Beside the very intersting thread discussing (finally!) about what are the real advantages of a good engine mapping, I would like to show you my small part of the Emerald learning on the subject...

 

Maybe in my presentation

http://www.300zx.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?166760-A-Z32-driven-to-France-for-a-new-or-continued-life-into-a-nice-home!

you have pointed that my Emerald experience started two years ago with the 280ZX IMSA Supercharged. The car was in parts with the supercharger, Sprintex 30 years old, not even assembled on the engine. The existing Emerald management on there was DOS based, and turned rapidly to a piece of museum history. Emerald proposed an exchange (half the price) for the latest version K6 unit.

After two years, the car was in Spa Classics... on the track! (still with some issues...) but drove me from France to Spa, had the track sessions, and back to France!

 

 

Emerald did provide a basic map, but there was no experience on superchargers with 2.8L datsun L28 engines. I succeeded to start the car, and after that I went through a learning curve that finally made me familiar with most of the parameters and possibilities of the system. I moved the power from 150bhp to some 250bhp with a small 7 psi boost on that engine from 1979. The forged pistons and the compression ratio lowered under 8:1 was giving enough flexibility without the risk of blowing the thing on a mistake!

 

I now have the conviction that this car will stand 300 good bhp's, and i am in the process of changing the supercharger for a more recent one...and start again the mapping with 16-18psi boost!

 

Now here come the real subjet with the 300ZX TT!

Beside this supercharger project, I discovered the BazzaJG modified car... also using Emerald, and that gave me the idea of moving one step ahead with the Nissan VG30 TT! Some quite long discussions to clear the details and the UK origin to be sure to import it without too many problems, and the deal was done. I had a trip to Manchester, met Barry at airport, had a test drive with him and on my own, and that was it: I drove the car back to Reims. That drive was under pouring rain, but the car was safe, providing you were not pushing hard on flooded motorway!

 

 

 

 

Barry did say to me that technical questions were not his favorite, so I got the whole file of what had been done, and for the questions, he gave me the names of the UK specialists involved. I must admit that the car is a real nice one, very powerfull, but also very drivable.

Now that I am back here, I still have to discover quite a number of specials about the car, but I retrieved the maps and configuration with a computer to have a look at the data.

 

No one here in France knows about Emerald, maybe apart a few Elise or Caterham specialists. So I am left with the same discovery as the one I had with my first experience, however I have a car driving nicely... and reaching the 500bhp line. I then started to read about Emerald experience with this model, learning about John Dixon who actually mapped the car that I have.

 

This mapping was the first ever TT unit managed with Emerald back in October 2010, and it looks like I have a driving car, but probably not really optimized at that time:

1. There is no Lambda probe connected to the management, so no chance to look at the ratios for optimizing the fuel/air mix.

2. As a consequence, the car was black coated at the back after the 400 miles drive down home, and the mix looks very rich.

3. The Cam Angle Sensor had synchronization problems with the original 360 holes disk, and I do not know if it was replaced with something else, but what I know is that it is not connected to the management ECU

4. The racelogic traction control is disconnected, supposely to avoid any influence on the mapping if tires are sliding on rolls. The question is wether this traction control uses ABS sensors to act on injectors, or if wheel sensors are installed, so that the full throttle gearchange can be activated in the management.

 

All these questions are probably to be answered by John as he installed the Emerald system, and Dave at Emerald would not know the configuration. Barry, the previous owner is trying to get in touch with John Dixon, but he has no answer. I hope that I can reach him (or he can read those lines?) so that I would know what has been implemented at the start, and what is new since this first installation...

 

Anyone knows how to contact him, or ask him to have a look here?

Thanks for your help!

I'm going to guess it's rich somewhere, wait till you get your wideband connected then you can monitor it

Does it run a MAP sensor or a MAF? If it's running a MAF it could be a boost leak so you'd need to pressurise the system with something like this to check:

http://www.boostpro.net/prodtester.html

 

These can be made from wood or plastic lids the correct diameter with a tyre valve fitted into them if you don't want to buy one. It's recommended boost leak testing should become regular maintenance

Agree jaffa, just trying to see if it could come from some "typical" area...

 

Thanks Eggs. The car is definitely running a MAP sensor with two separate inlets. MAF is gone with that change. Emerald software has the MAP connection and calibration. The Pressure (or vacuum) runs an extra table that applies corrections to the injection values (and to the timing).

The area here is covered with a nice thick coat of snow, so no real possibility to have a ride around...

I took the opportunity to have a warm up session, with the computer connected to the Emerald ECU and data logging.

 

Everything works fine, raising some more questions:

1. The MAP sensor is giving values on "live measurements" and data logger that agree together (as it comes from the same sensor), but the values on the Greedy EBC are not in accordance with those values when having a look to compare between digital instant readout on EBC and software data... Could that come from different units? Calibration issues? Or something else?

2. There is a narrow Lambda sensor connected to the Emerald software, so I suppose that one of the two sensors is giving values. On warmup, the voltage value was nearly 1 volt until temperature of engine coolant was up to 70°C. This is 11.0 AFR or less: Safe but rich. Then, I could get values down to 0.11 Volt by opening the throttle slightly (2500/3000 rpm as quick pushes), coming close to 14.0 AFR on throttle release, but then back to 12.5 AFR on idle. I deduct that one bank of cylinders is on survey with one of the two narrow Lambda probes on the exhaust. The Emerald software is made for applying a multiplyer to the input voltage, so that when correctly programmed, the voltage range is extended artificially to 0-5 Volts, giving a better resolution from the reading. Question to emerald users: Are you using this "extended" range, or staying with the 0-1 volts range?

 

I now have a nice set of data during warmup just for initial test, and the real log will come when the road will allow a drive!

It was also too cold to have the wide lambda sensor implemented... as temperatures were staying around negative celcius inside... too cold for my fingers when connecting wires to the ECU plug!!