Hey All,

I have had a UTEC+Tuner in my car for about a year now and have had nothing but issues and disappointments with it since day one.

The first shop I worked with here in PDX was able to get good HP results out of the UTEC but with major driveablity issues they were unable to resolve. This included massive jerking in the car when accelerating at %50 throttle and massive knock at low RPM's (between 2 and 4k).

I am now working with another shop and we started off with the base Stage II map from TurboXS. I am running an AVC-R set to 1.4bar, 3in Perrin exhaust (Turbo Back), and a walbro fuel pump. Once again we start the tune off with some low rpm 4th gear pulls to set the cells properly. What we find is that we get a lot of knock consistently between 2500 and 3500rpms in 4th gear. No matter what we do with the UTEC sells, add fuel up to 100, retard timing blah blah blah, it makes 0 changes to the knock and the AFR's are sitting at 14.3 the whole. Way to high IMHO for a run thats building 1.3bar boost. The only thing I found to actually get rid of the knock was to reduce the boost to under 1 bar. This got rid of the knock but talk about driving a honda civic.

I am getting really close to throwing this ECU out the window as it doesnt seem to respond correctly to adjustments made! You would think throwing in 100 for all of the fuel cells would reduce the AFR reading but it doesnt do anything. The O2 sensor was verified to be working properly and a proper free air calibration was performed.

I know several people have had nothing but great results with the UTEC but I am really starting to struggle here. Is anyone else having these issues? Does everyone have perfect drivability with no stutters? Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Chris

 

i also get a bit of a stutter. i am also not very happy with my dyno numbers.

 

I've heard some evos are just knock prone due to the sensor being really sensitive. Don't know if there is a fix for that or not.....

 

Couple things.
You could put in the Map sensor, if you haven't already, and use the Utec boost control thru the stock solenoid and ABC. Then you could gradually add boost after this area.
Another thing, where are you getting your knock data from? Tuner pro or Utec based on stock knock sensor.
Has the knock threshold been messed with?
You could re-load the Utec software and take it back to default.
2500-3500 is right were boost comes on, timing drops off steeply and afr richens just as steep.
Are you sure it's real knock and not valve train, (or something else), resonence(sp?).
A mechanics ear (stethoscope) will tell.
If you are retarding timing and adding fuel in this area, something else is going on.
I'm leaning towards knock thresholds.
Runs some race gas in it and see if it goes away, then you'll know if it's true knock.

 

Hi Bishiboy,

I am using the Stock knock sensor along as well as listening to the motor through the headphones via the Tuner from TurboXS. I have verified the knock via the knock count in the UTEC log as well as hearing it in the headphones.

What is the knock threshold you are using?

I went out on my own tonight and found that I could get rid of the knock by putting all the timing values to ECU for the 10% column through 3500rpms, which is where i was having knock. So I know that the stock ECU does not have knock at those ranges like I previously thought from my conversations with the tuner. I set it back to the Stage II map and started adding a little bit of fuel in small increments but wasnt able to successfully get rid of the knock by adding fuel. I only tried this up to 20 but felt that was too much fuel already so backed it back to 0 and tomorrow I will be working on the timing. The stage II map is currently set to 14.8 for the timing. Since I am only running 92 octane for gas (Damn conservatives) I believe, from what I have read, I will need to retard this timing a bit since the map is based on 93 octane. What would be a good starting adjustment for this?

Thanks!
Chris

 

I actually increased the sensitivity of my stock knock sensor in my Utec. I'll have to go out and look up the numbers when I get home this afternoon.
Why not just let the Ecu take care of the timing in these low rpm ranges? In datalogs in the UCC, it shows what the ECU timing is and what you have programed. You can compare the numbers in these areas. Also the UCC has a timing table builder using the Ecu timing as a base, check it out.

 

If you are adding tons of fuel across the board and it is having no effect on your AFR's there is somehing wrong. Forget about the knock for now. That could be awhole variety of things. The fuel system is more limited. Do you have stock injectors? Have you data logged when you get this jerking at 50% TPS? If you have stock injecors, I would first pull the fuel pump and put the stocker back in and see what happens. It could of course be a problem with the UTEC itself but it sounds more like a mechanical problem in the fuel system.

 

Hi Getstalt,

I am running stock injectors with the Walbro fuel pump.
Doing some runs on my own last night I learned quite a bit about the UTEC. Something I should have done when I first bought the device but was too scared to try anything because I didnt want to damage my car.

