What Did You Do to Your MSM Today? - Page 113 (2024)

Jesse1999

Join Date: May 2010

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Posts: 2,115

Tuning my MS3 has again been delayed by rain and illness. Good news, the state of MN no longer seems to be in drought. Bad news, I'm on week 4+ being sick this year. 7-10 days earlier, now another 21 days but today was the turning point where I'm improving. Between the wet roads and being exhausted, I haven't been able to continue setting up knock retard protection. I was working on balancing the cylinder knock output readings changing each cylinder gain setting to get a better average reading of background noise and what could be knock. I found an area that might be slightly too advanced but the spikes aren't much higher, I'm not worried with an 8.6:1 forged piston and an otherwise good tune. My MegaSquirt also seems to suffer from extra/false noise in overrun as I've seem others say their TPS and other readings aren't accurate in overrun. What I'm seeing might not be knock since it occurs at the start of overrun or immediately before overrun.

Below is a picture I took the other day, painting the tow hooks to match the valve cover was worth it. Pictures don't do them justice, the metallic silver base coat shines through better in person. They were dusty before the water beaded and I now see minor rock chip damage but nearly every time I walk up to the car, I see them and smile.

Better news is today I got my seat belts working almost as good as I imagine they did off the assembly line. My car is about to hit 31k-miles but this smooth action doesn't seem to be the norm with a roll bar. I have the upgraded belt guides on my Boss Frog double hoop bar but made a few more tweaks. I read about putting a zip tie just below the plastic trim panel to help straighten the belt on its way down to the retraction spool and I used a small file to round over the edge of the plastic trim where the belt was touching, both seem to have reduced friction. The original owner paid a shop to install the roll bar and FM2 Garrett upgrade kit. The work was mostly well done but I found many areas I could tweak things closer to perfection. The trim job on the interior trim pieces around the outer legs of the roll bar tubes was thankfully too tight, much better than trimming too far leaving large gaps.

Next, I unbolted the bottom end of the belt and soaked it in a weak detergent solution using very warm water and carpet oxy cleaner left over from renting a Rug Doctor. It wasn't very dirty but after it was mostly dry I applied 303 UV protectant. I can't tell what tweak helped the most but the difference went from having to manually feed the belt in over my shoulder to the belt retracting nicely on its own. Oh yeah, I also glued a small rectangle of felt sheet to the Elise seat using E6000 glue where the belt was rubbing. The black dye (were originally Magnolia leather) had rubbed through and the felt also reduced friction. So now I can delay buying a used seat of belts to have re-webbed (black with red edges), hoping the spring tension can/will be slightly increased when the new belt is wound.

But wait, there's MORE! I saved the best for last, closed loop EBC is finally working well. I made more adjustments (still in basic mode, P=100, I=100, D=100), mainly to the sensitivity slider and the lower limit delta (sets how far before target EBC steps in to control boost) but also softening the duty cycle bias/look up table a bit more. Boost spikes are now rare and diminished. Boost climbs smoothly to 18 psi and holds stable with a slight increase approaching the 7600 RPM redline. I can barely see the waver on the boost gauge as closed loop EBC works its magic. Ramping up duty cycle with a 1% slope the last two or three RPM columns as well as having a square top manifold solved the boost drop off I used to get after 6k RPM.

The only thing is I have to retrain my brain. EBC doesn't work like the MBC did, no more maximum boost at part throttle with the shortest spool-up time. If I want the fastest turbo response, I MUST go WOT. Otherwise, the boost control valve never fully closes, it stays at whatever duty cycle is required for whatever boost level the ECU is targeting for that throttle position. I'm loving the smooth, easily modulated power compared to MBC. Fingers crossed, I'm hoping this trend continues, I haven't been hitting the 21 psi boost cut and with boost by gear activated, I can better trust traction in 1st and 2nd gears. With fresh 200TW tires and the 3.63 differential gearing, it's been hooking up with 13 psi in 1st, 16 psi in 2nd, and 18 psi in 3rd+ gears, it MOVES. One of these days I'll re-enable launch control and try a some 0-60 runs (timed using my phone as well as confirmed with data logs), maybe also some 50-70 times in 5th gear (1:1 ratio). There are still lots of settings to play with, I haven't even looked into traction control or how to ramp up timing/boost smoothly after launching to help avoid spinning tires.