vader1

I am going to leave the tuner out of this for now, because he has a good reputation, but I have a fairly bad tune at this point and I want to see if you guys can sort of fill me in on what is causing these symptoms. I have a call into him and am waiting to hear back, but I don't feel like spending anymore money, this tune needs to be worked out gratis.


The car seems to do fine under full throttle. Pulls hard and smooth. No issues.

Part throttle is for shit and it has been to this tuner twice, and the issues persist although the second time I am not sure how much time he spent on it, just a call saying it was "done".

Issue 1: It idles at 14.0 when cold, it used to idle leaner and that was fine with me, would bounce between 14.5 and 15. When it warms up and you pull to a stop it will idle at 12.7 to 13. It is idling at what it used to run at moderate boost. About every other time I fire it up cold, it will go through the hunting idle after about a half mile where the tach goes up and down between 500-1500 rpm rapidly over and over, eventually to go away.

Issue 2: It will mostly cruise around 14:1 afr on the highway, (again it used to cruise at 14.5). I prefer to use less gas and have read that 14.5 to 15 under no load is fine, 14.5 would be my preference because it ran that way stock, and then on my last tune. But then under even minor light loads with the cruise on and going up a slight incline it will cruise at 12-13:1. It will even drop down to the high 10's and then recover into the 12's. Again this is cruising on a fairly flat surface with the cruise on. When whatever teensie load was placed on the engine disappears, it will recover to 14. But when cruising any tiny bit of throttle to maintain or increase speed ever so slightly which would normally be still in the 14's before is in the 12's now. And since the Roots blower is instantaeous with throttle, we are talking about situations at less than a pound of boost, probably less than half a pound of boost.

Issue 3: Again part throttle from a stop. A little throttle and it will spike rich, the exhaust pops, and then it smooths out but is running far richer under these light load conditions and feels held back because there is too much fuel. I drive this car like an old man 90% of the time and it is boggy, rich and constant small pops and burbles that have never existed before. I like it to be smooth when I pit the hammer down and it is, but most of my driving is commuting in traffic, stop and go, and it is boggy rich, and petrol smelling. I have always preferred to be under the radar and just drive casual, but now it behaves like an overfueled burbly riced out Civic.

This has come at the cost of about $3000 for a new Haltech, new injectors, and about $800-900 of the cost was tuning and retuning. It sucks to drive right now because it smells like a 1978 Buick with leaded gas and no cat. It is no fun because I feel like an idiot with the stink and the lightly popping exhaust.

indi00

What kind of injectors?

vader1

725 injector dynamics, but the same general behavior was seen with my Deatschwerks 650's on this new tune, before they were swapped out, none of this was seen on the previous EMU tune with the same 650's, the rich conditions only occured after swapping to Haltech and getting this specific tune.

Any foot to the floor and it is fine, but any partial throttle inputs and you get much too rich. The less throttle, the richer it seems. More throttle seems to be closer to normal.

My guess is the table for boost is too rich on the bottom end (very low boost) and needs to be leaned out, but I really am not qualified to mess with it even though I am tempted to try.

s2000Junky

That would be my first guess as well. Almost always the car needs to be street tuned to get partial throttle right, and that takes the most time. The dyno is for WOT tuning primarily. The tuner should have road tested/tuned the car as well as the Dyno tune.

vader1

That would be my first guess as well. Almost always the car needs to be street tuned to get partial throttle right, and that takes the most time. The dyno is for WOT tuning primarily. The tuner should have road tested/tuned the car as well as the Dyno tune.
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Still waiting to hear from him but I hope I can drive over there on my lunch hour and have him go for a ride and tinker for and hour. I doubt these issue would take long to replicate. I just noticed another odd behavior, after going on a full throttle run and boosting when you let of the gas put the car in nuetral it will stay at 10-11:1 AFR for a LONG time before it goes back to regular idle AFR's (which are also rich.) It used to just go back to normal AFR instantly after letting off.

starrman

I would agree with Junky, sounds like the car was not street tuned. I had a similar situation long time ago. Car was just dyno tuned and it was so rich, when I went to change the oil you could smell gas in the oil. I finally found a great tuner and he sorted all that out, but we drove around for a few hours after spending equal time on the dyno.

ryanvo

I had same problem like you had with my local tuner. then I had jeff evans etuned. takes time, but saved me a lot of headaches. car idle smooth, runs smooth, little gas smell, but I guess high flow cat should be smell.

s2k manic

as everyone else said need some street tuning and see if he can setup some o2 feedback with a 10-20% window so it doesn't mess up the tune that did the trick for me though I am running aem v1

s2konroids

Is it on a greddy emanage ultimate? , if so injector lag times (as they call it) are critical.

JayWLambert

What sort of dyno are they tuning this thing on? Anything that can add a load (Dyno dynamics, mainline, etc) can be used to reasonably simulate road conditions so that a street tune isn't 100% necessary.

-Jay