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Cold start e85


will15

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In hp tuners I changed the cranking lambda and it made it start easy but die straight away. I then found another table that had fuel enrichment coolant correction temp vs time or something, that was completely zeroed out. I added a value that I can't remember off the top of my head to decay for about 10 seconds and it fixed it.

There may well be other stuff to change to make similar or better cold starts but I never played with it for long enough to go through everything.

I know it's not the same as pcmtec but the same tables and scalars etc are still there, they are just labeled differently.

Fwiw I've found you want lots of fuel and not much timing to get a car to start well on e85 when it's freezing cold.

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E85 will burn differently to what a gasoline fuel will, therefore I would suggest adjusting the the tables relating to cranking spark advance (auF0209 & auF1721). Those two tables along with the tables you have already adjusted should be able to get the car starting relatively well, there will be other tables you can adjust further refine that. But with those tables you should be able to get it starting well with the standard OS.

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Play with these

Commanded lambda at crank

auF0180

image.png.5ac36255a30cdd41aeca41ace910373d.png

auF0181 multiplier to cranking lambda. This is per PIP. A pip is an individual cylinder fire. Eg column 18 is after 18 cylinders have been fired from cranking. This effectively decays the commanded lambda from very rich to the actual commanded value.

image.png.2d3857b3df59e70e8d553cef785c0f20.png
 

Cranking spark advance auF0209 I've never tried modifying this one, but it makes sense to modify it as the flame burns slower with e85 beware of going too high as you can get detonation whilst cranking due to the very low rpm. Not the end of the world but best to avoid.

image.png.1a9d25128dc8dfe34e50a214f5e31c69.png

Then the base fuel table when the engine is cold auF0173. Make sure the bottom row is the same as the bottom row in your base fuel table.

image.png.0604509a2f878950fbd0dbc089f6e653.png

 

The numbers in the example above work ok as a base, but definitely need further tweaking. I have it starting first crank at 8°C in SA however at ~16°C it takes 2 goes, unsure if it needs more or less fuel as its been too warm to properly test. I will optimise it this winter and possibly do a proper write up then.

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4 hours ago, Sam said:

E85 will burn differently to what a gasoline fuel will, therefore I would suggest adjusting the the tables relating to cranking spark advance (auF0209 & auF1721). Those two tables along with the tables you have already adjusted should be able to get the car starting relatively well, there will be other tables you can adjust further refine that. But with those tables you should be able to get it starting well with the standard OS.

I did auf0209 this morning before I saw your post, dropped cranking from 10deg to 5deg, didn't really help.

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23 hours ago, Roland@pcmtec said:

Play with these

...

The numbers in the example above work ok as a base, but definitely need further tweaking. I have it starting first crank at 8°C in SA however at ~16°C it takes 2 goes, unsure if it needs more or less fuel as its been too warm to properly test. I will optimise it this winter and possibly do a proper write up then.

I have pretty much adjusted all those tables, it just felt like I was going way to far with them, eg to rich. Ill do some more testing, just sucks only getting a couple of shots at it per day

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@will15 as Puff suggest in colder climates lower spark advance may work better, however E85 likes more spark advance due to burning slower so lower spark advance for e85 may still mean higher spark advance than what 98 will require. I live in North Queensland so our winters only get to like 15 degrees so I haven't had much experience with cold starts in an actual cold environment. From memory my crank spark is 12 or 13 degrees and run up spark 14 or 15 degrees for e85.

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It's a fairly easy thing to check, providing that it's winter. I've halved the cranking spark from 10 to 5 on a different motor and it started better like that on e85, with 10:1 initial afr.

You'll get several goes at it if you don't mind getting up at 4 or 5am and trying every half an hour with just a 20 second run time. Bust out the garden hose to cool it off too if needed.

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1 hour ago, Puffwagon said:

It's a fairly easy thing to check, providing that it's winter. I've halved the cranking spark from 10 to 5 on a different motor and it started better like that on e85, with 10:1 initial afr.

You'll get several goes at it if you don't mind getting up at 4 or 5am and trying every half an hour with just a 20 second run time. Bust out the garden hose to cool it off too if needed.

haha now that's dedication, I think iv made some head way with this I have increased spark to 15 and upped the crank multi a shit tin and it busted off first crank this arvo. I will check in the morning and see how it is should get down to around 10deg tonight so see what happens. I did adjust the auf1721 and have noticed that with the flex fuel os there is no blend table, so will see how that go's when I finish tuning the other car on flex.

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So didn’t start first kick this morning but did on the second, so it is better. I think I’m missing a table that is stopping me commanding the afr I want but. Say you at 15 deg engine coolant and I have set 0.75 lambda, with in seconds of the engine starting it go’s straight to 1.0 lambda.

Is there some other table that could over ride all of the above fuel tables that have been discussed above?.

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Set the open loop run timer to 60 seconds. I think it is only 10 by default. Once started it should idle fine at 1.0 lambda. It is just cranking that needs to be super rich, don't be afraid to make it 40% richer on cold start. Take a video of each start with the temperature and file it with the tune values you used, you'll quickly see if its improving or getting worse.

