I plan to share my tuning tips and tricks along with the basics for the DIY tuner. I have always had a passion for cars, I love the old school hot-rodding of taking parts from anything and making them work. This led me down the path of the DIY standalone EMS systems, I love to learn new things and taught myself how to tune by reading and watching everything I could find.
I'm not seeing closed loop idle PID activation settings nor disable RPMdot in tuner studio? I'm using registered Tuner Studio MS and my idle settings does not show that feature. I'm using V3.1.03. Do you happen to know if those settings have been moved around? You mention these settings @11:33
The version of tuner studio you are running does not have an effect on these settings, however the firmware in the ECU does have an effect. In this video I was using an MS2, the MS3 uses mostly similar settings but those can change drastically based on firmware
I inherited the mega-squirt have learned a lot but still a lot to go. I have a now good running car but I had to remove the distributor to re-clock it to make room for the big fuel rails. While running the timing light is showing -10 and the computer screen was showing +15. So If I follow your steps to get these to numbers to align them selves again I am good to go with out worrying about turning the distributor any? Thanks!
If you are reading -10 with an offset of 15 then you have 0* of mechanical advance.. assuming a locked timing value of 20* for every 1 degree of offset you get 2* on crankshaft. Larger offset values decrease timing at the crank. set your offset angle to 10 and adjust the distributor. However some prefer to run an offset value of 0*.
Thank you for this tutorial. I wasn't aware I can adjust it like this. Can you help with warm up enrichment? My Mustang runs like garbage until it hits about 145 degrees.
Of course, WUE is simple to tune. When the engine is cold it will need quite a bit more fuel, try and set the WUE so that the AFR is 1 to 1.5 AFR richer than your normal idle AFR. In order to give you a better response I will need to see exactly what the engine is doing. you can email me at blackfoxefi@gmail.com with the tune and a datalog along with a description of the issue
If I install a new distributor. Set Fixed timing at 20deg. With my trigger wizard at 0.00. Let’s say it reads 5deg at the balancer. I can’t just turn the distributor until I get 20deg? Then fine tune it with the trigger wizard? Thanks for all your knowledge and vids.
curious of a good working position or range the idle valve should be around at idle on a fox? mainly the steps or percentage it should be at. 5 or maybe 10% at idle? if any of that makes sense
What's your knowledge on a small block chevy? I have a two wire dizzy locked out with a phasing rotor. I have it set with a base timing of 10, my trigger offset is 10. I turned the dizzy untill the fixed timing matched the balancer, any amount of throttle it pops out the exhaust. I cant find ANY information on how to do a simple sbc setup properly
Sounds like you have a rotor phasing issue.. check your trigger for proper edge. sounds like you may be triggering early and when the advance comes in its firing the previous cylinder. you can email me at blackfoxefi@gmail.com for more help
Well, my buddy with megasquirt experience said to get my car set to to 20 degrees...I had the intake off/distributor off (SBF 351W) and I put the distributor back in and got to getting the 20 marked on the balancer to set it to. IT WAS DEAD ON 20 without even loosening the distributor. Then I said I will try to do it then have him double check me, so I searched and got here and BFT says set it to 20. Then the trigger decoder opens and has "20" on it. Nice. Rather be lucky than good any day. Remember to set back to table or you will be stuck on 20 degrees lol. I have to say it would be a lot easier to be able to pull the spout and not have the timing jumping around at all when you set it. Could just plug the real base timing in and be done, but that might be a Foxbody thing. Anyways, I am pretty sure it won't run with the spout out anyways.
In a basic trigger mode the offset cannot simply be discarded, that is what the base timing is set too. You also have to take rotor phasing into account, 360* of rotation /8 gives you 45* of rotor movement across the distributor per cylinder. We want to make sure we dont cross fire from one plug to another so we have to trim that down even further so we dont get scatterspark. lets say we have 35* of useful movement of the rotor but it is likely less. This is a narrow window to work in, The base timing is the lowest value that we can command. So if we discard the offset it will limit the amount of advance we can run or it can cause the maximum advance to be limited. You have to have the distributor somewhere in the 0-20* range for base timing, The ecu will accept this just fine. However with any installation the rotor phasing needs to be checked. by using a base timing in the 5-10* range you will fall safely in the range the distributor was designed for.
The 4 idle configuration videos are very good, I have been trying to adjust the closed cycle without good results for a long time, I encourage you to make other videos, for example, how to adjust the ignition well either in dyno or on the street, a greeting and thanks, keep it up
