Help with Logs - MHD Inside

[RSicks]

Hey, I wanted to see if you guys could help out. I have a '10 535i Msport that's just short of FBO (mods in signature). I went up to stage 2+ after my FMIC install, since a well regarded tuner said that a DP was not necessary, but would help. I can find the quote and add later if absolutely necessary.

I have noticed a lot of things, I have gained psi but have not gained any power (compared to previous tune V7.1 Stage 1+ without actually having a FMIC installed), I am only getting to 16.8 psi and I believe 2+ should be in the 18 area, and I keep getting shadow code 2DC5 about every 2 days.

I am currently working on the stft demons plaguing my banks, but that's been this way since I bought the car. No other codes besides the random shadow code, DSC off, and same road was used to MHD log and Virtual Dyno.

Any help/pointers would be greatly appreciated.

This was my previous log. Stage 1+, no FMIC
http://datazap.me/u/rsicks/pull?log=0&data=4-24

This was today's log, Stage 2+ ER FMIC installed
http://datazap.me/u/rsicks/1st-stage...og=0&data=3-23

[Sgop335]

Good comparison, quite evident from the log as well, no gain in power. 1st log looks good.

In stg2, noticed boost is not meeting target, perhaps you have a slight boost leak from installing the ic?

[RSicks]

I thought the same, but I forgot I had done a log from my last Stage 1+ just days after I installed the FMIC and just before I went Stage 2+. The boost was pretty close.

Installed the ER FMIC on 10/16, last Stage 1+ pull on 10/21 and then moved up to Stage 2+ today 10/23.

Here was the Oct. 21st - the last Stage 1+ I did, before moving to 2+:
http://datazap.me/u/rsicks/final-sta...og=0&data=3-23

But I did check all the connections at the FMIC and chargepipe and all looked good. Removed and reinstalled for good measure.

[RSL]

You're dealing with 2 different tunes and requested load likely wasn't the only change between them. MAF is going to be different at different RPMs, which will effect WGDC base/adders at the very least. The PID may also be different between them.

Bank 2 is definitely running a good clip fatter than bank 1 and has the higher STFT. I'd try an adaptation reset first and foremost, see if that brings the trims/AFRs in line with each other. It's tuned pretty rich either way and bank 2 is even more so.

2DC5, you're likely hitting a torque limiter somewhere or requesting torque out of a range that the TCU likes.

When you're relying on VD for numbers, it's best to do at least 3 pulls. No 2 runs will be exactly the same. You have 3 different ambient pressures on 3 different logs, which will move the lines. Another is weight. I can easily have a 25HP/TQ difference on mine just depending how much gas is in the tank, so something to note when you're logging.

[RSicks]

Bank 2 is definitely running a good clip fatter than bank 1 and has the higher STFT. I'd try an adaptation reset first and foremost, see if that brings the trims/AFRs in line with each other. It's tuned pretty rich either way and bank 2 is even more so.

Ya, its been something I've been trying to track down. All injectors are #11 , but the 2nd injector is 57.6 & 1.80. Martial had mentioned I move it to the 2nd bank, so that's what I will be trying next weekend - as well as checking for leaking injectors while I am at it. But I will try clearing the adaptations to the trims and see what happens while in this tune.

2DC5, you're likely hitting a torque limiter somewhere or requesting torque out of a range that the TCU likes.

Oddly enough, I went back to old version 6 stage 2+ 95 and haven't seen the shadow code pop up.

When you're relying on VD for numbers, it's best to do at least 3 pulls. No 2 runs will be exactly the same. You have 3 different ambient pressures on 3 different logs, which will move the lines. Another is weight. I can easily have a 25HP/TQ difference on mine just depending how much gas is in the tank, so something to note when you're logging.

Ya with VD, I hold the info as just informative. In this case its showing that I am not gaining any power moving up to a more aggressive tune. I am at, near or losing power - but def no measurable gain. I will need to do a boost leak test to see if there is somewhere else that could be causing the loss in boost. Normally I can feel the difference in MHD tunes, but I am not feeling or seeing a change between Stage 1 and Stage 2. So something is off, just trying to put my finger on it.

