I just got off phone with mike@mynes and he assured me that the fuel injector upgrade and spark plug upgrade and coil pack change should fix my issue. I asked him about the original tune and he said they tuned the car to what they had to work with in terms of me having stock injectors and stock spark plugs.
They plan to do a install of the new injectors, coil pack and spark plugs + new ECU flash and and dyno run.
I'm at 61k and only the spark plugs (stock) have been replaced during my 60k service and that my coilpack has not been replaced since I first got my car.
Hey Kam, I'm in LA myself... and have an auto. And a 17% and a tune. And the JCW (380) injectors.
Another factor is that we only have 91 octane gas in California.
Back when they removed 92 or 93 octane (i'm getting old, I forgot when) I was running a 300ZX twin turbo.
At that point, folks had a choice. Go to an aquamist setup, or turn down the boost.
While I'm no engineer, I do remember the major 300Z folks saying that at some point you had diminishing returns and no amount of fuel could support 16lbs of boost (on the Nissan engine, etc etc).
I'm pretty sure California has the WORST gas available in the nation.
And while I didn't go as far as to check coils, wire conditions, fuel filters, etc, my car had about 8k miles on it when it got it's first round of upgrades. And 12k when the 380cc (JCW) injectors went in.
And Blimey, my injector maps are still close to maxed out at some point on the RPM curve... hence the desire to switch to 550s and a tune that can handle them.
Who wants to send Kam and I some gas?
PS. With 100 octane in the tank, the detonation goes away on the JCW injectors. With the stock injectors it would STILL ping with 100% 100 octane in it.
Rooster - interesting that you're running close to the edge with your injectors...
I'm definitely not anti-big-injectors... I just don't think everyone needs them equally. You also need a tune that can accommodate them. And be sure the car never gets flashed back to a factory map. :devil:
Rooster, yeah it's definitely related to the octane. I usually fill up at 76 or shell and of course 91. It was explained to me that the 17% was the best bang for your buck for the auto mini since it's by the rev. I've herd a bunch of good things about Jan he was a good about checking out my car and hooking his laptop up and checking my ecu. He thinks the pinging is related to the fuel pump. Saturday I'm running over toe Ronin Autowerks and they're going to check a few things out since they worked on my car for the 60k maintenance. Pressure test the fuel pump, check the filter and all that. So hopefully that will rule out the easy things and then go from there.
I'm in Long Beach Rooster there are quite a few local guys out here on MA and Motoring Underground.
I'll be interested to see what they find out. Especially since our cars seem to exhibit similar symptoms... but again, mine did this with like 8k miles on it.
While brand new factory parts might have been causing issues, it's pretty unlikely.
Like I said, 100 octane and stock injectors would still ping. On the JCWs 100 octane is enough to keep the car quiet. Next stop (eventually) 550s.
Normally, i'd suggest the 380cc ($200 to $250) if you do not planned to upgrade your car any more after this point (i.e. no cam or header or IC, etc)... But if you have the upgrade itch down the road, then the 550cc ($300 new) is the best bang for the dollar.
As a tuner, we can only make recommendation. Whether or not people take our advice is up to them. When we did the 17% pulley upgrade originally, i highly recommended that a tune be performed at the same time. But that was turned down so the car left with the factory tune on the 17% pulley installed. Then we made arrangements two weeks later for the dyno tune.
Typically we ask the customer ahead of time of what their goals are from the beginning so we can recommend a mod list that fits the budget.
Another thing to remember is that your car is 'live' - which means its parts do experience wear and tear. So the tune may have been a static state at any given point in time, but when parts wear out and deteriorate, the status of the car will change. In this case, it may be as simple as a bad set of spark plugs. But with the bigger injectors, new colder plugs and new coil pack/wires, your car will be running much safer with a tune to tie everything together.
We will get it all sorted out on the dyno tomorrow.
Mike installed a new oem coil pack + new wires and NGK 1 step colder plugs. The pinging isn't as consistent as before so that has helped, this weekend I'm going to take it in to Ronin Autowerks the shop that did my service and have them check the bypass valve, fuel pump and fuel filter to see if any of those are faulty.
If the bypass valve, fuel pump and fuel filter on the car are perfectly fine. The only thing left would be the stock injectors. I'm going the simple route as Dr. Ob has mentioned.. fix the small things first and those don't resolve the issue then it's a matter of elimination.
I'm going to be looking in the near future to get new injectors, camshaft and a retune.
The engine pinging has finally been fixed. I had to bite the bullet and completely upgrade my fuel injectors and get a retune.
RMW camed down and checked my car out, we went through a few hoops to isolate the issue. I had a new coil pack and wires, ngk 1 step colder spark plugs, fuel pump installed, and then I went ahead and had 440 injectors and a RWM cam shaft installed. Had my ECU flashed and then had a street tune done to get it running safely again. Then I had it tuned on a dyno by Jan yesterday and I ended up getting 211hp and 197.7tq.
Before I had the cam installed I was geting 165hp. Man what a difference the all of those things made. My gas mileage has gone up from 20-25mpg to 29-34mpg on the freeways... amazing.
Jan was pretty thorough with everything explained where he made the changes and what settings were off. A few maps needed to be adjusted but everything is safer and I get no pinging. Jan suggested I might want to try Chevron instead of Shell gas and then he's going to run some sea foam through the car to clean it up a bit to remove anything that might be lingering.
Cheers JCC! I just wanted to have a answer for people just in case they came across the same issue. When I searched a lot of the threads weren't resolved and left unanswered! :arf:
As far as gas mileage goes are you basing that on what your onboard computer is saying or by just doing the math per tank load of gas ? With bigger injectors your onboard computer is thrown off quite a bit . I made that mistake when i put in 400 cc units and thought i was getting better mileage which was not the case .
Sounds like he needed more fuel to be delivered. Autos in California with 17% pulleys don't seem to like pump gas. At least not on stock or JCW injectors.
it's looking like the car was in a lean condition. But other cars with those parts don't always run lean. Whatever it was, going to higher capacity injectors and tuning for how the car is seems to have cured it. Whether it fixed the root cause or just compensated for an existing condition I can't see a way to know for sure.
