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Converting to full-return fueling this weekend. I was all set to do it last weekend, but I ran into a snag. I was using this thread as a reference but didn't want to use hose clamps and rubber for the connections to the 1/4" hard line originally used for the vent on an NB1, instead opting to use push-to-connect to -AN transitions and custom made -6AN lines instead. Only to find out that the 1/4" lines aren't push-to-connect! So I had find and buy a tool to form my own push-to-connect ends onto the existing 1/4" line. That tool just came in this morning, so I'll be "off to the races" on Saturday.
So I was able to successfully make the PTC flares on the 1/4" lines and was able to get the return-fuel lines all plumbed. But I ran into a problem with the "universal" AFPR and remote mounting kit I purchased from Radium. The remote mount kit was missing an essential -8AN ORB to -6AN fitting and the supplied -8AN ORB to -6AN ORB used to direct mount the AFPR to the Radium rail; a) won't work with a non o-ringed hose fitting (ask me ow I know) and b) when attempting to direct-mount the AFPR to the rail it interferes with the head (ask me how I know that too).
Anyway after breaking or losing a circlip on the ORB fitting, performing some minor fettling on the back of the head and extended usage of "interesting language" I got the AFPR mounted to the rail. The fit is not ideal and there's a minor fuel leak (is a fuel leak EVER "minor"?) that I hope to get solved this evening.
On another, there's a new occupant in the engine bay! Some say it arrived on a boat from China. Some say it can't be real because he NEVER buys the good stuff. All I know is that it has "BorgWarner" cast into the compressor housing;
Life IS good!
PS - does anyone know where to get a connector for the BCSV? Instructions say it's an "injector connection", but the spare injector pigtail for my old FICs doesn't fit.
I was finally able to drive the car today (having solved an exhaust and fuel leak) and all I can say is;
"Ever since I met ya, seems I can't forgetcha
The thought of you keeps runnin' through the back of my mind
Every time I'm near ya, I get that urge to feel ya
Just revvin' you and WOT'ing you makes ev'rything right
I never knew boost before (oh no) then came you, you, then came you
I never knew boost before, then came you then came you"
The ebc is a Ev1 injector clip. Tons of them on BMWs, or most parts stores will have one I bet. Looks like Dorman part#85137
can you take a pic of the radium fpr mounted on the rail? It looks like there would be enough room in the back, but I’ve been unsure. It would really clean up my engine bay if that could work.
^
There's not enough room for that unfortunately :(
This is the rail mounted on my MSM:
I have a 150psi fuel pressure sensor mounted on the end of the rail that I had to install before mounting the fuel rail because the rear engine hoist bracket (bronze bracket in photo below) interferes with the tightening nut when screwing in the sensor, it's that tight:
The "barrel" of the sensor has about 4 mm of clearance to the engine hoist bracket when installed.
Luckily the OEM engine host bracket is curved on the bottom so the sensor's tightening nut clears it when the sensor has been tightened completely into the fuel rail.
I originally had a Honeywell 100psi sensor with 3/8" NPT fitting that I wanted to connect to an ORB-8 - 3/8" NPT adapter on the end of the fuel rail but I couldn't get the sensor's tightening nut oriented NOT to touch the bracket when the fuel rail was tightened - there would be pressure against the sensor and since NPT fittings don't screw in all the way, the risk of creating a leak was too high, something you don't want on fuel lines.
I'm not a fan of NPT or BSP fittings with heavy sensors anyway (such as most pressure sensors) since mechanically they only thread using 30-40% of their threads vs ORB fittings which screw in all the way.
The 150psi fuel pressure sensor is overkill but it was the smallest ORB-8 sensor I could find >= 100psi.
In an ideal world you want the flange on the sensor (or washer) butting against the mounting ("the bolted joint") to support any real lateral loads/torques, fasteners really don't like unscrupulous moments or shear loads. That said, in most instances something like 90% of the load is supported by the first three or four threads engaged (depending on the thread type, etc.). The rule of thumb to be super safe I normally hear is 1.5 * nominal diameter of thread engagement.
