Turbo spool up tuning with holley efi

[Music] hey guys today I'm going to go over some tips and tricks and do's and don'ts on getting a big turbo to spool up on a reasonably small engine so I want to preface this by saying that one every single number that you see in this video as far as timing or fueling or anything is is literally for display purposes only so don't go plugging in any timing numbers that I've got in this video and thinking that this is going to be what's going to make my cars pull up every application is different I'm going to show you how to kind of find the best way for your application but the numbers the actual numbers that you see in logs and whatnot are for my application not yours not your buddies not anybody else's the other thing is is that if you've got an LS you probably don't know how to confirm timing I've already made a video on how to do that so watch that video as well so the everything that you see in this video the timing numbers have been confirmed by shooting the balancer with a timing light that right there that's your balancer that's your timing pointer for you LS guys you probably don't know what that is but you have to make one use a coat hanger or buy one from somebody and I've already made a video on that so watch that video too but anyway this video is going to go over how I have gone about over the years getting cars to spool so I'm just gonna give you a little bit of an intro on my own car because this is what I use for this test because I've got about thirty different data logs to show you I probably show all of them but I've got a lot of them to show you and a lot of them are going on the trans brake and so first off this is a 400 inch small block forward the intake manifolds big the heads are big the cam is reasonably large this and it's also got a this has got a 98 millimeter from precision so if you're watching this and you've got like a 5.3 litre LS with like an s 475 you're probably thinking to yourself well my car bills boost instantly you probably need to watch this video but when you put you know a man-sized turbo on the car you'll probably have to come back and refer to this so three things I want to point out the first if the converter is way wrong for your application as in way too tight for your application or for the amount of power that you made this this isn't going to be able to ban date it may be able to help you a little bit but it's not going to be able to fix just a complete wrong mechanical problem the second thing is is the exact same thing that I just said about the converter is true for the cam as well so you know by a camshaft from a from a good reputable person that knows camshafts right so there's a lot of people out there that do this in the the LS world Brian Cooley John bewdley tick performance the Doug at motion race works works with Texas speed they've got some good cams there's a lot of companies out there that do it for the LS world for the small-block Ford world if you're building a turbo small-block forward you're probably like me you're older and you've already been through this before and you're you know who to deal with so I personally my engine builder tkm Kevin Mullins he spec the camshaft for me through their bullet cam but there's a there's a lot of good guys out there on the small walk-forward small-block Chevrolet world and then if you're working with a big-block with twins you know you're probably going through boliya the same deal you know the the the man-sized motors not the LS stuff we all know who to deal with for camshafts as far as converters I really only stand behind one company when it comes to converters and it's nothing against any other company out there that builds converters I'm sure they're good sure they're great but I've been through a couple different converters and once I started dealing with Cameron Cameron store converter services in Columbia South Carolina I won't I won't use anybody else it's just it flat out works so that's not a that's not a stab at any other converter company at all I'm sure there's plenty other good ones out there but you need to be honest with your camshaft guy and with your with your converter guy because if if you're not if you tell them that this thing is gonna make mm more power and it really only makes 1,200 horsepower your converter is gonna be way too tight and you came from all going to be way too big and you're gonna be sitting here wondering why I won't call up on the chip the other thing is that I want to touch on is that cubic inch and compression make a big difference when it comes to getting one of these things to light off so if you've got a 327 H engine with a hundred and six millimeter turbo on it you you've probably already shot yourself in the foot this video may be able to help you a little bit but again going back to the first few things I said this will not mad this will not completely fix a mechanical mismatch of parts or mechanical screw up so for reference this engine is 400 inches it's got blue thunder cannon valve heads and the intake manifold is actually 420 I believe cubic inches the cam is in the neighborhood of two hundred and seventy five ish degrees of duration and about 780 lifts so this is a pretty you know radical as far as turbo cams go and then like I said the turbo is a 98 millimeter from precision the pro mod gen 2 so what we're gonna go over data logs is