The biggest thing when doing a turbo conversion is obviously controlling the additional heat generated by the turbocharger from affecting other components in the engine bay.
As an example, we may actually take ignition coils off the top of the engine because we know we are going to have a heat containing issue in the engine bay of the car. So, we sometimes mount the ignition system on the other side of the firewall, away from the engine bay heat. We then run the ignition leads through the firewall, and back out to the engine bay.
We also move the wiring to be nice and well away from the heat so we don't have a lot of reliability issues later on when the car is driving down the highway, on the race track, or while being dyno tuned.
A few factors have to be taken into account when turbocharging a non-turbocharged engine.
Obviously, fuel quality is very, very important.
Also, fuel quantity - you need to have ample amount of fuel all all times.
You can have a scenario when on the dyno your power run might be eight seconds long, but on the drag strip, you might be full throttle for the whole burn-out, then when you're staging on a transbrake, and then for the run.
The fuel system as a whole needs to operate correctly. For example, you do not want to have the situation where the surge-tank ends up empty because the pump that supplies the surge-tank has a low flow rate, and cannot keep up with the demands of the engine.
We often get asked: "Do I lose fuel economy when I turbo my car?"
Regarding fuel economy, with the V500 which is the system that we use, we have a lot of parameters where you can actually dyno tune the engine and implement to use as much fuel as required when the engine needs it (assuming the injectors and the rest of the fuel system is up to the task) but not use a lot of fuel when the engine doesn't.
So, if you're cruising on a highway at light loads, we tune that part of the fuel map where we can tell the engine how much fuel to consume, and we tune the ignition map for maximum efficiency under this condition also. And we can also do closed-loop feedback from oxygen sensors which will also trim the fueling to have what we specified.
So, we can have richer mixtures to dissipate the heat and protect the engine under full throttle, high boost, etc. Yet, we can have a nice lean mixture on the highway to maintain the fuel economy and good driveability.
The dyno tune itself would be no harder on a car than what you could do on the street or driving up a hill at full throttle or towing a trailer.
The use of a dyno is to duplicate those conditions so we can tune the engine to suit. So when you do drive the car, we've covered all applications.
We can use the dyno to duplicate light loads, medium loads or heavy loads at any rpm. In doing that, we take every precaution necessary to ensure that your engines do survive. For example, things like incorrect fuel mixtures and incorrect ignition timing.
We do a pre dyno tuning check on every car that goes on a dyno. We'll check for basic things like fuel leaks and air leaks and things like that. But we'll also monitor the condition of the engine so if we hear any funny noises or anything like that, we most definitely investigate further before we put the car on the dyno.
On the same token while we are tuning, we do use a dual channel knock box which gives us the ability to listen to the insides of the engine while we are tuning. We can normally hear the onset of any sort of damage if it is about to happen way before it becomes an issue.
Q. EFI PERFORMANCE has a lot of fast cars on the track. How do you achieve this?
A. What we found is it's very, very easy to make power using dyno tuning.
Controlling that power to generate good times is 99% of the battle. In a lot of our drag cars we will use boost control over wheel speed. Also boost control over transbrake, so, on the example that we do which is a 1JZ that we tune, we actually limit boost to ten pound on the transbrake. Then once the transbrake is released, we control the boost from 10 pound to 24 pound, from zero kilometres an hour to sixty kilometres an hour. And this gives us our best sixty foot on radial tires that we can get.
We found that if we dial in a little too much boost then we wheel spin. If we pull too much boost out, we just simply don't have the power to get the car going off the line.
Another thing we use is nitrous control. We use nitrous control to get the turbo on to boost so when the customers transbrake in full throttle, revs will come up when the 500 sees one pound of boost, it'll actually give a quick spray of nitrous just to bring it on to boost. Leaving the transbrake on ten pound, trim the boost up to twenty-four pound at 60 kilometres an hour. And then at 80 kph we actually bring nitrous back in to try and propel the car as quickly as we can down the drag strip.
We also use similar sort of setups for launch control or I should say, two step for a manual car. So, we can have clutch in, full throttle at 0k an hour and setup a secondary rev limit that is suited for that car. So, when the driver drops the clutch, the car just launches directly without wheel spin and without bogging down.
This car runs the Toyota 1UZFE all aluminium, 4 litre, 32 valve V8.
One of the performance upgrades that we are seeing a lot of lately is to bolt a supercharger on to the V8 engine. By bolting a supercharger on, you can get up to a 150% increase in power and torque. That's a fair increase on what is already a very nice engine.
It's not unusual to see over 300kW out of one of these at the wheels. If you use an intercooler, or use a water/methanol spray, it can be even better.
One of the things to note if we use the Wolf V500 to run this engine, is that we can run the engine in its standard form as a plugin, we control the transmission (I'll get more into this later), we control the air conditioning system, and the traction control (you don't lose the ability to turn the TRC on or off as per standard).
This means, that you have a nice luxury car with a lot of power.
What we find is, that because we have increased the power of the engine so much, that we can change, or tune, the transmission. With the V500 we can adjust shift points, we can change line pressures and torque converter lockup.
Now you have a lot more torque and power out of the engine, you adjust the transmissions shift points to suit it.
Here's a quick step by step on how to install the Wolf V500 Soarer Plugin.