I just replaced the whole direct mount thing with a -8 ORB to -6 fitting and then mounted the AFPR onto the firewall with new hoses. No runs, no drips, no errors. That's how it should have been packaged from Radium.
After the initial thrill of the insta-spool of the EFR, I settled down this afternoon to get the attached EBC (or BSCV in BW-speak) working. Using my tried and true method of using the I/O test mode to get the open and closed duty cycles (72 and 14 respectively - that 14 seemed suspiciously low, but okay) and leaving the frequency at 26z (just below the recommended 32Hz) I went out thinking that I could get things dialed in after a bit of PID loop tuning. Little did I know how wrong I was...
I spent the next several hours doing pull after pull only to find out two things (more likely, 3 things);
1) I couldn't find ANY closed loop PID settings that would properly control the wastegate. I put in PID values that were all over the map in the hope that I would fins SOMETHING that would get me close enough to work with, but I either got wild oscillations, or nothing at all (i.e. spikes in the duty cycle and no boost beyond 180kPa).
2) I gave up and went to open-loop mode and discovered that I couldn't even get that to deliver the results I was looking for (I had a target of 200kPa, max). No matter what I did I never saw more than 180kPa...ever...not even a boost spike. What I WAS experiencing was some "jitters" as the boost started getting around 165-175kPa. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that the wastegate was flopping around, opening and closing erratically. I have no evidence of that, but, that's what it feels like.
[3) I don't know WTH I'm doing and need to go back to Chinacharger-ville. Which is entirely plausible.]
I'll post the tune but know this; this was when I was getting desperate and just set the entire control duty table to "70" to see if I could coerce a boost overshoot. No dice, 3rd gear from 2800RPM up to 6000 and the max boost was 180kPa, period. Maybe I should have set the whole table to 100 to see what she'd do, but at that point I was frustrated and tired and hungry (and ready to slap somebody's mama), so I went home - defeated.
I know I'm doing something wrong, I just don't know what.
Here's what the datalog looks like, it and the tune are attached
And lo! An angel appeared before me last night and he said, "Why dost though despair? Did you not consider that a 70% duty cycle was enough? Perhaps thou should consider raising it to 75, nay 80 or above to determine the impact. Do not weep. Go therefore to TunerStudio and increase thy duty cycle and reap the bounty of boost beyond your wildest dreams! Go now and weep no longer."
I raised the open loop duty cycle up to 90 to no avail. Then I thought; there's only two things that are left...1) spark plugs - in case the "old" plugs (one, or more) have gotten tired and 2) skip the internal BOV and go back to my old Turbosmart BOV. So, in the interest of changing multiple things at once and not know which - if any - has made a difference, I swapped in some new BKR7E's and swapped out the built-in BOV. And, of course, the boost has returned...ALLOFIT!!
The ebc is a Ev1 injector clip. Tons of them on BMWs, or most parts stores will have one I bet. Looks like Dorman part#85137
can you take a pic of the radium fpr mounted on the rail? It looks like there would be enough room in the back, but I’ve been unsure. It would really clean up my engine bay if that could work.
... it looks like maxrpm (Project "Midnight Runner") did this (see post #85 of Project "Midnight Runner"):
- he did have to remove the rear engine hoist bracket to achieve this.
He has a version with a barb at the front too for the gauge.
- he did have to remove the rear engine hoist bracket to achieve this.
He has a version with a barb at the front too for the gauge.
My engine bay is not NEARLY as clean and tidy, so access to the front and rear of the fuel rail is tight at best. Given that, when I first attempted to attach the Radium AFPR (with the gage attached) I over-stressed their fancy-dancy swivel fitting and the circlip that holds it all together gave up the ghost and disappeared. I don't have any pics of the installation because I was tired and frustrated at the time, so pictures were the last thing on my mind.
Since then, I've replaced that fitting with an ORB to -6AN fitting, made up some new lines and moved the AFPR to the firewall as mentioned earlier.
