HighHopes85...the name speaks for itself
Welcome everyone!
In the summer of '01, I decided that my engine combination was so horrendous, any tuner who I asked out to burn a calibration for me would laugh me to my grave. It was at this point that I decided to start burning my own EPROMs for my '85, and I haven't looked back since.
The engine is and early 70's casting that has been bored 0.030 over and was fitted with basic buildup parts for a kid working as a night manager at a fast food joint. The rebuild kit cost under $200 and was not much to brag about. From what I remember, most of the components were TRW, including cast slugs, a 214/224, 0.442/0.465 cam ground with 112* LSA and cheap bearings. The buildup was originally in my '69 Chevelle that ran a 4-barrel Holley 600 w/ vacuum secondaries. I was not planning on having a Corvette that was fuel injected shortly thereafter, so I didn't worry about the harmony of cams and vacuum. The heads are mismatched mid '70's smog castings in the ballpark of 76 cc. All together, my compression is in the neighborhood of 9:1. The most expensive thing in the engine are the HS 1.6 full roller rocker arms.
The engine is and early 70's casting that has been bored 0.030 over and was fitted with basic buildup parts for a kid working as a night manager at a fast food joint. The rebuild kit cost under $200 and was not much to brag about. From what I remember, most of the components were TRW, including cast slugs, a 214/224, 0.442/0.465 cam ground with 112* LSA and cheap bearings. The buildup was originally in my '69 Chevelle that ran a 4-barrel Holley 600 w/ vacuum secondaries. I was not planning on having a Corvette that was fuel injected shortly thereafter, so I didn't worry about the harmony of cams and vacuum. The heads are mismatched mid '70's smog castings in the ballpark of 76 cc. All together, my compression is in the neighborhood of 9:1. The most expensive thing in the engine are the HS 1.6 full roller rocker arms.
Fast forward 3 years and that engine is still in the Chevelle and has less than 4000 miles on it. While driving the Vette after 3 weeks, something horrendous happened. The throttle body screw, not having been installed with loc-tite, became one with my #1 piston. I was unaware that a throttle body had been installed, so I was quite miffed. The engine in the Vette had less than 7000 miles on it and I had receipts from the previous owner totaling a (very outrageous for what had been done) $2200. That $2200 engine had a busted KB hypereutectic piston and a split cylinder wall. Needing the car to be running in time for trips to college, I yanked the engine out of the Chevelle and nestled it in the confines under the tilt-hood.
This is when I became a self-proclaimed expert at fuel injection and automotive electronics. A lot of this learning is credited to my father. As an Electrical Engineer (PE), he was able to make sense of what was happening and why. With his electrical background and my ability to destroy and rebuild, we breathed life back into Ole Silver once again.
The transplantation was nothing to brag about. This is where I came up with the opinion that people who shouldn't work on cars DO and do so poorly at that. I buttoned up everything and turned the key. Something was amiss, but I couldn't quite nail it down. A comment to my father, comical at the time, couldn't have proved to be more true. "It feels like I am only running on four cylinders" is what I remembered saying.
Turns out that the yeahoo that messed with the engine before had issues with a fuel injector connector, and felt it was easier to insert a paperclip into the connector instead of buying a new one. When I had put the connector back on (not knowing it had been mangled beyond belief), the paperclip shorted the quad driver in the ECM. There are literally dozens of these quirks that I dealt with during my swap, but there is not enough time, nor enough sypathy here, to divulge them.
Se was finally running, but running so terribly that I felt it was due to the calibration and the camshaft I was running. I set out to get tuning instruments and was at it. I tried like a penguin on fire looking for water to get the '85 MAF system to work. My burnoff module was shot and I felt that if I wanted to continue tuning for myself, speed density would be the way to go.
THe speed density system encountered the same problems. My timing was retarding when I pressed on the gas pedal, I had located TDC on my engine over a dozen times, and I disabled all my retard controls. I replaced thge EST, ESC, knock sensor, and a myriad of other things after running the diagnostics for each trying to iron out the problem. I will never buy another Wells brand component again.
