first time tuning a cam. need help. btr stage 3 camaro ls1

[thebeewantsboost]

i've got a little experience in tuning, but only a maf tune for a turbo. i just built a ls1 with 243 heads, ls6 intake and BTR stage 3 cam. it starts up and idles fine but it's definitely lean when driving. i need to know how to get my a/f to a safely tunable level... i guess. i tried alot of different things and ended up really frustrated. the fuel trims are way positive and but adding to the ve table didn't seem to help....

[R0G3R]

Are you using a wideband to tune the VE and MAF tables?

[mowton]

Are you using a wideband to tune the VE and MAF tables?

No....

OP, have you searched the HPTuners site demo and help sections, the internet for how to tune documents, have you read or watched any video's etc? Where are you starting from?

Ed M

[thebeewantsboost]

no i was planning on unplugging the maf and using the narrow bands (fuel trims) to do the VE. I do have a wideband but i only have long tubes on the car right now and was going to install the wideband when i got exhaust put on. which i plan to do as soon as its safe to drive. if it would be easier to do with wideband i'll certainly install it in place of a narrow band.
yeah. i've looked at a couple of things. if i understand them correctly, i need to log ltft and add those results to the ve table. since it was way off. i tried adding 25 to the whole table. i tried mutliplying by 1.20% the ltfts still showed up as 25 in the scanner. and it was running really bad. should it really be off that far? it was getting warm. so maybe thats why it was running like crap? i got extremely frustrated with it and was hoping for some pointers.

[GHuggins]

Add to your injection timing boundary. Start with something around 7.2 for a setting. Think the fuel be going straight out the tailpipe...

[thebeewantsboost]

Ghuggins. you think that because of the cam changing valve timing. its firing the injectors too late? if there was raw fuel coming out of the tail pipe would that not read rich? forgive me if i misunderstood you. i'd never heard of that setting and am looking into it. thank you.

[GHuggins]

It's firing them too early. The OE fires them when the intake valve is closed to better vaporize the fuel. The problem with that is when you put an overlap cam in the picture that fuel vapor goes in and right back out the exhaust valve. This is called "short circuiting" the fuel. If it burns in the exhaust it can show as a false rich, otherwise lean due to obvious lack of fuel being burnt in the cylinder. Anytime you raise the boundary, it "retards" the injection timing causing the injector to fire while the intake valve is open, not closed, and exhaust valve has closed. There are other tables that change this. It's just that the boundary table seems to always work the same through the years while the ect and other like tables require experimentation to see what they actually do when changed.

Hope this better explains things.

[thebeewantsboost]

Cam specs are 231/242 .617"/.592" 112+2

[JakeFusion]

Set your boundary at 6.5 or something straight across. But that's the least of your worries.

Tuning with the narrowbands would only work for cruising at idle. Any sort of PE is going to be way off.

But I tune idle without the wideband. I use the O2s and MAP pressure. Most people start tuning the VE or MAF first, but I tune idle first if doing it with a street tune. Need to be able to idle at stop lights. The point is, you want your narrowbands around 0 mV... you want a lean idle condition for a cam like the BTR Stg 3.

Here is a good write-up on tuning the idle by feel: http://www.hptuners.com/forum/showth...hat-stock-feel

And here is the one a lot of people reference (overall, it's pretty good and goes more in-depth than the other, but has a section on "feel" as well): http://www.hptuners.com/forum/showth...e-(w-pictures)

Follow those and you'll have idle nailed down and can start working on cruising. Once you get a wideband you can tune the VE table. Or, if you do a lot of reading, you can probably figure out how to tune the MAF using fuel consumption.

[mowton]

no i was planning on unplugging the maf and using the narrow bands (fuel trims) to do the VE. I do have a wideband but i only have long tubes on the car right now and was going to install the wideband when i got exhaust put on. which i plan to do as soon as its safe to drive. if it would be easier to do with wideband i'll certainly install it in place of a narrow band.
yeah. i've looked at a couple of things. if i understand them correctly, i need to log ltft and add those results to the ve table. since it was way off. i tried adding 25 to the whole table. i tried mutliplying by 1.20% the ltfts still showed up as 25 in the scanner. and it was running really bad. should it really be off that far? it was getting warm. so maybe thats why it was running like crap? i got extremely frustrated with it and was hoping for some pointers.

Im going to ask my question again, were are you starting from as far as expertise because what you are stating above says you are missing the tuning fundamentals. Do you know the proper procedure to put the PCM into Speed Density (needed to tune VE) You wouldn't add the LTFT to the ve as it is a percentage so you would multiply. Most likely you cant just unplug your MAF becase you will lose your iat....You would have to set the tune into Speed Density and then log the VE vs LFTF vs promary VE table to collect the error percentages to update the VE....do you understand that to be your plan?

Ed M

[thebeewantsboost]

mowton- I've been going off different write ups. my only real experience is with tuning the maf. but other than disabling the maf it seems similar. (i forgot the maf and iat could be intertwined but my iat is operative.) when tuning the maf i always used percentages. and so i started doing that with tuning . but i still had outrageously positive fuel trims. i thought i might be doing something wrong as its been a while since i've tuned. i read a write up that said to add and then i read another one that said subtract! so i've been all over the place unfortunately. if it's a percentage i was obviously adding way too much fuel.

