The Project Pad

Hey Nik this thread has been quiet on the 200? Any updates?

The 200 has been sitting since fall last year. It has had some parts borrowed from it and it's just hanging out in the garage looking pretty. I needed a break. Especially after building the Avant only to have it melt a cylinder 5 days after getting it completed. Both T44's have sat for quite some time while I re-gain desire/motivation to continue onward with them.

That being said, I just placed an order for the majority of parts needed to repair the Avant. It's my winter vehicle after all, so it should be up and running prior to snowfall. Better believe I won't be letting cylinder three run lean again. I'm now fairly certain there is something wrong with my VEMS unit. I will be confirming that once it's running.

The sedan will be back for next year. I think I've let enough time pass to finally want it back. Luckily I've been able to help Matt (my brother) with his built URS6 this summer to help keep my 5 cylinder spirits up. That and MY S3 has been keeping me busy too.

Thanks for the update. A year without sedan updates is rough!

Details on the VEMS/Avant issue would be nice when you get it resolved for sure.

I have a feeling there's an issue with one of the injector drivers. It's not dead, as the cylinder did fire but it's almost as if it's not providing the same output as the rest. I know that the Avant ran fine on Motronic for the year or so of owning it. Install VEMS, keep boost mostly stock and the car blew the HG on cyl 3. Full build, melts cyl 3. Too much is pointing to the VEMS unit. I need to obtain an oscilloscope and measure the output on each injector to confirm my suspicion. Then I'll go about installing a new driver.

Anyone know of a way to bench test VEMS? I could get to the bottom of this sooner than having the car running again.

Wow Nick is back !

That's really unfortunate what happened on your Avant :(

Just for my "culture", how could VEMS (with "boost mostly stock") could be responsible of a HG blown ?

Foscora wrote:Wow Nick is back !

That's really unfortunate what happened on your Avant :(

Just for my "culture", how could VEMS (with "boost mostly stock") could be responsible of a HG blown ?

An intermittent injector problem causing a lean condition (or slightly lean) on one cylinder might cause a cylinder to get hot enough to melt like that.

Like Chris said, lean AFR will cause detonation which in turn made cylinder pressures go through the roof. The weak link on a 350k engine with the stock paper head gasket was the gasket.

Build the whole thing properly, good surfaces, MLS head gasket, ARP hardware and crank the boost up and unfortunately the second time around the piston was the weak link.

Toast.

Oh ok, highest pressures, ofc. Thanks ! Well in this case, your analyse take sense to me !

I don't remember if anything was said about this, or If i said it so I'll throw it out there.
Check your injector wiring whenever you have the motivation to(I know the feeling). During the HG replacement and injector swap and yada yada it could have broken a connection or weakened a connection from moving the 20+ year old dry and burnt wires around. It could gain and lose connectivity periodically without you realizing it, especially under boost.

Between this and OB's UrS6, I'm wondering if it if might be a good idea to have an EGT sensor per cylinder when running standalone, just as a precaution.

If you just read your plugs you will be fine. I had my old motor trimmed out +- 5% on a few cylinders to get the plugs the same chocolate brown color across the board.

amd is the best wrote:The 200 has been sitting since fall last year. It has had some parts borrowed from it and it's just hanging out in the garage looking pretty. I needed a break. Especially after building the Avant only to have it melt a cylinder 5 days after getting it completed. Both T44's have sat for quite some time while I re-gain desire/motivation to continue onward with them.

That being said, I just placed an order for the majority of parts needed to repair the Avant. It's my winter vehicle after all, so it should be up and running prior to snowfall. Better believe I won't be letting cylinder three run lean again. I'm now fairly certain there is something wrong with my VEMS unit. I will be confirming that once it's running.

The sedan will be back for next year. I think I've let enough time pass to finally want it back. Luckily I've been able to help Matt (my brother) with his built URS6 this summer to help keep my 5 cylinder spirits up. That and MY S3 has been keeping me busy too.

Man this is glad to hear, I thought the S3 had completely taken you over.

amd is the best wrote:I have a feeling there's an issue with one of the injector drivers. It's not dead, as the cylinder did fire but it's almost as if it's not providing the same output as the rest. I know that the Avant ran fine on Motronic for the year or so of owning it. Install VEMS, keep boost mostly stock and the car blew the HG on cyl 3. Full build, melts cyl 3. Too much is pointing to the VEMS unit. I need to obtain an oscilloscope and measure the output on each injector to confirm my suspicion. Then I'll go about installing a new driver.

Anyone know of a way to bench test VEMS? I could get to the bottom of this sooner than having the car running again.

