Let's discuss spark advance
#103
Tour de Franzia
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Now, double the speed of the crank to 6,000 RPM. Ignition advance is now 33° BTDC. But the crank is now traversing 36,000 degrees per second, or .027 milliseconds per degree. If we light the fire at 33° BTDC and then wait 2.5 milliseconds, the crankshaft will have traveled 92.5 degrees by the time peak pressure occurs, putting it at 59.5° ATDC.
I have got to be missing something here. I realize that time slows down as you approach the speed of light, but I don't think the pistons are going quite fast enough for special relativity to come into play here.
I have got to be missing something here. I realize that time slows down as you approach the speed of light, but I don't think the pistons are going quite fast enough for special relativity to come into play here.
The cam issue became clear to me when swapping from the factory cam to the MSM cam in my track car. The same, but opposite effect, in my VVT engine.
Before you chastize me for continuing to post in this thread with my non-factory engines, these experiences I discussed above help demonstrate the affects of altering the variables in your discussion.
Suddenly, those archaic small block Chevy engines with their offset spark plug location and peculiarly shaped pistons make a remarkable amount of sense and provide the mechanical octane I've recently discovered...in 50-year old technology.
I should have been an engineer...god damn calculus.
#104
Dynamic compression ratio.
Everything below is highly theoretical because whats actually happening in the combustion chamber is not very well published.
Fuel/air distribution. More dispersed the fuel is the faster the flame speed. At higher rpms air and fuel are moving faster, so they'll get more dispersed. Also, hotter mixtures burn more efficiently, at higher RPMS you should get more adiabatic heating from the compression stroke. I've got no ******* idea how big of a factor that is or if the heat actually goes into the air charge though.
*Edit,
Hustler, what is that piston from exactly? Looks a lot like a piston from a DI engine, certainly going to help with fuel dispersion.
Everything below is highly theoretical because whats actually happening in the combustion chamber is not very well published.
Fuel/air distribution. More dispersed the fuel is the faster the flame speed. At higher rpms air and fuel are moving faster, so they'll get more dispersed. Also, hotter mixtures burn more efficiently, at higher RPMS you should get more adiabatic heating from the compression stroke. I've got no ******* idea how big of a factor that is or if the heat actually goes into the air charge though.
*Edit,
Hustler, what is that piston from exactly? Looks a lot like a piston from a DI engine, certainly going to help with fuel dispersion.
#105
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Originally Posted by Joe Perez
I did spend some time fine-tuning the trigger latency, so I know that my actual ignition advance is the same as my commanded advance across the entire RPM range (at least, when the commanded advance is locked to 15°)
#106
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I assumed trigger latency adjustments would reduce the numbers in the spark table, not increase them. I guess I don't understand the concept. I adjust for this immediately with CAS cars, never touch it with CKP/CMP cars. I also didn't think latency adjustments were necessary as long as the latency inducing conditions are the same at all times...which they are unless you change timing belts.
#111
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At the risk of again derailing the thread:
No, no. This has nothing at all to do with the timing belt.
There are three basic delays in the system which affect the relationship between crank (or cam) position and the spark event. They are:
1: The electrical delay between the time the tooth physically passes across the sensor and the time the sensor's output changes state.
2: The electrical delay between the time the sensor's output changes state and the time the that signal reaches the CPU itself (mostly caused by the time-constant of the ECU's input filters).
3: The electrical delay between the time the CPU commands the spark output driver to go low and the time that the actual spark event happens at the plug.
All three of these delays are a constant all all operating conditions, regardless of RPM, MAP, Dwell, commanded advance, etc. They will be different for different cars / sensors / ECUs / ignition systems, but for any given car, if the end-to-end delay is 100us, then it will always be 100us all the time (give or take minor changes due to temperature.)
When we set this latency variable, we're telling the CPU what the total lag through the system is so that it can compensate in software, by advancing the spark outputs by a certain fixed number of microseconds all the time.
If the latency setting is lower than the actual latency, then the actual spark angle will tend to retard as RPM goes up (because latency, as a percentage of time elapsed between trigger and spark, increases as RPM increases). If the latency setting is too high, then the CPU will be over-compensating and the spark will tend to self-advance as RPM increases.
Adjusting this is simple. You lock the advance to a specified number in the software (say, 10°) which overrides whatever happens to be in the spark map. Strobe the engine to ensure that this is the advance which are are actually seeing at idle.
Next, raise the RPM to, say, 4000, and strobe the engine again. Is the timing mark still pointed at 10°? If so, your hardware latency is correct. If the timing advanced beyond 10°, you need to decrease the value of HW latency. If the timing became retarded below 10°, you need to increase the latency.
