Ok, so my tuner is having problems mapping my turbo project and struggling to make decent power…..

First let me explain my setup spec:

UKDM 1998 5th Gen H22A5 (185bhp) 10:1 comp (our version of US base model)(BONE STOCK INTERNALS)

Turbonetics T3/T4 ball bearing turbo .63AR
Treadstone cast manifold
Turbonetics evo wastegate
Turbonetics raptor BOV
Treadstone TR8 fmicTreadstone
alu charge piping
Custom silicone couplers
Treadstone oil feed/return kit
Custom 2.5” downpipe
2.25” straight through (catless) exhaust
RC 550 saturated injectors
Walbro 255 pump
NGK grade 7 iridium plugs
AEM EMS 30-1020 (tuned without electronic boost control)

Think I have covered everything…..^

My tuner (factory trained AEM specialist with turbo Honda experience) mapped it using the 7psi spring and managed a peak power of 214WHP. This is obviously quite disappointing for starters. BUT the main problem is a huge dip in the torque curve from 4300-4600rpm. This is like a 15-20hp difference! The reason for this is that when the turbo starts to produce peak torque around 4300 the motors starts to detonate badly, so he has had to pull the ignition back to make it safe. He has done the usual tuning without vtec through the rev’s, then tune with vtec from 3k procedure and still can’t get rid off it. He said that the strange thing is that it’s still making power when well into the detonation zone, which would suggest that it may only be on one cylinder..? The whole team at TDI (tuners) got involved to try and cure this problem but couldn’t seem do anything about it.Then I spoke the guy who tuned my car yesterday, and he asked me about the Intake manifold runner system. He thinks that it may be causing enough turbulence to upset the air fuel flow to one cylinder causing it to detonate. As far as im aware this vaccum operated system is still set/plugged into it’s stock location……could this really be causing the problems? Any idea’s appreciated guy’s..? I may have overlooked something really obvious..? Such a shame because the bolting on part of the project went really smooth with no problems…..








James.
__________________



Modified by H22UK at 2:20 PM 3/15/2008

 

Unless you bought some aftermarket intake mainfold with a runner that is way shorter than the others, you are not going to have problems like that with it. After looking at your list, it would seem that you are running a stock manifold, which would make his comment about the intake system really retarded.

Pull your plugs and check your gaps.

 

did your tuner try to raise vtec to around 5K rpms?

 

Yeah, he tried vtec at various rpms between 3.5 - 5.5k, this seemingly made no difference.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Scheizty &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
Pull your plugs and check your gaps.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Ok, but these are brand new BKR7EIX plugs, surely they'll be fine.....or maybe not?

 

lol wait, is that laminated?! hehe

I would like to see a a/f ratio sheet.

 

most ppl gap there plugs at 32 if im not mistaken but i had to gap mine to 28 to keep it from breaking up...dont know if that helps u any but maybe try that..

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by H22UK &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
RC 550 saturated injectors
</TD></TR></TABLE>

not low impedence peak and hold ?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by NeKe1point0 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

not low impedence peak and hold ? </TD></TR></TABLE>

he is running them on H22A4/H22A5 uk spec OBD2 they use saturated injectors

 

my guess would be as i have seen this with several cars with AEM

when power comes up real hard (where your dip is) i bet your ecu is having issues with the signal its receiving from the distriutor and your ignition timing is doing whatever it wants (you can verify this if you get somebody brave enough to monitor the timing during a pull with a timing light)...which could obviously be causing the detonation you are seeing.

we use these on ALL of the aem cars that we do because we seem to run into this problem more often than not. we use a T1 cam trigger which sends its signal from a hall effect sensor on the cam gear to the ecu rather than from your distributor. it works WAY better. here is a picture of one on a b series




this is a car i tuned with hondata that had no issues. (out of injector as you can see)



we put in aem and had the same problems you are describing..... we then installed the cam trigger kit, and this was the outcome. all of the "issues" went away.


the distributor worked fine when using a factory based ECU, however when we switched to the AEM ecu, the distributor and the ecu no longer wanted to work well together.

my personal car wouldnt run worth a crap at all. it was missfiring and spitting and sputtering like crazy on the dyno with AEM. put a cam trigger kit on it, and it made 860whp @ 40psi---- we couldnt get it to make a clean pull at 15psi with out the cam trigger.

 

The problem that you are having sounds like what i have seen with alot of h22a set-ups running log manifolds. The h22a's only seem to make power with equal length manifolds or semi-equal length manifolds. I had to literally turn vtec off on several h22a set-ups to get rid of the dip, and to make good power. The engine would make more power with vtec off than turning it on. The other few wanted vtec super high (6-7k...basically redline). The h22a's are very sensitive to backpressure, and apparently do not like restrictive manifolds. I have seen the same situation on F20/F22c engines as well, and switching out the manifold makes a huge difference in power (log manifolds were home made weld el crap, not inline pro which makes good power).

