PrecisionH23a

Tonight I tuned a fully built h22a with the following:

8.5:1 compression
87mm bore
60-1 Turbo (.70a/r .63 t3)
Drag Gen 4 Manifold
Tial 38mm
2.5" Downpipe/Cat/Exhaust
MSD Digital 6+ and HVC Coil
3330 NGK plugs - gapped to .024
NGK Blue wires
Pump gas - 93 octane
OEM Rotor cap and button
Hondata s200 - PLX Wide band - Open Loop
Walbro 255 hi-pressure
83% duty at 19psi
720cc's

I was hoping to make much more power than I did and I am a bit confused. First off, the baseline pulls (power/torque curves) were really rough. I tried adding timing and it picked up a bit of power, but still was spikey. I pulled timing, lost 7-10whp and it got a bit spikier. I ended up changing the plugs and it smoothed it out a bit, but not as smooth as some of the other cars I have done.

We had an 02 sniffer in the back and for the first pull it read 12.6:1 under boost. On my PLX datalogged through hondata it showed 11.8-11.9:1 under boost. Greg C pointed out the cat would throw off the 02 readings and he was right, so we removed the sniffer and just used the PLX (about 8 inches from the turbine on the dp).

So after dicking around with trying to smooth out the curves, I gave up and decided to up the boost. We ended up with only 358whp at 19.5psi of boost. The drag manifold fluctuated from around 5700-7700rpms of boost though (18.1-19.5). Then of course we ran into heat soak so we had to let the engine cool down for a while between pulls. The heat-soak would really kick my *** because it would alter the af's by around .5 of a point between 2 runs when the motor would warm back up.

So yea... from other set-ups I have done and seen this car is definetely not making the amount of power it should be capable of. Timing is at 22 at 12psi and 17deg at 19psi. I tried adding timing to see if we could pick up power, and nothing substantial... same with pulling timing. Air/Fuels at 19 psi were a 11.7-12.0:1 ratio. I later cleaned this area up a bit on the ride home... the heat soak issue was kind of kicking my *** so I didn't want to overcompensate and end up lean on a pull after the engine cooled down a bit.

I spoke with Jdogg and he pointed out that it could be a clogged cat. The thing is, I just installed this brand new 2.5" catco cat last night. He said he has seen cats clog up that quickly before as well. He said he has seen cats clog up that quickly before as well. He also pointed out if you have a clogged cat, that adding timing will not yield any gains. I also checked the spark plugs and the straps have a slight color change slightly right at the middle of the bend. So I believe the ignition timing was ok.

So I'm trying to determine the route of this problem and why the chart looks like such *** as well as the lack of power made.




I've gone over some of my datalogs and it shows that on average i'm getting spike from around 5400-5600, 6500 (around 1-1.5psi), then drop around 6900 up. On lower boost setting's the spike is around the same rpm's but a bit more intermittant. I of course blame the creep/spiking issues to the manifold and that to some extend explains the bumpy power/torque curve. If I had the a/f's a little closer it would also clean it up a bit.

Like I said, I'm not too happy with how this turned out and I'm determined to get to the route of the problem.

Alstare

Hrmm...

Are you getting any detonation that you can tell of?

Seems like alot boost & timing for an H-series on pump gas IMHO. I run simular timing/boost on my racegas map, and I seem to be just on the edge.

Bump for more info.

PrecisionH23a

No detonation that I can see. I pulled the plugs and they look fine. No white specs on the electrode, nice dark plug base with a tan strap with a slight color change right of the bend as I described on all 4.

On my build H23a I was runing 19.5 degrees at 19psi with a mix of 93/110 octane at 9.0:1 compression. So 17 seems ok for pump gas with 8.5:1 compression. I understand the h23 has more displacement, but then again the h22a had lower compression.

93preludes

This looks like its going to be a good thread, my chart looked similar this past week but it was a fumble on my part... my bov was purging the boost because i didnt have a vac source to it. I'm curious to see whats wrong, but is the engine healthy and no leaks anywhere?

edit: if it's not a big deal try pulling the downpipe off and try making a pull open downpipe to see how it behaves... to eliminate that hunch about the cat.


