Notes from FAST bank/bank standalone computer install
06-10-2004, 10:54 AM
#42
LS1Tech Co-Founder
Thread Starter
iTrader: (34)
Last nite we:
-sync'd up engine and FAST base timing
-worked on idle, iac counts are still too high
-wired up fans
Tonite we will:
-wire up alternator
-try to get iac counts to below 40
-get oil pressure gauge working
-sync'd up engine and FAST base timing
-worked on idle, iac counts are still too high
-wired up fans
Tonite we will:
-wire up alternator
-try to get iac counts to below 40
-get oil pressure gauge working
06-11-2004, 06:45 PM
#43
LS1Tech Co-Founder
Thread Starter
iTrader: (34)
Update:
Magnus (Keith from HP Tuners) and I worked on the car again. Again with Keith leading the charge with the wiring changes and programming, a lot of progress was made last night. The car would be at shop by now if it weren't for Keith, Kurt Urban and Chris Sikora. There would have been no way that the car could have been converted over to standalone FAST. Keith has the pcm knowledge and also the wiring knowledge, Kurt has the only shop in the country to have done a number of standalone LS1 conversions, and Chris has an LT1 sequential standalone FAST and he spent a long time tuning before the car started to run low 9's, and ultimately 8.96. I just want to say that if you are contemplating running a standalone FAST or any other aftermarket system, you will really need to use a very knowledgeable shop or have advanced wiring and electrical knowledge. Once you remove the pcm and the engine control harness, you are going to need to custom engineer solutions for the starter, alternator, gauges, power, fans, etc., it's a long list.
Now I can bolt stuff in, and change stuff, and do some basic wiring. BUT I have tried to take a step back and assess the difficulty level of wiring up a standalone. First off the value in going standalone is being able to remove yards and yards of wiring, and to free up some useful real estate under the hood and under the cowl. If you piggyback you will be splicing into a great many wires unless someone makes you some sort of custom harness like Mac Mackenzie. From comparing some notes with Ryan Karasek, who did a Gen7 standalone by himself a couple months ago, it sounds like it was equally difficult. The killer in my mind is threefold. You might need to splice in anywhere from two to eight sensors. You will need address all of the lost engine harness grounds. You would be needing to wire up a lot of grounds and they all need to work right. You will be losing all of the factory gauges unless you can run the signal wires to the factory gauge cluster connectors down in the passenger side footwell. It would be impossible to do this conversion without a voltmeter, soldering iron, a strong knowlege of electronics, and a Helms manual. We used the Helms to go over the pinouts of the connectors and a lot of the factory harness wiring. We still don't have a permanent solution for grounding the starter relay it's one of those things that is time intensive and frankly only a guy like Keith, Kurt or Chris could figure out how to ground the relay. It took Keith a good while to narrow down that problem. Problems like that can easily eat up 1-3 hours each. I think that Kurt indicated to me that his shop could do the conversion in about 16 hours. Perhaps he can chime in and confirm that. I'm not sure if that quote was including removing the harness and pcm, and getting the starter and alternator to work.
BS3 is out, and it might be the easiest solution yet since it's more of a plug'n play solution, and does not use an external crank box or eDIST-type solution. If you set it up as a standalone, you would still run into about half of the issues that we ran into.
Hope this info helps.
Here is last nite's update:
Alternator - Thanks to Ryan Karasek for his help, we used (2) 1000k resistors and then wired the alternator to switched power. Charging just fine.
VE - 45
Injector Offset - revised (Thanks Kurt! for going over the hierarchy of stuff to tweak last night)
Idle RPM - 1000 (I'd like 900, but it's been suggested that we raise it to 1200 for racing so that the car works well in the waterbox and in staging)
Idle Timing - 34
Crank Angle - 55
Idle AF - 13._:1 (Keith where you did you last set it, 13.5:1 or so?)
Idle Spark Table - 0 on the left, ramping up to 10 on the right (Kurt)
IAC - 70 (still high but better than before, drilled out a 2nd hole in blade. Was pegged at 180 on day1, and then in the 100 range for a while, now at 70)
Next Step:
Part Throttle Tuning - I'll pilot, Keith will do street tuning, to work on the cruising, ligh load, and low boost tuning. Last time we did this, when the car has the hybrid FAST, we did this for about 1.5 hrs in the neighbourhood.
Notes:
-98 Alternator is different from 99-02's, so not sure how to wire that up resistor-wise.
-Fans on at 175, off at 170, car cools off fast.
-We have two fans stock, but FAST has only one fan input
-My battery is probably going to need replacing, it may be a casualty of all the tuning time, hard to get around it.
-We have the fuel pump wired up on a separate switch, but FAST does in fact have an input for that.
-Coolant, voltage, and oil pressure gauges are not working
-The idle VE was in the 60's until last night, and Keith revised the injector offsets until we could get the VE into the 40's
-Idle timing is close to stock, stock is 35 right?
-IAC counts on the FAST can go up to 180. Initially the IAC was pegged until we drilled a second hole in the TB blade. The second hole was made bigger a few times especially when we started to lower the TB idle screw to almost flush with the TB. I think that we might be able to go even bigger with the holes.
-Keith has gotten the tune to where you can just lean in and turn the key and the car starts without any throttle input.
-Keith spent a lot of time last nite working on the tuning for throttle/off throttle transition, ie if I bipped the throttle... He worked on the AF for that as well as what I would call the idle recovery.
