Wallace18"s 818 Build

[Aloha818]

So sorry hear this, I just started catching up on posts from the weekend, it looks like the whole 818 community has your wife, you, and your family in our prayers.

Praying for a speedy recovery!

[Erik W. Treves]

just saw this....horrible to hear that.. Hang in there and go easy...we can pick it back after her speedy recovery. ..until then your extended family will keep you both in our prayers.

[Tony Zullo]

Sorry to hear Tom ..Give her and your family our best from FFR!! Tony Z

[ehansen007]

Yes, all our best in prayers and wishes...

[wallace18]

First off my wife Marsha is doing much better. If her MRI is OK she may get to go home tommorow. We prefer to keep the details private. I know you will honor our wishes on that. It has been a exhausting last 5-6 days for both of us. This is the first day I had to look at the forum. I can't put into words how much all of your posts, prayers and well wishes mean to us. When I told Marsha of the post she teared up saying they don't even know me and they care. I told her that is how the FFR family is. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, thank you and God Bless. T.W.

P.S. Wayne your post made me laugh for the 1st time in 6 days. Thanks.

[wleehendrick]

Great to hear... If you give her a fraction of the care and attention you put into your cars (and I'm sure you do) she's in good hands.

[mrmustang]

Tom,

Here are best wishes for a speedy recovery for Marsha.


Bill S.

[wallace18]

My wife Marsha came home last night. She is doing fine. Thanks again for the prayers and kind thoughts. I am catching up on posts in between taking care of her. She can go back to work in 3 weeks. I may have to take a peek at my 818 on Sunday. LOL. I missed a lot of action in the forum, time for me to catch up.

[Erik W. Treves]

sweet!!! glad she is on the mend...go easy!

[RM1SepEx]

Great news!

[Xusia]

Glad to hear it.

[wallace18]

Marsha was feeling so much better today. She gave me the go ahead to work on the 818 some. You gotta love that girl!! LOL. I finish up my coolant lines and filled it with coolant and pressure tested it. I made a bracket sorta like Dan's a week ago. Simple fix for the tank on the engine. What was FFR thinking when they made that bar so close??? I cheated and instead of unbolting the radiator I just lifted the front of the chassis to get rid of the air. I guess I was lazy. LOL. I hope to fire it up Tuesday or Wednesday.

81895.jpg81894.jpg81892.jpg

[wleehendrick]

What was FFR thinking when they made that bar so close???

More like: what was Subaru thinking when they put the tank there? They should have known these motors would end up in a mid-engine tube-frame kit-car! It's all good, I ordered Craig's bracket. Good to see you back in the garage.

[blueoval_bowtie_guy]

Really glad that Marsha is doing so well! Hope to be able to make it up there again one of these days to see your progress first hand. Keep up the good work (Marsha first and the 818 second!).

Steve

[C.Plavan]

Glad Marsha is doing well- BTW you should have a check any day for the Adjustable Rear links.

[Vman7]

Tom, sorry I missed about your wife Marsha I guess that's what I get for not checking threads for a while now. Glad that Marsha is doing well, I will keep you and your wife in my prayers

David

[wallace18]

Well I have all my fluids in and hoses hooked up. I am pretty sure I have all the wires needed for engine start up. I pulled the plugs and spun the engine over till I got 50 psi Oil pressure. I have 2 gals of high test in the tank. I hope to start it today if I have time. Wife's needs come first and Doctor visits and such. I'll try to post a video if I can.

[blueoval_bowtie_guy]

Fantastic progress Tom!

[metalmaker12]

Cool man number 6

[wallace18]

Well I had a few minutes today and success! It started right up. Thanks again Wayne and Erik. It really sounds nasty in person. I can't wait to go-cart it next week.
No leaks, but the temp gauge stays buried even when cold. I got to figuire that one out.

[JeromeS13]

No leaks, but the temp gauge stays buried even when cold. I got to figuire that one out.

IIRC, there are two plugs that are identical in the coolant temp sensor area. Make sure you have the correct one plugged in.

[RM1SepEx]

Congrats! Your IC sits so much higher than mine!

[waruaki]

Sounds great! One question, what bellmouth on your turbo did you go with for your exhaust?

[blueoval_bowtie_guy]

Sounds great Tom!

[AZPete]

Sounds great! What intercooler is that? Tranny cover and firewall are beautifully done.

[wallace18]

It is an AMR intercooler from AJW. The bellmouth is listed in a prior post. Invidia.

[wallace18]

Congrats! Your IC sits so much higher than mine!

It is not stock and not bolted down yet.

[RM1SepEx]

Tom, you used Wanye's VCP wiring and CPU, how much of the stock Subaru wiring do you use?

[wallace18]

You send Wayne the ends of the engine harness, cluster and steering column. He blends those with his own harness that looks similar to a Ron Davis type harness. His makes the whole thing so simple. No O2 sensors, no A/F meter just the basics for a good setup. Very simple relay boxes and fuse panels that are small and easy to mount. The system can have lots of add ons if you wish. Well worth the money IMO. I may end up building a N/A 818 down the road and try the stock harness. If you can afford it Wayne's setup is the way to go IMO.

[RM1SepEx]

Nice, so he does al;l the extensions etc and you can plug everything in. Does this include the lighting etc...

[wallace18]

Nice, so he does al;l the extensions etc and you can plug everything in. Does this include the lighting etc...

\\

The column, cluster, engine, alt. and ECU all plug right in. You must terminate all the rest like the kit does. He leaves plenty of wire so you can route it the way you want. I ended up simplifying some of the engine harness because his ECU does not use all the factory sensors and such. It made for a neater harness IMO.

[Xusia]

Being an novice at this, one question that comes to mind is if the factory uses an O2 sensor and A/F meter, what are you losing by not using those in your setup? I mean, they must serve a purpose, right?