Modified by 93preludes at 8:00 AM 8/26/2005


Modified by 93preludes at 8:01 AM 8/26/2005

PrecisionH23a

When I was originally going to tune the car back in July I first did a compression test on the engine. It read low and come to find out 3 valves were bent. The head was repaired and then the compression went back up to 185 across the board.

Turbocivic94

Eliminate the cat and see what happens.

Finest

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Turbocivic94 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Eliminate the cat and see what happens.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I say just go with a full 3" exhaust, no cat. What's the VTEC x-over set at? 5200?

bubbahatch92

It may be a shot in the dark, but I would double check the timing belt and make sure the cams are setup correctly. If he still has an auto tensioner they can slip, and it is also very easy to be off a tooth when setting timing on these motors. I've done it my self so I know. I've also seen hudge power losses from cats and bullshit exhaust so you should probably do like someone suggested and make a pull open dp just to rule it out.


Darkness

PrecisionH23a

Vtec was originally set at 5600 rpm's and it needed to go down a bit... I spent the majority of my time trying to fix up the break-up in the chart and forgot to raise the vtec engagement on the dyno. My buddy is a ricer though... he wants to feel the mad tiite vtAk engagement, lol.

I went up to the other dyno that we put this car on back in July. The dyno lost power that day so we only got 3 runs in. But I pulled up the charts and at 7psi it had the same horrible break-up. A smoothing of 5 was definetely bumpy, and when set to 1 you could see peaks. So that's a sign of ignition.

Last night at GSC I spent 11 dyno pulls trying to smooth the tune out and no matter what I did (added and pulled timing at 8psi) it remained peaky. Now, back last fall Mase and I went to Miami to tune my car as well as a customers of mine. I just remembered this, but we ended up taking my car off the dyno due to it breaking up so badly. I was running the msd digital 6+ with HVC coil at the time. When I got back home I removed the box and set it back to the stock coil and ignition and took it to the dyno and everything cleared right up. So I'm thinking the ignition is the guilty party in this case. The cat could be a possibility of it not making that much power, but I believe the ignition box is responsible for the peakiness of the power/torque curves.

This motor has been converted to the manual h23 tensioner as well. The only other issue that could play a factor is that he is using STOCK cam gears while the block was decked due to being resleeved. I do not know how much the block was decked though since I did not build the shortblock. I am not sure also if and how much material was removed from the head. But when I put the belt back on, the holes on the cams aligned almost perfectly with the cam plates. So there could be a minor possibility that the cams are slighty off by X degree's.

93preludes

I went to the dyno last time and like I mentioned before the car was not making any power.... we attributed the problem to a faulty bov setup and although it did help the car is still not making what it should. The best the tuner could get from it was 200whp on 11lbs spiking to 13 at the top of the rpm range. We could not figure out what was causing the lack of power, we were expecting about 275whp, The piping all looked decent but I think it might be an issue, the piping on my car is a hack job...

I'm basically going to pull everything off and verify that it's ok and check the engine, the car sounds fine and drives fine just no power. It will be interesting to see what's holding the car back...

any luck on your end?

btw my setup is:

stock block h22a4
drag kit (unsure of turbo size)
dsm 450 injectors
2.5" dp/cutout
stock ignition+magnecor's

b16hybridsol

it always seems to be the h22as The graph makes it seem like its a tooth off but those numbers seem a little to high for it to be a tooth off. Have you tried to open up the plugs a bit, i run mine at .030 with a blaster2 coil and have no break ups

PrecisionH23a

opening up the plug gap will not help anything.

I removed the digital 6 and hvc coil and set the ignition back to stock. I can't really tell a huge difference on 8psi. But then again butt dynos are worthless and the breakup before was slightly noticeable.

