My EVO underwent a rather big change this weekend. I chose to remove the AEM EMS and HKS RS intake and go with the Vishnu XEDE and Xflash. Unfortunately, there were a lot of minor and medium problems in the conversion. There was the predictable number of surprises, missing parts, etc. The biggest problem seems to be some sort of boost leak that has not yet been pinpointed (pardon the pun). Anyway, I sure hope is not a hole in my very expensive Greddy RSPL FMIC.....
Here is the interesting thing. After all the things possible were put back to near stock condition, Shiv tuned the car and produced the following power/tq. graphs. Even though the car could only make relatively low boost, it made a very respectable 271.7 hp with pump gas... As a point of comparison, the graphs show what the car made on the dyno with one of the original custom tune done with the AEM EMS ....

 

This is not to say that the AEM EMS is not a good tool. Also, the HKS intake has been dyno proven to make good HP gains. My reasons for removing the AEM EMS are manifold but include my inability to tune it myself and the issues with passing emissions inpection.
The HKS intake is not the prefered system to work with the XEDE piggyback so it was also removed. The car still retains the following mods:

3" turbo-back exhaust
HKS 264/264 cams
HKS cam gears
680 blitz injectors
Walbro pump
Perrin fuel rail
Greddy RS PL FMIC
Exedy twin plate clutch

I'm fairly confident that the power output will improve significantly once the boost leak(s) are found and corrected. Also, the race gas map should yield much higher numbers.
The one issue with my car that bothers me is that the compression is a bit on the low side (140-150lb) and I obviously have blowby which is indicated by the crankcase pressure that causes the dipstick to blow out and oil to spill out.

There is a very important lesson that came out of this. It's hugely important to make sure that the tuning of any stand alone or piggy-back computer be done by experts. I can only think of very few reasons my car has blow-by. First and most obvious is that initially the car was tuned so rich that it blew clouds of smoke all the time and made huge black deposits of soot wherever it idled more that 5 minutes. I'm almost 100% positive that this over-rich running conditions for 3 months washed the oil off the rings and cylinder walls causing the loss of ring seal.
Another possiblity is that during the "tuning" the car was run with much higher boost pressures than prudent which could have also caused ring seal failure. Actually I suspect it was mostly if not wholly due to raw fuel washing out the lubrication from the rings aand cylinder walls.

At this point, I'm going to try to determine whether it's worth the money to correct the blow-by or not. The car is obviously not making the power it could, but it might not be cost effective to correct this at this time. For now, the car is still not completely sorted out, but it does look like for my purposes and for my car, the Vishnu solution is much more effective and convenient. Hindsight is 20/20, but I sure wish I had gone with Vishnu from the start. I would have many more $Ks in my bank account and a better performing car. BTW, it was really something to see a Vishnu stage 3 EVO make well over 420 whp on race gas in the DD dyno today

 

Who did your "custom tune" on the AEM? That is a horribly rich A/F ratio! And you said it was even richer when you first got it? Holly Shhhhnickys!

Any particular reason you are running stock (possibly a bit lower) boost? With your setup (very similar to mine) I would expect 300 to 310 HP on a DD dyno on 93 octane, probably 290 to 300 on California gas if you bumped the boost up. I made 311 HP on 94 octane with boost spiking up to 22 psi and droping to 20 psi by redline using my AEM EMS tuned by me with a wide band O2 sensor.

I have to respect the idea of going with the tuning tool most commonly used by your local top tunner though. If Shiv is the best tuner in your area and he is most familiar with the XEDE system then it makes sense to use it.

Good luck on some great numbers after you find that leak

Keith

 

At one point the car was making upwards of 23 psi but later the tuner decided that my car "did not like timing" so the timing was retarded. Shiv is not the best tuner in my area. I live in Georgia and Shiv is located in California. But he came here to tune the cars and his products seem to be more reliable and more "user friendly". The piggy-back computer works well enough and it retains the stock driveability.
My car has never made the power that the original tuner promised to deliver. In actuality, the car did make more power than stock, but the bottom line is that it became an undriveable POS and suffered mechanical damage as the result of the work done. I realize that **** happens sometimes, but I'm pretty bummed out with the results of the work by the first tuner. It would be nice to have some sort of arrangement for reparations, unfortunately the tuner washed his hands off my car after "finishing" with my car......