[wallace18]

Being an novice at this, one question that comes to mind is if the factory uses an O2 sensor and A/F meter, what are you losing by not using those in your setup? I mean, they must serve a purpose, right?

I'll take a stab at answering this. Wayne most likely can do better. This TecS system is for performance first. Where the stock system is designed for emmisions. Just as a race car does not use a lot of pollution controls this one follows that kind of deal. You can add a O2 sensor to this system and I might very well do so after I get it on the street.

[Frank818]

The O2 sensor and AF meter are used usually to reduce emissions, yes. But can also be used to target a specific AF ratio cuz for some reason you want your engine to run at these ratios given a number of variables (pressure, TPS, RPM, etc.). If you let the O2 sensor and its little computer do their work to hit the targets you want, you call that closed loop mode, opposed to open loop mode. Open loop does not use the fuel corrections the O2 sensor can apply. It just takes the fuel value you have given it. But sometimes that fuel value may not be perfect due to several reasons, closed loop sees that and adjusts the AF accordingly. But in order to do so, you need the O2 sensor so that it can detect what AF ratio you are running at.

I can better explain if anyone's interested.

[Xusia]

I do understand the difference between closed loop and open loop modes, and it seems to me closed loop mode would be far superior (Perhaps that is wrong?). Knowing closed mode requires an O2 sensor and A/F meter, it would seem to me you would want them. Hence the reason for my question. Without them, it seems like the usefulness of fuel injection is limited.

[Wayne Presley]

I'll take a stab at answering this. Wayne most likely can do better. This TecS system is for performance first. Where the stock system is designed for emmisions. Just as a race car does not use a lot of pollution controls this one follows that kind of deal. You can add a O2 sensor to this system and I might very well do so after I get it on the street.

I can supply a narrow band or wideband O2 sensor with the TEC systems. I like using narrow bands only in cruise conditions where the throttle positions and load don't change quickly. What ever they read has already happened so they are only estimaters of what the motor needs next. IF the engine stays in the same configuration/load, then the information from the O2 is relavent to what happens next. Now if the engine load changes quickly, then the sensor is working behind the curve of the actual fuel load. That being said, modern electronics are so fast they can adjust the fuel and spark between individual combustion events and even between cylinder firings on the same crank revolution. But they can be give bad information with exhaust leaks, cracked spark plugs, bad plug wires so I really only let them have a +/- 5% range to work in and only in a cruise mode. At full throttle you can burn up a motor being 5% off on mix if you are tuned for maximum power. At idle the O2 sensor can cause hunting of the idle speed by changing of the pulse width of the injector.

[Frank818]

No mode is better. It depends what you aim for. For race, I don't see a reason to use closed loop, in fact it may be worse.
For street, closed loop may be better.

But that depends on so many factors! Stand alone ECUs is a complex world due to the fact you have to deal with all situations and you have to control all the data/sensors/etc. You mess something up and you're screwed. Some ECUs are easier to work with, I don't know about the TEC.

First of, you need to get the car on a dyno or tune it on the road and have your fuel map as perfect as possible. In open loop. Once that's done, closed loop can come to play and apply slight error corrections in those rare situations open loop would not hit the desired target. On some ECUs, closed loop is not controlled very good, on others it's better. You also may have to configure your sensor in the ECU's software, so you tell it how many samples per second to check for, you key in the PID factors and a LOT of other variables. You don't get that right, closed loop will barf on you. Anyway 98% of the time open loop is sufficient (IF properly tuned). And if fuel is no issue, you tune your map a little rich everywhere and the engine will never jerk.

Open loop usually is smoother cuz in closed loop there are always corrections applied so the AFR may fluctuate and if the sensor is slow to react in those situations when AFR changes are too quick, you get fuel increases when you need decreases and you get decreases when you need increases, cuz the sensor is constantly chasing its tail.

The key with stand alone ECUs is to get a perfect fuel map (well, timing as well but fuel is harder) in open loop. Once you get there, you can try closed loop and see how it behaves. If you are happy with open loop, don't spend the money on the sensor. If you want a better mpg, try CL and see if it helps.

I use closed loop cuz I realized I do have situations where open loop would act weird. It's possible I have some bad values somewhere in my map (temp, MAP, TPS, volt, who knows I built it alone from scratch!), but with closed loop I am able to smooth that out. CL helps me get a better AFR at idle, but that's my personal situation. Always try open loop first for a while.

I don't know how Wayne does his maps, but if you have an AFR meter, install it and monitor in various situations. If you are happy with the logs, don't bother with CL.
I'm sure there is a reason why Wayne doesn't use CL. But unless configured perfectly, CL is not necessarily better than OL.

[Frank818]

Well there you go, Wayne just said it!

I must say I do not have that problem at idle, maybe I did set my CL right in that situation, I guess.

[Wayne Presley]

With the flurry of self learning systems on the market over the last 4 years, there has been a bit of a learning curve for the industry. Mostly about the limitations of these systems WHEN something isn't perfect. An exhaust leak, faulty spark plug, burned plug wire and the computer pulls out fuel because it thinks it rich from the mis fire. It pulls fuel and pulls until the motor is too lean until it barely runs. Now I do set systems in Closed Loop (CL) but only when I can have it off at idle, on in light cruise and off once it got above about 80% volumetric efficiency.

[Erik W. Treves]

I followed Wayne's advice and ONLY allow my car to use the Narrow Band sensor (5%) at points off-idle up to about 4000 RPM and below WOT..the Electromotive allows you set several conditions for the O2's to come in....here is a video that I did a while back on my Cobra using the TEC-GT on a 408W, X303 cam with a 66mm turbo...I'd say the engine idles pretty darn good when not using the O2's...