Safe 2-step and flatfoot shifting settings
 

You all might remember me from the post I made about blowing up my motor in my 01 hitting 2 step. I have since swapped in a 00' motor and it's been running great. I have been running fuel cut only 2-step, but today I grew the balls to enable spark cut once again. I have a few questions before I start pushing it to be sure I don't blow up my new motor again.

1. How did 2-step break a rod in the first place? I was only pushing around 9 psi, and if I'm not mistaken retarding the ignition severely limits power and would put less stress on the internals (other than the turbo). I'm thinking it either pre-detonated due to heat or a really lean condition and shitty tune.

2. What do you guys run ignition retard wise? When I blew up my other motor I was at "-8" but I have set it to "-4" which I hope is more conservative.

3. The field in tunerstudio says "retard to (deg)". If I want to retard timing by 5 degrees, I would type "-5" into the field and not "5", right? Kind of weird that it says "retard to" but uses a negative value.

Throwing the rod at that time was probably just coincidental

No such thing as "safe" and "launch control/flat foot shift".

Unless by safe you mean "teeny tiny bit less dangerous"

I don't know, it started ticking after hitting flat foot really hard and then blew when I was hitting 2-step so I feel like it might have something to do with it. Having it hang at 4500 rpm at full throttle probably didn't help though

Nah, drag cars are famous for engine longevity.

Damn just gonna send it I guess

Pretty much. I have seen cars blow up being babied, and I have seen cars blow up being sent. I'd rather have enjoyed sending it then having blue balls AND a blown up engine.

that said, we did discuss many launch control approaches in the megasquirt section. if you have ms3 you can ramp in the power gradually upon launch to more effectively put the power down

I will have to look but retard to _ would probably be after TDC numbers and if you inserted a minus symbol it would be a BTDC number. You may want to read the megamanual about it before proceeding.

I still wouldn't.