all based off of this combination this this combination just made 1980 rear wheel horsepower well at the hub not on their tires but same thing and I drive this car on the street and it also gets raised to a good but this is as you can tell probably from how dirty everything is this is how I go about getting them all to come up on the chip there's a couple other things that play into spool up I don't want to get too deep into it but you know a header header primary size crossover size all that kind of stuff plays into it because tons of debate about that I don't wanna get into it I'm just going to show you how we do it in the software with ignition timing and with fuel and with rpm so this is just to show you kind of what all these data logs are showing that's why my timing numbers don't necessarily matter to you okay so just forget that oh hey he said you started degrees and this I didn't I didn't tell you to put thirty degrees of timing and your stock bottom end unless I didn't put tell you to put forty degrees of time I didn't tell you to put any of that what I'm telling you what I'm gonna show you is how to look at a data log and use your torque converter basically as a kind of as an engine dyno because not all of us have engine dyno so we're gonna use the torque converter in essence to see how the engine responds and what it likes so this has kind of been a proven thing for for me and quite a few other people that works every single time to get them to come up as fast as they're going to come up I'd seen quite a few of the small box single turbo cars and they all typically come up pretty fast so unless something's completely just mismatched then then we have to work around it but or we have to fix what's mismatched not try to work around it with a tuning salt like with tuning software so let's go look at some data alright sorry about the long intro there but I just want to make sure that everybody understood that numbers that you see here are not what you're supposed to plug into your engine okay so first thing I'm going to explain is uh we're if we're at this point of worrying about spooling up a turbo engine this thing should already be pretty close for the tune-up as far as start idle drivability in power of the whole nine yards we should be pretty close if you just started the engine last night and now you think it needs to go on the trans brake and whatnot then you know maybe maybe revisit this video later but this is under the assumption that you've already kind of got a decent run an engine maybe you've already raised a little bit this thing's a little lazy to come up on the brake and you kind of don't really know what to do if this is a new build and you just gotta fire it up you can you're you revisit this later okay so anyway what I typically do after I've gotten the car started running idling you know driving around pretty good or if it's a race car you know taking throttle decent he's already came off the dyno or whatever it is this is this is how I go about it so you'll notice that my entire timing table below three point eight pounds boost you know all through here it's it's thirty degrees right so all this is thirty degrees so the reason this is all thirty degrees is because I am on a one single number to find out how the converter is going to grab the engine it's a lot easier than making a nice smooth lennier you know reduction of timing as boost increases this is this is gonna get changed back okay but for right now it is going to stick one solid number so in this case it's thirty degrees as we look at some day logs we're gonna see where that number starts to change so again the numbers are arbitrary but typically you know wherever the words driving around and cruising around the best is where I start right so we've got thirty degrees of timing jammed in it all over the place right here okay I've got no timing modifiers or anything like that going on now what I want to show you some data logs and so what we're gonna do is we're gonna pull up this data log this is a comparison data log and I named it thirty degrees low TPS okay so the first thing I want to point out before we get too much into the time it is if you don't put your foot to the floor there's a good chance it's gonna spoil pretty slow okay so look we're starting all of our logs at 30% TPS and eyes erode amount of 30% TPS so on this thing when the first main log not the comparison Longreach is 30% TPS it zeros out okay so if you notice up here well barely in the gasps 12% have you noticed the first one the main log it's also slow so you'll see that don't go judging how long it takes to get to the chip if you can't put your foot to the floor all right so I know it's pretty basic but I just wanted to point out that you know wouldn't your foot to the floor is actually kind of important if you want to go up on the chip so some of you guys that roll into it real nice and soft and slow that's a problem um so that was just the first thing I want to show you remember I'm talking about having thirty degrees right here over the place what we're gonna do we're gonna look at this now this is thirty degrees of timing now disregard pretty much from here over we're not gonna look at that so we're gonna look it from here to here so if you stand on the transbrake for a while and you you look at pop it bang and build boost you put a bunch of heat into the converter that's