Well my wife and I both took our cars to a dyno day today - at first I was going to be the only one dynoing (with my 2001 Eclipse) but I suggested that maybe she should give it a shot too just to get some kind of baseline for her car (her header and Catco cat hasn't yet been installed, figure we'd probably see a few more HP out of the car with that). It ended up being a very interesting experiment for her car. There were 3 runs - here's the results for her car:
2002 Sunfire (2200 OHV) - automatic
eBay intake
Accel wires
Megan Racing exhaust
Run #1 - 85 whp/ 101 wtq
Run #2 - 85 whp/ 104 wtq
Run #3 - 85 whp/ 105 wtq
Pretty consistent, huh? While I haven't seen many near-stock dyno runs for the OHV, I think this is pretty much on par with what people generally get with an automatic.
Now...the question part.
Back when she had herself posted probably almost a year ago with plans of what she was going to do with her car, she had mentioned getting the SAFC to tune with. Some people though had told her that it wasn't worth getting for these cars though because you wouldn't really see any gains with it N/A. Well, the dyno also provided the A/F graph...and her car runs absolutely pig rich right now with just the catback. The A/F starts out pretty lean at the beginning of the run (like normal) but around 3400 RPMs drops like a rock straight to 11.5:1 and from there slowly drops to 11:1 where it stays for the rest of the run. After the header and cat are installed I figure it'll probably drop to closer to 10.5:1 across most of the range...and that's incredibly rich. Doesn't it stand to reason that by leaning that out to near 13:1 with a SAFC that there should be some decent gains? I would think that if a SAFC was installed after the header and then tuned to around a 13:1 ratio across the board, somewhere around 100 whp should be possible. After all I wouldn't be surprised if you could easily pull 5 more whp just out of the intake/catback with a SAFC, and the header will obviously add some more.
Thoughts? No, I'm not under some impression that you can make an OHV (especially an automatic) into a rocket with just the simple bolt ons and a tune, but I think there's room for a respectable gain from tuning. Anyone have dynos of an OHV with intake and full exhaust and a tuned SAFC?
well, i guess before i can tell you what I think would be the best option for you, i need to know what you're looking to get out of your wife's car. Frankly, IMO, the SAFC is quite a bit of money for what it does, when an Emanage system costs almost the same (of course you need a laptop in addition but basic no frills used laptops can be had on ebay for cheap) and allows you to do more. I haven't ever setup an emanage on an OHV so i couldn't tell youexactly what would be involved bu others have done it. But I do think you're right, that leaning it out some may show some gain, and even bigger gains could come from timing advance.
However, in all honesty, is she racing this car? Because any "tuning" would have to be done on the dyno, which costs money, a lot of money to spend just for "passing power" and in reality the best you'd probably see is 5-10whp at most. It just seems somewhat pointless to me to go through that kind of effort if the car's only ever going to have basic bolt ons and never see any track time of any kind... The OHV just isn't woken up by bolt ons, thats pretty much been proven over the years here.
The other thing is, since you're actually the first person I've seen on here to post a stock dyno, that af does seem very rich and i'm wondering if perhaps something is wrong... A tailpipe sniffer should read even leaner than the actual af when there's a cat installed..... Although PJ (The Flying Squirrel) dynoed his OHV with bolt ons and a ported head and got in the 13's for a/f, with no cat and no tuning of any kind, so perhaps it would have been quite a bit richer with the stock head.
Arrival Blue 04 LS Sport
Eco
Turbo
Megasquirt
'Nuff said
Well, we plan to do some drag racing but not all that much or anything - we've never actually taken her car or mine, or any other car, to a strip, but we're interested in it. There's obviously much much better platforms for drag cars than the OHV and we know that, we just want to get what we can out of it. If that means it starts out as a stock 80-85 whp engine and we can build it up to 140 whp pretty easily, then great, maybe it'd be more, that'd be even better, maybe it'd be less, oh well, it's more about having fun doing it.
I've looked into the eManage some myself, but I haven't ever actually worked with one and so I don't know how to use one. I have the SAFC in my car and the big plus with it seems to be that its really easy to use. As for tuning, while dyno tuning is the most accurate, there's also the option of getting a wideband of your own and then being able to tune on your own (even if you aren't tuning on your own, I feel that if your car has some kind of piggyback or ECU flashed tune, you should have at the least a wideband display in-car so you can monitor it). But as for a laptop, I already own one myself so there wouldn't be additional cost there if we decided to go all out for the eManage.
But yeah, when I saw the A/F ratios my first thought was "man you sure as hell should be able to tune some more power out of this car." Her car runs great, does well on gas, has plenty of power (thinking in OHV terms) for passing and such, idles fine, etc. so I don't think there's anything wrong. And comparing the tailpipe wideband readings on my car with the ones from my in-car wideband, actually their sniffer seemed to be reading just a bit lower (richer) than what my wideband was indicating. Not exactly sure if that makes sense or not...
So if no one that you can remember has shown a nearly stock dyno for an OHV, maybe this will open some eyes and others will try some kind of tuning with intake and exhaust? I think there's gains to be had.
