How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

[ethanol-smart]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

I've skim read the Civinco piece (a struggle as not all words translate) and so far I've seen, as you say, the ECU go to closed loop at 2900rpm and the Lambda read 0.8-0.9V. If 0.45V is stoich', what AFR is 0.8-0.9V? Just how rich (fat) does it go?

Re fly-by-wire: page#9 dealing with methods of boost control has this:

''Step 5
Another step is to connect into the accelerator and let the boost pressure can be controlled by how hard you step on
gas. The prerequisite for this is that the e-gas, that an electrical signal from the accelerator, which in no way
proportional to throttle position.''

Which I interpret as: stamping the gas pedal to the floor (at lower rpm) does not immediately open the throttle plate to wide open.
Thus the gas pedal position is a driver command indicating the torque output he/she requires and the ECU opens the throttle plate with that command in mind and according to how much air the engine can actually inhale at its instantaneous rpm. (The directness of the gas pedal command being the raw signal to up boost level). Make sense?

Beyond that I need to re-read. PWM and PID confusion and a translation into 'damper' and 'gate'. Is 'gate' wastegate, throttle plate, other? Damper? Plenum?

Looking at the (first) log on page#5, the first 5 or so seconds shows fluctuating MAP and fueling- why? The fueling looks to be responding to the MAP - correct? The Lambda to the fueling, or the increased air with increased MAP? And the first 12 or so seconds shows wildly fluctuating Lambda despite the fueling and MAP between 5.3 and 10.5 seconds being stable, even though increasing rapidly. Why all the oscillations?
Last question - TOT fuel. What is TOT?

An interesting piece ES - thanks.

Thanks T.

A correct translation of Step 5 would be: "The prerequisite for this is that the e-gas, that an electrical signal from the accelerator, which in some way is proportional to throttle position.''

PWM is english and stands for Pulse Width Modulation, PID , I think is Property ID, but I didnt find it now in the text, where is it?

About the diagram on page5, I think those fluctuatiions of MAP and Fuel is simply the result from a very quick hit on the pedal, but Im not sure.
Fuel is responding directly, yes, lambda to maintain the stoichometric mixture as a result of air and fuel amounts.
The osciallations is simply how the lambda control works, by oscillatiing around the lambda 1 value = 0.45V from the lambda sensor, which is rapidly switching its voltage from about 0.2V to 0.8V when the exhausts are going from lean to rich, and back again.
TOT fuel is simply total fuel

[ethanol-smart]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

What an amazing thread. What you have accomplished is fascinating.
I am interested in water/methanol injection for the Smart and we sort of cross paths there.
I will aim to replace the 'cooling fuel' with the W/M mix.
I assume you will not be able to dial all the 'cooling fuel' out without knocking, and therefore will still have to run a little rich under load for combustion chamber cooling?
Is the ignition system at all stretched by the modifications? Do you run regular sparkplugs or colder ones?
Cheers!

Thanks Kaptain!
It is a good question, I hope that I will be able to take away great deal of the extra fuel, but this needs to be investigated carefully ofcourse. I will probably mount a exhaust temperature sensor in order to judge this, once I have possibility to manipulate the fuel amount.
Ignition is still also in original, but will be optimized too.
There I expect to see the most efficiency gain on normal load.
I go for std sparkplugs for now. The coils with HT leads wiil be replaced by original new colis, or Mercedes twinspark coils, but mounted in a more nice environment due to reliabilty reasons, se my other thread: http://www.smartmaniacs.co.uk/showth...-Hmm-misfiring
In the process I will also beable to put loong enough sparkconnectros, so a normal hand can disconnect them without any special tools....
WHY, Mercedes put this **** on????
Looking forward to you Methanol project!!

[Kapt. Q]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

Wizard of Nos described the same ignition problems in his experiments with the smart engine and NOS. I am sure I will have the same problem, so I am very interested in any solution you may come up with.
Once the ignition is sorted you might consider adding a straight water injection system, this would allow you to replace all the cooling fuel with water and then being able to run it even leaner still under load as exhaust gas temps would likely be lower than they are now. More mpg/km's!
Cheers!

[ethanol-smart]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

Wizard of Nos described the same ignition problems in his experiments with the smart engine and NOS. I am sure I will have the same problem, so I am very interested in any solution you may come up with.
Once the ignition is sorted you might consider adding a straight water injection system, this would allow you to replace all the cooling fuel with water and then being able to run it even leaner still under load as exhaust gas temps would likely be lower than they are now. More mpg/km's!
Cheers!

He did? Did he also increase CR?
I have only problem on one cyl, the rest are fine.
Water injection is interesting, should have been in the stressed Smart from beginning, as I see it!

[Kapt. Q]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

I think his problems were caused more by the overboost levels he was using rather than any change of compression, they were caused by faulty plugs, wires and coils at times. I think it is because it is asking too much of the stock system, but I do not know. Your thread has been very useful to me because my thoughts had all been focused on overboost and I had not really considered a significant compression change, which is so obvious as to make me feel stupid (boost fixation, lol).

Ultimately I would like to build a blueprinted and dynamicaly balanced engine with forged rods and crank, with attention to the head and valvetrain for better high rpm performance. At the moment I am planing to use my own mildly modded and tuned engine as a test bed to get a better understanding of the injection (I will be trying pre-turbo injection too) and ignition. I am meeting with a technichian from Aquamist this week to get some help, advice and the hardware.
Cheers!

