I'm sure that's gonna be the case, but I just hope whatever I get from a 3.4" will keep me satisfied long enough till I have the funds to build something a little stronger. I'm in Ottawa.

Me too! I was not looking forward to a long, drawn-out troubleshooting phase.

Thanks, like this?

[youtube]j6hocHtvov4[/youtube]

 

Great write up and pictures! Glad you got it all figured out, you are going to love the TVS!!!

 

Thanks, I sure hope so!!

 

Got the Aeroforce Interceptor wired and mounted yesterday, and come to realize I think I fucked up again. I put the wideband O2 in the driver side rear bung, which happens to be after the cat, so now I'm thinking the cat is skewing the A/F reading. That or I'm not calibrating it properly, but the calibration instructions are a little confusing. It says to hold the button on the controller for 3 secs, with key on, engine off. I understand this, but I wired the sensor/controller to an ignition on source, so with key on, engine off, there is now power running to it, right? And then it goes on to say that after calibration, the reading on the gauge should show 19.8 for a few seconds, then adjust. Well, if I have to do this all with the key off, how would the gauge show any of this?

I did hit the calibration button yesterday while I had it running, and it did flash to 19.8, but then settled to this:



So, either the problem is:

1. the tune is incredibly lean (unlikely);
2. The wideband placement after the cat is showing an overly lean mixture (which makes sense, if the cat is doing what it should); or
3. I'm not calibrating the sensor correctly.

I've been reading up about wideband placement after the cat, trying to get a reasonable delta figure, that I could substract from my overly lean current A/F ratio, in order to get some frame of reference, i.e., if the cat adds 5 pts, roughly, then I could still use the sensor reading. It's just a lot of guesswork right now, which I don't really like trusting.

The primary reason I wanted a wideband O2 was as a warning gauge, if the engine started going lean, I could watch the A/F and shut down the truck as soon as I spotted trouble. Second reason was as an aid in tuning, but since I'm a long ways off from being comfortable with EFI Live just yet, it's not such a setback, moreso that I wasted a day routing wires and money buying the thing if I can't even use it properly.

I guess I can now just use fuel pressure as my early warning detector, which would show basically the same function if it starts leaning out.

This is more an irritation than anything, I wish I would have spent a little more time thinking before putting the y-pipe on, or else I would have had a bung welded in before the cat, I just completely overlooked the effect of the cat on potential A/F readings

Vacuum at idle isn't too bad. By changing the MAP though, I may always be questioning whether the MAP isn't calibrated correctly, or if I have a vac leak, or whether the boost is accurate or not. I'll see when I get into the throttle a bit, I should see between 5-8, I think it should come out closer to 6, or at least I'm hoping. I may have to hook up a mech boost gauge just to be sure though.

And what fuel pressure should I be looking for? It should be around 58psi, right? And how much of a drop is acceptable?

 

I was curious to get to the bottom of the "Service stabilitrak" and "Service traction control" message I was getting, so I hooked up the autocal and found DTC code P0300. Looked it up and it's "Random misfire".

Now, since it's not giving a code for a specific cylinder, how would you go about troubleshooting this without pulling each plug? Could cancelling the rear O2s give this code?

*EDIT: Also just read about aftermarket cams giving this code if the misfire tables haven't been lowered to accommodate the cam...

 

Use a scantool, and watch the misfire tables while it's running. You should be able to watch "current misfires" and "history misfires." Check this while idling, and while driving. If you have a real misfire, it's gonna count up really high on one (or two) cylinders. If the count stays low, and seems relatively even across the board(all cylinders), then it's likely your cam causing crankshaft speed variation. Then you just need to raise your misfire count threshold. If it's one cylinder counting up, then do some troubleshooting.

 

For the wideband calibration, with the key turned to "run" all things that use an igition power source will have power, so you should be fine. When you turn the key its the second position.

 

Thanks, that's good info. I'm gonna hook up the laptop to the autocal and look for that misfire table tomorrow. I cleared the code so I'll see if it's something reoccurring. It's such an unspecific code it's gonna be a bitch to track down if it's not something simple to discover like a plug that opened up or something...I've gone over all the plug wires making sure they were tight on both plugs and coil packs, all the coil packs' connectors are secured, the two main coil connectors are also secured. All vac lines were recently installed so they all seem secure. So far I've read the P0300 could be from ignition misfires, aftermarket cam, unplugging the main coil connectors (which I did to prime the oil pump), vacuum leaks, bad coil packs, bad O2 sensors...ugh..

Ah, thanks, that's good to know. Wasn't sure if "run" powered up the ignition circuits as well. I'll try that tomorrow as well, but I might just have to drop the one piece of the y-pipe and weld in the bung pre-cat. Not looking forward to it, but also don't want a useless O2 sensor.

 

Okay here's a very newbie-ish question: to hook up my laptop to show the real time scan of the ECM, do I just connect the OBD-II cable to the OBD port and the other end (looks like a CAT-5 connector) to the comp, or do I connect the OBD cable to the autocal, then the autocal to my comp via USB?

And I have version 8.2 of EFI Live Scan and Tune, and when I click on F2: Scan, I get a window that pops up and says "This option has not been released yet". So will I still be able to hook up my comp and see what's going on, or do I have to do a datalog then review it after? Because since I can't access the F2:Scan section, I can however select F5:BBX, and in that option I can select various PIDs.

I'm a bit confused with this.

*EDIT: I figured out you need to go from OBD-II port to autocal to laptop in that order.

 

Alright, seems as though version 8 can't show real time data, so I would need version 7.5, unfortunately I can't download either from EFI Live's website at the moment because it says the software is undergoing maintenance. So I'm SOL as far as any efi live-based help to diagnose this misfire code. I cleared the code yesterday, and restarted it this morning and the code came back, and it does seem to be idling roughly, so I guess I have no other option but to pull all 8 plugs and check em, and then take the valve covers off and check the rocker arms. Just what I wanted to do on a humid sunday afternoon