[RSL]

If they're coded correctly, it shouldn't technically make a difference, but that doesn't mean there isn't a difference between technically and actually lol You could always try coding them slightly higher/lower before physically moving it to see if anything changes, but I'd do adaptations and give it a couple of days first.

There's probably an increased torque request in V7 or something related that it doesn't like. OTS is easy, but one size fits all...some better than others. Nothing beats a custom tune based off the bin from your specific car.

[threetirtyfive]

OK seems I've successfully flashed stage 0 (couldn't flash to stock and get car to start) car's trying to start but battery seems too low- but I get ECU normal operation which I'm fairly confident means it will start. I'll sort the charge out and update on here.

[RSicks]

So its been raining really good this week, so I have not been able to log a good 3rd gear pull in good conscience. But I had already set aside this weekend for electrical day. I replaced the battery and the spark plugs. And when I registered the battery I did another reset of the adaptations while I was there. So the logs will have to wait until everything has adapted.

So the changes since have been:
Moved up to 4gals of E85 with the rest ACN91 - from 3.5gals (the low pressure and rail are showing okay)
New battery
New plugs, moved up to NGK 95770
Went back to V7 Stage 2+ (to see if I can spot where the 2DC5 is coming from)

Here were the plugs from cylinder 1 -> 6:

Looks like the Bank 2 is running rich, but its all 3 so I can't say there's an injector leaking per se - except 6 looks the worst.

[threetirtyfive]

OK seems I've successfully flashed stage 0 (couldn't flash to stock and get car to start) car's trying to start but battery seems too low- but I get ECU normal operation which I'm fairly confident means it will start. I'll sort the charge out and update on here.

WRONG THREAD WRONG POST SORRY

[RSL]

The plugs don't look abnormal to me. Bank 2 were always much darker and #6 completely black for me on stock turbos no matter how much boost or how lean I ran. If you mentioned you were on E85 blend before, I sure didn't see it and that changes everything with AFRs. Gasoline and E85 have completely different stoich values for Lambda. It at least explains why the AFRs seem so rich to me, but I've never used E85, so won't be much help on what is a "normal" gasoline AFR to see on E85 blends.

I don't see any timing issues in the logs, not sure what you hope to gain by adding more E85 except possibly making it read fatter than it already does. It's not going to add any more boost or timing than it's targeting in the map, so the goal would actually be to run as little E85 in the tank to that yields no timing corrections, even if your pumps will take more. If you want to do that, get a custom tune and take full advantage of the additional E85 you can run.

[RSicks]

Ya I understand what E85 does to the curve. It takes more E85 to make the same power as gasoline. My problem is I have ACN91 which is crap gas and the only way to run a 95 octane tune is to run E85 or meth. Even with an ER FMIC my IAT's aren't the greatest, so a little more E85 for cooling the cylinders.

I will be eventually running a Stage 2 Fuel It fuel pump soon and will be tuning for E85 then. But I'd like to get the banks closer to each other and my boost closer to requested before I make the jump. I'm hoping with the new battery and plugs with your recommendation of resetting the adaptations help. I jumped into INPA and saw nothing of concern, but once the car gets some miles after the reset - I'll check the stats again.

[RSL]

OK, gotcha. I'm guessing there won't be much you can do to affect things until you get into a map. The MHD OTS maps are all locked, right? You can try re-coding/moving the injectors around, but not sure swapping hard parts before is time well spent. Once tuning changes hit, it's going to impact a lot of things.

Remember, it's targeting load, not boost. Where you're below boost target, actual load is further under requested load. It's relatively the same places on both, which indicates it's tuned on both maps to have more margin there (or your car/environment may just be responding that way). On the stage 2 where it's targeting higher loads, it's also interpolating to different cells in tables, which is also going to change how everything responds. Tuning can change actual:target load, boost target:load and actual:target boost, but again, need to get into a map to make it happen. Spending time or money trying to physically make it do what the DME isn't telling/allowing it to do won't go very far. I'd say get yourself a tuner first and then see what things look like.

