Hodgdon Extreme

I just wanted to follow up on this again. Using the correct trigger setting completely fixed my inconsistent starting; and I've not had a backfire since. I found I needed 6º of trigger offset (extra advance) to get my timing light to match my reference timing. I found I needed 105 uS of ignition delay to get my timing light to show the same results at 1000rpm and 6000rpm. My default value was 80uS, which was retarding timing about 2-3º at 6000rpm. For reference, I am using an ATI harmonic balancer and the stock Toyota timing marks on the front cover. I have not verified the angularity accuracy of these parts; I've just been assuming they're correct. Also, the ATI has marks all around the front edge. I put a paint mark on the rear edge of the balancer, even with the 15º mark, and I'm shining the light down the crevice between the front cover and the coolant expansion tank. Using an old Actron roll-back timing light, but rather than trusting the electronics of the light, I set it to 0º and relied on the marks on my ATI and front cover. Hope this helps somebody else get up and running easier!

I used to run dynos for the OEMs. I know of no other way to develop ignition tables other than hammering out tests on the dyno. MBT is pretty easy and can be done on a chassis dyno pretty well; but if you want to minimize pumping losses and BSFC at less than WOT the way the OEMs do - it'll need to be done on an engine dyno - or take lots of time and fuel doing it on the street empirically. I suspect you are already well aware - but it bears repeating: be super careful reading into other internet people's ignition timing values. Did they truly get the trigger offset and ignition delay correct? Are the timing marks on their balancer even accurate? Are yours? Do they shine the timing light on the balancer and look at it from the same angle as you? There can easily be 5º or more accumulated error based on these factors.

That'll work just fine. That particular port is already occupied on mine, because that's where Toyota chose to source the oil supply for VVTi. To pic nits, however - I'm not in love with that Drift Motion adaptor if you will be using a combined oil pressure + temperature sensor, because there won't be any actual flow of oil over the sensor. It'll read pressure ok but there will be a bunch of lag in temperature readings.

Many fuel pressure regs have a pipe port where you can install a pressure transducer; or perhaps a hose that runs to a pressure transducer. That can work fine - in my case the sensor was too bulky to fit directly into the port. Instead, I drilled/tapped the fuel rail directly. An advantage to this compared to running a hose to a remote-mounted sensor, is you won't have an air bubble that damps/isolates pressure fluctuations. Regarding your URL to the 8AN fitting: I don't understand your vision for how that would be used.

Drilling/tapping the pipe plug in your oil filter housing adaptor is a nice way to implement a combined oil pressure + temperature sensor. You'll need to replace the OEM hex-key drive pipe plug with one that has an external square drive. This way, the OEM oil pressure switch can be left as-is; located in the center of the bolt that holds the oil filter adaptor onto the block. For fuel pressure, I prefer drilling/tapping directly into the fuel rail. For coolant temperature/pressure, you can either use the original ECT sensor location below the intake port for #1 cylinder, or you can leave the original ECT sensor as-is an use the plugged location that is about 50mm rearwards of the existing ECT sensor. Here is a pic that kinda shows everything I wrote about above: In this pic, you can see the combined oil pressure/temp sensor in the union bolt that holds the oil filter adaptor on. I removed the pipe plug from the oil filter adaptor and replaced with a 90* fitting to use for supplying oil to my turbo. In the head, you can see a brass pipe plug, plugging the rearward/secondary port into the cooling passage. The ECT sensor is a bit farther forward - you can just see the connector poking out between the VVTi banjo bolt and the oil filter adaptor.

Appreciate the response! Hopefully you/Link can get to the bottom of this anomaly. In the meantime, I completely understand your workaround suggestion.

