ACCLR8N

I can look to see what ELM327 I bought when I get home. I can tell you it is short and has a clear blue case. My son has a larger black one. It did take several attempts to get mine to pair with my phone the first time.

Just to stir the pot a little more, I don't shift my GTO into 6th below 60MPH either. It will pull it at lower RPM but I don't like to lug the engine like that. I'd rather buy a little more gas and not hammer on the main bearings. I get +17 MPG back and forth to work. No highway, average speed 35 MPH, making the turbo sing at every chance I get.

AnotherWs6

iTrader: (17)

Perhaps a bit harsh, aggrevating things going on at work. And someone saying ERRRR wrong and then calling you a noob is pretty annoying.anyway, I also don't like lugging the motor whether it will go or not. As far as the obdII reader, yeah check it out if its not hard to find. I did order one already though. I know these cheapy bluetooth things are often a crapshoot. I went with this guy......

Jenson

iTrader: (32)

Everything made in china is a crapshoot...as far as lugging my motor goes. I figure what I do to it on the entrance ramp, parking lots, and drag strip does far more damage than cruising up a hill on the hwy at 70-75. Lugging it up a hill at 50mph and 20% throttle on side streets, is also better than sideways, 5K rpm, and 100% throttle

AnotherWs6

iTrader: (17)

Yup, good old china, you roll the dice every time.

My car hasn't seen a track or parking lot shenanigans, she's babied most of the time. I mean, she kisses that rev limiter (damn factory tach) fairly often, but it's on back roads and done in a gentle, loving manner. Completely different.

ACCLR8N

That's the same ELM327 that I have.

AnotherWs6

iTrader: (17)

Well with a lot of mpg oriented miles and more than the usual amount of highway driving I managed 13.3 this last fillup. Let the diagnostics begin. Thanks acclr8n.

ACCLR8N

All this had me curious so I had a really boreing drive home yesterday and in to work today. Grabbed 6th as low as 45mph, put up with the buzzing from my near solid motor mounts. Lots of stop and go, no highway with a whopping average speed of 32 mph I mustered 18.9 mpg out of my LS2 turbo car. I have a lot more fun at 17 mpg.

I brought in my bluetooth adapter so I can play along on the way home.

AnotherWs6

iTrader: (17)

Yeah, I got curious to and drove all my highway milesin 6th this morning. Did ok, feels better in 5th though. Have no idea what mpg difference is

Jenson

iTrader: (32)

Oh how I wish I had time to throw my LS1/4L60/3.07 in my volvo right now, goal is 30 mpg hwy for it. ACCLR8N, have you ever tried a lean cruise turbo hwy tune? I had a buddy do one on his D16 turbo honda, he was getting 60mpg out of it. 5% throttle felt like 25%, pretty neat little setup. I wouldnt try it on hyper pistons though

Latigo

From California to Montana I was averaging 26mpg in my (just purchased) 98 M6 WS6 holding at 80mph pretty much the whole way. Has MTI CF lid and MTI R1 cam, LS6 intake, bigger injectors, walbro fp, 3.73 gears and much more. Was pleasantly surprised seeing as how I wasn't even trying to get good mpg's.

JD_AMG

Relax, no intention being offensive here, Im just trying to help.
I've seen some crazy crap over the years, and the gas gauges are not always accurate, I wouldn't be totally surprised if you got 200 miles out of the second half of the tank...

These are fuel injected cars, whichever gear is letting you drive at the lower RPM will generally yield better gas mileage, even if you are giving it more throttle. With your logic you should put it in 4th because you would have to give it even less throttle compared to fifth.
You are not lugging the engine if you are keeping RPMs above 1000 in 6th, these are not gen 1 SBC's or ford mod motors or something.

RevGTO

iTrader: (12)

Another, if you're not using sixth and complaining about poor gas mileage, you already have your answer. That being said, I don't like using sixth much below 65, definitely above 60. At anything more than steady throttle, I hear that low rumble of lugging below 1400rpm.

AnotherWs6

iTrader: (17)

In fourth I would have to use more throttle to give me and maintain the rpm needed to go 65 as compared to fifth, so that argument is invalid. Whatever. Not using 6th for the small amount of time the car is on the highway is not making me get 10mpg. That is a very silly statement. I do not want to discuss the ridiculousness or benefit of the tiny overdrive ratio in these things. Let me try to ge to get some factual data from the computer and see if something stands out.

AnotherWs6

iTrader: (17)

Hey ACCLR8N, or anyone else of course!!! So I smashed my phone's screen and was waiting for my new one to play with obdii stuff. I downloaded torque lite (might get pro, maybe another one. I just dont want to pay for one unless it gives tranny temp for my truck) and hooked it up to my 2000 5.3 chevy. The bird is taking the week off now that my DD truck is back on the road. anyway, i threw a couple of the available fuel trims up on the screen and right away something is weird. The first bank first sensor never gets above about 5 while the second bank second sensor stays around 80. I dont know what this means because I DONT KNOW WHAT THE HELL A FUEL TRIM IS!!! Can you learn me up on this a little real quick? Thanks. This thing gets **** poor mileage as well, but I always figured cuz its big and old and has a loooooot of miles. Maybe something is wrong though? This tuning/monitoring thing is pretty new to me.

ACCLR8N

Your PCM has volumetric efficiency tables that plot RPM versus MAP. The fuel trims are the percentage the PCM is increasing or decreasing the VE values in the chart to reach the desired air fuel ratio (Lambda of 1). Positive trim means the O2s are reporting lean and the system is adding fuel. Negative trim, the truck is running rich. Long Terms are stored when a consistent deviation is identified after a few seconds in a specific cell, short terms are always oscillating back and forth.