That's with the S2 manifold. I'm more concerned with the intake manifold. Or are you saying there's more room than it looks back there? Head is the primary concern?
That's with the S2 manifold. I'm more concerned with the intake manifold. Or are you saying there's more room than it looks back there? Head is the primary concern?
For me, the problem was not with the stock 99 IM, there was plenty of clearance there. The issue was attempting to get the direct-mounted Radium AFPR to clear the head. The casting for the bolt hole where the stock coil pack bolts to the head interferes with the Radium regulator by about 1mm. 30 minutes with a Dremel solved the clearance problem but that only uncovered a secondary problem. The Radium-supplied swivel mount/fitting to attach the regulator to the rail is not very robust, and can't take much radial loading. After clearancing the regulator, I managed to destroy the circlip that holds the adapter/fitting together while trying to turn the regulator enough so I could see the pressure gage and it (and a rail-full of fuel) came off in my hand. Not fun.
I bought the "Remote mount kit" but it was missing what appeared to me to be a critical piece - a -8AN ORB to -6AN fitting - which would screw into the rail and provide a means to plumb a custom line from the rail to the remotely-mounted AFPR. THAT would have saved me hours of screwing around with trying to get the regulator to direct-mount "natively", hacking at the cylinder head, spewing high-pressure gas everywhere because of a broken circlip and being down for 2 days, waiting on a fitting.
Not sure if this helps with your question curly, but here's a photo of my Aussie MSM with flat-top intake manifold and the Radium fuel rail and FPD (brake master cylinder and ABS on opposite sides to LHD) - you can see that there's quite a bit of room back there but it's tight mounting anything other than a hose to the rear-end of the fuel rail due to the engine hoist bracket and other harnesses/hoses get in the way so must be sorted out:
Unfortunately on RHD cars, there's very little room on the firewall. If I were to mount a Fuel Pressure Regulator, t would need to sit on the cold-side shelf, under the brake master cylinder.
I have some other photos of the installation in my garage thread starting at Lokiel's Radium Fuel Rail Installation that may be helpful too, AND some warnings about fittings.
Have you ever been working on your car, looking around after finishing a different job and noticed something that didn't quite look right. And then, after closer inspection, finding out something and saying to yourself, "Holy ****, how long have I been driving around like THAT?!!"
Well, on Tuesday I was cleaning the underside of my car (as one does in preparation for a weekend track day) and noticed that the two bolts holding down the rearmost "ears" of the front subframe were missing. Not loose...just plain not there. And, evidently they've "not been there" for quite some time as evidenced by the light rust on the threads. The last time that I did anything with the subframe was probably 5 or 6 years ago and I haven't thought about it since then. In the meantime I've done autocrosses, track days and untold street miles with the car in that condition - not noticing anything amiss.
I don't know if those bolts are just an extra "safety margin" engineered in by Mazda, or my butt-dyno needs to be sent back to the manufacturer for calibration, but I ordered the bolts straight away from Mazda and installed them yesterday.
On another note, I think that my newfound EFR-power has managed to overwhelm my modest ACT pressure plate / California Clutch combo. While trying to dial in my boost duty table I got a pretty hefty clutch slip (just the thing I need when I'm scheduled for a track day this Saturday). Virtual Dyno as me at just north of 300 lb-ft of torque (which, the skeptic in me doesn't believe but the boosty-boi in me loves), so I need something that's up to that power level. I'm thinking about a FM Stage 2 Happy Meal. Any other suggestions?
This place is local to me, and I'll be there on Saturday and can snag it while I'm on-site.
The only thing I'm a little concerned about is; What does the engagement feel like? Once upon a time I had a 6-puck disc (can't remember who's) and engagement was "challenging" at best.
Yes that one, usually you can only get the 4-puck, but either one works. I barely noticed the difference, and actually really enjoyed the small increase in crispness to shifts and take offs. Organic felt like a stiffer stock clutch that could hold some power.
I also had a 6-puck racing ceramic I hated, this one is much better than that was.
09-16-2021, 09:43 AM
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