Utilizing UCC, which occasionally crashes my laptop for some damn reason, I figured out that I am getting adjustments made into the ECU for fuel etc. The reason nothing was happening yesterday during a tune sessions was because the tuner was somewhat new to the UTEC interface. He thought the Load Columns were based on throttle position which is why he wasnt getting any changes made to the car even when putting fuel values of 100 in the cells. Cant imagine what this would have done. Just putting them to 30 I got a stall but the AFR's dropped real low =)

So I spent a lot of time reading last night on the forums and I think I have a plan.
First I am going to utilize the sweet Dyno at Perfection Motorsports. They have the same dyno Lamborghini uses and it mounts directly to your wheels so you dont use rollers which cause a lot of incosistencies in measurements etc. The dyno can also hold the car in any load cell you want it to quite easily, this makes it real easy to tune all of the cells across the board. First I am going to get knock out anywhere I can find it while monitoring the AFR's. If the AFR's start to get high then Ill add some fuel. Once I get the knock out then I will start advancing the timing and see if I can get some power while also reducing the fuel in areas that are really rich or adding fuel to keep AFR's around 11.5. Probably going to take forever but will be alot o fun.

Once the dyno runs are done then I need to do some road tuning. The problem with PDXTuning's map is they were unable to smooth out the transitions between stock ECU and the UTEC. So whenever I had a transition point occur at or around the tip in point for TPS then I would get a "jump", best way I can describe it, in the car. I think it was just because the Timing adjustments for the UTEC were way more advanced in that load cell then what the stock ECU was set to. I learned a lot about smoothing last night so I hope to be able to fix all these issues too.

Expect to hear a lot more questions from me in the future and thanks for all the input so far!!

By the way.. Anyway have a setup similar to mine? I am running AVC-R at 1.4bar, Walbro Fuel pump, and TBE with test pipe. I have no internals changed and using the stock Air intake. If so could you PM me your map? I would like to see how different my maps start to look and see if I can learn some things.

Thanks All!

Chris

 

I suppose it only goes to show you that not every tuner is created equal.. And why its important to choose a tuner with experience in the car and the tuning hardware your using.

I am impressed that you chose to go the methodical route and take the time to do the research, I have seen many people dump hardware thinking the problem was the hardware when in reality it was just taking a little time to learn how it works.

You really don't need another boost controller with the UTEC, in fact, you can better leverage the potential of the UTEC if you use its boost control features with the stock boost solenoid. When everything works in concert, you have the ability to have lots of useful control and tuning/logging ends up being alot easier.

The AVC-R is a nice unit, I had one in my car along with the S-AFC, when I got the UTEC I removed both units to use the UTEC features.

You shouldn't use someone elses map, no matter how similar the setup is. HOWEVER you can use UCC and log data in MAP-0 on your car for a few days, take those logs and build a base timing map, then tune from there, you will get good timing numbers for transitions and drivability, then you can focus on tuning for power.

 

Have you been able to get the same quick results with the UTEC controlling boost as the AVC-R? I utilize the different map settings on the AVC-R quite frequently as I do a lot of track time (Not 1/4 mile actual track) in the summer and I generally lower my boost quite a bit for those days since its not really needed. I also heavily utilize the feedback information from the AVC-R just to make sure Im not having any boost issues and that boost and rpm and where they should be. It seems this would be a lot tougher to track on the UTEC and the feedback would be a lot slower. Curious on your thoughts.

Thanks,
Chris

 

Well, in the sense of realtime display, you would find you have to log the data to gather anything useful..

However if you utilize the closed loop features of the UTEC, most of the tuning parameters are very similar to the AVC-R albeit a little different in method... Remember you have a 2D map that you can handle boost at different throttle positions and loads which means under low throttle you can maintain low boost at lower RPMs, so its similar in some ways to the gear based feature of the AVC-R (though most don't use the gear based features) But there is a "Gain" type feature at determines the boost response, the more aggressively you set it, the more likely it'll spike, and the less aggressively its set, the less spiking oyu may get, but it'll be slower to respond... All of these things can be adjusted to give you some really good control. The Stock boost solenoid works best in conjunction with the ABC because you set your baseline with the ABC...

Open loop boost control is very fast responding, but can spike and since it doesnt have the feedback of the MAP sensor utilized (if you have one installed) but you will get what you set, only you have to readjust for the weather occasionally just like an MBC.

The advantage of using the UTEC Boost control is pretty obvious (if it can control boost to a level thats satisfactory to you) Each map you have, can have a unique boost map...