You should be looking at the long term trims. Create a digital gauge and a graph gauge for each side by side in Torq.
Fuel Trim Bank 1 Long Term
Fuel Trim Bank 2 Long Term

Also look at the mV output of the O2 sensors. 100 mV is lean, 800 mV is rich. Should be oscillating back and forth around 475 mV for stoic.
O2 Volts Bank 1 sensor 1
O2 Volts Bank 2 sensor 1

The front O2s do all the work tuning the engine. 5% is pretty good for an old engine. 80% should not be possible. My car is limited to 25% adjustment, then the check engine light is turned on and a code is set for either rich or lean for the bank in question.

ACCLR8N

This is a small piece of an EFI Live log, steady cruise with the car well warmed up (20+ minutes). What I consider a good running car. You can see the short term trims rapidly switching back and forth, while the long term trims remain consistent. This is just a small piece of the puzzle. I'm looking to see evidence of faulty O2 output or a rich condition to begin diagnosing your fuel economy.

black_phoenix

iTrader: (27)

LOL, i go WOT all the time and get about 120 to half tank in my current z28 and consistently did so in all my previous ls1's... I can get more but part of driving a performance car, is to actually FEEL the performance of it (what good is it, if you worry about mpg, in my case i have my wife's gutless Matrix)... i dont care about mpg, unless i have to drive my car over 200 miles somewhere...

Now dont get me wrong, Im always on top of my car's maintenance... Like clockwork

AnotherWs6

iTrader: (17)

OK, trying to decipher your EFI Live log. I believe the squiggly lines towards the bottom are your short term trims? Are your O2 readings there as well?

I've only played with this app for a couple of minutes here and there so I am not too familiar with it but I did try to set it up like you mentioned before leaving for work this morning. I did not see either a short or long term fuel trim, I only have the options for plain fuel trim. I think they are the short term ones though because they were dancing around constantly during my drive. This is in my truck remember, I will apply what I learn to the bird later. I did not get trim readings in the 80's this time. Both sensors (bank 1 sensor 1 and bank 2 sensor 1) stayed pretty close to zero, again dancing around. I don't know if there are other sensors, I think I may have been seeing the 80-90 numbers on bank 2 sensor 2 which I have a feeling does not exist. How many sensors are there? Now my O2's were crazy, really all over the map and sometimes fairly off from one another. Under part throttle they were reading fairly high (moving around quickly) and at least one of them would run above 700 a lot and get damn close to 900 under sustained moderate throttle. I tried to log everything but when I downloaded it after the drive it only shows me speed, gps coordinates and g forces, so non of the info I really care about. Is this because I have the lite version? Do both types of fuel trims show up in the pro version? Does the pro version include tranny temp? I dont care about spending the 5 bucks, but again I want tranny temp and all of this other stuff included in the same app so I can have them all at once while towing.

This truck does not run very well, and sputters a bit sometimes at lower rpms. It did so as I took off from my driveway this morning noticably while dead cold. I did not have the app open yet to see what readings I was getting. (Didn't want to be late so like an idiot got it open and mounted while driving and loading sirius app. I did have all my gauges setup beforehand though) It is not terrible, never bucking or stalling, but it feels very underpowered. Much better since the 4.88s went in last weekend, but I know it still cant be right. I took my fathers 05 4wd 5.3 camping a couple of weeks ago, had about 2,500lbs between camper, gear and wood and it performed flawlessly. Could easily hold 70mph uphill. I dont think this thing is going to even after the gears. It burns some a oil, a couple of quarts between 3K mile oil changes -but doesnt have any glaring problems. I don't think I have any serious compression or valve issues etc.

Could it be something so simple as bad 02's or is there something else causing those readings? I really appreciate the help. Amazing what 20 bucks worth of technology can buy you in this department these days.

ACCLR8N

Yes, the bottom chart had short and long term fuel trims. I put it up to simply illustrate how the O2s naturaly cycle back and forth while long terms give a better indication of the state of the tune. These indicate how the ECM is reacting to the O2 sensors. I did not log the mV readings of the O2 sensors themselves.

I am not sure what limitations the lite version of Torq are. I posted above the actual names as they show up when I select add gauge and I see the list of available parameters. I have not figured out the logging myself yet on the App. I do not know about the trans temp. I'll check that out on my '02 Avalanche this weekend. This is by no means a serious diagnostic tool. It was a suggestion to get some data without a large investment. I'm a little surprised you purchased the bluetooth adapter but are dragging your feet on the $5. Mind you, I'm a cheap bastered myself running an ebay turbo & wastegate, brown bagging my lunch everyday so I do see where the mindset comes from.

It could very well be bad O2s. If you are oiling them down that much it would have to be hindering their output. Have you done a compression test?

AnotherWs6

iTrader: (17)

I just bought the app and spent a few minutes cursing it for the tranny temp gauge not doing anything. Then i went online i figured out how to make it work. In celcius, but oh well.

I have not done a compression test. I also never have seen a whisp of smoke from the tailpipe under any conditions, whether its me driving it or watching somebody else pull away in it etc. so I have never been worried. I think a lot of it is leakage honestly. But at this point EVERYTHING, every seal, gasket etc is likely sweating. 270K miles, you know? Its pretty grimy down below, hard to tell what is what. Truck has run the same way for several years at least.

If the o2 voltage is bouncing around so much and going so high, how do I differentiate between bad o2's and other symptoms? Like is it my 02's saying the truck is running running rich because it really is, or is it that it isnt running rich and the o2's just think it is? Am I making sense?