Drew Peacock

A dyno operator over here told me he didn't like using MSD gear on the dyno said that the dyno it self can effect them causing them to act erratically behaviour that you wouldn't normally see on the street. He gave a reason I forget what it was now.

b16hybridsol

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by PrecisionH23a &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">opening up the plug gap will not help anything.

I removed the digital 6 and hvc coil and set the ignition back to stock. I can't really tell a huge difference on 8psi. But then again butt dynos are worthless and the breakup before was slightly noticeable.</TD></TR></TABLE>

i have to disagree. A small plug gap can act the same way as a weak spark and can cause a break up in the power band.

.024 probably isn't to small to act this way, but it can't hurt to open them up a little more just to see

PrecisionH23a

My point was opening up the current .024 gap will do nothing. Especially when running 20psi of boost... .030 isn't going to cut it.

graphic

my h22 was acting all goofy and stuff also, 275@18psi off a t3/t4 60 trim

turns out we had to retard the intake cam and leave the exhaust stock, remove the cat and convert dumptube to openloop, we even found out that disconnecting the secondaries we made more power.

after all was said and done w/ 19 degrees total timing on the same 18psi we made 380whp and 320 tq.

Jared

How is the condition of the turbocharger?

93preludes

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Jared &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">How is the condition of the turbocharger?</TD></TR></TABLE>

This is what I suspect is my problem, I just noticed today a small ring of oil at my turbo inlet. I am also going to be redoing my intercooler piping before the intercooler. It's not the most efficient setup and I think it could be restricting airflow...

PrecisionH23a

The turbo has only 1200 miles on it. It was brand new when originally installed.

The power is a concern, but not as much as the choppy power/tq curves. I suspect the msd... but the butt dyno couldn't really confirm if it fixed the problem.

It very well could be cam related since its on stock cam gears and material was removed from both the head and block when they were worked on. I do not have the specs available to me though. I'm going to double check tdc when i get the car back.

M.A.R.C.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by PrecisionH23a &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">It very well could be cam related since its on stock cam gears and material was removed from both the head and block when they were worked on. I do not have the specs available to me though. I'm going to double check tdc when i get the car back.</TD></TR></TABLE>

it very well could be. i dynoed my built gsr-t with an sc61... car made 313whp @ 15psi... sad. we checked the cam timing. it's off by like half a tooth or so. i'm suspecting that's it but i'm waiting till i get the new valvetrain in a spare head here and see if that works. check it out. hope that'd be it than something more complicated

PrecisionH23a

One thing I remember about assembling the timing belt assembly was the difficulty and tightness of the timing belt. The engine was converted to the manual tensioner assembly as well. We are going to find out exactly how much material was removed from the block/head and go from there. The funny thing was the first time around 3 exhaust valves were bent however the engine was not ran over 6000rpms.

Say the cam gear was off by a half tooth... would it be possible that is how 3 exhaust valves got bent in the first place?

bubbahatch92

I would take a really close look at the cap and rotor, and also make sure the connections on the ICM are really tight. I had a similar problem, and I thought it was my msd, because it would break up real bad when the msd was hooked up, but it turned out to be the things i described above.

M.A.R.C.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by PrecisionH23a &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">One thing I remember about assembling the timing belt assembly was the difficulty and tightness of the timing belt. The engine was converted to the manual tensioner assembly as well. We are going to find out exactly how much material was removed from the block/head and go from there. The funny thing was the first time around 3 exhaust valves were bent however the engine was not ran over 6000rpms.

Say the cam gear was off by a half tooth... would it be possible that is how 3 exhaust valves got bent in the first place?</TD></TR></TABLE>

i don't think so... not half a tooth. my car is off about that much and it runs fine.

93preludes

my motor had a timing belt done not too long ago... i'm going to make sure that's on par also...

1boostedcivic

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by M.A.R.C. &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

i don't think so... not half a tooth. my car is off about that much and it runs fine.</TD></TR></TABLE>

um remember when my car was off 4.75 degrees and it ran like ****. wouldnt go anywhere. sounds like timing issues