Tuning With An Air/Fuel Gauge

[dutchzcarguy]

7 hours ago, chaseincats said:

I have been using NGK Iridium BPR6EIX-11 plugs.

Why? are you doing 30000km/miles a year? no? then you don't need those i think.. just put in 6 cheap but good original BPR6ES from NGK  (Watch out for super cheap copy $^!#..) They are about 3 dollar a piece and are perfect for the L series engines.. 

Then take a look at those after at least an hour of driving.  (Haven't read it all but guess you have a "normal 2753cc engine..) 

Place some pics of those plugs ! 😉 

[chaseincats]

5 hours ago, jonbill said:

I'd just go with cheap bpr6es.  Does your engine burn some oil? It looks like there are deposits on the spark plugs.

I believe it burns some oil, but whatever it burns it isn't enough to affect oil level over the course of a year.

@dutchzcarguy@jonbill Understood on the spark plug material.  Which heat rating though (bp5, bp6, bp7)?

 

2 hours ago, madkaw said:

Those plugs show lean and or hot - I would be concerned if my plugs looked like that . I haven’t read your complete thread , but those do not look good 

Plug reading really isn't the way to go as long as you have an air/fuel gauge to see what the engine is actually doing.  It's running at a 13.8-14.2 idle, 12.3 WOT, and 14.7 highway cruise.  I will say, the other day I did catch it running VERY lean (in the 17s) so I pulled over and fiddled with it - not sure if that's when the plugs started looking like this or not though

Edited January 21 by chaseincats

[madkaw]

7 minutes ago, chaseincats said:

I believe it burns some oil, but whatever it burns it isn't enough to affect oil level over the course of a year.

@dutchzcarguy@jonbill Understood on the spark plug material.  Which heat rating though (bp5, bp6, bp7)?

 

Plug reading really isn't the way to go as long as you have an air/fuel gauge to see what the engine is actually doing.  It's running at a 13.8-14.2 idle, 12.3 WOT, and 14.7 highway cruise.  I will say, the other day I did catch it running VERY lean (in the 17s) so I pulled over and fiddled with it - not sure if that's when the plugs started looking like this or not though

Plugs can verify what you think is a proper tune  . I’ve been running programmable EFI for years - those plugs look bad . Something is not right . 17’s would be terrible for an engine that doesn’t have full spark control. 
I run my engines lean - even my stroker and 15.5-16 is a lean burn for these old engineered engines . I appreciate your effort to make these old Bosch systems tunable - but without any load readings( I assume you use standard dizzy) you are guessing .

i would recommend a 123 dizzy if you don’t already run one . 

[chaseincats]

11 minutes ago, madkaw said:

Plugs can verify what you think is a proper tune  . I’ve been running programmable EFI for years - those plugs look bad . Something is not right . 17’s would be terrible for an engine that doesn’t have full spark control. 
I run my engines lean - even my stroker and 15.5-16 is a lean burn for these old engineered engines . I appreciate your effort to make these old Bosch systems tunable - but without any load readings( I assume you use standard dizzy) you are guessing .

i would recommend a 123 dizzy if you don’t already run one . 

The air/fuel gauge connected to the o2 sensor that was installed gives you load readings that I listed above though.

[madkaw]

What KPA is cruise running ? 

[chaseincats]

1 hour ago, madkaw said:

What KPA is cruise running ? 

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what does KPA stand for?

[Patcon]

I believe it is Kilo pascals...

[chaseincats]

8 minutes ago, Patcon said:

I believe it is Kilo pascals...

Never heard of that let alone it being used as a metric for engines.  @madkaw

[AK260]

Never heard of that let alone it being used as a metric for engines.  [mention=6833]madkaw[/mention]

Often used when talking about MAP (manifold absolute pressure)



As been said already, what I see on your plugs is Lean, very hot burn and some detonation marks (although that could just be the photo quality).

[jonbill]

100kpa is about 15psi is about 1 bar is about atmospheric pressure.

 

[madkaw]

As said above - using MAP density tuning - KPA would be your measurement for load. 
Tuning for cruise would be difficult not knowing how the engine is loading . 
Loading can change a lot just climbing a slight grade though you aren’t putting much throttle to the engine . The OEM injection biases everything to the rich side to be safe . 
Those plugs took a while to look like that and most of the time we spend in cruise . 
That’s why the 123 ignition is a nice supplement to help keep the engine safe while tuning since it does have MAP sensor 
 

[chaseincats]

5 minutes ago, madkaw said:

As said above - using MAP density tuning - KPA would be your measurement for load. 
Tuning for cruise would be difficult not knowing how the engine is loading . 
Loading can change a lot just climbing a slight grade though you aren’t putting much throttle to the engine . The OEM injection biases everything to the rich side to be safe . 
Those plugs took a while to look like that and most of the time we spend in cruise . 
That’s why the 123 ignition is a nice supplement to help keep the engine safe while tuning since it does have MAP sensor 
 

is that something you just pop in or does it require a lot of supplementary tuning?