Dyno Day results: "Your car has big problems"... HELP

[John91coupe]

Originally posted by WA2FAST
Thank you... what did you do for your ground... that is what I am kind of torn between. Did you do 2AWG or 4AWG? Where did you connect it to?

I used the factory ground up front from the block to the frame and the battery ground in the trunk is the same as the positive lead, 2 AWG. You should always use the same gauge wire for the ground as you do for the positive.

[WA2FAST]

You did the same thing that I did then, but I did run a seperate dedicated ground to the ground screw for the computer harness as I was told. I have the factory ground cable grounded up to the frame in the front (I ground the frame down to bare metal around the screw hole and used dielectric grease), and the 2awg ground cable grounded to the rear of the car from the battery.

I am still going over wiring problem possibilities, but I did find that the car seems to run a little bit better with the ground cable run directly from the battery to the computer harness ground screw in the front as the factory had it. My problems aren't solved yet though. I swapped computers with a buddy this weekend and the car was doing the same thing with his in my car and his car ran just fine with my computer, so that eliminates that (not that I thought the computer was bad, but at least that eliminates that possibility). I am still doing a lot of stuff with the wiring harnesses right now making sure that nothing is wrong/broken inside.

Question... I would like to test impedance through the wiring harness... what should the resistance read for a good wire?

[Blown347Hatch]

Interesting thread, since I am thinking about running a blow through style meter.

I called and spoke with Rick Anderson at AFM late last week about my own application. He said that the blow throughs work fine, but interestingly enough, he said to get a "naturally aspirated" calibration as the "supercharged" calibrations have a mid range tuning glitch that can't be tuned out (too easily). I believe he said it starts lean on low end, goes rich in mid range, and then lean again up top, which rings a bell with WA2FAST's problems.

He wanted to make it real clear that Pro-M makes a great meter, but just suggests the naturally aspirated model in blow through applications.

Hope this opens up a possible fix. Please let us know if you do try this and it cures the problem. I want to run a 4 inch blow through type meter with the D3-R down the road.

Greg
Miami, FL

[WA2FAST]

Unfortunately, I have been told that the ONLY blow through meter to get, or rather, the only meter to run in a blow through application is the Univer because the whole premise behind a meter is NOT to be blown through... the Univer is the only one that properly does it. The Univer is only available in the Blow Through setup anyway to my knowledge. Jim was un-willing to work with me anyway as of now, so I am pretty much stuck with this meter till he or I can prove otherwise. It’s a real ugly situation right now with what’s going on. I'm still in the middle of it, which is why I haven't really posted much... I will give updates as I go.

[Blown347Hatch]

Originally posted by WA2FAST
Unfortunately, I have been told that the ONLY blow through meter to get, or rather, the only meter to run in a blow through application is the Univer because the whole premise behind a meter is NOT to be blown through... the Univer is the only one that properly does it. The Univer is only available in the Blow Through setup anyway to my knowledge. Jim was un-willing to work with me anyway as of now, so I am pretty much stuck with this meter till he or I can prove otherwise. It’s a real ugly situation right now with what’s going on. I'm still in the middle of it, which is why I haven't really posted much... I will give updates as I go.

Did you see my last post? Is your meter calibrated for a supercharged application?

[WA2FAST]

Blown347Hatch... yes I did read your post, but like I said, the univer to my knowledge is ONLY available in a blow through design... and Jim at Pro-M is un-willing to work with me so far on getting this meter either re-callibrated or replaced, so I am stuck with the blow through callibration. It almost seems that when ANY air is metered through it, the meter just makes the car DUMP fuel... I un-plug the meter and the car runs great. I am going to test the voltage across pins C&D as suggested by Pro-M, but I am positive that it is the meter now. I have gone through the car very carefully and fixed all of my minor wiring problems... they had nothing to do with this, but it needed tobe done anyway. I am going to see how that goes. It is hard to run the car with the meter plugged in because it won't go anywhere... so I don't know how well pulling codes is going to go. I will give it a shot. Now it's just getting ahold of blownwindsor to see if I can borrow those 2 meters that he has for a couple of days to see how the car runs with them vs. mine. I am going to try to get ahold of him.

[Blown347Hatch]

Originally posted by WA2FAST
Blown347Hatch... yes I did read your post, but like I said, the univer to my knowledge is ONLY available in a blow through design... and Jim at Pro-M is un-willing to work with me so far on getting this meter either re-callibrated or replaced, so I am stuck with the blow through callibration. It almost seems that when ANY air is metered through it, the meter just makes the car DUMP fuel... I un-plug the meter and the car runs great. I am going to test the voltage across pins C&D as suggested by Pro-M, but I am positive that it is the meter now. I have gone through the car very carefully and fixed all of my minor wiring problems... they had nothing to do with this, but it needed tobe done anyway. I am going to see how that goes. It is hard to run the car with the meter plugged in because it won't go anywhere... so I don't know how well pulling codes is going to go. I will give it a shot. Now it's just getting ahold of blownwindsor to see if I can borrow those 2 meters that he has for a couple of days to see how the car runs with them vs. mine. I am going to try to get ahold of him.

I never questioned whether the Univer is available in a draw through design. I was just saying that perhaps, according to Rick Anderson, the "supercharged" calibration could be causing the problem. He suggested when I buy a blow through meter, that I get the naturally aspirated calibration. Is Pro-M no longer recalibrating meters? Are they having problems over there managing their business? Sounds like what used to be a good company is becoming questionable? Apparently, they only want to sell mass production meters to the retailers? I wonder what's going on?

