Trumpetrhapsody
June 16th, 2016, 08:55 AM
This is half cry for help, half sanity log for myself. I've done quite a bit of gas tuning on EFILive and Megasquirt, but am new to diesel tuning. Within a year of owning my truck I had 3 injectors die on me, so I got the not-so-bright idea to upgrade the nozzles while I was in there replacing bits. I sent my injectors off to DFIS in Portland for testing and flow mapping, which is when they told me 3 needed replacement. At their suggestion (also not the wisest) I only replaced the failed injectors as the others were claimed to be in good shape. I asked them to do a 40hp hone, which I guess via miscommunication turned into a 60hp hone. So far as I know they outsourced that portion, and the name of that shop escapes me. DFIS flow tested them after the hone and said they were all reasonably close to each other. Other than the injectors and a muffler delete my truck is stock. After the upgrade I ended up with a fair amount of smoke at low to mid acceleration boost and rpm (1/4 to 1/2 throttle between 1200-1700rpm) - top end on the factory tune was reasonably clear. This spurred me to go the EFILive route to clean it up - especially since I eventually plan to upgrade the turbo as well.
I've read all sorts of guides here and elsewhere, tips and tricks threads and many of your experiences, but the common theme is that the same thing doesn't work for everyone, and most people leave out crucial bits of information. On gas engines I could quite clearly see results in changes I'd make, whether via wideband or the butt dyno. It's frustrating in the diesel world not to have any feedback other than a non-logged EGT and smoke that I'll forget where exactly it happened by the time I go look at my log. Couple that with the 5 minute flash time preventing me from rapidly experimenting, I'm at my wits end. I understand the basic principles and relationships between duration and timing for the pilot and main injection events and how they affect spool and power, but don't have a firm grasp on how to methodically improve them using street tuning and trial & error. Most changes I make seem to have no noticeable effect, or make things worse.
I've mostly been working off of DoghouseDiesel's "Gift Tune" as my baseline. I noticed a pretty healthy increase in power, response, and smoothness, but also noticeable smoke increase across the board. I don't really care about smoke over 3/4 throttle right now, but I'm hating life at part throttle under 2k rpm. I've tinkered intermittently over the last year but starting today I'm going to dump some serious time into this and detail it here. To start with I have 3 experimental CSP tunes to try:
1 - 50/50 timing across the board using the calculator
2 - 20% duration reduction from 1200-1800 rpm in the 30-80 mm3 range, timing recalc'd based on original %'s
3 - 20% pilot mm3 & timing increase in the same range
Any suggestions are very welcome, otherwise i'll probably just post my results as I iterate through various trials. I'm a big do-it-yourself-er so i'm trying to avoid dyno time or flat out paying a tuner. I refuse to believe i'm not capable of figuring this out!
I've read all sorts of guides here and elsewhere, tips and tricks threads and many of your experiences, but the common theme is that the same thing doesn't work for everyone, and most people leave out crucial bits of information. On gas engines I could quite clearly see results in changes I'd make, whether via wideband or the butt dyno. It's frustrating in the diesel world not to have any feedback other than a non-logged EGT and smoke that I'll forget where exactly it happened by the time I go look at my log. Couple that with the 5 minute flash time preventing me from rapidly experimenting, I'm at my wits end. I understand the basic principles and relationships between duration and timing for the pilot and main injection events and how they affect spool and power, but don't have a firm grasp on how to methodically improve them using street tuning and trial & error. Most changes I make seem to have no noticeable effect, or make things worse.
I've mostly been working off of DoghouseDiesel's "Gift Tune" as my baseline. I noticed a pretty healthy increase in power, response, and smoothness, but also noticeable smoke increase across the board. I don't really care about smoke over 3/4 throttle right now, but I'm hating life at part throttle under 2k rpm. I've tinkered intermittently over the last year but starting today I'm going to dump some serious time into this and detail it here. To start with I have 3 experimental CSP tunes to try:
1 - 50/50 timing across the board using the calculator
2 - 20% duration reduction from 1200-1800 rpm in the 30-80 mm3 range, timing recalc'd based on original %'s
3 - 20% pilot mm3 & timing increase in the same range
Any suggestions are very welcome, otherwise i'll probably just post my results as I iterate through various trials. I'm a big do-it-yourself-er so i'm trying to avoid dyno time or flat out paying a tuner. I refuse to believe i'm not capable of figuring this out!