rollex

What did that cost, was it a custom setup?

so anyway what temp is considered overheating for these motors?

If you are running not much boost that would be believable, but if you are pushing 15psi of boost the air is going to be more than 5c above ambient. Eg the stock intercooler will get much hotter than ambient.

Not necessarily, you are making 460rwkw, you would still be making way more power than any of us at 6k, eg you are flowing fine. The reason you are making peak power lower is because you are reaching the max flow of the head/cams/turbo so it is choking up top, it is still flow very well up top though. If your power was 350kw etc I might comment that it was just your boost curve is poor and dropping off in the top end, but 460kw is definitely going to be stretching the flow limits of everything so it sounds normal. edit: If you overlayed your dyno curve with ours you will see what I mean, your power in the high revs will still be very high, you are just making sh*tloads more torque (probably lots of boost) hence the low figure. What turbo are you running?

Ok good. So what kind of temps are considered too hot and overheating, 110 ? 40-50c intake temps was with about 26c outside, the huge intercooler is why they are so low.

319rwkw @ 5475 rpm Ignore the figure below, that is their "flywheel" figure, the actual figure is only 319

So I had my car retuned with a XCAL 4 and have been using it to datalog just out of curiousity. Anyway I'm seeing radiator temps of 90-100c (got to 104c sitting in traffic when it was 30c) and oil up to 90c in this 25c weather just after a fairly normal drive without much boost, that is about halfway on the temp gauge in the BF. If I boost it in the hills the temps are more like 90-95 due to the extra air flow however it seems very high, my old skyline never went over 85-90c even when on the dyno in hot weather with a stock radiator and huge FMIC. Car has a stage 2 process west intercooler which I'm guessing blocks the radiator slightly. What temp is considered overheated and going to cause damage to the motor? Also what is the stock thermostat temperature? The air intake temps never go over 40c unless I idle the car in traffic for an hour, then they can get to 70c but very quickly drop down to 40-50 again. Is getting the fans to turn on earlier all I need to get the temps down, or is upgrading the radiator a fairly common thing to do? Or are these motors designed to run hotter for emissions and 100-105c is fine? I've been told the new v8 commodores can get to 115c around town which is apparently fairly normal. Cheers

passive aggressive something something ?

Well I have conflicting advice, two guys who have looked at it and said it is fine, and two guys on the internet who say replace it. I'm curious why you say replace it, have you seen centre bearings with no play that look fine but still clunk? I'm no expert so I have no idea.

Here is the new dyno chart Here is the dyno with the old one overlayed, this is with their "flywheel kw" number, no idea if it is accurate or not. Either way you can see the extra midrange which is what I was raving about before.

???? What makes you so sure it is the centre bearing? If I replace it and it isn't the cause what do I do then... start replacing more bits until I've replaced everything?

I specifically asked them to change it but both places said it looks fine and has no play so why change it ?

Had two workshops look at this and give up. Diff bushes are new, centre bearing has zero play. They tightened up a bunch of loose stuff (subframe bolts and vibration shield) which didn't fix it. Suggested it could be driveshaft/tailshaft bearings but they didn't want to start replacing stuff hoping it would fix it in case it wasn't the problem. Said it might be best just waiting for it to get worse until it becomes obvious what it is. They didn't charge me as they couldn't figure it out.

Got the car retuned, it is like night and day. Made a way more midrange and low down power, and even more top end. Car drives so much better, no more doughyness or needing 75% throttle to make boost, also doesn't backfire all the time like it used to. I've never had a tune change the way a car drives this much, It literally feels like a different engine. Can't hear it pinging any more either. I'll post the dyno curve up later, I realise you can make them look better/worse but end of the day how it drives is what matters and how it drives reflects the new dyno sheet, eg way more midrange and down low. PCV is apparently working fine as well, they couldn't get it to pass but I might check it myself later.

KPM said they have never seen a PCV fail and think it is just increased blow by, so you have seen it fail yourself?

How is it set up though, a simple 2D map?

I'm aware that this takes time and money, I did it on my old skyline and ended up having to do it myself as other tuners wouldn't put the time required into it. Intake temp vs enrichment is pretty easy to do on other ECUs, a very simple 2D table of degrees vs % enrichment (entire map is enriched apart from idle), only takes about 2 minutes to set up properly. Ignition temp retard was a similar 2D map on the ECUs I've used. Do the ford ECUs do it this way? I'm guessing they provide more variables and are hence more complicated to do.

I'm not expecting more power, I went to them to make sure it won't grenade in a year. Eg I want the boost/fuel/ignition to trim and avoid detonation if I decide to hold my foot on the brake an accelerator on a 30c day. This will require more fuel, less ignition, less boost and definitely less power however I want it to be dynamic so when I'm driving it on a 10c night it will make the power it is capable of. So could you explain the boost selection and why this might result in a leaner result on a hotter day? End of the day I just want the tune to be robust and never detonate.

Bruce tuned the car in cool weather, KPM ran the car up on a hot day, it was at least 30c that day so I was surprised seeing the temp sensors reading that low. The suggested the tune was quite aggressive timing and fuel wise and this would explain knock retard kicking in yet it still pinging. Being a hot day probably doesn't help either (intercooler would be hot just from the car sitting in the sun not running) Shouldn't heat soak make the car run richer? Don't these ECUs run intake temperature fuel trims etc? Why would it run leaner?

I wasn't there when they did the run as they were doing other work to the car I left it there for 2 days. I dont have an SCT so they couldn't edit the tune easily. Are you implying they would change the tune to make it look worse? It is a guy I know fairly well from high school and they already knew I wanted to spend money so I highly doubt they would do something that dishonest, not to mention they have nothing to gain from it. Bruce said he tuned it to 12:1 and no higher, regardless it is pinging (mildly) across the entire range now. What are the bigger issues you are talking about?

here is the scan from kpm and the one from bruce I didn't realise it at the time but that big peak in AFR is near peak torque, when I got the dyno sheet it looked as if that was while boost was building and the transition from O2 closed loop to open loop. Only after I worked out the rpm did it look wrong.

I'll look at getting a check valve for the vent, where on the rocker cover is the vent located? Also does the PCV leak with old age, worth replacing this as well?

~15psi that tapers off to maybe 12psi. Are you saying the oil in the intake may purely be because of limitations of the stock PCV system at these boost pressures? That is pretty much happened, they said don't get it on boost until it can be retuned.

Stock everything with a process west stage 2 intercooler and a K&N panel filter. I know some cars tend to get too much oil in the head if they sustain high revs and need oil restrictors/extra drains etc, I'm assuming this isn't a problem with the barra and that any oil in the intake is from piston blow by? Using this kit: http://www.processwest.com.au/products/ford/ba-bf-products/stage-2-intercooler

Bruce is happy to help and said he would look at if I wanted however I'm still going to get KPM to do the tune. I'll post up the two dyno graphs later today. For reference bruces was 340rwkw and about 0.5-0.75 lower AFR, KPMs was 310rwkw and never went lower than 12.5 AFR and as high as 13 AFR at peak torque. edit: Motor is breathing slighly now, was oil in the intake after 3 months (new intercooler so it was all clean before 3 months). It also used maybe 500-1000ml of oil in 3,000kms, in fairness the motor does have 190,000 kms on it. Before the tune it didn't drink any oil. How much oil do these motors tend to use in their later life?