[RSicks]

Damn RSL this is exactly what I needed. Tuning has always been my weak spot. Every car I've owned prior to this was NA so tuning was only making the parts work together. With your description it makes total sense. I promise once I get rep power, I'll take care of you

[RSL]

No sweat, glad to help. N54 is way past cams, intake manifolds and exhaust scavaging. Just bolting stuff on these cars alone will do almost nothing. If anything, they're supporting mods for tunes and more boost. Timing, boost (load), and AFRs are easy, but just about everything in the tables is connected to something else. It's a lot to learn and probably never stops. If you want a peek, download TunerPro and the XDFs (you'll need to find which rom family you have for which to load, but MHD should tell you). Then grab a bin (a COPY of your original if you backed it up, JB4 backend flash, one of the ones in the download section here), load TP, load the matching XDF and open the bin to get an idea what we're dealing with here.

$200-250 on an e-tune and having someone knowledgeable about the workings of the DME in your back pocket is the best money you'll ever spend on it. Other than that, there are some of the most knowledgeable people for tuning N54's on this site to learn from. E-tune is faster to get you going and then you can learn at your leisure, but make sure you get unlocked custom maps from your tuner so you can see what changes are being made and dabble yourself if you choose.

[all4bspinnin]

Have you done a carbon cleaning?

[RSicks]

Supposedly it was done at 60k before I bought her. She's at 80k now and when I removed the stock FMIC there was no oil or residue in it. Guess the RB PCV works

I guess I should look into it on the horsepower standpoint, but if the intake runners where starving - wouldn't the DME cut back on fuel?

[all4bspinnin]

Supposedly it was done at 60k before I bought her. She's at 80k now and when I removed the stock FMIC there was no oil or residue in it. Guess the RB PCV works

I guess I should look into it on the horsepower standpoint, but if the intake runners where starving - wouldn't the DME cut back on fuel?

Ok, so the carbon cleaning was done. Good. Bank 2 is definitely having to add more fuel per your STFT. You can also see in your spark plugs how 4,5,6 are running more rich. (notice the black around the threads/tips)

I see that you have BMS DCI's. Have you cleaned the filters recently? Also, did you ever reset your adaptations?

Any fuel smell when you look over the injectors?

[RSicks]

Ok, so the carbon cleaning was done. Good. Bank 2 is definitely having to add more fuel per your STFT. You can also see in your spark plugs how 4,5,6 are running more rich. (notice the black around the threads/tips)

I see that you have BMS DCI's. Have you cleaned the filters recently? Also, did you ever reset your adaptations?

Any fuel smell when you look over the injectors?

Yes I've got BMS DCI and cleaned them a little over 2 months ago. I haven't removed the injectors and moved them yet, but spark plug #6 was the only one that had a very slight gas smell - but not wet.

I have reset the adaptions and waiting for some mileage for them to find themselves. Once they do, I'll post a new log to look over. With the new battery and plugs - she feels better... but the logs will show more.

[RSicks]

Oh boy, so getting the adaptions reset made matters worse as far as the whats going on:
http://datazap.me/u/rsicks/getting-c...og=0&data=3-23

The boost is now closer, but not as initially snappy as I have seen others and the fuel trims are crazy. AFR's are close to where they are supposed to be, but the trims to make it so are all over the place. Hell my ltft is even off compared to what it was.

Any suggestions on where I should start looking would be appreciated. I honestly thought the car had felt better...

[RSL]

You generally don't see LTFTs deviating during WOT, but given your STFTs, I'm not totally surprised. You used new seals and installed decoupling rings on the injectors? What's odd about yours isn't the trim gap so much as the AFR gap. If the DME thinks a bank is over target, it should be trimming it down and vice versa. There are other things that impact how high/low the trims are, but the AFRs should be pretty close bank-to-bank. The DME seems to think bank 1 is relatively on track (or more on track) at the leaner AFRs and bank 2 is somehow a good bit under, even though it's way fatter already.

Unless it's something totally odd in the map, like different scalars or AFR targets for each bank (which I doubt), I'd almost lean toward an O2 sensor or a leak. Are you getting any codes at all? It seems to be holding boost fine, but since the intake manifold was off at 60k miles, were the runner o-rings replaced at the time? Maybe one wasn't seated right or broke (if old ones were reused) during the re-install. That would be a long shot, just thinking off the top of my head.