not what we're going what our goal here is okay what we want to do is we want to see where this thing rolls over at where the converter grabs it so what I mean by is where the converter grabs it is right around here okay so if you look I've got two separate logs to both read 30 degrees right both same you know point 7 into the vacuum all same target air fuel same bout same time pressure we've got a little bit of a fuelling difference here okay I'm gonna get into that in a minute but notice we've got a 200 rpm gap between the two all right now TPS one percent but we got a little bit of a gap 200 rpm gap what what our goal here is is to see where the converter crabs so we had 30 degrees of timing in this one and then we make a numbered pole at say 32 degrees in timing see if it flashes higher now the reason I have this this graph up here to show you two different flash points in essence is because one of these and I'll let y'all figure it out one of these was done at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when it was 95 degrees outside the other one was done later that night at about 10 o'clock at night when it was about 60 degrees outside so as you can tell this one was done 60 degrees outside and this one was done when it was 90 degrees outside so we have close to the same result but they are they're different okay they're off by a little bit so the whole the whole goal here is to get this thing to get up on the two-step as fast as we can okay so the faster we can hit this limiter right here all right let me reset it on this one is 43 honored fast we can get to that limiter the better I said now if you noticed this is our boost number down here and you'll see that the solid line our main log not the Natha comparison is ahead the air was a lot better so the better the air the faster it seems to come up and make power so when you start comparing logs besides the fact that just putting your foot to the floor you also have to keep in mind that when it's 40 degrees or 50 degrees outside and the air is perfect right as some of y'all like to call it boost whether if it's boost weather the first time you do this and then you go and you you try to do this again as a comparison and it's a hundred degrees outside that's not boost weather that's that's crap weather and you can't really judge how one is responding versus the other as you can see there's quite a bit of difference and now these two respondent here we're on the chip at one point eight here we don't get the chip until two point one so some people I think that that's my nude oh man it still goes as a chip at 1.8 seconds or a 2.1 that's fine just always keep it in mind that when you're trying to do a comparison between changing settings between timing that you have to keep your environmental conditions similar right so anyway those are the two reasonably large caveats keep your foot to the wood and do it in the same weather okay now what we're looking for when we spool up a turbo is pretty much the first point eight seconds are really important okay so we're going to zoom in we're going to look at just the first point eight so here we are pointing so which one would you say makes more torque okay so the idea of torque is you have a torque converter behind this engine and the torque converter is stopping the engine from revving because the converter is gonna grab the engine and tug it down right it's gonna hold it back so if we've got an engine my engine right here it flashed a 3400 of good weather and 3276 and not so good weather right it's reasonably close to each other we we know 30 degrees gets us about 3400 rpm right so what you'll do is the way I go about this is I will go back into my global and this is something to kind of just play with all right so here I'm gonna change this since we don't we don't care about it bumping and banging and hitting the chip we want to see where it flashes to right so we only want to be on the transbrake for a second we don't need to lay into it to you know to find out what the engine likes for timing right so here we're gonna go in here and the first thing that I would do is I put 32 degrees in it and I'd repeat okay so I go to 32 degrees and I would redo my spool up and I let off of the throttle at you know one second into it so right where they were the engine it starts to come up with over and it's been stalls it raisa wherever wherever the converter kind of tugs right so that's where you stopped shut the car off let it cool down pull the pull the data log in compare it right so we have 30 degrees versus 32 degrees which one flashed higher if 32 degrees picks you up 150 200 rpm in the same conditions and the same throttle then we know the engine likes 32 degrees now before you start jamming a bunch of timing into your engine you have to understand something that just because we've got 30 degrees in the engine or 32 or 28 or 21 whatever it whatever the number is again it's an arbitrary number that we're talking about right now because my engines probably different than yours whatever that number is that doesn't mean that more is better okay so this right here we try 32 degrees if we don't see any type of a response from gaining two degrees of timing all right we don't see any type of a change and how high the converter flashes go the other way but 28 degrees in it okay so if 28 degrees yields us a result like this right so imagine