-Kurt was suggesting a somewhat fatter AF at idle, like in the 12's, and Chris was in the low 14's... We split the difference and put it in the 13's. Initially it was in the low 15's. Part throttle AF will be in the 12's and 13's.
-Idle is a bit more choppy then I would expect, it's only a 230/236/115 cam. Might be a sign that more IAC is needed but the surging is down to only 100 rpms now, when it does it.
Magnus (Keith from HP Tuners) and I worked on the car again. Again with Keith leading the charge with the wiring changes and programming, a lot of progress was made last night. The car would be at shop by now if it weren't for Keith, Kurt Urban and Chris Sikora. There would have been no way that the car could have been converted over to standalone FAST. Keith has the pcm knowledge and also the wiring knowledge, Kurt has the only shop in the country to have done a number of standalone LS1 conversions, and Chris has an LT1 sequential standalone FAST and he spent a long time tuning before the car started to run low 9's, and ultimately 8.96. I just want to say that if you are contemplating running a standalone FAST or any other aftermarket system, you will really need to use a very knowledgeable shop or have advanced wiring and electrical knowledge. Once you remove the pcm and the engine control harness, you are going to need to custom engineer solutions for the starter, alternator, gauges, power, fans, etc., it's a long list.
Now I can bolt stuff in, and change stuff, and do some basic wiring. BUT I have tried to take a step back and assess the difficulty level of wiring up a standalone. First off the value in going standalone is being able to remove yards and yards of wiring, and to free up some useful real estate under the hood and under the cowl. If you piggyback you will be splicing into a great many wires unless someone makes you some sort of custom harness like Mac Mackenzie. From comparing some notes with Ryan Karasek, who did a Gen7 standalone by himself a couple months ago, it sounds like it was equally difficult. The killer in my mind is threefold. You might need to splice in anywhere from two to eight sensors. You will need address all of the lost engine harness grounds. You would be needing to wire up a lot of grounds and they all need to work right. You will be losing all of the factory gauges unless you can run the signal wires to the factory gauge cluster connectors down in the passenger side footwell. It would be impossible to do this conversion without a voltmeter, soldering iron, a strong knowlege of electronics, and a Helms manual. We used the Helms to go over the pinouts of the connectors and a lot of the factory harness wiring. We still don't have a permanent solution for grounding the starter relay it's one of those things that is time intensive and frankly only a guy like Keith, Kurt or Chris could figure out how to ground the relay. It took Keith a good while to narrow down that problem. Problems like that can easily eat up 1-3 hours each. I think that Kurt indicated to me that his shop could do the conversion in about 16 hours. Perhaps he can chime in and confirm that. I'm not sure if that quote was including removing the harness and pcm, and getting the starter and alternator to work.
BS3 is out, and it might be the easiest solution yet since it's more of a plug'n play solution, and does not use an external crank box or eDIST-type solution. If you set it up as a standalone, you would still run into about half of the issues that we ran into.
Hope this info helps.
Here is last nite's update:
Alternator - Thanks to Ryan Karasek for his help, we used (2) 1000k resistors and then wired the alternator to switched power. Charging just fine.
VE - 45
Injector Offset - revised (Thanks Kurt! for going over the hierarchy of stuff to tweak last night)
Idle RPM - 1000 (I'd like 900, but it's been suggested that we raise it to 1200 for racing so that the car works well in the waterbox and in staging)
Idle Timing - 34
Crank Angle - 55
Idle AF - 13._:1 (Keith where you did you last set it, 13.5:1 or so?)
Idle Spark Table - 0 on the left, ramping up to 10 on the right (Kurt)
IAC - 70 (still high but better than before, drilled out a 2nd hole in blade. Was pegged at 180 on day1, and then in the 100 range for a while, now at 70)
Next Step:
Part Throttle Tuning - I'll pilot, Keith will do street tuning, to work on the cruising, ligh load, and low boost tuning. Last time we did this, when the car has the hybrid FAST, we did this for about 1.5 hrs in the neighbourhood.
Notes:
-98 Alternator is different from 99-02's, so not sure how to wire that up resistor-wise.
-Fans on at 175, off at 170, car cools off fast.
-We have two fans stock, but FAST has only one fan input
-My battery is probably going to need replacing, it may be a casualty of all the tuning time, hard to get around it.
-We have the fuel pump wired up on a separate switch, but FAST does in fact have an input for that.
-Coolant, voltage, and oil pressure gauges are not working
-The idle VE was in the 60's until last night, and Keith revised the injector offsets until we could get the VE into the 40's
-Idle timing is close to stock, stock is 35 right?
-IAC counts on the FAST can go up to 180. Initially the IAC was pegged until we drilled a second hole in the TB blade. The second hole was made bigger a few times especially when we started to lower the TB idle screw to almost flush with the TB. I think that we might be able to go even bigger with the holes.
-Keith has gotten the tune to where you can just lean in and turn the key and the car starts without any throttle input.
-Keith spent a lot of time last nite working on the tuning for throttle/off throttle transition, ie if I bipped the throttle... He worked on the AF for that as well as what I would call the idle recovery.
-Kurt was suggesting a somewhat fatter AF at idle, like in the 12's, and Chris was in the low 14's... We split the difference and put it in the 13's. Initially it was in the low 15's. Part throttle AF will be in the 12's and 13's.
-Idle is a bit more choppy then I would expect, it's only a 230/236/115 cam. Might be a sign that more IAC is needed but the surging is down to only 100 rpms now, when it does it.