Have you dug up any MHD logs from others to see if they're experiencing similar things? It could always just be something off. Is that a beta or a final map?

[RSicks]

It's the MHD 7.1 Stage 2+ 95 - so final map as in the last release. No codes except the 2DC5 on occasions, but not of late. It's funny you mention the runner o-rings, they came to my mind as well. Since it was done before I bought the car, that is a possibility. I haven't fumbled with the injectors at all, but I won't rule out that one or more may be off. Because it's in a lean state, I don't necessarily think leaking - but maybe clogged or bad spray pattern.

However, today I started messing around and I think I may have fixed it - I don't want to jinx myself yet... but the trims looked really good after another reset once I did the changes for the first 30+ miles. I'm going to give it some more miles and I'll log then and see if that's what it was. I don't want to leave on a cliff hanger but I also don't want to give any false hope until I'm certain.

[all4bspinnin]

It's the MHD 7.1 Stage 2+ 95 - so final map as in the last release. No codes except the 2DC5 on occasions, but not of late. It's funny you mention the runner o-rings, they came to my mind as well. Since it was done before I bought the car, that is a possibility. I haven't fumbled with the injectors at all, but I won't rule out that one or more may be off. Because it's in a lean state, I don't necessarily think leaking - but maybe clogged or bad spray pattern.

Have you done a boost leak test on the car?

[RSicks]

No boost leak test, only reason I haven't was by removing the FMIC and reinstalling, spark plugs and a battery - the boost started to get closer. But I am going to have to do it this weekend or next week once I have time.

So here is the new log, don't mind the blip at the beginning. I didn't realize that the Auto record feature on MHD would have started early when trying to build up a slight boost before recording:
http://datazap.me/u/rsicks/e25-3rd-g...-25-26&mark=15

So the trims look a little better, with the exception of a few spots.

After RSL pointing out the E85 as an additive, I kept going back to it in my head. So I decided to go with the MHD E25 tune since I was technically running E26. I thought that maybe the 95 tune did not like a high concentration of E85 instead of regular gas. So the trims have now gone down to as close as .5 and as high as 8 separation which is much better compared to the other runs. Banks are still a bit off on afr and it takes a bit to get to 235, but better as well. My boost is still weird - so I will def need to smoke test to see what's going on there. I have not ruled out a vacuum leak yet either, because my wg is at 97 during the initial buildup instead of the 99 I've seen on other logs.

So a good stepping stone. Hopefully this helps diagnose an issue. Once I get the boost leak test done, I'll let you know. Is there anything else I should be looking at since my Indy/friend would be the one doing the test.

[RSL]

WGDC will move around a bit. Lambdas are closer (and more "normal"), as are trims. LTFTs are 0 at WOT and bank 2 is negative prior now. STFTs had a huge move down. Split is still there, but much narrower and both negative almost across the board. 8% or less difference isn't much to worry about. More importantly, they're out of the +20% range.

My money is on scalar differences between the E25 and 95 maps. If you're running E85, stick with maps designed for ethanol, which generally have higher fuel scalars and likely what shifted the STFTs down so much. If you haven't reset adaptations since switching to the E25 map, you might want to give that a go again as well. They're closer already and appears bank 2 is still moving down (closer to 1).

I'm still guessing the under boost target initially is PID tuning and trim split may be as well, at least partially, but smoke/pressure test couldn't hurt.

[RSicks]

Sorry about the delay, lots of things going on... but I do have a new log. I've been working on getting my IAT's in check as well as a couple other things.

I have reset the adaptations and the car is running well on the E25 MHD tune. The stft's are still off by about 5 points, but that's better than it was. My under boost has changed to over boost and going over the load requested. Now I am getting mean throttle closures. Complete opposite of what it was doing... at least I can rule out boost leak =)

Here is my latest log, I rolled into this one a bit since I've been getting a little wheel spin on the lower end of the RPM's in 3rd lately. The throttle closures are pretty bad at the end of the run - less than half way open. Not even sure where to start on that one.
http://datazap.me/u/rsicks/throttle-...=0&data=3-4-24