How to Safely adjust timing
 

I was just wondering if anyone can shed some light on how to adjust timing. I think i got the fuel trim adjusting down pretty good. Just kinda confused on how to do the timing. Any input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance

Freddie T

I doubt any pro tuner will tell you their technique since it is their livelyhood, but Always start conservative and work your way up.

I am not asking for any pro-tuners advice. I would rather have people like malibu jack, warrtalon, or even Alwaysinboost. I am just looking for where you should start. I remember how Alwaysinboost was showing us where to look to know what blocks we were in in ver .7. But with the program not working with version 8 I am just looking to safely increase my timing even a lil bit for a bit more power.....

Thank you everyone.

But if Shiv or Al wants to chime in I wouldn't want to discourage them :D

If you want info like that man you need to do your homework so you can at least understand though. Someone can tell you a basic step, but understanding is necessary also.

ok. where should i go and read up to do my homework. The fuel map was easy but, i figure when i start to mess with the timing i will be redoing my fuel map so its all good. I just really want a good starting point

By the way where in houston are you man. I went to high school in pearland, and went to Montgomery College in the Woodlands??

There's really no big secret to adjusting timing at all.

You'll need:
- lots of time
- an open (err, closed) road. Actually a dyno would be greatly preferred, since it eliminates varying environmental conditions.

Make a couple of 3rd gear pulls with your existing map and log them. You'll at the very least want to log RPM, Timing and Knock Sums, airflow is good to know as well.

Now take a look at your logs.
- Look at the timing values and figure out which load cells you are hitting on your high octane timing map
- If your logs show knock at WOT, then you are done and you should consider backing off your timing by one degree or more (depends on how bad things got).
- If your logs show no knock under WOT, increase your timing by 1 degree for the load cells that you are hitting. Pay attention to the adjacent load cells. For the sake of knowing which load cells you are hitting, you do not want to have two or more cells next to each other with the same value (i.e. something like [3][3][3] ). So, if you have values that are something like [3][2][1] and you want to bump the [2] to a [3], then you'll probably want to change it to look like [4][3][1]. In other words, you are not simply changing one load cell, you are changing the 'curve' at that particular RPM value.

Make another couple of runs and log them ... rinse and repeat.

The key to tuning is taking small steps, logging, and having consistency in your WOT runs.

This method will allow you to tune your car for the maximum amount of timing advance that it will run on that day. If environmental conditions change (e.g. hotter, colder, humid, dry, etc), then your tune may not hold up, which is why you will want to log as much as you can. The more you decide to push the envelope, the more you will have to keep tabs on things...

l8r)

how can you tell which load cells you're hitting? that's the one thing i don't get, i can see what rpm, timing, and knock are, but how do you determine load? do you just match the rpm and timing number up and see which load cell it's in?

Just make sure there is no knock present. And then, that is it....very simple ;) .
knocking will change the timing value from the table. So, you can't follow the load value if you have the knock counts.

i guess i'll just stick to fuel, i don't follow. how do you eliminate the knock from a particular load cell if you don't know what load cell needs timing pulled?

Trial and errror. :D
knocks more than 5 counts will definitley pull the major timing from the table. But, for small knock counts like below 3, ECU doesn't really pull the timing that much...
so, just do the wild guess around that region and try fueling it more or lessening the timing.

you should tune fuel first, then mess with timing, correct?

there is also a point where u can go overboard on timing, without gains in power... just closer to catastrophe when u have a mishap, such as bad fuel, or a significant temperature change....

wideband, close observation of knock voltage etc...

I'm just a beginner like you but one thing I can tell you is if you allready have a custom tune timing map on your car and you need to add timing for say, alcohol, it can be easy to do.

That was what I did, I added just 1 degree to where my load vs rpm, furthermore alcohol was spraying and that 1 degree made ONE BIG difference. I actually posted that map (like an idiot) thinking that it was now my map since I added one degree and got into big trouble with all the EvoM CEOs.

One degree at a time- would be easier if 0.0 able

Do I need to write another how-to? :lol:

Actually it's pretty simple. Log your RPM and your Timing, then take those data points and look at where they fall on your high octane timing map.

How to do this?
- open your high octane timing map
- Hit [ Alt ] + [ PrintScreen ]
- open Paint
- Click on [ Edit ] -> [ Paste ]
- Now take your RPM and Timing numbers and put them on the picture of your map

So, assuming a stock timing map and a log that looks like this:
RPM ... Timing (degrees)
4633 ... 2
5005 ... 2
5406 ... 3
5759 ... 7
6313 ... 9
6791 ... 13
7289 ... 15

The end result will look like this:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/at...chmentid=93255

So now you would know roughly which cells the ECU hit.

However that is assuming that no timing was being pulled due to knock. Therefore you also need to look at your knock counts during the run and you need to take a look where the timing would have fallen on the low octane timing map. If you map the same hypothetical timing values out on the stock low octane timing map, you'll see that they would have hovered around the 160-180% Load columns. It would be very unlikely that your Evo was only able to generate 180% load at WOT.

l8r)