1. Remove the carpet - the original ECU is where the passengers feet would normally be.
2. Remove the original ECU from the floor.
3. There are two connectors into the original ECU. One of these connectors has a 10mm bolt holding the connector in place. You will need to undo this bolt to remove the plug from the ECU.
5. Plug in the Wolf V500 Soarer Plugin Harness and do up the 10mm bolt in the larger of the two connectors.
6. Run a vacuum line from the manifold to the ECU. If you have a supercharged engine, you must run the vacuum line from the manifold after the supercharger.
7. The V500 ECU and adapter harness fit back in from where you removed the original ECU.
At Wolf Motorsport, we work on many different types of vehicles.
One example of the types of vehicles we install the Wolf V500 ECU on is a Toyota Hilux Ute that has been modified to accept a Supercharged Toyota Lexus 1UZFE engine.
The installation is very nice and the customer has done a great job of the installation itself. But, of course, the original ECU cannot run the modified 1UZFE engine. So, he needs a programmable engine management system.
In this particular installation, the customer has installed the Toyota Crown wiring loom that came with the engine, so we have made up an adapter harness to go between the Toyota Crown wiring harness and the Wolf V500 ECU.
This allows a very quick installation, and we can get straight into tuning.
On top of all of the normal tuning parameters of fuel, ignition timing, idle control, etc, in this case we could install a alcohol/water spray system to help keep the intake charge as cool as possible.
An important thing to note with this type of installation is to keep things as neat as possible, with nothing that can move and maybe hit or be caught in the the belts or drop onto exhaust manifolds when we are tuning the engine.
An example of something that can be removed from the original engine, is the factory air flow meter. This can be removed, and replaced with an efficient tube to help improve air flow to the engine.
One great thing that the owner of this vehicle has done is that even though he has a pod air cleaner, he has covered it to ensure that the air cleaner picks up cool air from the front of the vehicle instead of engine bay air that has been heated by the engine and radiator. This will go a long way to improving engine efficiency.
Due to the increase in power, it's important to make sure the radiator is up to scratch. Using a larger, more efficient radiator will help in this regard.
Using the V500, we can control all of the original air conditioning system that came out with the engine. We can interface with the pressure sensor for the air conditioning, the magnetic clutch that engages the air conditioning compressor, and the switch on the dash.
Now we have excellent control over the whole air conditioning system. We can turn off the air conditioner compressor when the correct max system pressure is reached. We can also turn it off when the driver goes to a high throttle value (this is adjustable), so the compressor is not using engine power when the driver wants it all to go to the wheels.
We can also turn on the thermo fan when the air conditioner is turned on to improve the a/c efficiency.
This is a great setup allowing us to keep EOM factory style systems, but still get as much power as possible from the engine.
If you take an older vehicle with wiring that is old, maybe 30 plus years old. The wiring will have deteriorated and people may have cut into it many times.
Some of the things you may want to look for when deciding if you want to rewire it, are things like wiring that has been cut into and joined numerous numbers of times, it is very likely to fail in the future.
project, and a lot of expense into your project, you don't want to be broken down on the side of the road because of broken wires.
When you are about to start rewiring any part of your car, is to draw up a list on what you want to do. You may be doing only one section of the car like the engine bay, or you may be doing everything from the front to the rear bumper.
Determine what it is you want to achieve and wire down all of the parts you are expecting to replace.
If, for example, you are going to rewire the engine bay, the next thing to do, would be to remove all of the wiring from the engine bay.
Unplug everything on the engine and its accessories. Some engine bay harnesses will have a firewall plug, but if yours doesn't, you will need to cut the harness in half. When you do this, don't cut it off flush with the firewall. Allow at least 6 inches of wire to enable you to unwrap and trace the wires back to other areas of the car if you need to.
Depending on the size of the original hole in the firewall, you may need to drill an additional hole to get the extra wiring through.
If you are going to hide your wiring, you should lay it out without hiding it, so you can work out the various lengths, and how it is going to run through the engine bay.
Whether or not you have the battery in the boot, or the battery in the engine bay, make sure you use the correct gauge wire so that it has enough current capacity to ensure correct operation of things like you engines start motor.
Make sure you use a body grommet through any holes in the firewall. The wire is then protected from any damage from the rough edge of the hole. The body grommet also stops water and other liquids from passing from the engine bay to the passenger compartment.
Using correct sheathing, like a nylon braid will stop wires from chafing on any sharp edged items in the engine bay, and keep the wiring in great shape.
Moving on to the interior of the car, we remove the dash panel or instrument cluster. This may take around an hour in most cars, but it will save you hours of frustration trying to work behind it. Plus, it will make your job look even more professional. This allows for easy access behind the dashboard, and you can see all of the original wiring and mounting points.
This also makes it far easier to remove the original wiring, and work on putting the new wiring in place.
TIP1: Place application tape around any areas where you will be cutting, or where wires or sharp objects might be moving around, so that you don't scratch any of the dashboard area.
TIPS2: If you are going to all of this trouble to rewire your engine bay, it's highly recommended that you replace the original fuse box ore boxes. The old fuse holders have been through thousands of heat cycles, and will most probably have lost their tension. This can lead to loss of contact between the fuse and the fuse contacts, which can lead to all sorts of electrical problems.
This blog is written by Wolf Engine Management to help those new to performance EFI better understand some of the concepts of installation and tuning of programmable EFI systems for performance applications.