So again, this is purely an electrical / software thing. It has nothing to do with mechanical slop in the engine.
I assumed trigger latency adjustments would reduce the numbers in the spark table, not increase them. I guess I don't understand the concept. I adjust for this immediately with CAS cars, never touch it with CKP/CMP cars. I also didn't think latency adjustments were necessary as long as the latency inducing conditions are the same at all times...which they are unless you change timing belts.
There are three basic delays in the system which affect the relationship between crank (or cam) position and the spark event. They are:
1: The electrical delay between the time the tooth physically passes across the sensor and the time the sensor's output changes state.
2: The electrical delay between the time the sensor's output changes state and the time the that signal reaches the CPU itself (mostly caused by the time-constant of the ECU's input filters).
3: The electrical delay between the time the CPU commands the spark output driver to go low and the time that the actual spark event happens at the plug.
All three of these delays are a constant all all operating conditions, regardless of RPM, MAP, Dwell, commanded advance, etc. They will be different for different cars / sensors / ECUs / ignition systems, but for any given car, if the end-to-end delay is 100us, then it will always be 100us all the time (give or take minor changes due to temperature.)
When we set this latency variable, we're telling the CPU what the total lag through the system is so that it can compensate in software, by advancing the spark outputs by a certain fixed number of microseconds all the time.
If the latency setting is lower than the actual latency, then the actual spark angle will tend to retard as RPM goes up (because latency, as a percentage of time elapsed between trigger and spark, increases as RPM increases). If the latency setting is too high, then the CPU will be over-compensating and the spark will tend to self-advance as RPM increases.
Adjusting this is simple. You lock the advance to a specified number in the software (say, 10°) which overrides whatever happens to be in the spark map. Strobe the engine to ensure that this is the advance which are are actually seeing at idle.
Next, raise the RPM to, say, 4000, and strobe the engine again. Is the timing mark still pointed at 10°? If so, your hardware latency is correct. If the timing advanced beyond 10°, you need to decrease the value of HW latency. If the timing became retarded below 10°, you need to increase the latency.
So again, this is purely an electrical / software thing. It has nothing to do with mechanical slop in the engine.
#112
A number of factors influence the speed at which fuel burns in an engine. AFR is one, fuel composition is another, static compression ratio plays a factor, etc. Fortunately, we can assume that most of these variables are fixed for any given engine, or at least that the variation in them is relatively small.
(amiwrong? dunno.)
(amiwrong? dunno.)
The main factor here is that the VE of the engine is changing as you go through the RPMs. What is VE really? It's how much fuel and air you can get crammed into your cylinder on the intake stroke. This in turn gets converted to pressure within the cylinder during combustion, which in turn changes the flame speed.
Typically, VE will be low at low RPM, increasing to some maximum for which the engine's valve timing has been tuned, and then tapering off as you reach your RPM limit. You can see this in the tuned advance curves where the advance doesn't increase as much as you might expect in the heart of the torque-producing RPMs (the plateau that Joe's questioning), but then you do see advance at the end where the engine "runs out of breath."
So many variables. Makes my head hurt.
#114
Judging by those graphs
here:
that posted OEM map vs. a typical basemap you might end up with:
I'm guessing on the load values, but it makes sense to me. or shoudl I assume the row I marked at 60% should be 100% load? I need to find the old thread where someone was taking obdII data and populating a spark map...
but there's also a huge thing to remember.... hold on while I set it up...
that posted OEM map vs. a typical basemap you might end up with:
I'm guessing on the load values, but it makes sense to me. or shoudl I assume the row I marked at 60% should be 100% load? I need to find the old thread where someone was taking obdII data and populating a spark map...
but there's also a huge thing to remember.... hold on while I set it up...
#115
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That's fair.
#117
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Yes. That map is similar to my AFR target map, except that I am holding off on the transition out of stoich for a bit longer on both the RPM and MAP scales, because I sometimes drive on the freeway with my 4.30 gearing (RPM) and I live in a very hilly area so I spend a lot of time at 70-80 kPa in normal everyday driving (MAP).
We're not ignoring your posts. We're just ignoring your feelings.
We're not ignoring your posts. We're just ignoring your feelings.
#119
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big skim of the last two pages but thought I'd post this for joe's sake:
you will not generate enough EGT at cruise to raise any eyebrows. at 15:1 and higher AFR and relatively normal timing, I struggle to exceed 1200F.
you will not generate enough EGT at cruise to raise any eyebrows. at 15:1 and higher AFR and relatively normal timing, I struggle to exceed 1200F.