I'm very curious about your issue, I work in the IoT field and we deploy tons of micro controllers and devices (Printers, Thermostats, Solar Grids, Coffe machines, you name it we can probably make it talk to the internet) and most of my time is actually spent around error events or fluctuation of uptime reports (Similar to the one you're saying) the only difference being, these are for industrial or residential people with service contracts, or some other sla.

Anyway - The reason I bring this up, is if I could figure out what the ECU Hardware is on 'VEMS' I could probably find a way to create a program that would basically be a debugger if we knew expected values for each board component. I'm not sure even if VEMS is a compiled software - is it? I'm sure marc has all these answers, but seriously a little program written in any basic language could give you some real information.

Beyond that that could even be a small program that could be run on a phone or tablet (Using blue tooth) so you can always have realtime knowledge that the system is 100% functional. You could even build in some error reports that could email or do some little pop up message. Someday I will own a VEMS unit and it will probably be something I would be very willing to invest some time into, if it isn't rework.

Again - glad to see the sedan coming back he's a true american hero.


Edit:
Atmel RISC Microcontroller - Found it, reading now (what a low power option haha)

Edit again:

http://www.atmel.com/products/microcont ... gaavr.aspx - Anyone know which device they run from this list? Do they change hardware? cool that it uses RS232 cables... definitely have a few of those laying around, just no VEMS unit

pilihp2 wrote:I don't remember if anything was said about this, or If i said it so I'll throw it out there.
Check your injector wiring whenever you have the motivation to(I know the feeling). During the HG replacement and injector swap and yada yada it could have broken a connection or weakened a connection from moving the 20+ year old dry and burnt wires around. It could gain and lose connectivity periodically without you realizing it, especially under boost.

The issues arose just after the VEMS instal. The car ran fine on motronic the whole time I've owned it. Install VEMS and bang, head gasket blew. I did test the wiring a bit. Nothing too extensive however all checked out well. Same resistance from
Ecu to injector as the other. Shook the shit out of the harness and no changes. I'm still willing to put my money on it being an issue with VEMS. I did get the unit used and it would suck to find out that it came from a car that toasted cylinder three...

audifreakjim wrote:If you just read your plugs you will be fine. I had my old motor trimmed out +- 5% on a few cylinders to get the plugs the same chocolate brown color across the board.

This had to have been more than 5% off for the carnage that took place. I didn't even have time to read the plugs either. There was no indication of a problem. Went out tuning and popped. No audible detonation because E85. Shitty situation.

amd is the best wrote:I have a feeling there's an issue with one of the injector drivers. It's not dead, as the cylinder did fire but it's almost as if it's not providing the same output as the rest. I know that the Avant ran fine on Motronic for the year or so of owning it. Install VEMS, keep boost mostly stock and the car blew the HG on cyl 3. Full build, melts cyl 3. Too much is pointing to the VEMS unit. I need to obtain an oscilloscope and measure the output on each injector to confirm my suspicion. Then I'll go about installing a new driver.

Anyone know of a way to bench test VEMS? I could get to the bottom of this sooner than having the car running again.

the nature of the transistors that drive fueling in the ecu make it hard to fathom partial failure. all or nothing is much more likely. when they do fail, all the ones I've seen fail full closed or full open.

to answer your question regarding a bench test, the right way to go would be to feed it with a trigger signal (I use the jimstim), hook it up to real fuel injectors so the drivers will get good and hot, and simulate load by feeding some pressure into the map port, the duty cycle will go up (or you can just change the req_fuel so the injectors reach your desired duty cycle).

anyways, once you have the duty cycle stable, hook a multi-channel scope up to the - trigger lead on your injectors in question and log the pulsewidth. look for variations over a long period of time. record a vemslog at the same time to make sure nothing changes on the ecu side that changes pulsewidth.

also, if you are worried about burning up your injectors (a possible concern with them just dry opening and closing for a long time) hook up some 12 ohm minimum 20 watt resistors instead on each injector channel you want to test.

It might be a good time to bring this up whether it is related to your issue or not. I know this has been on the minds of a few around here and some pretty bad misinformation (in my opinion) has been spread around.

I have had a few "customers" try to blame the injectors themselves in similar situations to this. So far, all who have been claiming issues like this have been running E85. I have been able to get two of these customers to scrutinize their fuel systems and send the injectors in to be inspected and cleaned. In both cases, the fuel systems inspected by the owners were dirty and the injectors were reported by FID to be filthy as well.

I don't know exactly what injectors you're using in the avant (I think you said 870 cc, non-EV14), but EV14 injectors have 5-6 micron internal filters in them due to VERY tight clearances at the pintle. No one makes an inline 5 micron filter yet, but the filter manufacturers are working to bring them to market because of the EV14 injector filters being so small and issues with e85 additives coming out of solution. I recommend at least a 100 micron filter pre-pump and 10 micron post pump for those running E85. I have been scared away from E85 for these reasons and the revver will be running race gas for sure now. It is just too valuable to risk in order to run a cheaper and more available fuel.