The problem was due to a defective batch of pick-up coils. They only have 2 leads on them. The inductive type pickup has only 2 leads coming out of the housing. The pigtail can only be plugged into the EST module one way. The wire colors were correct and the pigtail was correct. Out of spite, my father and I decided to try to blow up all the electronics one last time. I broke the pigtail, wired the wires opposite of the factory color coded diagrams, and life roared out of the tailpipe. Some schmuck on the assemblly line had failed to realize the importance of soldering the correct leads to the correct poles INSIDE of the housing. Yes folks, when my distributor was approaching the magnetic pickup, the pickup coil thought it was leaving. Talk about 'Pissed Off 101'.
This is when I became a self-proclaimed expert at fuel injection and automotive electronics. A lot of this learning is credited to my father. As an Electrical Engineer (PE), he was able to make sense of what was happening and why. With his electrical background and my ability to destroy and rebuild, we breathed life back into Ole Silver once again.
The transplantation was nothing to brag about. This is where I came up with the opinion that people who shouldn't work on cars DO and do so poorly at that. I buttoned up everything and turned the key. Something was amiss, but I couldn't quite nail it down. A comment to my father, comical at the time, couldn't have proved to be more true. "It feels like I am only running on four cylinders" is what I remembered saying.
Turns out that the yeahoo that messed with the engine before had issues with a fuel injector connector, and felt it was easier to insert a paperclip into the connector instead of buying a new one. When I had put the connector back on (not knowing it had been mangled beyond belief), the paperclip shorted the quad driver in the ECM. There are literally dozens of these quirks that I dealt with during my swap, but there is not enough time, nor enough sypathy here, to divulge them.
Se was finally running, but running so terribly that I felt it was due to the calibration and the camshaft I was running. I set out to get tuning instruments and was at it. I tried like a penguin on fire looking for water to get the '85 MAF system to work. My burnoff module was shot and I felt that if I wanted to continue tuning for myself, speed density would be the way to go.
THe speed density system encountered the same problems. My timing was retarding when I pressed on the gas pedal, I had located TDC on my engine over a dozen times, and I disabled all my retard controls. I replaced thge EST, ESC, knock sensor, and a myriad of other things after running the diagnostics for each trying to iron out the problem. I will never buy another Wells brand component again.
The problem was due to a defective batch of pick-up coils. They only have 2 leads on them. The inductive type pickup has only 2 leads coming out of the housing. The pigtail can only be plugged into the EST module one way. The wire colors were correct and the pigtail was correct. Out of spite, my father and I decided to try to blow up all the electronics one last time. I broke the pigtail, wired the wires opposite of the factory color coded diagrams, and life roared out of the tailpipe. Some schmuck on the assemblly line had failed to realize the importance of soldering the correct leads to the correct poles INSIDE of the housing. Yes folks, when my distributor was approaching the magnetic pickup, the pickup coil thought it was leaving. Talk about 'Pissed Off 101'.
SO here I am...running a speed density system termed '730 out of a '90-'92 F-body. I am using TunerCat for my calibrations and running an updated Vette bin.
My first area of concern were the volumetric efficiency tables. With an aftermarket cam, you are generally less efficient at low RPMs and higher at high RPMs than the factory calibration. By remapping these values, I was able to get nice running all around. I am constantly toggling back and forth between spark and VE tables, but I have a lot of time and little money, so I don't mind messing with it the way I do.
At the top, you will be able to find updated Diacom runs. I have over 100 runs of data that are no longer useful because of the pick-up coil inconvenience, but now I am getting solid data. The runs are in Microsoft Excel format and should be labled for what I am looking at in each one. Thanks for following and ENJOY!
My first area of concern were the volumetric efficiency tables. With an aftermarket cam, you are generally less efficient at low RPMs and higher at high RPMs than the factory calibration. By remapping these values, I was able to get nice running all around. I am constantly toggling back and forth between spark and VE tables, but I have a lot of time and little money, so I don't mind messing with it the way I do.
At the top, you will be able to find updated Diacom runs. I have over 100 runs of data that are no longer useful because of the pick-up coil inconvenience, but now I am getting solid data. The runs are in Microsoft Excel format and should be labled for what I am looking at in each one. Thanks for following and ENJOY!
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