 

hope everything works out for you

 

I hope so too. BTW, I want to thank the people who've helped me a lot with my car.
Andrew at Dyno4mance for the use of his place and his wonderful cooperation.
Seth and Dustin who worked practically all day Saturday on my car removing the AEM EMS, the intake and replacing a lot of the stock components back into the car. It was a huge job because of all the wiring and all the boost control, sensors, hoses and various lines and wires which had to be improvised or created due to the missing stock parts.
Thanks also to Shiv for his cooperating and for tuning the car.
Also, I really appreciate the help of the local guys like Matt who put me in touch with Doug who gave me the missing O2 sensor from his car on very short notice.
Also, Mike Miller and Mike Raza who helped me with the brakes and with contacting the ppl to find my parts.
A big thank you to all of you!
Frankly this whole process of modifying my car turned into a huge nightmare. I can only hope I don't have to spend an equal amount of cash to undo the damage as it cost me to get it done to begin with

 

yeah, hopefully you will not need a short block to rebuild the motor. Its good to see you're up and running again though!

 

Thankfully, a whole short block is not needed. A good tech can do a ring job for a fraction of the cost of a short block. Anyway, my car can probably run OK with the blowby. It's just not as good as it could be......

 

I ended up with 307 on pump and 324 on race on Friday. What day did you run?

 

Until you tear down or otherwise determine the cause of your blow by it is unfair to place the responsibilty for it on anyone. Rings can fail. It would seem as likely as not that a marginally weak ring that seems ok could fail when cylinder pressures are increased. To bad you can't get warranty relief here but you have a chance to clean up the cyliders and replace the stock pistions with some lighter stronger forged ones. You will spool better and rev higher.

 

No, you would not need a whole short block. It is possible to remove the head with the block in the car and to a hand hone, but you would have to remove the oil pan to clean everything out after the hone and you would have to be VERY careful not to hit the crank. Now, with that said, the best solution would be to take the engine out and have the block machine honed with a torque plate on it to insure roundness and the re-ring it. You may or may not have to replace the bearings. Probably not, but many would do so anyway just to make sure that everything is right. If you have the mechanical ability and the tools (i.e. hoist) to remove the engine yourself then you would save a lot of money, but it is a pita. It really depends on how bad you think the blow-by is.

 

If I had the facilities and mechanical ability/inclination, I probably would not be in the fix I'm in. Unfortunately for me, I cannot rebuild my engine for many reasons. I think the blow-by might not be severe enough to warrant a re-build, but it might......

Maybe you have a point, but running a car with higher boost levels than stock and dumping fuel to the point of running 11:1 A/F's at cruising and off the scale rich at WOT is a recipe for exactly this kind of failure. The car was fine compression wise and blow-by wise until it was "tuned" & "modified" at 22K miles, shortly thereafter (within a couple of K miles) all these syptoms appeared. I absolutely would not expect or ask for any warranty relief. I knew that when I elected to have the car modified, I relinquished the right to the manufacturers' warranty. Unfortunately, the tuner cannot address or rectify these problems. At this point even if the tuner offered to take my car in to repair it at his place, I'd would not trust them with my car at all. They blew their chances after the 5th time of failing to do anything effective to even tune the car correctly. Actually, every time I took the car back for more works or re-work, more things went wrong with the car.
I'd be happy to get some sort of finacial compensation for at least a portion of the work required to rectify the car, but I'm not holding my breath

 

Congratulations on your good fortune. I'm afraid that is not my case..... My car went on the dyno Saturday night.... Unfortunately, it could only make low boost so the final chapter has not been written. Shiv seems to think that he has created the maps for my car and once the XEDE is shipped and the boost leak is corrected, I should get better numbers. Of course, it's unreasonable to expect extremely good numbers from as car that has been messed up by incompetent, careless and irresponsible tuners. The damage has been done and all the repairs have not been finished.