we'll just for instance here if this was the same exact weather conditions this is 28 degrees this is 30 degrees then I'm sorry this is this is 30 degrees this is 28 degrees right then we know the angel likes 28 degrees more if you're on an ethanol or methanol based car then you can start putting fuel to it so methanol what I typically do is I find what what weird flashes the highest rpm based off the timing right so say 30 degrees right or 26 whatever it is and then I start putting fuel in it right so I'll just I'll just change it targeting our fuel number and then I'll let it offset in the fuel map but as we start changing a target or a fuel number you'll do the same thing so this isn't just a 15-minute fix and this is how we get it to spool I turned a lot of a lot of small-block turbo cars and them around a lot of small-block turbo cars and some of them spool up really really well and it's because the owner or the tuner or myself or whoever it is that was behind the keyboard spent the time to invest the time to actually figure out what the engine actually likes okay so if you don't have an engine dyno sitting at your disposal whatever you want we're using basically the torque converter to tell us where does the engine like for timing and for fuel so look at No so notice you've got thirty degrees in this one as well and they kind of level off but one gets one get one starts to climb a lot faster than the other now no matter what it is if we look at that same point eight right at the same point eight of a second thirty degrees was our number for this this combo the change that I made here was between target our fuel okay so one is just a little bit richer than the other and and the reason being they liked it leaner right I liked it a little bit leaner so I know we're splitting hairs here but when it comes to getting this thing to pop it back on the chip that one was a little bit faster okay so when I talk about being lean or being rich on you know prior to get into the chip typically most engines like a lean and mean to get to the chip and fat and once they're on the chip okay so what that means is this area we're gonna take a walk and then activate overlay so this area here is it's going up to the chip okay so we're getting to the rev limiter right so this area right here was on its way to the rev limiter all right now let me look at the fuel map and we can start adding fuel here or we can go to target air fuel and just offset it here and let it do its thing but what I'm getting at is some engines don't like being rich on the way to the chip if they do if you've got it way too rich to the chip it'll typically respond very well to more timing going so this is kind of just a rule of thumb that I've always used is I put it's in a wood and I see where the converter grabs it right so if it's 30 degrees and it's 28 degrees or it's 22 degrees whatever it may be you have you have the ability to change it you know dramatically and quickly so what I always try to tell anybody that spins in my classes or even it contacts me and asking any questions or whatever is that you don't you don't need to get in a rush about this because when you go to the racetrack the worst thing that can happen is you with a turbo car is you put it on the trans brake you put it to the floor and nothing happens so things just never gets to the chip it never lights off you look at it and then the car leaves it goes 149 60 foot and you're scratching your head going what the heck happened this thing made 2,000 horsepower on the dyno and it doesn't 60-foot worth of crap and it doesn't follow a boost curve and it doesn't do anything that it's supposed to do or it spins the tire 60 foot out because all power father came in work on this in your shop like I like I always breeches you know working the shop not not in the racetrack and get this nailed down before you go anywhere you have plenty of time in your shop instead of watching you know this YouTube video or something go out to your shop and play with it right so your engine may be really happy at 25 degrees of timing that's why timing numbers from somebody else's combo even though it's may be similar is completely irrelevant when it comes to your engine right so you don't know what your engine wants versus their engine so ad timing start removing time and see where the converter rolls over at and this rpm is point 8 into the into that you going to the floor is important all right I always look at right around point 8 we have 0.62 1.0 into you going to the floor where the converter grabs it I I deal with a converter company that I've mentioned before that is fantastic again this is my combo is not an easy one - it's not exactly hard but it's not extremely easy to light off considering the weight of the car how tight the converter is and the fact that I Drive the car around town so it's got a very very tight converter in it in comparison and the more you work on it the easier it'll be to get this thing to actually light off so the next thing I want to show you once you've kind of come up with what your whatever your magic number is right for your your application the next thing I want to show you is um once you get them onto the chip okay so I've made a video on this before and it was on an advanced table for using a boost building so there's there's two things here that you have to remember you set your rpm for your