Turbo 2J with Bosch 68mm DBW throttle. Have been using closed loop idle control and closed loop ignition control. Overall it works great, but I've noticed from time to time the engine/ECU will dither ±150 rpm chasing a target idle speed. It'll do this for a few seconds or a minute; but eventually settle out. Over last day or two I've worked on nailing down the idle control. I turned off closed loop idle, set my spark timing table (in the entire start/idle region) to 15º; which is equal to my idle ignition target. Did a cold start and populated idle base position values to achieve target idle speeds for all ECT as the engine warmed up. Once fully warmed, I incremented idle base position value 0.2% at a time - basically to characterize how much RPM every extra 0.2% of TPS creates - assuming 15º spark. This all worked great except for 2.4% TPS. The instant idle base position was set to 2.4% (12:03 in the datalog), the idle began to dither, and it appears my DBW throttle is having a hard time hitting that specific opening percentage. As you can see in datalog, the throttle has no issue achieving any value under or over 2.4%. I'm pretty sure this is causing my intermittent idle instability. PID values for the throttle are the ones published by Link: 4, 0.080, 50 Aside from this issue, the throttle tracks along with APS great. Suggestions? Cal File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19D9WQcWioeabMbIaeRM7Sy1h-9xWDE2i/view?usp=drive_link Log File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wTYGXOtWcjItN-udFZkkoYLSEuT698nf/view?usp=drive_link

I don't see that any of the standard tables/maps are set up to control how the engine will flare to a higher RPM for a moment, after being started - and then ease into target idle RPM. I'd like to tailor the start-up flare. Was thinking about making my target idle RPM a 3D surface based on ECT and Engine Running Time. Is this a valid way to go about this? Am I missing something? Is there a slicker approach?

For educational purposes, can you explain what's happening in the background firmware that caused my inconsistent starting and backfires on account of choosing wrong trigger type? I had trigger 1 set to 36-2, which I'm pretty sure is correct. I think the issue is in this mode, trigger 2 defaults to single pulse and cannot be changed to 3X... So any time you crank, the ECU has a 1 out of 3 chance of picking up the correct synch tooth on the cam...?? Could I have theoretically made this work right by grinding the other 2 teeth off my camshaft? I get how that would cause a no-start condition, but I don't understand why that would cause the big backfire. Is it because the ECU was synching - but doing so in the wrong position and therefore causing wildly incorrect ignition angle? ...I like to fully understand my failures...

The CAN gages on the market are pretty cool. Link sells ones that appears to be a private-labeled version of the GageArt unit. BTI sells another. Bottom line, it can be configured to display anything the ECU is aware of. It can show one, two or four channels at a time. You can configure multiple "pages" and cycle through those pages with the touch of a button. Very nice.

Don't I feel dumb; but boy am I glad I spoke up in this thread... You are correct indeed that I have been using multi-tooth/missing trigger mode. Haven't seen any VVT errors, but have noticed some trigger errors here and there. Until you mentioned it, I hadn't pieced it together that my inconsistent starts were linked to those trigger errors. I just spent some time with it and noticed when it starts perfect - no trigger errors. When it won't start; but rather just cranks - followed by a big backfire out the exhaust when I quit cranking - trigger errors. I've tried wildly different start fueling via adjusting engine capacity to 2500cc, 2000cc, 1500cc, 1000cc... sometimes it starts right up, other times just cranks followed by the backfire. Adjusted my trigger type to 1JZ-VVTi and offset to zero - started perfect 20 times in a row with zero trigger errors with ECT ranging from 130F to 185F. Thanks for sharing your knowledge! I didn't have a timing light with me tonight so that needs to get done ASAP. What else in my calibration do you think I need to go back over after making this trigger type change? Arming thresholds? Ignition delay? Knock thresholds? VVTi PID settings?

For what it's worth, my 2JZGE-VVTi required a -155* trigger offset. I have an ATI damper, and have checked timing with a light multiple times. ECU is AltezzaLink G4x.

I think you're right - you can't count on that location to provide you good temperature feedback.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. I set stoich for fuel 1 to 14.7:1. I set stoich for fuel 2 to 9.1:1. I rescaled my multifuel blend table 1:1 from 0 to 100. My thinking here is I want the flex fuel to work from E0 to E98... I found that setting injector flowrate for fuel 2 at 1332 * 0.83 = 1106 cc/min is pretty darn close. I'm achieving target lambda everywhere except for conditions under 2000rpm and under -60 kPa MGP. For those light load/speed conditions - I'm 4-5% rich. Before I can draw any real conclusions, I think I need to switch back to gasoline and retest because my VE table was developed with fuel 1 stoich set to 14.1:1. Can't help but notice there is a 4% difference between 14.7:1 and 14.1:1...

Thank you for reply. I've read the Multifuel portion of the manual. It mentions a second VE table may be required. Are you saying that in your own experience, achieving good results with flex fuel - and hitting lambda targets with both gasoline and ethanol blends will require the 2nd VE table?