Emissions & Ignition Timing strategy - 2001 IS300
11-20-18, 05:20 PM
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Emissions & Ignition Timing strategy - 2001 IS300
I have modded my IS300 in a way that is probably not that common. I kept the stock engine and automatic transmission and added turbo to it. My goal was to be able to easily pass emissions by putting the stock injectors back into the car and unplugging the ProEFI 128 ecu when it came time to get a sticker. The car has a cat and has front/rear O2 sensors. My other goal was to retain all the functionality of the automatic transmission. I had one built by PTE and it feels great shifting vs. the stock one I removed.
Well, after all my hard work and foresight, the damn traction control light was still lit. I have the stock maf in draw thru pre-compressor. It's never seeing any boost pressures but it is seeing more airflow than it ever did in stock form. In any case, I'm here to ask some questions and hopefully get some help on some things since the ecu is fighting me the whole way here. I'm not interested in swapping to a stick shift in this car or entertaining any different ECU setup than what I have.
As I understand it, the A340E transmission has a weird setup in terms of how the solenoids are controlled, being that they're PWM solenoids and not just on/off like a lot of automatic transmissions are. This presents an interesting problem because there are no "good" aftermarket ecus that can control this transmission, and that's why I believe many people just pull it out and swap to a stick shift. That's easy AND expensive.... well maybe not even easy. Anyway, that's not the route I decided upon. My car still shifts properly but doesn't have traction control anymore. I intend to, in the future, tap into wheel speed sensors on the car to let the ProEFI control the traction of the car because it has good strategies to do so.
I know I'm jumping all over the place here, but I'll try to summarize at the end. The stock o2 sensors are still hooked up to the stock ecu. I have 2 pre-cat sensors and 2 post-cat sensors just like the stock setup.... well kinda. This didn't work because the stock ecu complains about the o2 sensors being out of range. The stock system has 2 pre-cat sensors, one on each bank. Then, the rear bank of 3 cylinders has a post cat sensor in between that bank's cat and the rear cat after the y-pipe. There is then, another sensor behind all of it before the tailpipe/muffler after the last cat. So there are 3 cats in the car. 2 sensors in front of all of them, one in the middle, and one at the very end. I suspect that this middle sensor being installed in the stream of all 6 cylinders post cat is the problem, but I'm not 100% sure on it. If it's expecting to see some kind of richer mixture than the last sensor sees then this makes sense.
My last point I'd like to talk about is, does anyone have any pictures or can anyone talk about what the timing looks like for a VVTI engine with pump gas? My car already smoked a ring land, or at least that's what I think happened, before boost was even applied to the car (turbo plumbed, oiled, cooled, etc but no wga attached so the flapper can just blow open and never make boost). My suspicion is that some very crappy old premium unleaded caused this problem because we heard pinging at mid throttle before the motor started smoking badly and filling the intercooler with oil. The turbo is fine and is not leaking, it's brand new and I've already tested it. The oil puking was strictly from the pcv system just dumping oil back into the intake.... or at least that's the only thing that makes sense. I'm going to get another GE motor and install all this crap again and start over, but I want to avoid the problem I ran into (won't buy gas in the middle of nowhere Texas panhandle again). The fuel setup is a little different as well. I used an aristo pump that goes into the stock location on an is300 without modification so that I have a return system instead of a dead head system like the car has stock. The aristo pump fills a Radium Engineering surge tank and receives drain back from the surge tank as well. The surge tank has a built in pressure regulator that dumps excess pressure right back into the can without ever leaving the can..... and the rest of the system is like the stock dead head. Pressure is maintained in the rail like the stock car had. This provided a "bolt on" setup without a bunch of pump hanger modification to make bigger pumps fit and etc. My gas gauge still reads properly.
To summarize:
1. What does "good" timing control on a modified GE VVTI motor look like with turbo?
2. How can you make the car pass emissions "properly" with a turbo installed?
3. Is there any way to get my stock traction control back that is "not happy" because of the o2 sensor problem the stock ecu is seeing?
Mods:
Stabilizer bars all the way around
Water to air intercooler,
BW 6758 EFR turbo
Treadstone cast manifold w/ adapters to EFR v-band
ID 1050x injectors
ProEFI 128 ecu installed "piggyback" mode w/ stock ecu in place to control auto trans
PTE built transmission
Aristo pump in stock location feeding Radium Engineering fuel surge tank in trunk.
