Apexi' NEO tuning/general tuning advice

[mattmk3]

Originally Posted by cre

I don't have time to go over this tonight, but here's a tip. Smell the exhaust. Unburnt fuel causes a lean reading on a wideband. You are fighting with this more than someone with experience but no more than any other novice, especially when they've made too many changes at the same time. Set the fuel pressure to stock. Set the NEO to zero across the board. Look to see how far rich or low you are across the board and make a mainscale adjustment to account for that. Then trim each section as needed on an individual basis. The ECU doesn't learn how the engine is running from one single session and I believe it continually adjusts to changes as well. After the first couple drives it should be pretty well set though. Resetting the ECU when the car is cold or hot isn't going to do much it's looking at averages from multiple samples.

DON'T PANIC A lean idle isn't an engine killer unless other things are wrong (no EGR to cool things down, heavily advance ignition, etc.).

Is the stock O2 sensor still installed? Or is the AEM providing the ECU with a narrowband signal? If the AEM is providing the signal make sure it's properly scaled and the wiring is rock solid... Doesn't take much to throw the signal off enough to cause the ECU to think the AFR is WAY off and perpetually over correct.

Just noticed an error I made, I said RICH when it should have said lean frying things but i think you picked up on that.

I've been driving it around, it feels awesome, and I've gotten into boost and it's actually a nice range of mostly around 11-11.5, dips to 10.5 at some points but in full boost, never hits 12. So it's actually boosting quite nicely. I think it may still be learning idle and cruise though because it has dropped from 17.9/off the chart to 17 and idle sometimes goes down to 15 but then climbs back up. Maybe it's trying. I think I'm just over thinking it and just being paranoid.

Utilizing stock o2. EGR IS removed. Is that a possible problem for EGT's? I've been meaning to get an egt gauge. Timing is stock spec for turbo engine.

Side note: Since it's running well under boost, i decided to crank the boost up to 17 and see how it goes. A/f's are still solid, pulls like a maniac. Gota be sitting up towards 400whp (basing off of my last dyno results and what i did to get there).

The question: Twice and only twice, when I hit it hard, preloading and then dropping into the boost, It puffed a decent cloud of greyish smoke. Not white, and not the black shit i used to spit out. Is this an indication of anything bad or just a hard working engine? Only a puff, didn't do it the whole pull.

I'm going to go through and make sure all my intercooler pipes are nice and tight and make sure everything else is good to go for 17psi. My only other issue is a oil burning issue from what I've narrowed down to be the valve stem seals.

Thanks!