Ghuggins. thanks for the explanation i spent some time looking at it earlier. but you cleared it up.

Jake, i was only planning on doing cruise for now. with the narrowbands. i'm going to read up on those links. thank you.

[mowton]

Please post the document that you used for setting up Speed Density as it is wrong as I thought.

You need to set DTC p0101-0103 to fail on first error to enable Speed Density and isolate the fueling to the VE table. You also have to set the low octane spark table to your high octane table which you have done. When you do this, the check engine light sb lit. Then and only then can you log the fuel trims and adjust the secondary VE table...key point is secondary VE, not the primary. When you have completed the tuning process, you return the tune back to normal and copy the secondary VE values to the primary and interpolate across the missing map values.

Ed M

[thebeewantsboost]

this is one of them. i've been reading through the idle write ups. there is alot to them. i will probably work on the car tomorrow. i read that idle fuel trim tuning with long tubes and overlap is impossible. good to know. I was adjusting the primary ve tables. I didn't realize you would do the secondary.

[POWERZONE]

I suggest you invest in Dan Lasota's book or Banish's collection of tuning material as a base.

The core thing to remember is that these books and tuning material WILL NOT make you a tuner overnight. They are only good to give you a solid foundation. The other small finite tuning tricks you will learn as you go or hang out in the tuning community. The only way to really learn how to tune is through actual chair time.

Becareful of trying to mix different tuning material you find on the web as I often see guys trying to do this and they end up just chasing their tails. Then I view their tunes and they have changed so much stuff that my only suggestion to them is to start over from scratch with the original stock tune.

Educate yourself on what each sensor and acuator does. Educate yourself on what each table in HPtuners does. After you do that then you will have an understanding of why you are making the changes to certain tables vs. just because someone told you to do it.

Your tuning abilities will only be as good as how much time you put into it.

[mowton]

I suggest you invest in Dan Lasota's book or Banish's collection of tuning material as a base.

The core thing to remember is that these books and tuning material WILL NOT make you a tuner overnight. They are only good to give you a solid foundation. The other small finite tuning tricks you will learn as you go or hang out in the tuning community. The only way to really learn how to tune is through actual chair time.

Becareful of trying to mix different tuning material you find on the web as I often see guys trying to do this and they end up just chasing their tails. Then I view their tunes and they have changed so much stuff that my only suggestion to them is to start over from scratch with the original stock tune.

Educate yourself on what each sensor and acuator does. Educate yourself on what each table in HPtuners does. After you do that then you will have an understanding of why you are making the changes to certain tables vs. just because someone told you to do it.

Your tuning abilities will only be as good as how much time you put into it.

Couldn't of said it any better...

Everyone wants to be a tuner, but doesn't seem many want or have put in the research time and effort. You must start with the basics, understand the sensors, know how to use the tuning/scanning software (logging to me is the most important understanding next to what each of the tune tables/parameters do), the many tuning procedures etc.

Ed M

[JakeFusion]

There are a lot of tables you can mess with. My advice is to not touch a lot of them. Most setups don't need you screwing around with the stock GM parameters. If they do, then something else is wrong.

But understanding how to tune (Closed Loop vs Open Loop; Speed Density vs MAF) are critical. Most of the tricks you pick up over time involve the scanner. How can you make the tuning easier and more "automatic" and repeatable.

Three main things to remember: fuel, air, and spark. Tune in that order. Get fueling correct - and I can't stress this enough. If you swap injectors, you have to get the right data in there or you'll chase your tail as so much is calculated from fuel. Once that's right, you need to futz with air. You shouldn't have to touch much outside of the RAF, VE, and MAF airflow tables, but you need to know what you're doing and make sure you're only tuning one or the other. There are typical places in terms of lambda that you get optimal power so setting your airflow to match that is critical. Finally is spark. That determines your power vs safety threshold and overall manners of the car assuming the VE/MAF tables are correct.

Once you get those three dialed in, everything else is tweaking (as needed).

[thebeewantsboost]

good looking out guys. i do have a greg banish book. last time i spent time tuning i felt pretty good about it. but i've learned tuning for a turbo and a cam are definitely a bit different. i thought i would be able to start driving and logging immediately. i've spent alot of time this weekend digging in. going to try a few things today. and will find that book and give it another look.

[texterror]

http://ls1tuningguide.com/index.php
This looks like a pretty good guide. I downloaded it a long time ago before they started to charge for it. But from what I remember if they haven't changed it its pretty detailed walk through to tune a cammed LS1 car

[thebeewantsboost]

texterror. that is actually one of the guides i was using that had bad information in it. it says to "paste special ADD" your ve error. and only tells you to unplug the maf to enter speed density. which may or may not work but you can possibly lose your iat readings which you need for VE. if anybody wants to straighten that part out. feel free.

[bigfatls6]

either they changed it or you did not read it all. I used the same one years ago and it works. In the maf only guide they show to change several tables. Tells you to go into the closed loop closed loop enable table and change all to 284.