19 hours ago, will15 said:

I have pretty much adjusted all those tables, it just felt like I was going way to far with them, eg to rich. Ill do some more testing, just sucks only getting a couple of shots at it per day

Don't be afraid to go super rich, just keep track of how it starts vs your changes. E85 needs a lot more fuel. You could look at some GM tunes which do flex fuel from the factory and see what they do for a sanity check.

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5 hours ago, Roland@pcmtec said:

Yeah that will make it lean during cranking for sure

So smaller numbers is richer?, I was thinking the other way. I don’t really understand your  explanation of how the table decays form commanded lambda from very lean to the actual commanded lambda

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I just tried that pip crank table as stock, the car has not been started today with 17deg  ambient temperature and it took like 5 go’s for it to start. It was starting first kick with the high numbers in that table at 17 ambient temp

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image.png.d410c1dc297bf7587c7f4787fbd443ca.png

image.png.95230d6cf6c3c0194edb683eb9849892.png

If the engine speed is under auF11086 (crank rpm) and the throttle is below auF11922 (TPS counts) then it is considered in stall mode and activates "crank mode"

In crank mode it uses auF0181 "Multiplier to cranking lambda to taper the cranking fuel"

the final commanded AFR is as follows:

Commanded_Lambda = auF0181 / (base_fuel_cold - lost_fuel)

So in a stock car it tapers from 1.8 to 0.8 when cold. When warm it tapers from 1.1 to 0.7

Lets say we are commanding 0.8 lambda in the base fuel (auF0173) and have 0.085 lambda lost (auF0178)

at 0 pips Commanded_Lambda = 1.8 / (0.8-0.085) = 2.5 lambda

at 720 pips Commanded_Lambda = 0.7 / (0.8-0.085) = 0.97 lambda

So a lower number is going to result in a richer start. I don't really understand how having a huge number like 3 or 4 would have even started at all? 

Edit: this is backwards, a bugger number is richer, smaller is leaner. 

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On 4/13/2019 at 1:18 PM, Puffwagon said:

Try doing this below, or a variation thereof.

 

QstuHNs.jpg

This table definitely makes a big difference in commanded lambda, helps stop the stalling when cold and you put the can in drive or reverse. 

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1 minute ago, will15 said:

This table definitely makes a big difference in commanded lambda, helps stop the stalling when cold and you put the can in drive or reverse. 

Yep that table and the cranking PIP table are the ones you want to play with. You can achieve the same thing with the base fuel when cold fuel table as well.

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I’m  getting it a lot better, but the only way it works is to use the PIP table backwards then what you guys have said.  Say the PIP table is stock and I log cold start inj timing will be say 10ms, then I half the valve in the PIP table inj timing will be 5ms. So then I double stock value it will be 20ms. It seems to work well so I don’t know. Then only other problem is about 40 seconds in to a drive after cold start it will command 1.20 lambda and stumble.

I have gone though every table I can think of and it still dose it.

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2 hours ago, Roland@pcmtec said:

When does it command 1.2 lambda? There should be a hard limit at 1.05 lambda.

I’m tuning to cars at the moment and they both do it about 30sec to I minute from cold start around 23 deg coolant temp.

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Yes it is commanded afr not wide band, I don’t have a wide band in the car at the moment. But I can see the narrow band o2 go lean when the ecu commands this and the car will stumble and nilly stall when I’m driving up the road at about 40km. I can get a lot of it happening but I’m using hp tuners for the logging.

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  • 3 weeks later...
1 hour ago, will15 said:

When’s the e85 cold start thread how to coming?, because this cold start tuning is really starting to pee me off.

Pretty much everything you need to know is in here already. But one day when I get time I will go over it in depth. First I want the datalogger finished as that will be crucial to logging lambda vs the various scalars.

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with auf11086 being set at 190rpm (stock) I would think it would come out of crank mode while cranking, I have not had a chance to look at cranking speed just yet but im sure it would have to be quicker then 190rpm. Any one tried playing with this?

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  • 3 weeks later...

All right got the cold start worked out and starting awesome with the standard os and I am now doing the flex fuel one but there are some tables iv used that are not in the flex fuel blend tables auf0173 and auf0162, is there anymore tables getting added or suggestion of tables getting added later on. cheers.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/24/2019 at 1:52 AM, BDAZLA said:

Is someone able to provide the injector scaling for bosch 1000cc injectors for E85 Fuel with 58 PSI Fuel Pressure please?

ID1000 will be good enough to start with, you will still need to scale it though. Here is what I used for E85 with stock fuel pressure.

image.png.a971d63836cfeb3e2c37ce3f84d79ec0.png

image.png.6ef96fab559b64f56917bf802bd290b6.png

This gets me ~1-2% fuel trims everywhere, obviously you will need to tweak this data.

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I also have an issue where the car wont stay started and will stall and has to be started several times before it will stay started. this is worse on cold start but also happens on warm start too. Any suggestions for that?

