A bit late b/c I'm in a rush trying get my car together and rebuilding my son's jr dragster and a friends car
For those who have FT500/FT600, an update was released a month ago (3.40).
https://www.fueltech.net/blogs/articles/new-ft500-ft500lite-and-ft600-update-1Among the bunch of new things, there are 2 I think you guys would like to hear about.
1 - Improved 2step strategy.
2 - Active traction controlI'll pick one of them that might not be so intuitive as the other.
So today I'm gonna talk about the
Improved 2step strategy.Sometimes using a huge turbo becomes a pain when it's about making it spool when staging the car.
There are a few tricks to help to achieve this (and Richie has tried some of them on the old Cabrio with success), but there's something even better now and that no other EMS has done up to now.
Usually, when setting up your 2step strategy you define a target RPM and a target Ignition Timing (usually below 0 to have it really retarded to help on the turbo spool).
Some engines like it, some not.
When you retard your ignition too much, some engines may not respond well to this.
They may take longer to rev or bog when releasing the 2step button due to the engine not being able to get the cylinders ready for launch quick enough after a nice amount of ignition retard due to fuel soaked spark plugs or any other reason.
Also, keep the engine on an ignition cut limiter for too long is hard on valves and valve seats.
With that in mind and, of course, always looking to help people improve their setup, there's a new feature associated to the 2step function.
Additionally to the well known options, you can now decide if you want have your 2step by ignition cut (standard mode) , ignition retard (new mode) or both.
So let's say you already have your 2step configure to 5000rpm and -5 as your ignition timing during the 2step, but your engine still struggles to build boost of the line.
Usually you'd increase the ignition retard, bump up the RPM target, try change your fuel table or even enable the 3step function.
Now you have an easier way of fixing this problem.
In the 2step config screen, you now have a "Ignition retard" checkbox.
When you click it, an new field will be enabled. That's the "Ignition Retard Applied" field.
Here you can define a lower ignition timing other than your usual one (-5). You can put any number you think would help you spooling your turbo.
Usually you'll see extremely low numbers on this field, such as -30 or -40 and I'll explain you why.
Let's say you enabled the "Ignition retard" function and set you "Ignition Retard Applied" to -40.
As soon as you enable this new option, additionally to the standard 2step strategy, you'll have an ignition timing up to that new ignition timing applied to RANDOM cylinders.
So you may have Cylinder #1 showing -5 as ignition timing (which is your base timing on your 2step config), Cylinder #2 showing -15, Cylinder #3 showing -8 and Cylinder #4 showing -40.
What does this mean?
This means that:
- You'll have more retard applied than the standard -5 you have set for your 2step timingl
- Since you have a huge ignition retard being applied to random cylinders instead of a huge retard being applied to all of them, you'll still be able to rev up your engine on the starting line and it's easier for the engine to be ready for launch after the 2step is released
- For the same reason mentioned above, your engine will operate much smoother b/c you'll have fewer ignition cuts since high timing retard itself will hold the engine revs, but not as much as if the timing retard was applied to all the cylinders at the same time
- And finally: you'll make boost much quicker!
From here, since this bigger timing retard is applied to random cylinders, helping us spool our turbo faster than usual and still keep our engine responsive, we can make a few other changes to keep our engine healthy and happy
You can now:
- Use a not so low ignition timing in your fixed ignition timing setting, allowing your to reach out to your target RPM quicker than when you have a too low of an ignition timing
- Try LOWER your target RPM, since your turbo is going to spool faster b/c of the huge retard applied to the random cylinders instead of b/c of the high RPM+ignition cut
- Try make more boost at the same target RPM or at a lower target RPM
I helped a friend of mine test this feature on his drag car (the one I'm helping rebuild) back on May and he made a nice video showing how it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOxEUXyPpRYIt's in portuguese, but you can enable the youtube auto-generated subtitles just to have an idea of what he's saying, which is almost everything I said here.
Now go there test this new feature and let me know the results and send me a message in case you have any doubts
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