Very entertaining thread.

 

Hire a professional tuner.

 

Im in for the carnage pics. As a side note, I would think its best to not dismiss the advice of several of the communities best tuners telling you your running too much timing. I mean it could just be me though

 

This will be the sticky "How not to tune an Evo".

 

He was at least watching knock and trap times, so its hard to fault him for the timing map other than to have checked around before pushing it that high. I'm more curious about how the oil level got to be more than 1/2 quart high. If there was no coolant in the oil, it seems that it had to be a huge amount of E85 that got by the rings.

 

Being a 2G DSM makes a difference I'm sure, but I've ran A LOT of timing without real carnage. Testing some things, I ended up running 19`at 3 grand @ 31psi and just hurt the headgasket enough to push some coolant (not that bad as I drove it a year after before fixing it, a couple days driving would put the bottle 1/2 full, or full if I really hammered on it). Yes my pistons (Wiseco 8.3:1's) still look like brand new on top. Running anything even close to the stock Evo 8 timing really kills the torque on my car.

I don't remember what my whole timing curve currently looks like off the top of my head, but if I remember right I'm at 11` at full spoolup, 18` or so by about 5 grand and run up to about 21-22` on top. My last dyno run was 414hp / 459 torque on a dynojet last year with all 3 pulls being quite consistent.


If you're not goona spend the money to tune it on a dyno, adjust the timing by doing pulls on the road and use the excel dyno posted here on evolutionm.net. E85 will pretty much let you run any timing you want, but you can break stuff because of it.

 

I'm fairly certain the tune was not actually the issue as I've been running something similar, actually even more advanced midrange, for about 4 months. Also, as I posted earlier, less timing KILLED the car's power which suggests I wasn't past MBT for my fuel map, which I left unchanged the entire time. And I have tephra's knock light active at 3 counts of knock, I ALWAYS let out if I see it.
It's an 80,000 mile motor that has been maintained well, but beaten almost daily. It's been in the elevens for a while, trapping 116-118 all year on stock intercooler and piping. It started making bad sounds after a highly irresponsible drive down the highway. stupid I know. Here's hoping my bottom end is salvageable.
Compression check in a half hour. Carnage some time later.

 

Could have been four months of beating the crap out of your bearings or other engine component.



Hope you find it's not an expensive failure. If it's knocking I would imagine bearings at this point.

Good luck

- Bryan

 

He said that he wasn't using knock as a determining factor because he didn't see any. I find that hard to believe, only because on my personal car and a couple others that I've tuned, they don't like anymore than 4 at peak tq. That's just me and a couple others though. If I do go over the limit (even on E), knock is quick to show up (at peak tq), not so much in the upper RPM's.

All the other evo's I've messed with were E85 conversion tunes and none of them liked more than 4 (max) at peak tq. Of course this is with close to 30psi ramping up.

Back to the wonder of the extra oil, I'm thinking cracked rings allowing fuel into the block. If that were the case though, I would think he would also be burning massive amounts of oil. Can only wait to see the pics I guess

I feel pretty bad for Thub....this is a hard way to learn about something. The situation does suck and I only hope the best for him.

 

I hope you're not talking about peak HP? Your peak torque timing is what everyon is talking about being too high, past MBT, and most likely pounding your bearings.

Trap speeds or peak horsepower has nothing to do with this area. Did you ever do runs from like 2000 or 2500 RPM to redline to see where your MBT was in the midrange? It's hard to believe that you weren't past MBT in that range...300 load/4000 RPM and you have 14* of timing and you're telling us that's not past MBT in your setup?

Do you have any logs showing the torque/hp at 4000 RPM with different timing numbers, with it always increasing up to the 14* mark? For example, what is stock there, like 0 degrees? OK, so you upped it to 2*, then tested. Then upped to 4* tested, etc, etc...all the way to 14* and your torque increased every time, all the way to to 14* that you settled at?

 

I was referring to peak torque and power, both got knocked way down with less timing. see post 24 and post 12 for what I mean. I'd do another run in third with retarded timing if I could, but that's probably unwise.

Yes, I generally make 2k RPM to redline runs to tune unless I'm actually at the track, and then I'm not touching anything lower than 5500 RPM.

The results of the compression check are really puzzling to me. I'm seeing 120 +/- 2 PSI across all 4 cylinders. It's definitely top end related, but what the hell would offset the compression of a whole engine evenly like that?

 

I'd also like to add that I have the "how to tune an Evo" thread available offline with an icon on my desktop. I'm familiar with it.
Also could bent valves be the issue? These cams are 288*advertised duration. 280 @.050 lift. And I was temporarily running stock valve springs. (the new ones are in my toolbox scheduled to go in friday.)

 

What compression ratio was your motor? I find it hard to believe that the car 'liked' that much timing at peak torque with as much boost you were running. I personally haven't seen even a 8.0c/r motor take much more than 9degrees at 3000rpms and last for too long -obviously not pump gas.

 

If that was a healthy stock motor and everything was in time, etc then I can pretty much say that 12*-14* is way beyond MBT at 27psi in that region. Cylinder pressure increases dramatically beyond MBT and will beat the living **** out of your bearings.

E85 tuning really needs to be done with respect and with no greed. The typical "push till it knocks then dial back" will get you a vented block with E85.

- Bryan

 

I'm not disagreeing with you, GST. My thinking is, though that maybe my wideband was messed up and I was rich enough to where that much timing was necessary to overcome being crazy rich. which could account for the excess oil that smells like gas in under 500 miles.
___Any idea what compression the stock engine SHOULD have? And any ideas what would cause all four cylinders to drop so consistently? The engine was healthy before, the compression is literally within 3 PSI across the board but it's at 121-124 PSI. It doesn't make sense to me.
___Also, the knocking seems to happen more when dropping revs and it's fairly difficult to make the knock sensor hear it as knock, I logged it and even though I could clearly hear it the ECU would only occasionally pick it up as knock. this surprised me.
My cams are at the limit of what the stock valve springs can take according to GSC. My brain is pointing to that as my real problem right now.