[WA2FAST]

I completely agree with you. It is very questionable if you ask me. Supposidly they changed ownership and they are expanding into SO many different areas and product lines that they honestly don't have any control over quality anymore. Unfortunately to us local guys, their answer is to bring the car in and have it dyno-tuned because they "can" fix the problem then... I'm NOT buying that sales pitch... that's BS if you ask me... "well I can't fix your meter, nor will I, but if you bring your car in to us and pay $600 to get it dyno tuned, all of your problems will be gone" Sorry buddy, I have my tuner, if you can't get your meter working, there is NO WAY that I am letting you tune my car. Anyway, I hope to hear back from blownwindsor... he has a 3" univer and a C&L both for #42... I want to put those on my car to see what happens... I sure hope something gets figured out, this is rediculous.

[blownwindsor]

ya I have them just give me a call at 586 604-6661, havent been on to much latley working on my car as well.

[WA2FAST]

Okay, great. Thank you very much... I will call you when I get out of the office today. Mayeb I can stop over later or something.

[John91coupe]

OK, here's the deal on Pro-M mass air meters and a little history. There are 2 basic aspects to how the meter functions. One is by what means it samples the airflow and the other is how it sends the signal to the computer. The Univer has a far superior means of sampling the airflow as compared to the method used on the typical 75mm unit. The 77mm unit was a step in the right direction as far as sampling goes because the electronics element was buried inside the meter and was not effected by turbulant airflow. Problem was that the casting was very expensive and the large size made it only adaptable for draw through applications, which at the time was fine. ProChargers and the advent of more and more turbo kits started the trend toward blow through mass air meter configurations and Pro-M, actually late Bob Atwood, took up the challenge to make a meter that had an accurate way to sample airflow for blow through applications that was uneffected by how the pumbing was configured. They succeeded in that respect.

Now comes the problem area. How the signal gets processed and sent back to the computer. This has to do with modifying the meter electronics to trick the computer into thinking that the injectors are 19 pounders no matter what the actual injector flow rating was. Back when "big" injectors were 36 pounders, this was not much of a problem since the amount of "trickery" involved was fairly small. As injectors got bigger and bigger the margin for error in a given calibration got bigger and bigger as well. You can imagine how much tweeking is necessary in the electronics to make the computer unaware of the fact that you are running 72 lb injectors when the Ford program is saying 19's.

OK, so even with 42 lb injectors the calibration can be hit or miss and even more of a gamble as the injector size gets larger. When Bob was running the shop he was very willing to help out when the calibration was wrong/off and would recalibrate meters until they were "right". Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, Bob was a great people person and a true genius (he invented the aftermarket mass air meter) but he was not a very good business man due to his extreme willingness to help the customer at his own cost. Right or wrong, the current management seems more interested in making a buck (which is good business sense) then trying to handle some of the problems that go along with their products.

Anyway, to bring this long explaination to a close. Finding someone with a like calibration (as you have) and testing their meter out is probably the best way to solve a meter problem under the current circumstances.

[WA2FAST]

John, you are right on. Thanks to Anthony (blownwindsor), I am luckily able to try a different meter out on my car. I met up with him yesterday and he let me borrow his 80mm C&L that is calibrated for #42 blow through. According to him, he said that the meter ran his car absolutely no different than his 3" Univer did, so we'll see how it works on my car. I ended up getting the meter a little later than expected yesterday, so I didn't have a chance to run it on the car. I will do so today and see what happens. So far, testing proves to show that it is my meter because with the meter un-plugged (my 3.5" Univer), after the car hunts for and finds it's idle, it runs and drives like a champ just as it should (going off of ONLY the O2 sensors in that scenario). Anyway, thank you for the informative post John, I will keep everyone updated and let you know what I found out after I run the car with this C&L tonight. Thank you again.

[Blown347Hatch]

So if I understand it correctly, you could order a blow-through meter, calibrated to the injectors you are running, and there still stands a good chance that the calibration may be off?

And then, based upon Pro-M's latest business practices, it's very difficult (if not next to impossible) to get them to put it right?

If this is correct, then I am becoming discouraged, as I am (was?) planning on ordering a 4 inch blow-through calibrated to 83lb injectors.

Signed,

Nervous:(

[John91coupe]

Greg,

Wow, I didn't mean to discourage you with my post but there is a strong possibility that the calibration will be off, especially with 83# injectors. To be truthful, I don't know of anybody that is running that size injector with a mass air meter and Ford computer, even though it is working well for you. The fact that you have the ability to alter the injector pulse width with the PMS is a big plus and may help to get things sorted out. The problems I described are not exclusive to a meter that is set up for blow through, it can happen to any meter and size injector.

On one of my early setups with 36 lb injectors I had a 77mm Pro-M that had horrible cold start problems. It would buck like a carb motor that didn't have a choke until it warmed up, then it was fine. Turned out that the idle calibration was off and too lean, causing the bucking. I actually fixed that one myself by getting one of the Pro-M Calibrators. It is a device that allows you to adjust the idle voltage as well as the WOT voltage. This might be an option for you also if you want/need to fine tune the meter voltages.

Again, didn't mean to make it a bad day for you but at least now you know there could be a problem with the calibration.

Hoping yours is one of the "good" ones.

John

[Blown347Hatch]

Thanks for the heads up John.

With the PMS, fortunately I can lean or richen idle, so perhaps I can tune out any miscalibration. I guess I'll have to make it a point to buy the Meter on a credit card.

Talk to you later.....

Greg