Try turning vtec off, or moving it to a really high rpm and the dip will go away.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by boosted hybrid &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">The problem that you are having sounds like what i have seen with alot of h22a set-ups running log manifolds. The h22a's only seem to make power with equal length manifolds or semi-equal length manifolds. I had to literally turn vtec off on several h22a set-ups to get rid of the dip, and to make good power. The engine would make more power with vtec off than turning it on. The other few wanted vtec super high (6-7k...basically redline). The h22a's are very sensitive to backpressure, and apparently do not like restrictive manifolds. I have seen the same situation on F20/F22c engines as well, and switching out the manifold makes a huge difference in power (log manifolds were home made weld el crap, not inline pro which makes good power).

Try turning vtec off, or moving it to a really high rpm and the dip will go away.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I thought i was the only one. I have seen this plenty of times with these engines.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by boosted hybrid &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">The problem that you are having sounds like what i have seen with alot of h22a set-ups running log manifolds. The h22a's only seem to make power with equal length manifolds or semi-equal length manifolds. I had to literally turn vtec off on several h22a set-ups to get rid of the dip, and to make good power. The engine would make more power with vtec off than turning it on. The other few wanted vtec super high (6-7k...basically redline). The h22a's are very sensitive to backpressure, and apparently do not like restrictive manifolds. I have seen the same situation on F20/F22c engines as well, and switching out the manifold makes a huge difference in power (log manifolds were home made weld el crap, not inline pro which makes good power).

Try turning vtec off, or moving it to a really high rpm and the dip will go away.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Ah rite ok this sounds like a plan, but surely this isn't caused by vtec in my case..? My vtec is cutting at 5k and the detonation is happening at 4300+ well before vtec. I can see where the manifold may be causing me problems in terms of gas flow and making good numbers. This manifold is my only option for now because i want to retain my AC and stock rad and fan's (for now). im confused....

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by boosted hybrid &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">The problem that you are having sounds like what i have seen with alot of h22a set-ups running log manifolds. The h22a's only seem to make power with equal length manifolds or semi-equal length manifolds. I had to literally turn vtec off on several h22a set-ups to get rid of the dip, and to make good power. The engine would make more power with vtec off than turning it on. The other few wanted vtec super high (6-7k...basically redline). The h22a's are very sensitive to backpressure, and apparently do not like restrictive manifolds. I have seen the same situation on F20/F22c engines as well, and switching out the manifold makes a huge difference in power (log manifolds were home made weld el crap, not inline pro which makes good power).

Try turning vtec off, or moving it to a really high rpm and the dip will go away.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Bingo.

I tuned a H22a with the same Treadstone Kit and the power was HORRIBLE as you will see below.



H series are not like B/D series engines as they are much more volumetrically efficient. They flow much more CFM's and as Jeff pointed out backpressure is a huge issue with turbo H motors. Throw a large sized turbo on there with a log manifold and you'll really start to have issues. Do your homework and look up detonation and how backpressure can cause this. Of course cam selection can help to a certain extent. I've preached about this a ton but people on the 'web' don't want to listen. We had a nice thread about this a few months back where Tony and Joe added some good info as well. I even posted up a few dyno charts with turbo H set-ups using log manifolds and how poorly all of them did.

 

the F-max/Turbonetics H series kits are the worst with what jeff is talking about


ive done a few H's that had a little bit larger size turbo's with your nomal crap log manifolds that worked out well, however the ones that have small turbo's never seem to want to run right.

this car, my old hatch, had a perfectly clean dyno chart with normal vtec activation, but also had a decent size turbo....




h22's are a love hate thing---they either work awesome, or will give you more problems than any other motor

 

i tried to help but you guys on that prelude forum but you didnt listen, ........ oh well whats funny to is your setup on the PUK forum is different then to the list you have here.....2.25" exhaust maybe..... how does that work? second... you still have your intake air butterflies hooked up......

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by hyabusa hunter &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i tried to help but you guys on that prelude forum but you didnt listen, ........ oh well whats funny to is your setup on the PUK forum is different then to the list you have here.....2.25" exhaust maybe..... how does that work? second... you still have your intake air butterflies hooked up......
</TD></TR></TABLE>

Hi hunter. "I" listened to you and never dissagreed with what you said, and also followed your advice with going to TDI etc etc. Yes my exhaust size is 2.25", i see i have made a mistake when typing this up, my bad...(edit list)

I never realised that the IAB vaccum system needed to be modfied untill yesterday. I never ame across this problem during my research. I'm learning new stuff everyday. Im still not 100% sure about the whole iab thing, so many mixed opinions....

 

Well I spent all morning yesterday at the tuners trying to rid off that flat spot in the mapping but it was a complete failure, the IAB vaccum mod didn't make s#!t difference, the detonation problem showed its ugly face pull after pull
Looks like it's the crappy log manifold

SO,the next plan is to make use off the AEM's boost control facility and fit the 5psi WG spring. We're hoping that 5psi will be low enough for the setup to cope around the det area, and then progressivly increase the boost to 7-8psi after 5k ish. If this works, i should see a much smoother curve without the huge dip and then the power should hike up from around 5k......Not ideal but it will have to work for now....

Also its got a stalling problem. My tuner must off spent a good half hr tinkering with the Idle/anti stall settings and we though we had cracked it BUT it done it again at a junction on the way home. I left it idleing for a short while when i got home (no turbo timer yet) and when the rad fan cut in it stalled the engine thats how on edge the bloody thing is!!

On the plus side, it gained a few extra ponys and it feels like it now pulls stronger lower down

back to the drawing board i guess.................