IT RUNS!!! - My 500whp build - Element motor and Moore Performance Twin Scroll Kit! by dexterous

7 minute(s) of a 312 minute read

A co-worker showed me this after I told him about my car today. It kind of makes me feel that maybe my issue isn't so bad.

5-15-2012

Just out of curiosity, the head on the drivers side was re-used form the old motor. That head has been decked (very little removed) at least twice in its life time. The head on the passenger side (the one with the plugs that look ok) is 100% new. Could the difference in deck height do this?

Also, the fuel return line on the drivers side (with the black plugs) is about 4" longer than the passenger side, otherwise, the lines are all very close in length. Is there any possibility of this causing those cylinders to be that much richer?

Element Tuning built the motor. I know that they also had the new head decked so its possible that they had the machine shop make them identical. They did after all send both the new and the old head to the shop. I will contact Phil to see what he says.

5-16-2012

Just to reiterate, the new head would have been machined once and the old head would have been machined twice. Phil has told me that they skim just about every head (even new ones) prior to assembly. The reasoning is to ensure the best possible head gasket seal. My understanding is that an extremely minimal amount of material is removed from the head surface so I have to ask; how much would it take to throw things off?

Changing the fuel lines around made no difference at all. The car still smokes enough to easily notice right after start-up and just a little bit at idle after its warmer. I didn't drive it (I couldn't leave the house) but if it sticks to its normal behavior the smoke would be basically non-existent once the car has been driven but will puff slightly on takeoff. Prior to starting the car I put another spark plug into number four and it was totally black after idling.

I didn't have a chance to pull a plug on the passenger side to verify that they are still white but I will do that soon. I am also going to swap the injectors form the passenger side to the drivers side to see if there's any difference. If I get the injectors swapped and there's still no difference I am not sure what else to try.

5-21-2012

Thanks guys. Phil basically impossible to get in touch with on the phone so I have been emailing him. He has suggested that I check a few things with the car. He also gave me a few tuning pointers but he really isn't sure what's behind the fouled plugs on the drivers side. He doesn't appear to be overly concerned with the plug color variance at this point as his primary suggestion is that I try putting some more miles on the motor.

Thats pretty much what I am planning on doing but I have been 1, pissed at the car and 2, busy with my house so I haven't done much of anything. I am going to try pretty hard to get the compression check done tomorrow night. If the compression is off on one side I will pull the timing belt covers off to see whats up.

The motor is firing on all four cylinders, i am 100% sure on that. I have unplugged one coil pack at a time and listened for the difference in noise and roughness. Just to throw this out there, the motor is very very smooth, sounds good and drives perfectly. For as well as the motor runs, its hard to imagine that the car could have much wrong with it.

5-22-2012

Phil called me today around lunch time and talked to me for about 20 minutes. We went over all kinds of possibilities as to what the issue could be. Its hard to diagnose an issue when the car runs absolutely perfectly less two fouled plugs. He told me that only the Hydra 2.7 has the capacity to log both cam position sensors concurrently (I have a 2.6) so it will be pretty hard to tell what my problem is. He did offer to pull the Hydra out of one of his cars and try it in my car just to do a datalog. I would even be game for the upgrade if it wasn't for the fact that the tuning files are in no way compatible with each other.

Unfortunately, I had to go out of town for a work thing so I wont be home to do any work on the car tonight. If all goes as planned, I am going to compression test the car this week and if that checks out I will swap the injectors form the passenger side to the drivers side. At this point my gut feeling is that there's some kind of issue with the AVCS system which really sucks.

5-23-2012

I just finished the compression test.

Cyl 1: 151
Cyl 2: 151
Cyl 3: 151
Cyl 4: 153

Phil confirmed that the hydra can't move the cams at idle so it's not that. It's possible that it's the injectors so that's my next task for tomorrow.

I have been researching how to better read spark plugs and I came across this picture. All I can say is damn, I thought my plugs looked bad! I have no idea what did that but whoever owns that motor is screwed!

5-24-2012

I followed Phil's instructions and went for a drive at 3000-4000 RPM and here's the results:

The left plug is from Cyl 4 which still looks a touch rich but much better. The right plug is from Cyl 3 which looks like its been running very lean.

The only real change that I made prior to driving the car was to lower the minimum pulse width to .3ms. It was previously set at .5ms and I couldn't get the car to lean out at idle. The best it would idle was 11.2:1 and now it idles at 13.2:1. As far as I can tell, it has also eliminated any visible smoke that the car was producing at idle and while driving.

I am not sure how to convert the duty values in the Hydra 2.6's base fuel map to pulse width. Any suggestions?

Cyl 3:

Cyl 4: