Davidv

Been out driving it a bit and it's running great.

Saw an AE86 on the motorway the other night, just at same time that I was testing camera angles etc for some trackday footage.

Here's some old trackday footage from back with the standard ECU.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBGYkttBwq8
you can see into the first corner that I'm having to saw at the wheel and modulate throttle to get the car to turn at all - At the time I had my LSD set to 2 way, with really agressive preload etc.
I found out that the Cusco units are adjustable so I pulled it apart, rearranged clutch plates, set it to 1 way only and took out some of the springs which set the preload amount.
Which made a WORLD of difference to how the car turns, steering weight reduced by about half, which is surprising considering it was a modification to the other end of the car.
It seemed really complicated looking at the exploded diagrams but was actually quite easy to dissasemble / reassemble. You can tell some thought went into the design to make them easily servicable for when clutches wear out etc.

Now that's a little off topic to ECU stuff, buuuutttt if I had wheel speed sensors hooked up then it would be easy to tell that the LSD was too tight, and wasnt allowing the inner wheel to rotate slower on corners.
I'm keen to get this setup so I can judge whether tightening it up a little or setting two way etc will be of any value. Currently it's great but it's always awesome to have some data to work from and then adjust further from there and see the benefits (or not)
I've added some ignition timing and sorted the fuel out in the high load/rpm region, and now the car looooooves to rev! Limiter is now at 8300rpm when previously it was 7400rpm with standard ECU.
Makes a world of difference, now each gear shift isnt so critical. The car is still making peak power past 7400rpm so it's been well worth it.

Hi David, 
I will ask for this to be added to our request list.
Cheers,
 

Something else I had a play around with, was fitting a 3 axis accellerometer to the car, I found some online that have a 0-3v output and can accept a 5v supply.
Wired it up so that the X Y and Z axes were analog inputs for sake of datalogging at trackdays etc.
I thought it might be useful for datalogging cornering forces or something like that, however realistically without any conditioning of the outputs and just viewing the raw data it was fairly meaningless.

Looked something like this:

When you go over a bump it would affect all 3 axes so it was hard to differentiate one thing from the other. Also I think in order to work properly it would need some logic like the G-tech units where it calibrates which direction is "up" when stationary and then interpolates the 3 signals to show you forward accelleration, cornering force, etc.
Ultimately inferring cornering speed etc from my GPS software that I run on the netbook proved a lot more useful, only downside is that there's no way to correlate the GPS information with the engine logs etc. (Would be nice to be able to see if I was being wussy and lifting off throttle etc, haha)
So in the end I pulled the accelleromter back out to free up those 3 ANvolt inputs for other things.
The program called Racechrono is frigging awesome, it can tell you in real time how your lap times are tracking.
I use it with a 20hz reciever that plugs into my netbook via USB. The more recent version is for android but the old PC download version is awesome too.

It's really handy being able to visualise how taking a 'slow' line around a corner ends up faster overall when you can see it on a screen.


 
 

Hi David,
Most powersport applications do not run knock detection, this is because a knock sensor has difficulty differentiating between the mechanical noise from 2 stroke engine and actual knock. 
Depending on your ignition system type (direct spark being best) and the mechanical noise your engine makes, narrowing the window will allow you to increase the maximum engine speed you can detect knock at.
PCLink help has a little info on this, including a table. Take a look at:
PCLink Help > G4+ ECU Tuning Functions > Knock Control > Knock Control Settings  and then look at the window length section.

Hi Davidv,
I am just suggesting what I do in alot of my applications, solid lifters, forged pistons etc.
You can go to 8000 rpm if you wish, however I would much prefer to use audible det gear and trust the human ear via electronics and then setup the ignition timing from there.
Regards
Dave.

Hi David,
It sounds like you have things set up correctly. My initial thought was that something else is being triggered off DI 10. If you post up your log and base-map we can have a look.
Cheers,
Scott

Okay so there are a few stages to setting it up.
 
 
1. Wiring
Run one wire to the knock1 or knock2 wire on the link loom, and one to sensor earth, polarity unimportant. must must must must use shielded wire. The knock sensor outputs a very low voltage signal that's prone to interference.
2. Initial settings
Since you are using the 'wideband' knock sensor and an engine with an ~86mm bore has a knock frequency in the ~6khz range select your Freq Channel as 4-10khz Wide Band.
Set Ignition Retard limit to 0 degrees.
Set the RPM high and low lockouts however you like. (500rpm likely not ideal for the low setting)

 

3. Cylinder balancing
Your knock sensor is mounted closer to one cylinder than the others. It picks up vibrations, so the vibrations from that one cylinder will give a stronger signal than the others.
So what you need to do, is hold the motor at say 4000rpm (no load) and check the signal strength of each cylinder.
You can check the signal strength by pressing F12 to get to the runtime values screen and looking at these numbers, knock level cyl 1/2/34

 
 
See how in that example above, the numbers are 235 / 160 / 255 /145. You need to get these numbers as balanced / equal as possible.