limiter here Commission parameters rev limit right here okay so what so whatever rev limiter alright so we'll say 4200 okay and then the next thing is it's how much don't pressure you applying while you're on the transbrake right so when you're grabbing the transbrake you've got 13 psi of dome brush we're trying to hold the wastegate shut alright so when you're doing these tests even when you get to you know seeing where the converter rolls over to always be repetitive right so you always want 13 pounds of doing pressure that's gonna be the number you use same thing with the the limiter won't matter as much because you should begin out of the throttle before it ever hits the limiter right 4200 here and as we were showing these and these logs here were rolling over around 34 33 3400 so we're about a thousand rpm away we should never you know you should be getting out of the throttle here you know it's wrong let it we'll see where it grabs and let off of it and if you have a turbo card you know exactly where that point is because you've probably sat there and went what the heck is going on and then it finally starts to laying off and beltzman boost so first step find that timing number find that fuel value that it likes on its way to the chip okay typically lean and mean and when I say lean and mean that means a little bit less fuel and a little bit more timing than normal on the weight of the chip okay so once you've got that nailed down and you find okay we've a lot of people I talk with and work with and helping what not we typically find two to three hundred rpm more of what we'll call flash or getting up off of the transbrake we typically find two to three hundred more rpm and if we're only 700 rpm away from our target rev limiter then 300 rpm is quite a bit I know it doesn't seem like much but spend the time do it now and you won't have to be you know looking like a jackass on the starting line sit down the transbrake cooking a transmission and then calling your transmission and converter guy claiming that you know this thing's brand-new and it's smoke what's wrong with it what's wrong with it is that you you know you didn't spend the time in the shop and to figure it out before you went to a racetrack and get any burnt up for transmission so now to address the one sits on the chip right so we use this one so now again remember I told you that I just shoved the same number in here everywhere okay so you can do this a couple different ways if you drive the car around town wherever this thing flashes the highest so 32 degrees here and then in this map right it's typically wear these things drives the best too but when you're driving it'll be down here right so you'll be in you'll be in a heavier vacuum you're just cruising around town so you can fix your timing table here but remember what that timing value was right so if you want to leave your timing value here hey we got a thirty degree you know thirty degrees is the magic number right here this is where it likes it or all this has got to be 30 degrees then what you can do is start rolling your timing out of it that you know 3.8 pounds of boost or whatever nobody decide which leads me to the the Boost Builder function that I made a video on this on how to use an advanced table for boost focus but when I typically figure out what an engine line for booze builder but contrary to popular belief I will take this entire section and shove the same timing value in it that is in here that we just figured out where it likes to go up to uh goes up to the chip now you're probably looking at this and gone Jesus he's got thirty degrees of timing that's only two pounds of boost in it and then it goes to 15 degrees the point of this is not that we're gonna run this card on the racetrack like this and so that the math can be easier we will adjust it accordingly but it's so that the math can be easier to deal with when you work with her through your advanced table okay so you're not going to leave this like this okay so we've already worked on how to get this thing to flash and get up to the chip as fast as we can now we need to use a boost building function in order to remove timing right so advanced table probably already watched this video from from me on this and this is this is pretty basic right so we've got no timing coming out of it until we reach 4.8 pounds of boost and it starts to linear removals down to 23 degrees out of it by 6.0 thousand boost so this is a really quick aggressive pull of timing but it's already on the chip at four point seven thousand boost and it won't fall back off of the chip now remember I said we shove thirty degrees of timing in that whole map there and so that we can make these numbers nice and easy to understand okay so thirty minus twenty three is seven degrees of timing instead of okay well we're pulling 23 at six pounds and then we got to go back over here and at you know a six pounds of boost we should be you know twenty four degrees and it's easier I repeat it's easier to start this way okay and then you can come back and linearly remove timing out of the engine the way you know you should and then modify your advanced table here accordingly so it may look something like this you know we may be your advanced table maybe doing something like this okay this is pretty common but uh and then when you start getting up into boost especially if you have an LS