung, but I can see how it should be pretty dialed once I put aero and more rubber on the car. The thing drove great all weekend. I played with the coilover clickers as well. Started at 8 clicks from full soft (out of 20) front and rear, and worked my way up to 13 by Sunday. I think I'm going to back off a bit for the next event.

Something was in the air on Saturday. People were going off track left and right. HPDE, TT, wheel to wheel racers. Nobody was exempt, myself included. I lined up with the other TT6 racers for the qualifying session and went to work getting familiar with the CW14 layout. It didn't take too long to get dialed in and I ended up qualifying P1 by a decent margin. Sick! Way better start than I expected. I came into session two confidently. Too confidently. I braked late for Riverside on lap four and pretty quickly realized that I wasn't going to make the corner exit if I committed to it. I straightened out the car and went off at the corner entry, mowing the lawn at about 80mph according to my GoPro footage. Much fun, but I got DQ'd for that session due to going four off. I spent a decent bit of time after the session digging bushes out of my front bumper and radiator inlet. I'll get the GoPro clip up here later on.





Session three was action-packed as well. I had to swerve to avoid a Mustang that spun on the sweeper, went four off, and took a DQ again for that session. I probably could've disputed it, but figured I'd just drive conservatively for the fourth session and pull off after 10-15 minutes. That worked, and I threw down a few solid laps, taking the win in TT6 for the day along with a new lap record!

Or so I thought. Sunday morning, we finish session one and John, the TT director, tells me he needs to talk to me. Apparently there's a note in the TT6 rules that NC and ND Miatas aren't allowed in the class, even if they meet power and weight requirements. I got bumped up to TT5, but still took 3rd place of 6 for Saturday! Sunday, a couple more people showed up and I was able to drive the car to 3rd of 8. Times weren't especially tight, but I'll still take it. I have to class my car again for TT5 now, but I suspect that I'm currently about 40 horsepower underclassed, even if I add aero to the car.



I instructed a handful of drivers over the weekend. Saturday, I was in the car with a friend of a friend's dad in his 991 Porsche 911. It was his first time on track and given the car he was in, he did super well. Surprisingly, he was pushing the car (to a safe degree) pretty well by the end of the day. Sunday, I had another student in the Toyota GR first-timer group. Dude was eager but super responsive to my feedback. We worked on a whole different slew of things and he made some really solid improvement by end of day as well. I also rode along with my buddies David and Mike who were pitting with us in their Boxster and Cayman respectively. I didn't have near as much feedback for them but it was super fun to get to ride in three Porsches in a single weekend, especially since I've never rode passenger in one before.

I messaged our NASA SoCal director today regarding the weekend and should be able to obtain my instructor license now. Can't wait to keep doing this and getting better at it. It's so damn satisfying haha.

As a bonus to the weekend, NASA had an endurance race that ran from 6-9pm on Saturday night. My buddies and I watched the start from the tower, then grabbed a couple free NASA-supplied beers, set up our lawn chairs in turn 13, and just watched for almost two hours. Super sick way to spend the evening.


It'll be another few weeks until the car hits the track again. Got a busy couple weekends ahead but I'm thinking I might pull the motor and drop in the 2.5 at the end of next month, we'll see. In the meantime, I've got the cams coming this week and am going to start laying out a plan for aero for this thing.

 

Great result considering getting bumped up a class!

Definitely looks better on the video, though obviously still a little tail happy.

 

Yo, thanks Roda! Stoked on how it did. The car should be a contender for top spot once it's got the 2.5 swap and some aero. The other two cars ahead of me are an NB and ND. Will be super cool to get an NC into the mix with them!

I'm ok with the tail-happiness. The fact that the car stays on the ground now is a huge win, though

 

Great update! Glad to see you back out there. My car was broken for all of a day and I had a full panic attack, which helped me realize I take the poor thing for granted now because it has been so reliable. I track the **** out of it, put it back wet, and ignore it for weeks at a time until the next track event. I was thinking about you and your NA saga afterwards, I bet the NC is such a relief after that!