You can adjust the values up or down by tweaking the numbers up and down in Knock control > Cyl setup > Cyl 1/2/34 knk level gain
 

 
 
Best to start with a value of 1 for the cylinder that's closest to the knock sensor, and increase the other values to suit. If one of the values reaches '2' (maximum) you can reduce some of the other numbers to less than 1.
4. Non knock noise levels
Since the knock sensor picks up vibrations, there are of course vibrations happening even when there's no knock. As RPM increases, the amount of 'natural' background noise increases too.
The ECU can tell that knock is happening, because there's an unexpected large spike in the 'noise' from the motor around the time of the iginition event. Soooo, you need to find out what the background noise level is for your engine.
According to the manual, a 2 row table with full throttle and 0 throttle is sufficient but this is up to you and how long you want to spend on it haha.
So head to Knock control > Knock target, right click on the table and select Axis setup to define your table similar to this (if you want)
 

 
Then you need to run a datalog through the rpm range at full throttle to see what the values are for this table. (and coast back down off throttle for the zero TP target, although I'm guessing not much knock happens at 0% throttle)
Open the datalog and bring up a screen to show engine rpm and the knock level global.
Knock level global has a maximum value of '1000'. If you find that you are hitting 1000, you need to reduce the Gain Channel number on the main knock sensing setup page to something a bit lower and try again. Remember that the '1000' has to be the maximum even including allowance for knock which is much stronger signal than the background noise so you need to allow headroom for that too.
 

 
Once you've established these background noise levels for the motor in your table, increase all of the numbers in the table by 20% to give it a bit of a margin against picking up normal engine noise as knock.
At this point, because you've set the maximum ignition retard to 0 degrees in your first step, the ECU isnt taking any action against knock.
Now that you've got everything setup though (unless I've missed a step here, haha) you can turn the knock sensing on by setting an ignition retard limit here, to say 3 degrees or 5 degrees or whatever you want:

Then as per reccomendations from the manual, it's best to test that knock sensing is working under a scenario that minimises risk of damage to your engine.
So you could drive along at low load / low rpm and induce knock by creeping the timing forward until it knocks and you can see from the runtime values table (F12) that it's working.
From here, it should all be working awesomely. (No responsibility taken for blown up motor though! This is just what has worked for me)

Hopefully it all makes sense though
Where are you based / what is the car used for? 
Keen to hear how you get on.

Hi dave, pulled plenum off tonight and noticed a small line between the outside of the rubber and the plenum sections on runners two and tgree like it had a tiny leak, so I put sealant around all 4 runner holes, reinstalled the plenum and throttle body, refit all vac lines and it started perfect  let it warm up on its own and it dropped down to 1100rpm and idled perfevt like it used to. So I believe the problem has been solved! ::D still cannot believe that it was a leak as all info pointed to a settings probelm until I tried the idle off and ethrottle off tonight which resulted in no change. So thanks to you guys I have learnt a lot about the software and my setup. Can never be too careful I guess.. as I followrd the toyota manual to a t and it specifically said no gasket was required on that particular part due to rubber interface.. so there ya go  
Will still be taking car to tuner on weekend to get cold start sorted a bit better, and also getting launch control setup as well,  have jist obtained an expansion cable to add more inputs and outputs
  
Will be sure to ask for help if I get stuck in the future! 
Brendon

Hi Davidv,
well done, very happy to hear you have resolved the issue CORRECTLY.
Regards
Dave.

One trick that can help when doing the calibration is to lower the PID gain values to give a slightly less sensitive response.
Also need to be sure the voltages track nicely. There should be no dips or spikes as you progressively open the throttle.

Hi KD, I'm running a redtop engine with g4+ Xtreme.
Are you wanting information regarding the physical wiring setup, or what values to put in tables etc?
I can probably give you a good head start with what I've found to be the best values for VVTI timing etc.

The Throttle position sensor has 4 wires, 5V (VC), VTA, VTA2 and sensor ground (E2), the pedal position sensor also has 4 wires with the same 5V and ground along with VPA and VPA2.
Wire VTA to AN Volt 6 and set to TPS Main
Wire VTA2 to AN Volt 5 and set to TPS Sub
Wire VPA to AN Volt 3 and set to FPS Main
Wire VPA2 to AN Volt 2 and set to FPS Sub.
This is also detailed fairly well in the help files