list there's only timing you'll wind up doing this okay so this is all an offset of this but when you start fooling with this in your shop it's a heck of a lot easier to have a one solid number here it's a subtract from so there's been a peanut gallery that has made comments about all they saw my timing map or something from a video that I made previously and Jesus must be the spools owner or something well the reason that that was like that is because the math is a heck of a lot simpler when you're figuring out how to set up your advanced table okay once you have your advanced table kind of figured out that hey this thing really likes 4 degrees of timing when it's on the chip and 5 pounds of boost and it really lights off there well remove a little bit here and go over here oops over here and start making your changes right so you may have twenty eight there and you may have twenty here whatever whatever your numbers are they're arbitrary for this conversation but understand this is how I go about doing all right it's a heck of a lot easier to remove 23 from from 30 than it is to continually have to come back here and go how many how many degrees of time you weren't we're in this cell how many were in this cell what does it interpolate between here and here I leave them all flat do the math in the advance table and then once I figure out where it likes it I refer to my data log right here and I look and say hey right here boost build is removed in thirteen point eight degrees at four point four and we're down to sixteen degrees of timing and now we know now we can modify our ignition table our timing table to uh to correlate correctly as if it was in power going on the racetrack and then offset that with less of a boost build okay hopefully that makes sense if you have questions destiny now the things to look for when you are on the transbrake and you get to the chip and it's lazy or it's fast or whatever it may be if you look we've got we've got two logs here right and they both start at 30 degrees of timing okay and one has got a pretty lazy removal rate the timing and the other one is pretty aggressive right so I just make a channel an input channel to show me with the build is but if you see that it starts to fall off or the chip you have probably removed too much timing too aggressively okay if it has not fallen off the chip and when I say bye fall off the chip is you'll see it goes bang bang bang bang bang and then the engine rpm just kind of falls at lowes and then it comes back and bang bang bang way back so it means you've created too much load by removing too much timing while on the the rev limiter okay so that's when you get too aggressive with timing removal if you get if you're not aggressive with timing removal it will be here you go there's a spot right there let me close the cabarrus no there we go perfect so right there you can see there's a good spot where it fell off of the chip and if you notice it fell off with a chip when it had let's look nine degrees of timing of 3.8 pounds of boost so I was I was a little bit aggressive with the removal of timing from this right so I removed it too fast all right so if you do remove it a little bit too fast it will pull it off of the chip and you know no matter how loose the converter is and whatnot it'll eventually pull it off of the chip those are a couple things to look for hopefully this is given a little bit better of an explanation as to how I go about spelling up a big turbo on a small engine I've done everything from 380 inch engines with 118 millimeter to 416 changes with 98 time all over in between I've done a lot most of this is really relative to small box because small block with a big turbo typically needs to leave on a good bit of boost in comparison to a big block with twins because the big block makes so much torque it you know leaves on 5 to the 7 pounds of boost so that's why I say this is more of a small block single or twin turbo type of deal than it is a big block deal if you have a big block we have a 565 in a single 118 and you can't figure out how to get that light off you probably shouldn't have that that car to begin with but um but anyway hopefully this answers some questions and last but not least with this boost builder I want to show you what I do to stop them from continuing to climb and build boost as some of you may notice it but 15 pounds of boost is where I want this thing to leave that ok so what I'll do is I'll go over here 15.1 enter so when it reaches 15 point 1 pounds of boost it jams all the timing back in it and it comes it back down okay so it'll call it back by putting the timing back in it it'll calm it back down it'll sit there at fifteen point one fifteen - fifteen point one pounds of boost it's a lot more accurate than just relying upon what you put in here hoping that your launch target is accurate but based off of dome pressure and spring pressure and waist key you know priority and where it's mounted so hoping to answer some questions let me know they've got any questions and you know good luck gonna miss bull see [Music]

Channel: devin vanderhoof

Views: 31,124

Rating: 4.8112359 out of 5

Keywords: holley, holley efi, dominator, hp, racepak, terminator, terminator x, precision turbo, borg warner, garret, forced inductions

Id: RQ5txVdiJ8I

Length: 37min 50sec (2270 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019