"The Green Monster"

[F1 LOTUS]

Well played Russ!
It would be interesting to see some comparison graphs? How responsive is the car in terms of lag, noticeably different from stock? What A/F ratio are you able to run at 16 psi?

[Houdini]

Here's a comparison (sorry didn't scan the graph yet) of the 2 turbo's. By the way AFR was approx. 11.5:1 at 16 psig. Also to answer your question on lag Brian it was not an issue. To be honest from what I remember about driving the stock turbo it felt much better. Maybe that's just wishful thinking but it really did feel better. Anyway check out the quick Excel sheet for a comparison and you'll see why additional tuning will really help. A major dip at 4000 rpm because that's where the secondary throttle is now opening. That needs to be massaged. Second, you'll notice the big fall off in power after only 5500 rpm. The reason for this is one of 2 things. Either there is alot of room for tuning improvement there or because I have done no flow work it's not capable of any more. I think it falls somewhere in between. You'll notice at 5000 rpm there was a gain of almost 66 HP and by 6500 it was only a 37 HP gain. Buy the way max. torque was 214 at 4000 rpm.

Any thoughts?

[F1 LOTUS]

Did you run Elanscan on the dyno?

[Houdini]

Did you run Elanscan on the dyno?

No, I never was able to get it work.

[F1 LOTUS]

Probably a dumb question anyhow - does the Haltech piggyback the stock ECM

I was just wondering if the ECM was retarding ignition to control knock? Intake temp's etc?

[Houdini]

Probably a dumb question anyhow - does the Haltech piggyback the stock ECM

I was just wondering if the ECM was retarding ignition to control knock? Intake temp's etc?

No it's a stand alone plug and play.

[Ashaman]

Hey, congratulations! Glad to hear you are operational

Strange about the dip in power though, honestly I would expect it to increase throughout the range...it would be interesting to try adjusting the secondaires. Have you verified that they are in fact opening?

Sounds dumb I know, but it DID take me a couple tries before I got it right.

When I did, I set mine at 3500 as just a guess. It seemed like it might kinda make sense to drop it, no idea if it really did or not

[Houdini]

Just got back from a weeks vacation and got a message that my car was ready and they found more power. Didn't say how much though, but will find out tonight. He did say I would be rather pleased and he'll wait to show me the results.

On the down side I must be absent from this forum for awhile as I have some personal matters that will take 150% of my time for the near future. We are relocating to another area of the state (500 miles away), and I'm searching for a new job at the same time (a full time job in itself). On top of that I now have a medical problem I need to take care of. Although the problem isn't critical it is going to require some down time and worst of all I may not be able to drive the Lotus for awhile. I'll try and pop in every now and then to keep my sanity and see whats going on, but it could be a few months before things start to get semi normal again.

Later, Houdini

[Doug]

Don't disappear on us, Houdini

500 miles, eh -- sound like you are coming my way? let me know?
I'm sure I can drive your car for you while you convalesce--and I have a BRG license!!

[Dave M]

Best wishes to you Russ, and our prayers are with you. That's a lot to take on all at once and I can relate to having to prioritize time. Sadly, despite how much we love it, in some cases there's no extra time to visit the forum. But the beauty of this site is everyone's here to help and be of support no matter when a person visits.

Good luck to you and your wife with everything. We'll be anxious to hear how everything comes out.

[algirdas]

Dear Houdini:

Best wishes to you and your family in everything. Get well soon. You will be in my prayers. I wish you all the best and let us know periodically how you are doing.

Sincerely,

Algirdas

[Houdini]

Thanks Everyone!

One quick note before I take off for awhile. HP is now at 246 at the wheels and there is a little more to be gained. At this point I think I would have to put work into the head with porting, etc. to gain more. Since the car is very quick at this point I'll work on fine tuning a few spots and not worry about the head unless I'm forced to.

One more thing. On top of everything that's going on I've been asked to take on a special assignment here at work. Now if I can convince them to work from home, say 500 miles to the north, all will be good. My surgery is planned to happen in about a month. It's hard to explain but I had 2 major surgeries several years ago after a misdiagnosis and almost didn't make it (no I never got any money out of it). This surgery is just to take care of few loose ends and I'll be back working and driving in a few days, no big deal. Since those first surgeries life has new meaning though and I don't worry too much about anything except being healthy and happy.

I'll try and check in every week or so to see what's going on.

Later, Russ

[F1 LOTUS]

246 AT THE WHEELS
GOOD JOB


Fingers crossed for the special assignment

[Dave M]

Nicely done, sir! What boost level was that at? How were your a/f ratios? Congrats on what I know is a very quick car! Take some asprin before driving as your cheeks will get sore from all that smiling.

