I have just finished mapping Carphone's (Dan) standard LE and thought it was worth a little mention. Dan had it on the rollers at Powerstation last year and while it made near enough standard power they told him it was very lean when coming on boost although it richened up around 5000rpm to redline. Dan replaced the MAF sensor on their advice but unfortunately this made no difference.

The car is in good health, no errors, a compression test today showed a strong engine. There are no mechanical defects, everything works as it should.

Run 1 - Standard Chip

The car makes 1bar of boost around 2800rpm in 3rd gear. The fueling at this point is 13.2 afr rising to 13.5 at 3400rpm, you wouldn't run a normally aspirated car this lean let alone a boosted one! It is only until 5000rpm that the fueling reaches 11.9afr, which is around where a standard car should be. Thereafter it bottoms out at around 11.3 slowly richening up to 11afr at redline. It's quite surprising to see a standard car have such poor fueling, and while unusual, it's something to consider as it's not just modified cars that go pop!

Final Run - Remap @ 1.2bar

The fueling is now back on track, coupled with a few other little tweaks. It's like a different car, I know I am used to big power but for a standard car with just a remap it felt pretty darn quick! A good result I dare say

love the fueling line flea !!

Ooh I've been waiting to see what you could do with a standard setup.

Looking forward to getting my standard 20v done in the near future flea, looks good.

I'm also looking forward to getting mine done aswell

Did it retain the standard ecu controlled EBC?

So if this car is completely standard and it's running poor doesn’t that indicate that there is a problem somewhere?

Surely remapping the ECU is only compensating for an existing problem unless the problem is the actual ECU/map.

What happens if the problem is suddenly fixed won't it run too rich?

Hi All,

I would just like to say a big thanks to Leighton, he has transformed my car today. I had a great drive home as you can imagine, booting it were possible :-)

@benje
its been mapped on a PRV, but the option to use the standard EBV was available. I was worried it was not upto the job though as it could not handle a GTEC chip.


@turboJ
good point, but i have replaced, fuel pump, injectors and MAF already, what else is there....

THANK YOU LEIGHTON :=)

Dan

Would the car would have adapted to a lean injector by running the others rich resulting in a acceptable afr?
If the FPR was leaking before the correct pressure wouldn't the ecu increase its/injector duty cycle?
What else except a stray map would lead to lean running?

Well I posted knowing that this would likely be questioned, indeed I knew it would likely be questioned by you!

There are two answers from my point of view:

1. The car as stated was mechanically sound. There are only a number of things that effect fueling and as Dan has stated, three of them have been changed i.e. MAF, fuel pump and injectors. The coolant temps were perfect, the air temps were normal, the lambda was normal, the turbo was boosting as standard. I make a point of checking many things before mapping and also road testing as standard. I have sent people away if I believe there is something wrong with the car which needs fixing before mapping.

2. My due diligence completed as stated above, Dan brought his car to be mapped, that's what I did.

the only thing I can think of to make it run so lean on such a standard car is voltage at the fuel pump - it doesn't matter if the pump is brand new, if its not getting 12v - 13v, then it won't deliver the fuel

Thankyou I’ll take that as a compliment guess I keep you on the ball then

Look I’m not questioning your ability as its obvious that you know what you’re doing however I do find faults like this intriguing.
I ask questions because I want to learn.

I know you won’t let anybody leave without it being tested and obviously if there is a gremlin and you've fixed it which it appears so by the fuelling graph then well done. (Credit where credits due)

However I am curious as to the behaviour of the ECU if the situation changes. (BTW you have PM)

Yes your quite right Nigel. Dan actually has a direct battery feed to the fuel pump as fitted by Motormech. Obviously as engine load increases so do the demands on the fuel pump, however the reverse was true for Dan's car whereby it was lean at lighter loads and rich and heavy loads.

HI all,

Just to confirm a few details. I forgot to mention i also had the lambda sensor changed.