I'll be running a previously clogged up and now cleaned set of EV14 1200s in my avant when I put VEMS in as a way to prove the reliability of the injectors (25k + miles a year should be good data). Anyway, maybe this information will help for your avant and your sedan.

loxxrider wrote:It might be a good time to bring this up whether it is related to your issue or not. I know this has been on the minds of a few around here and some pretty bad misinformation (in my opinion) has been spread around.

I have had a few "customers" try to blame the injectors themselves in similar situations to this. So far, all who have been claiming issues like this have been running E85. I have been able to get two of these customers to scrutinize their fuel systems and send the injectors in to be inspected and cleaned. In both cases, the fuel systems inspected by the owners were dirty and the injectors were reported by FID to be filthy as well.

I don't know exactly what injectors you're using in the avant (I think you said 870 cc, non-EV14), but EV14 injectors have 5-6 micron internal filters in them due to VERY tight clearances at the pintle. No one makes an inline 5 micron filter yet, but the filter manufacturers are working to bring them to market because of the EV14 injector filters being so small and issues with e85 additives coming out of solution. I recommend at least a 100 micron filter pre-pump and 10 micron post pump for those running E85. I have been scared away from E85 for these reasons and the revver will be running race gas for sure now. It is just too valuable to risk in order to run a cheaper and more available fuel.

I'll be running a previously clogged up and now cleaned set of EV14 1200s in my avant when I put VEMS in as a way to prove the reliability of the injectors (25k + miles a year should be good data). Anyway, maybe this information will help for your avant and your sedan.

I'm running the same injectors (but a new set) that I had ran in the sedan for years. Siemens 870's. Ran on E85 for years without one E85 related issue (or any injector issue for the matter). Stock sock and filter but of course they were new. The injectors that were in the Avant when they failed are in another car running perfectly right now. So in my case, it was not injector related.

K, just making sure that even more misinformation is not assumed or implied

saw some instagram updates with gaskets and other nice things... cough bump cough

How about a harness issue? It is a high milage car after all, the injectors moving rules them out and I'm with Marc in that I've fried a couple similar kind of channels and never seen an intermittent failure. Maybe run multimeter leads from the injector plug pin back to the ECU and move it around/bend it/pull on the connector and harness to see if you see any resistance change and then do the same thing from the plug back to its 12v source?

I did check the harness. Checked continuity and resistance between ecu socket and each injector. All identical. The car also ran fine on Motronic for the year I drove it prior... I'm not ruling it out at all but it seems to be VEMS in this case. Once it's running I'll do extensive testing.

A variance is a variance... that it could be detected and logged/proven is entirely another thing... that we could try to mimic the same conditions and failure is yet another... Since I deal in finance my head is wired way, so I look at just like the economy, what are the leading, lagging and coincident indicators?

Jim is correct on the reading of the plugs as a leading indicator, but when is right to do so, how often & can you trust it? For example you could use bond yields as stock market indicators but it isn't always right ... The tune/map could be spot on and telling the hardware to do it's thing, but will the hardware always follow as directed? And by hardware I also include the hardware within the VEMS unit as well (as already stated here)... but from that point EVERYTHING & ANYTHING is and can be SUSPECT...

Have we seen faulty ECU's? Sure, just look in my thread last year...
Have we seen faulty wiring? Certainly, 20 year old cars...
Have we seen an injector go bad, ever? Just do a google search...
Have we seen e85 mixtures vary? It's actually a must in certain areas...

Could extra precautions like adding filters as mentioned above, re-wiring harnesses, periodic cleaning on injectors, per cylinder egt's, fuel pressure sensors, knock control ect, save these types of failures? Maybe... there's just too much gray area... what I do know, like many here, is of people that haven't gone to such extremes and have had success for years , be it on this platform or another...
What would it take for manufacturers, vendors, and supports of products & to a certain extent owners themselves to realize that all these parts are man made and therefore are fallible?... we take hits, we try to minimize them, we try again and the only thing that's repeatable is failure.
I just take it 1 step at a time, ask questions, rationalise, take a break and come back... Just sucks to have an unknown possible variable that could happen at any time...

I feel your pain, bro... I'd normally recommend a bigger turbo when all else fails, but I think you've already pretty much accomplished that

At least your Honda Grom provides plenty of diversion in the meantime...

The scientific method!

mushasho wrote:At least your Honda Grom provides plenty of diversion in the meantime...

As well as the S3 !

That said he already made a donut and a jump with the Grom. As he already did the donut in the snow, I look forward to see the S3 fly