[algirdas]

Dear Russ:

246 HP at the wheels? That thing must fly! What does it drive like? What is the throttle response like? Turbo lag? Which cars can keep up with you? Is there a write up (other than this thread) of what all you have done to the car?

Congratulations on the car and good luck with all of the challenges facing you in the days and weeks ahead.

Sincerely,

Algirdas

[Nige]

Russ,

246 at the wheels?! That sounds like something I could use I'll trawl back through the rest of the thread. More importantly all the best for the days and weeks ahead and look forward to seeing you back here soon.

[Houdini]

Update!

First of all for anyone thinking of doing this it’s no slam dunk. You would think that living in a large metro area that has a large car culture, and tuning is in most enthusiasts’ vocabulary, that it would be easy to have quality work done.

Things I’ve learned after the fact:
• There are a few excellent tuners (somewhere)
• There are a few really bad tuners
• Most tuners are average
• Most tuners do not know much if anything about Lotus, or in particular Isuzu engines and have limited working knowledge of Haltech ECU’s

The tuner I choose has excellent customer service and will fix any issues (at least he’ll attempt to). He is well known for his excellent tuning capabilities on Honda’s, Nissan’s, Toyota’s, etc., but not on German, American, or obscure cars. So after having my car tuned twice and showing some real power gains I did some investigations of the fuel and ignition maps because I still wasn’t happy with cold start, idle, and I still had some nagging drivability issues. All had seemed fine when I picked it up but in the real world of driving certain things come to light especially in stop and go traffic, etc. I had my doubts after looking at the maps if all was well, as I was seeing some strange fuel and timing issues at high loads and higher rpm and that made me wonder if my HP figures were fabricated somewhat to satisfy my desire for a certain gain. So I loaded everything up and showed it to an ECU expert here at work. He used to work for Cosworth Racing as an ECU expert for engine management, traction control, etc. His initial response was that I was right, it didn’t look correct and this was more common than not as most tuners only do a fraction of the tuning and you are left with less than desirable results. Bottom line I have no confidence in my power numbers at this point.

So what are we going to do? We’re (okay he is) going to make some assumptions and do a few calcs to hopefully get me closer to my ideal conditions and we’ll see what happens. This is still going to be a time consuming operation that will eventually give me the drivability performance I want I hope.

As a side note I found out that it’s easy to manipulate dyno output to give the customer numbers he’s looking for (no surprise there). This hopefully doesn’t happen too often but let’s face it a customer spends a lot of money and he wants to see some results. There are factors that the operator can adjust to multiply the output to appear larger than it actually is. Bottom line is use dyno results as information and don’t get hung up on the actual numbers because they can vary form dyno to dyno, operator to operator, etc. Be more concerned with the results for drivability and what the car feels like and you’ll be happier.

I’ll keep everyone updated on what’s going later.

[Dave M]

Bottom line is use dyno results as information and don’t get hung up on the actual numbers because they can vary form dyno to dyno, operator to operator, etc. Be more concerned with the results for drivability and what the car feels like and you’ll be happier.

Great advice, Russ. I'm curious to see when my car is all done what variance there is between the two types of dynos I've used. I'm doing all the tuning on the Mustang dyno, but will eventually get back to the DynoJet to compare my old runs with the new components.

Sorry to hear the car's not driving how you'd like it. That can be very frustrating. I'm on the other side of the coin presently. It drives around town fine, but top end is hampered because of it running so rich. It sounds as if maybe your tuner set up the car at WOT which I've heard is the easier part to do. Cold start, idle, and all the other settings are much more difficult and time consuming because there are so many variables.

Good luck - hope everything else is going well with the job and your health issues. We're thinking of you.

[Houdini]

Spent some time playing with no load conditions and and now have my idle pretty much nailed along with cold idle as well. A little more work to do on cold idle but it's pretty good. Got direction from the ECU guy at work and just went to town trying to make things run smoother. No load to part load is very good now and driveability is much improved. I haven't started on the upper load areas yet but that's next. To do this and fine tune all areas I invested in a wideband and should get this in a week. I'm going to have a second bung installed in the exhaust at least 12 inches (305 mm) from the Turbo. After getting the fuel requirements down I'll work on the timing. At least the tuner got me in the ballpark and now I can do my best to fine tune.

Here's a link to the wideband I bought.


http://www.ngksparkplugs.com/products/air-fuel/faq.asp?nav=19100&country=us

[F1 LOTUS]

Seems like a useful piece of kit