It's basically a stock BA F6 with a Walbro 460 in the main tank, 1000cc injectors and a fuel reg so nothing fancy. it does have a tune in it for other parts such as a bigger cooler and actuator but if I can get the fuelling correct and the car stays started idling then I can get it on the Dyno to fix the rest.

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On 11/1/2019 at 10:40 PM, BDAZLA said:

I also have an issue where the car wont stay started and will stall and has to be started several times before it will stay started. this is worse on cold start but also happens on warm start too. Any suggestions for that?

It's basically a stock BA F6 with a Walbro 460 in the main tank, 1000cc injectors and a fuel reg so nothing fancy. it does have a tune in it for other parts such as a bigger cooler and actuator but if I can get the fuelling correct and the car stays started idling then I can get it on the Dyno to fix the rest.

When you say "a fuel reg" do you mean a modified standard one to fix the high pressure at idle issues? It is worth checking the fuel pressure at idle and at WOT to make sure it has enough return flow to maintain a consistent pressure.

When it stalls does the dash cut out? Some of the older BAs have issues with the PCM getting hairline cracks, extreme weather (hot or cold) makes them cut out. You can confirm if this is the issue by datalogging when the issue occurs, if the car simply stalls it will continue logging, if the PCM is losing power or resetting the datalog will stop.

Finally (though I would test this first as its the easiest) what are you LTFTs like when warm (start here then work backwards to cold star). If you can show me a megalog viewer scatter plot of pulse width (Fuel PULSE WIDTH) vs fuel mass with the Z axis as LTFT. 

If you get a plot like the one below (showing terrible 18% trims at low load) then you need to fix that. If this is your own car and you have all the time in the world, I would be aiming for 1-3%. If it is a customers car and you are limited on time 10% is the highest number you can get before you start running into stalling issues (you should be able to achieve 10% or better in under an hour). 20-30% and the car will not idle when cold, it will be stalling when the AC kicks in etc etc.

image.thumb.png.6ed45e3673a1066dc2dc90b71047325e.png

More reading on injector scaling here.

 

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Thanks Rolland, I will give it a whirl. I have a gfb reg on there and also I have just purchased a fuel gauge kit to see what it’s set to as I brought the car like that. Tonight I reflashed the car back to stock and then put your injector scalers in and a few other bits and it seemed to behave. I’ll try cold start tomorrow to see what happens and maybe it’s a simple as the timing is way off now with some of the hardware changes. I’ll let you know 😉👍

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11 hours ago, BDAZLA said:

That spreadsheet for the scalers  is very handy btw. Kudos to whoever made that up 😀😀😀

It is for ID1000 injectors and is supplied when you buy them (can view them all on their website). It is why I highly recommend paying the premium and getting their injectors as you get good base data. Almost no one supplies data, or even worse they just copy other injector data which is wrong.

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  • 7 months later...
On 4/19/2019 at 5:36 AM, will15 said:

but the only way it works is to use the PIP table backwards then what you guys have said.  Say the PIP table is stock and I log cold start inj timing will be say 10ms, then I half the valve in the PIP table inj timing will be 5ms. So then I double stock value it will be 20ms. It seems to work well so I don’t know

I would just like to confirm these are my findings as well.  Stock numbers in the FG cranking table were all under 1.  So before reading this thread i assumed the equation for cranking fuel was cranking lambda * cranking multiplier. So being under 1 it would give a final lambda as a percentage of the cranking lambda value.  Lower being richer, higher being leaner.  However no matter how low i made the cranking multiplier it never richened or made made it easier to start on e85.  Watching the inj PW confirmed that lowering the number was indeed leaning it out.

Below stock table (fg series 1) and below that E85 cold start enriched

.105157333_e85before.jpg.ee2306123173736ce079ddd610d7ea59.jpg

26023336_e85after.jpg.746f935d7acf12e2fa5f0aa112592192.jpg

 

Hopefully helps for others sorting out e85

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Sometimes I wish I knew where to find the actual functions that showed how these variables operate. But then I’d be down another rabbit hole. 😂 I’ve had issues with trying to work out other variables like fuel pump. Still don’t think that works how advertised.

Any other advice on the cold start up?  Looks like just the multiplier and maybe crank spark seems to be enough(I haven’t touched yet).

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This is what I've done in hp tuners back in the day.

I've used the "cold enrich decay" to add fuel at startup for about 20 seconds. Try 0.1 across the board at zero seconds interpolated down to 0.01 at 20 to 30 seconds.

You might want to go through your "fuel base cold" table and add a bunch there too as it is fairly lean when stock. There is a table called "cold enleanment" that appears to counteract the cold base table but I haven't used it.

Depending on how cold the weather is and how much ethanol is in the mix you might want to extend the time that it takes to swap from open to closed loop (base fuel enable time).

All of that is in the Fuel>Open loop/Base tab.

The cranking fuel should be fine as it is very rich anyway. It is in the Fuel>General tab.

 

But yeah I haven't played with it yet in PCMTec so gimme a couple of weeks and I either will or wont have anything else to add regarding e85 cold start.

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