Everything else on the car is stock. I hope to get some sort of discussion going, I know this is not a typical build because I did everything the hard way on purpose to keep the auto trans in the car. The goal for this car is not something crazy HP wise, but just to have a bit more power than stock while still having a stock appearance. Thank you for reading if you've made it this far and I look forward to making some new friends on this site.
Well, after all my hard work and foresight, the damn traction control light was still lit. I have the stock maf in draw thru pre-compressor. It's never seeing any boost pressures but it is seeing more airflow than it ever did in stock form. In any case, I'm here to ask some questions and hopefully get some help on some things since the ecu is fighting me the whole way here. I'm not interested in swapping to a stick shift in this car or entertaining any different ECU setup than what I have.
As I understand it, the A340E transmission has a weird setup in terms of how the solenoids are controlled, being that they're PWM solenoids and not just on/off like a lot of automatic transmissions are. This presents an interesting problem because there are no "good" aftermarket ecus that can control this transmission, and that's why I believe many people just pull it out and swap to a stick shift. That's easy AND expensive.... well maybe not even easy. Anyway, that's not the route I decided upon. My car still shifts properly but doesn't have traction control anymore. I intend to, in the future, tap into wheel speed sensors on the car to let the ProEFI control the traction of the car because it has good strategies to do so.
I know I'm jumping all over the place here, but I'll try to summarize at the end. The stock o2 sensors are still hooked up to the stock ecu. I have 2 pre-cat sensors and 2 post-cat sensors just like the stock setup.... well kinda. This didn't work because the stock ecu complains about the o2 sensors being out of range. The stock system has 2 pre-cat sensors, one on each bank. Then, the rear bank of 3 cylinders has a post cat sensor in between that bank's cat and the rear cat after the y-pipe. There is then, another sensor behind all of it before the tailpipe/muffler after the last cat. So there are 3 cats in the car. 2 sensors in front of all of them, one in the middle, and one at the very end. I suspect that this middle sensor being installed in the stream of all 6 cylinders post cat is the problem, but I'm not 100% sure on it. If it's expecting to see some kind of richer mixture than the last sensor sees then this makes sense.
My last point I'd like to talk about is, does anyone have any pictures or can anyone talk about what the timing looks like for a VVTI engine with pump gas? My car already smoked a ring land, or at least that's what I think happened, before boost was even applied to the car (turbo plumbed, oiled, cooled, etc but no wga attached so the flapper can just blow open and never make boost). My suspicion is that some very crappy old premium unleaded caused this problem because we heard pinging at mid throttle before the motor started smoking badly and filling the intercooler with oil. The turbo is fine and is not leaking, it's brand new and I've already tested it. The oil puking was strictly from the pcv system just dumping oil back into the intake.... or at least that's the only thing that makes sense. I'm going to get another GE motor and install all this crap again and start over, but I want to avoid the problem I ran into (won't buy gas in the middle of nowhere Texas panhandle again). The fuel setup is a little different as well. I used an aristo pump that goes into the stock location on an is300 without modification so that I have a return system instead of a dead head system like the car has stock. The aristo pump fills a Radium Engineering surge tank and receives drain back from the surge tank as well. The surge tank has a built in pressure regulator that dumps excess pressure right back into the can without ever leaving the can..... and the rest of the system is like the stock dead head. Pressure is maintained in the rail like the stock car had. This provided a "bolt on" setup without a bunch of pump hanger modification to make bigger pumps fit and etc. My gas gauge still reads properly.
To summarize:
1. What does "good" timing control on a modified GE VVTI motor look like with turbo?
2. How can you make the car pass emissions "properly" with a turbo installed?
3. Is there any way to get my stock traction control back that is "not happy" because of the o2 sensor problem the stock ecu is seeing?
Mods:
Stabilizer bars all the way around
Water to air intercooler,
BW 6758 EFR turbo
Treadstone cast manifold w/ adapters to EFR v-band
ID 1050x injectors
ProEFI 128 ecu installed "piggyback" mode w/ stock ecu in place to control auto trans
PTE built transmission
Aristo pump in stock location feeding Radium Engineering fuel surge tank in trunk.
Everything else on the car is stock. I hope to get some sort of discussion going, I know this is not a typical build because I did everything the hard way on purpose to keep the auto trans in the car. The goal for this car is not something crazy HP wise, but just to have a bit more power than stock while still having a stock appearance. Thank you for reading if you've made it this far and I look forward to making some new friends on this site.
Last edited by daddystop; 11-20-18 at 05:27 PM.
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hshak2006
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