I'll also add that we're not sure what future plans we actually have for the car - we may get a P&P'd head and a cam, we may go with FI...I'm pretty sure though that we are going to go further than just where the car is now (well will be soon, we have a header for it but it's not installed yet). For that reason, I understand that if we could front the little bit of added cash needed for the eManage it would probably be the best investment in the long run. I'm just not too sure of wiring one in, and also like I said not familiar with the tuning of one. I'd kinda like to find someone in the area who knows a bit about that to actually show us in person before we'd tune with it ourselves (I'll probably end up getting one myself when I FI my Eclipse).
screw the safc , screw the emanage
get the HP tuners , you keep the stock pcm and tune it
OK, I've seen the HP Tuners software mentioned in the past...but I didn't realize that it would work on the 2200 OHV. From going to their website, it seems as though it works on almost ANY GM ECU? Is that really the case? (And if so, why in the world aren't there more people out there tuning GM cars?)
Definitely sounds like a good option though. Is there a thread or threads in here that perhaps go into detail of tuning with it on an OHV? I'd be curious to see what people have done with it in the past and how well it works - all I usually see about it are comments like "I installed X turbo kit and then tuned it with HP Tuners," or "I'm planning to use HP Tuners to tune the car." Anyone tried it on basically a stock car? Possibility of advancing timing to work with higher octane to get more power?
Basically, someone give me an overview of what it can and can't do or at least point me in the direction of something that will show me that, preferably for an OHV but if not, at least for a 4 cylinder. Most all their examples are for LS1's and other V8's, understandably, since those are the higher HP producing engines. But it sounds like an awesome product.
well, i would have said hptuners, but i wasn't yet aware of where this build was going.... hptuners is obviously the best option now, but emanage for an all motor simple bolt on setup is cheaper, although it is more work.
as far as i know, no one really has a fully tuned J with any engine running hptuners yet, although i know shifted has been messing with it, i haven't seen any results yet... Or did i just miss them somewhere Ron?
as far as what it can do.... pretty much anything that gm could do.
Arrival Blue 04 LS Sport
Eco
Turbo
Megasquirt
'Nuff said
Scarab (Jersey Jay 1.8T) wrote:well, i would have said hptuners, but i wasn't yet aware of where this build was going.... hptuners is obviously the best option now, but emanage for an all motor simple bolt on setup is cheaper, although it is more work.
as far as i know, no one really has a fully tuned J with any engine running hptuners yet, although i know shifted has been messing with it, i haven't seen any results yet... Or did i just miss them somewhere Ron?
as far as what it can do.... pretty much anything that gm could do.
eManage looks like it's arguably cheaper, although looking on eBay, by the time you buy the unit, the harnesses, and the CD support and ship it all, I think you're looking at $500. The HP Tuners is $499 for the standard suite, $649 for the pro suite (I don't really know what the differences/advantages are of the more expensive one). So I think honestly we may be looking at about the same cost. And obviously the eManage involves wiring where the HP Tuners doesn't.
We're not planning to just stick with simple all motor bolt on regardless - we realize that the best way to make somewhat respectable power with the OHV is FI (or nitrous) but we're just kinda exploring options. If we're gonna start breaking sh!t left and right trying to turbo the car and still only end up with a high 15 second car, then we may not go that route. This is more of a learning experience for both of us - we're planning to turn this into at the least a lifelong hobby (possibly a career) but we don't have a ton of money at this stage to just dump into motor swaps or a full rebuild (the possibility of having the block honed and dropping in a higher compression piston, say 10:1 (just to avoid problems with knock and pump gas), may be there, but as for having the whole thing completely rebuilt - bearings, seals, pistons, overbore, crank balancing, the whole 9 yards, probably not). So plan on either a lower psi FI situation that wouldn't involve needing to rebuild the engine first, or an all motor setup with a cam, P&P'd head, intake manifold/TB, maybe the slightly raised compression, and pulleys, in addition to the current intake and full exhaust. Just looking for a fun car that we could do some tweaking on and learn with, and also surprise some people from time to time with it's decent amount of gain over stock. We're not talking blowing away 350Z's or anything, but maybe sticking it to a Honda or two
So basically if we were to consider the HP Tuners route, there's not been much experience on the J-bodies with it...but it is there and it works. Hmm...if I knew more about tuning I'd be all sorts of ready to jump on something that's pretty cutting edge like that - but I wouldn't want to @!#$ up and have her with a non-driveable car.
OK, anyone who's watched any Carlos Mencia will get this, others will be lost...
