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St170 Engine Into My Spitfire


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Both the temp sensors on mine are standard GM rating so just had to select from a drop down list in Tunerstudio. I ended up buying a Jam thermometer from the Pro Cook shop for £8 just so I could check. Thermometer & Tunerstudio reading were within 1c of each other.

 

Darren

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Good day today.

The oilleak is fixed (sump gasket had slipped, and looked as if it is a poor design. A plate now welded inside the sump to stop a repeat) And it is now leak free.

Tank out and fitted the cupra turbo "r" fuel pump. Tank back in andthe 3.8 bar FPR now in service, all good.

 

Fired up the car on a downloaded basemap (std st170 on jenveys apparently) and ran poorly. However, I had changed the injector size to 315cc whichis std st170, wheras the basemap had 250cc injectors. I thought this suspicious, and they may have entered a guess injector size. Anyway, I reverted to 250 ccinjectors in the map, and it ran pretty well. So I may have been correct. 

 

My LD wideband is here, and I will get that connected up on Monday, see what AFR is like. And hope to getan hour tomorrow to calibrate the temp and coolant sensors accurately.

Will book MoT ASAP and also get mapping session on the rollers sorted. Down near Frome, so will run the engine in nicely!

 

Looking like Spa is realistic as long as no more disasters.

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They make the ECU,and have done a lot of work on properly controlling the st170 VVT (VVT pro controller, plus they make nodiz, sort of megajolt with coil drivers in a box)

 

Anyway, mine was one of the first sent out for zetec/st170 supplied premade loom (though it was a Zetec version, needed a couple of tweeks) and I bought it for 2 reasons.

1. It is the cheapest ecu with the capability of controlling the VVT

2. As they wanted to get some out into the ford world, I bought it with a free mapping session chucked in. I think that is worth a good few quid, so a double win.

 

To be fair, when I have stumbled and resorted to a phone call, it usually gets answered by the owner. And it seems that even I am beginning to get there with understanding getting things to happen.

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Today teh car went for mapping to ME (manufacture the ecu) but it wasn't a great journey there. I forgot to take my lappy, which would have been handy as the car was running rich all the way. And it was suffering from a sticky throttle, but an early start meant little start/stop traffic.

 

On arrival at ME I had to wait for a marcos (factory built with a rover tomcat engine) to do some power runs, then mine was strapped to the dyno.

Fist run made 60bhp, and got stoooopidly rich over 3500rpm. That was on teh map I had loaded and got down to them on. They popped another basemap on, and dialled in a few settings, and 120bhp. And the comment the VVT wasn't working. A delve under the bonnet and some test signals, and it was found it was set on the wrong channel. That was sorted, another power run, and 150bhp. Some tweeks to teh mapping, and a few more runs, and it made 160. At which point they declared that was all that could be done with the issues (sticky throttle, which wouldn't be fixed despite my best efforts)

Matt, the mapper/owner commented a std st170 engine on the dyno always make 150bhp, a low figure compared to other numbers talked on the web.Maybe this dyno is more honest? who knows. He also pointed out that the inlets needed some work (I admitted I hadn't even thought about that aspect) as there is a step that needs flowing. And sorting the throttle..... plus my manifold and exhaust are not ideal, but there is little that can be done withing the constraints of it being a spitfire!

 

Driving home what was immediately apparent was the feel. There is masses of torque, it will pull in 5th from 1200rpm upwards. In fact feels almost like a triumph 2.5, but revs cleanly to 7000rpm. 

 

What I also noted is that at cruise it is still a little rich, 11.5-13AFR, which I think should be about 14.5. And there is a stumble at 1500-2000 when it leans out under very light load, again something I can sort by(Gill) mapping as I drive. Hopefully that will help economy as we are off to Spa next week in it.

 

So a mixed bag. I am happy that the mapping is 80/90% correct, and all I need to do now is sort the throttle opening/closing..Not delighted with tha, but as it was "free" I can't expect them to trouble shoot all the foibles, I should have got that sorted beforehand.The deal was mapping only, no spannering at all.

 

Is the ECU any good? I think it has some useful features, and I plan to fit a MAP sensor to set up barometric correction before the 10CR. Hopefully I can manage that! Not sure if I should set up autotune now it is all close ish? But that means getting a decent target AFR map.... 

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I ran a Nodiz in my Ferrari 308 (on carbs) and got them to map it. I was always happy with the hardware but the (paid for) mapping wasn't great, the fella there really didn't have a clue what he was doing with down draft Dell'Ortos, leaving it far too rich. I could smell that it was way out without any tools! He wouldn't have it but I got it to run far better at home with some traditional tweaking.

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Today was spent fettling. No chance for live mapping as Gill was busy....but did sort the sticky throttle  by rerouting the cable and tweeking the adjusters so more cable is exposed. rebalanced the ITB's and now idles at 500rpm if required. Not a great idea as it will stall when cold, so upped to 8/900rpm.

 

Changed the iffy speedo cable, so speedo now works fine. 

Tidied the wiring with cable ties so routed a bit better, and out of sight. And refitted the H frame c/w speakers and amp, ready for sounds. 

 

Hiowever, the most useful time was spent fitting teh £2.50 stainless box I bought at SEM last weekend. It is really too small a bore, looks like a TR6 one wit upswept tailpipe. But SOOOOO much quieter. Handy with Spa coming up next week, not to mention 10CR in September.

 

Also had a chat with a friend. He has inadvertently got involved with mapping some race cars (mainly classic sierra cossie racers, but also some rallycross stuff with Julien Godfrey) He gave me a few pointers, including the very strong advice NOT to polish the inlets or ports, but leave a rough finish. And suggested I need to get a knock sensor added to map the timing effectively. May get to fire up the autotune too. May be handy, as could get some interesting data on the Spa track laps......

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Sounds very promising.  Auto-tune can work really well (the Tuner Studio version anyway - can you hook that to your ECU?) but does require a decent  target table.  To best do the target table you need to know were the engine is in terms of rpm in terms of rpm and lead (TP or MAP) under various use conditions (mainly the typical cruising points) so you can best set the AFRs at those points and build the table around them.

 

MS also has a feature (which I've yet to figure out) where you can cut out the middle man and tune directly via target table - ie you request the target and the tech just makes it so.  You do need to be reasonably close before you can do this though.

 

I thought that not polishing the inlet tract is more important for "wet" manifolds and not so much for dry, FI manifolds?

 

Knock sensor technology can be bloody tricky - may be worth getting some "det cans" - basically headphones amp and mic so you can listen whilst timing though tbh I really think that for the high load/rpm stuff this needs to be done on a rolling road with a decent operator and speed hold facility.

 

Nick

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The inlet polishing stuff was all in a quick conversation, so I may need to quiz a bit more. But the important bit is to blend the end on the plastic inlet and get rid of the step.

 

The ecu has a LTT (long term trim) option, which seems quite sensible. It builds a confidence score for each load site, and you can decide where it gets data (ie they recommend the central 50% of a load site), plus when you apply the new figures, rather than changing the fuelling to what should give you the target AFR, you can decide what % change to apply,ie 50% is again recommended. Sort of makes sense. 

Anyway, tomorrow Gill will be lappy operator, and we will map for cruise at say 50, 60, 70 and so on (!) at 14.5 or thereabouts. Hopefully save a few quid on fuel travelling to/from Spa.

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Spent an hour or so with the lady wife in the car. Drove up the A/M23 from Brighton up to the M25, and back.

 

Most cruise sites on the map now 14.5-14.7 and they were often 12 something area.

 

Will see how that works, and further investigate the autotune. Not terribly easy maintaining sites on the map......

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