The fuel pump i had fitted after the initial fuelling problem was discovered was an uprated (genuine walbro) with wiring mod.

The car was running lean before all these items were changed and was running lean after....

This means it is something mechanically which i have over looked or it is the map. Going on probabilities i would say the map is the most likely culprit.

I guess its impossible to be 100% certain, but right here and now i am happy that my car is fuelling correctly. I will get it on the rollers at power station shortly to see what it is putting out (my guess is 250+bhp).

I look forward to joining the regular RR gatherings to keep an eye on it going forward.

In conclusion, I am a very happy chappy. Once again, i would like to say what a very proffessional service Flea has provided. I may be back to see him again if the tuning bug goes any further and i decide to fit a hybrid turbo and FMIC :-)...

Thanks

Dan

My Coupe displayed this same trait when the turbo seized, the harder it was for the engine to spin the turbine, the richer it went at high revs and the leaner it went when coming onto boost. At the point I took the turbo off it was too seized to turn by hand at all (but the engine could still get 1.2 bar out of it) and the AFR was 10 at the redline, but lean at 3500rpm. Changed the turbo and it was back to normal again.

Probably a completely different thing, but I just noticed the similarity in the fuelling curve

Sorry if I´ve missed something here, but on a std car, isn't the Lambda supposed to as close to 1 (one) as possible? Which is 14:1 (air:fuel). In that case it should be quite safe?

Or is it a completely different matter on a turbo aspirated car? On mid-load anyway it should not be.. right?

cool very nice results and nice fuel line to show..but how about the power? any idea before/after mapping??

Lambda 1 is expressed as 14.7 : 1 for petrol cars. This is where the amount of oxygen exactly meets the correct amount of petrol for a complete burn. This is why modern cars have lambda sensors to keep idle and part throttle applications at 14.7 i.e. stoich, which allows good emissions control especially in conjunction with a catalytic converter.

In terms of making power, well the exact AFR depends on many things therefore it is very much application specific. What makes best power on one car doesn't always work for another therefore realistically you don't tune to an AFR but tune to the application. In a race car setting you would have access to a lot more information including injector duration, spark timng, and EGTs for each individual cylinder to get peak torque for every conceivable load/rpm point. With a road car, well we don't have the time or facilities to screw every last newton metre out of the car. Indeed we don't want to, but we do want to get fairly close with safety as the overiding concern.

So in terms of what works for a street car. Well a normally aspirated car under full load would generally see 12-12.5 afr, when tuning you may lean this out to around 13 to achieve some gains coupled with better ignition timing. A boosted car generally makes best power between 11-12 afr, again it depends on many things e.g. amount of boost, inlet temps, octane etc. Obviously engine design impacts on the above greatly e.g. cam profiles, compression ratio, squish band, volumetric efficiency, headers, back pressure... the list goes on. Of course, at any given time you can only tune what's in front of you, so the goal is to make it work better.

I've been looking forward to seeing the results of a Fleamap on a standard car. Get it on the rollers pronto Carphone!

Ditto - as my first post.

Flea - thanks for that clarifying!

i will get it down to powerstation asap :-)

went to power station today and made 259bhp, very please indeed. (240 Torque)

the best part of 40bhp increase on a standard car is much more than i expected!!

I have a graph for a 256bhp run, but sadly they didnt save the better run. will post the graph up when i get my hands on the soft copy.

thanks again to Leighton :-)

Dan

Yes great result Dan, I only had chance to briefly look at your graph on the screen but it looked like a fantastic torque curve. 260bhp is about as good as it gets from a totally standard car and confirms my feelings on the road about how zippy it felt

i think i need to get my coupe done!
so roughly, what sort of increase in power could be expected on a decatted chipped coupe on 1.2bar?

Out of interest, how much are these mappings affected by temperature? Will it still be accurate at the height of summer?

The ECU has air temp, coolant & baro compensation tables as standard the remap will not affect these values so summer or winter it will be fine.