NC is looking mean, I agree it looks a lot more settled. A touch snappy here and there, but overall way better. And damn your front end saw some mud from that off, haha look at that pic, kinda glad you didn't have a splitter to deal with yet. There's something to be said for that.

Sounds like a great weekend, thanks for sharing, love your updates as always!

 

Thanks, Nate! Stoked to be back. The months-long hiatus made me all too grateful to have a trackable car again. The NC is a massive relief from my previous predicament! Although, I'll still hold that my NA was pretty reliable too before I went hog-wild with the drivetrain haha.

Also, all that mud was actually plant guts! It's been bone dry out there for months, Just blasted through enough bushes to get a nice sticky resin all over the front bumper lol.

Speaking of splitters:

 

Front end aero is done! I'm usually pretty subpar at anything that requires fabrication, so I really tried to take my time on this go around and make the front end look nice. I'm extremely happy with how it came out. RaceBred splitter brackets, 4" front-end protrusion to keep it NASA TT4/5 legal, wheel spats and the classic GV lip!



I started out with an eBay GV-style lip so that I could mount the splitter closer to the ground. If nothing else, it makes a pretty nice change in the front end aesthetics for only $90. Pictured above already. Installation instructions say to wrap it around the bumper and bolt the sides of the lip into your fender wells. There's no other fasteners/provisions for mounting, though, and the lip flops around quite a bit. I drilled some additional holes and added some thick plastic push pins to keep it from flexing/sliding around on the bumper. After this, it was pretty sturdy. I should probably replace them with rivets, but they're plenty fine now that the splitter is supporting the lip too.

I splurged a bit and sprung for the RaceBred NC splitter mounts to start the project. Unsurprisingly, they're very sturdy, and the quick release feature is a wonder to have after my last splitter being very complicated to remove. Installation was easy, and I was able to drill out the rivets in the U-shaped factory undertray and retain the side-ducting for the radiator with minimal modification. Hard to take a picture of it but I tried.



Factory side ducting retained, splitter mounts on the outside of the plastic ducting. Side note, even after clogging the radiator with plant debris last weekend, I still didn't see coolant temps rise above 181*F.

For the splitter, I wanted to take my time and make the thing slicker than my last one. Started with a sheet of 1/2" birch, took some measurements, cut it way bigger than I needed on Friday, drove home, then trimmed it down today. I added some 1" aluminum angle on the wings and in the center section as well to provide support. Also added some ventilation foam to prevent air from passing under the radiator. I then took some spray adhesive, covered the foam in it, then applied a couple pieces of foil tape over the foam (not pictured) to try and stop any air from passing through it. I laid down a couple coats of matte black spray paint on it yesterday then finished the job by emptying a full 16oz can of rubberized underbody coating on it today.



Car looking silly with the uncut splitter yesterday.



After finishing up the splitter and adding a couple mounting points to the front of the subframe, I cut and installed the wheel spats and called it good. Just waiting on a couple mounting studs so I can cut and install a set of Professional Awesome Racing splitter rods this week. The rods will mount where those two holes are in the front grille mesh, via the threads already drilled to mount the front bumper cover.



I guess my only gripe would be that the front end of my car now has four different shades of black components on it lol. I also forgot to take the protective covering off the ABS sheet that I used for the passenger side spat. Gonna have to remove that as well.

Seriously, though. I'm super amped on how this came out. Usually, I'm full-on form over function, but I actually think this front end came out looking sick as hell haha. Just gotta balance it out with a proper wing now.

 

Looks awesome. The tire spats are a little aggressive, looks wise (I.E. how they stick out past the widest point of the fender), but should be super functional and will look better once you go with fatter tires (and/or a more aggressive roll/pull?). Aesthetically, I like it, other than the 5 different shades of black like you mentioned, and of course it really needs a big ole **** to even it out.

But most importantly looks super functional! Your cars gonna end up like mine, I.E. a wrap (livery?) or paint job away from looking **** (but still awesome looking in a racecar function>form way). Really looking mean for an NC1!!