[ethanol-smart]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

U are a bit excused by not thinking of increasing CR, in most engines, it is quite complicated task, valves will collide with piston etc.
The funny thing with Smart is that it actually seems to have been an NA engine that got only added material in the CH, before turbo-boosting it...
Normally, its done the other way around by the OEMs, by changing to bowl pistons and/or Shorter conrods.

[ethanol-smart]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

T. forgot to answer your fist question;

so far I've seen, as you say, the ECU go to closed loop at 2900rpm and the Lambda read 0.8-0.9V. If 0.45V is stoich', what AFR is 0.8-0.9V? Just how rich (fat) does it go?

The thing with narrow band lambda sensors is that U cant really tell. It only indicates to the ECU to go leaner. The same if there is 0.1V: go richer!
U need a wide band lambda sensor to know what you actually are running at.
I have that on my AMGC36, and the lean running potential of Ethanol is stunning, without even altering the ignition timing, the engine runs fine, without any misfiring, up to and over lambda 1.25.
Up to at least 4000 rpm, I have tried, ofcourse with low crusing load.
At those high lambdas, ignition should be set much more advanced though in order to get most mileage out from the fuel.

[Kapt. Q]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

Hi ES, will you be doing dyno runs with this engine while dialing in the mixture under boost? I would be very interested to see any data collected. Whatever happens please keep us posted. It will be interesting to see how lean you can go.
Cheers!

[ethanol-smart]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

Hi ES, will you be doing dyno runs with this engine while dialing in the mixture under boost? I would be very interested to see any data collected. Whatever happens please keep us posted. It will be interesting to see how lean you can go.
Cheers!

Once I have got the ignition problems sorted, I will start to try to get a way to run lean.
Logging will then be neccessary. Will keep U posted here!

[ethanol-smart]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

Igntion coils are now replaced with new BERU coils.
For now mounted in original postion, will be moved out somewhere on the body with longer HT-leads later when I have time.
Engine was better, but there was a knocking sound and when a bit heat was built up, slight misfiring and even backfiring.
I was confused but decided to take out the spark plugs, which all looked almost perfect some 1000 km ago when I milled the cylinderhead and put it back.
These NGK std plugs are maximum 3000 km old.
I was chocked when I saw cyl 2:s plugs. They where both with a cracked insulator, and the inlet plug had even one of the side electrode melted together with the center.
Seems to be too warm plugs really for this new engine configuration.
Any tip from the tuners here what plugs to use?
I also looked with endoscope down the cylinder but nothing special to see there.
The cyl1 and 3 plugs all looks the same, a bit sooty, but generally only looking used a bit over time.
When I hade replaced the plugs with similar new ones, the engine runs like a charm again.
Problem solved.
Probably cyl2 igntion coil was starting to give weak spark, making the plugs to overheat a bit more than the other two.

However..
After the increased compression, unfortunately, I have started to note a higher oil consumption...
I see now a blue smoke when rewing the engine so I guess that it was a mistake to not do the oil rings when I had it almost all down...
Maybe the stupid overheatings during some weeks in winter made the oil cooking too much in the ring groves.
Its a shame, but Im starting to think if there really isnt any way to solve them up.
Some write about flushing, I guess that is some oil meant to flush the whole engine.
But what about pouring some solvent in the cylinders and let it leak down to the oil rings, gasoline, E85, kerosene (?), and stand for some days, could it work?
Anyone tried that?
The reason I ask is obvious ofcourse...I dont like the idea of taking apart the whole engine...
To my support in this case is that the pistons are not yet burned, it seems to be only the oil rings stuck, sp new pistons are not needed, only loosening the oilrings.

[ethanol-smart]

Re: How much can be milled off the Cylinder head?

OK, the story goes on..
I need colder sparkplugs! They melt down side-elektrodes in intake side, probably due to the higher compression ratio.

According to carsparkplugs.com these plugs are the correct ones:

Coupe 0.6L Petrol 1999 - 2003

Twin Spark M160 E6

BKR6EKE - NGK Spark Plug (5649) K20TXR - Denso Copper Cored Spark Plug (5063) FR6KDE0 - Bosch Super Plus Spark Plug BKR6EIX - NGK Iridium IX Spark Plug (6418) VK20 - Denso Iridium Tough Spark Plug (5604) RC87YCC - Champion Spark Plug (OE102)

Now, I cant find BKR7EKE
and niether K22TXR anywhere. Where can I buy 2 elektrodes, resistor plugs with colder heat range?
Denso VK22 seems to exist, but as VK20, these Iridium plugs arent an economic first choise...15Eu times 6 for a set is a bit hefty.

Hmm
According http://www.globaldenso.com/en/produc...pec/index.html

,we have these heat values for the different manufacturers:

Heat Range DENSO NGK CHAMPION BOSCH 9 2 18 10 14 4 16,14 9 16 5 12,11 8 20 6 10,9 7,6 22 7 8,7 5 24 8 6,63,61 4 27 9 4,59 3 29 9.5 57 31 10 55 2 32 10.5 53 34 11 35 11.5

It seems like Champions plugs RC87YCC - Champion Spark Plug (OE102) are as cold as BKR7EKE (if they would exist)
Anyone tried the Champion RC87YCC in high output, tuned Smarts?

Found now NGK NGK spark plug BKR7EKC / BKR7-EKC to very low prices on Ebay...are they working in a Smart? I didnt find what difference an EKC makes compared to an EKE..?