Durr-ta-durrr...I just noticed the big-ass sticky at the top of the forum for the HP Tuners FAQ. I'm a dumbass
I'm in the process of reading now, but this sounds awesome. I see no point to go with the piggybacks now, none at all. Thanks for pointing me in this direction
Scarab is working on a ohv buildup also.
http://www.j-body.org/forums/read.php?f=2&i=333676&t=333676
And he don't even have a j-body!! It's good to see people adding to the community like this, especially the ohv engine cuz not too many are willing to put in the time and research on what is a good reliable engine when you look past stock hp/tq numbers
with the emanage , you gonna figure out how to wire it in , and make it run with no codes , and tune it
while the HP tuners might seam to cost more , all you do is install the program in a laptop(easier for tuning) , hook it up to read your pcm , make a pass
and start tuning , no electrical to work out , no anoying codes to worry about
11.1 is pig rich, but your stock ecu is doing this because it was programmed at the factory to prevent detonation and stuff that can damage the engine. GM wanted to be safe about warantees so they programmed the cars to run rich in an effort to not allow any knock at all.
I'm tuning on the 95-pre ecm's, heading up the project actually and what i've found is that if you lean it out to 12.7 and 13.7 the tq and hp really pick up some. It actually does make a difference at the wheels, at least the butt dyno felt difference. Also advanced timing maps help a lot too. We were able to advance our maps an average of 5deg up here without knock, the sweet spot being at that.
I'm getting ready to supercharge here in a few months, hence the ecm tuning. It's imparative that you get your tune locked on with a boosted car, as a really bad tune can cause poor performance or bad damage.
If your wife is as interested in racing or hp as mine is with her 98 cavi, you should look into hp tuners. It's by far one of the best options out there. Your stock ecm is advanced enough to deal with tuning changes. Or if you like piggybacks you can get a SAFC, but i hate them even for fine tuning.
BTW i paid $50 for a P3 1ghz laptop with 256mb ram and 20gig hd. Perfect for tuning.
I'll keep an eye out for laptops, as i'm going to be putting in a tuning order soon for more hardware.
Reviving this thread, mainly to post the scanned dyno sheets...but first...
C Smyth wrote:BTW i paid $50 for a P3 1ghz laptop with 256mb ram and 20gig hd. Perfect for tuning.
Damn...that's a sweet ass deal. I'm sure my laptop would be more than capabile (it's a P4 2ghz, 512mb ram and 40 gig drive...lol didn't think about it until I started typing but double everything on the one you picked up), but it would actually be kinda nice to have a laptop that would be completely formatted and then only tuning and datalogging software installed on it (for both her car and mine).
So like I said, finally got the dyno sheets scanned (had to wait until I was back to my parent's place to use a scanner). Keep in mind, it's an 4-speed auto with just a few (60,000 something) miles on it, but the plugs and wires were changed last summer.
WHP
WTQ
A/F Ratio - only graphed for 1 run, the last one
I know stock settings are usually rich but damn...that's pretty close to insane
Makes me wonder if the intake and catback contributed at all to making it richer, or if that's essentially what the A/F would have looked like bone-stock.
If it's that badly rich, wouldn't you smell it?
Well, for at least the short amount of time that it's on the dyno (at WOT) there isn't enough exhaust that builds up that you smell it. If you mean from inside the car, no, not at all - remember you don't usually go driving around at WOT all the time, and under part throttle your A/F ratios are much much more lean as the car is using the feedback from the O2's to keep it around stoich (14.7:1)
Wow, that's really rich. I REALLY hope you go through with the HPT, and see what you can get out of that motor with just basic bolt-ons. It hasn't been done before since tuning methods were...less than adequate
, but I have a feeling now there may be a surprise waiting in that arena.
fortune cookie say:
better a delay than a disaster.
OHV notec wrote:Wow, that's really rich. I REALLY hope you go through with the HPT, and see what you can get out of that motor with just basic bolt-ons. It hasn't been done before since tuning methods were...less than adequate , but I have a feeling now there may be a surprise waiting in that arena.
Well in the end the choice is up to my wife, since it is her car, but I think she was pretty much sold on the idea. We're going to get the header installed first, that much I know. Unfortunately we can't afford to keep dropping money on dyno time to dyno after the header is installed and then again after tuning.
However if I had to speculate, I think that after installing the header (and HFC) and tuning with HPT, I think that 100 whp is very possible, even with it being an auto OHV, maybe even more than that. Too bad that we don't know anyone yet in our area that's knowledgeable with these cars and tuning - I'm only just now learning the basics of tuning and I'm sure that HPT would be a bit overwhelming for me at first. I figure that not only leaning it out but advancing timing slightly will be possible and will show more gains than just simply cutting some fuel and leaving it at that.
Well I'm bringing this one back from the dead...just because this is related to this thread
I've got a chance to pick up a used eManage for $225 - injector and ignition harness included, however it sounds like the CD isn't (I don't have the money immediately or else I'd probably just buy first and then decide later to make sure I got ahold of it). While I understand that HPT would probably be the best in the end, I'm wondering if perhaps we should just try this out first to see where it leads us. I'm interested though in hearing from anyone who has successfully wired an eManage up to an auto 2200 OHV - it'd be nice if there'd be the possibility of some help if we ran into any snags installing it.
And even if down the line we decided to ditch it in favor of HPT, I could very well end up using it (the eManage) on my Eclipse when I boost it. Also...I'm right in that that's a pretty good price on the eManage, right? Or do they often sell for that price or less used?
