Emerald Installation And Rolling Road Mapping

[Phil S1]

Glad you like it, looks like we're in for a spell of good weather so I'll be making good use of it.

I've now overlaid all 3 graphs, albeit from different rolling roads, of my standard engine v the KR1 ported head and then with the Emerald and Newman cams.

Graph 1 - Standard spec engine with Larini 4-2-1 manifold and Club Sport exhaust.

Graph 2 - As above with the addition of Sabre Heads KR1 ported head.

Graph 3 - As KR1 with addition of Newman phase 2 cams, Verniers, Emerald, de-wedged 48mm TB, K&N panel filter and 100mm intake pipe.

Rolling Road Emerald v KR1 v Std.doc

[legin]

Phil any chance you can overlay the mems with kr1 and cams im interested to see what the emerald added.

[Phil S1]

Yeah I could do that, it wouldn't be a true comparison though because along with the Emerald I also de-wedged the throttle body and fitted the K&N panel filter.

Might be the weekend before I get round to it but leave it with me....

[Phil S1]

Here we are then Legin, as promised, an overlay of the Emerald with the MEMS. As I mentioned previously the Emerald graph also has the de-wedged TB and K&N so maybe not a true comparison.

Nonetheless you can see there's a good gain in torque of up to 10 ftlb across the rev range:-

RR Graph Emerald v MEMS.xls

[legin]

Thanks Phil.Interesting how closely the curves follow each other. How is your tickover now you have the emerald ?

[Phil S1]

Tickover is much improved but could still do with a bit of fine tuning once I get more familiar with everything. It generally idles at around 950rpm but now and again it can drop slightly lower and get a bit lumpy so I might raise it slightly at some point.

[Phil S1]

I felt the need to just update this thread a little more.

Since fitting the Emerald there had still been a number of running issues with my car. The rolling road mapping was fine and the car performed really well on track but general on the road driving manners had been pretty poor:-

There was still the lumpiness between 1200 and 2200 rpm that we had previously encountered after the mapping. This made 30MPH zones a 2nd and 3rd gear affair, no chance of using 4th although I could sometimes get away with 5th on very light throttle (idling). Low speed manoeuvring was a bit of a nightmare too, requiring at least 2500 revs and a bit too much clutch slipping.

I had also been struggling to get a consistent idle so the car would sometimes want to cut out at junctions but then on another occasion would want to rev at say 1300 rpm.

Cold starting had been inconsistent too.

It's taken me quite a while to begin to get my head round the workings of the Emerald ECU but I had a moment of revelation last Monday night. After deciding to start the idle and cold start mapping all over again from scratch I discovered that the IACV was faulty. Although it sounded like it was working it was in fact just glitching about randomly. As part of the ECU mapping process you are required to manually control the IACV off the laptop to determine how far open it needs to be when the engine is cold and then how much to close it down every 10 degrees of temperature as the engine warms up. Once fully warm it should be near to or fully closed. For anyone not familiar, the IACV is basically a motorised valve with a piston that traverses in and out maybe 10mm. In doing so this allows air to bypass the throttle body. When I tried to control the idle speed off the laptop via the IACV there was no logic at all. I unbolted it from the inlet manifold and with it still plugged in was able to see that the piston wasn't traversing in and out. I had acquired a couple more over my many years of Lotus ownership and fortunately one of them actually did work... the ropiest looking one of course!

With that fitted, suddenly, setting the idle speed was a breeze and bit by bit everything else has fallen into place too. I've got the cold start sorted by adding a few more rotations of cranking enrichment and I have now also just about eliminated the low speed lumpiness. I hadn't noticed the lumpiness at all with the original supplied base map, it had only occurred after the mapping. So I compared the injection and ignition maps between the two and noticed some significant differences with the fuelling at the speed sites in question. My assumption is that the IACV had been playing up for some time and the fuelling was adjusted on the rolling road to try and correct it. I have now more or less reinstated the original base map figures in this area and the car is back to it's normal driveable self.

Happy is not the word

[Martin R]

Phil, well done. I may have to go the same route when funds allow

 

Edit, the duff IACV would probably explain your problems before fitting the Emerald?

[stockhome]

Nice one Phil love your informative threads

[russelld]

Glad to here it's running better Phil.

 

It did look to be going very well at Donnington

[Phil S1]

Thanks chaps,

You could well be right Martin, that many of my earlier running problems could have been down to the faulty IACV. I've just re-read the Greg_S seloc post I'd previously linked in where he had similar running problems. He changed loads of parts before ultimately buying an Emerald but it doesn't look like the IACV was one of them. My old MEMS ECU seems like it's still okay too as it's now installed in AL's car and running fine so far. I guess we'll never know for sure.

The main thing is, it's running fine now! The Emerald is a wonderful piece of kit, once you get your brain in gear!

[Martin R]

Phil. an Emerald also opens up a host of options for the future

[Phil S1]

Yeah, I've only scratched the surface. There's still all the other stuff like switchable maps, flat shift gear changes, gear position indicator and data logging, not sure when I'll be using any of those though!

[Phil S1]

Thought I'd resurrect this thread just to give a bit more of an update.

Recapping, since the rolling road mapping I had done last year, there were still a couple of things I thought could be improved upon. There was a tendency for the car to initially try and stall when approaching junctions but the main problem area was the lumpiness I was getting when the engine revs dropped below about 2200rpm. These 2 things took much of the enjoyment away from the general day to day driving. I had subsequently discovered that the IACV had been faulty at the time of the last mapping and at that time I was also only running on 95RON unleaded.

So with that in mind, yesterday I made the journey to the Emerald rolling road in Watton. (I had to book about a month in advance). I got there about 9.30am to be greeted with a mug of coffee and have a good chat with John, who's worked with Dave Walker for about 8 years now. There were a few cars to manoeuvre out the way first, this one was quite interesting....

 

It had a turbocharged 1.4K with which the owner hoped to get in excess of 400BHP. It had Curborough Sprint stickers on the wing endplates so I guess it could be a Midlands based car?

 

It's a tad basic inside and the propshaft's a bit close for comfort too...

 

With mine on the rollers, John spent a good hour and a half mapping across the rev range in 500 rpm increments, culminating in a few power runs to see where we were at. Unsurprisingly the graph looked very similar to that I'd had done previously, with a very similar figure of around 153 BHP.

We then had a break to let the car cool down a bit, after which John continued fine tuning it. Out of curiosity he suggested disconnecting the air filter hose from the throttle body to see if there was any performance gain to be had there but it made absolutely no difference. So it seems that my modified airbox with the K and N panel filter is doing a good job.

A bit more fine tuning and then John also advanced the ignition timing by a couple of degrees to make use of the V power I'm now running and we ended up with a few more BHP...

John suggested I took it for a run then to see how it felt on the road, it didn't take long to notice the difference, the lumpiness has gone, no cutting out and I'm sure I could even feel those 3 extra ponies too . So by about 1pm it was job done!

By the time I'd made the 3 hour journey back home again I'd had plenty of time behind the wheel and the car has been transformed. John has done a great job, he really looked to know his way around all the programming of the Emerald software so it has made the journey well worth while in my mind.

All I need to do now is revisit the cold start mapping, although I don't think that is a mile off so I should soon be back to motoring nirvana.

 

 

[Dr H]

Good stuff.

 

Emerald really know their stuff. Had the 340R mapped there twice, both times by Dave. Good to see that John knows his stuff too.

It's a bit of a trek but well worth it.

 

Last time I went it was 30 degrees outside and we had to stop twice to let the dyno cell cool down. The 6 hour journey there and back in those temps and a 340R was pure hell!