I have a 2010 Honda Civic LX, preproject with tsi extreme turbo kit. G25 turb with 410cc inject. I bought it with all the work done, and tuned by a race track place.
This year my wideband A/F is reading rich and can’t tell if the sensor is dirty or if the tune got thrown off.
I’m also having problems with heat soak when 100F+ as the hood is not vented, so the 800degree turbo spreads that heat like a wild fire. It’s also cooking my alternators causing me to replace it every 2 years.
For the heat issue, how well will e85 tune do to help? And secondly if you get more boost, less heat, cheaper gas prices. Why aren’t all aftermarket cars e85?
Wondering the pros/cons and why it was 93 tuned in the first place.
I’m not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but in my experience, E85 burns through a tank of gas faster than 93. It’s cheaper to fill up, but you’ll fill up more often.
And I’m not totally sure why fuel choice would make your turbo generate less heat. Does E85 have lower exhaust temps?
It will help the INternal heat quite a bit. The richer mixture cools the intake charge…sort of like adding a bigger intercooler. The extra cooling and the higher octane (98+) allow more spark advance and more boost. You need 30% bigger injectors and fuel pump plus the tune needs to reflect that you are using E85. Aftermarket ECUs allow the addition of an E85 mix sensor so you could run all E85 or all 93 octane E10 or anything in between.
The EXternal heat is mostly generated by your turbo. That can be insulated itself with the correct heat wrap. More HP means more turbo heat, more radiator heat and more intercooler heat. All ending up inside the engine compartment. Free your underhood heat! Cut holes in the hood for louvers!
Likely it was tuned for 93 in the first place because the owner didn’t want to search for E85 stations.
I know DIY venting the hood is cheap, I’m worried about rain water tho as it’s parked outside, or possibly the turbo being hot and rain touches it and idk maybe it cracks. (I’ve never done this, sorry for not being educated in it)
I could get a $800-1200 hood aftermarket and not have to worry about that tho.
Otherwise your saying 85 tune is awesome idea expect you need to toss $$ on fuel injectors, different pump, flex sensor.
I also thought about a bigger intercooler or upgrading the radiator but I’m new to aftermarket and don’t know like radiator will help 9% but intercooler will be 21% difference and vented hood will drop heat by 14%
The cars at 112k miles and ig I’m trying to save money but also get her running good even on hot days. So what’s the best bang for my buck in your personal opinion?
Thanks man for your book of knowledge!
He was in small town in wisconsin e85 would of been headache for him. Makes sense
[quote=“Blakensnake, post:1, topic:191909”]… with 410cc inject. … my wideband A/F is reading rich
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One idea, if your injectors inject more gasoline for a given pulse width than the computer’s algorithm is expecting, too much gas will be injected for a measured intake airflow. The O2 sensor will show the exhaust stream as having less than the expected amount of O2 (b/c all the O2 gets consumed by the extra gasoline during combustion), making the computer think (accurately) that the mixture is too rich, causing the computer to reduce the injector pulse interval so less gasoline is injected. This would show up as a negative fuel trim.
You can use a bigger intercooler or bigger rad but if the air cannot get out… you still have a heat problem. You can vent the hood but put a splash shield under it to redirect water or install a turbo heat blanket (like below) and solve the water problem and part of the heat problem at the same time. How much have you spent on alternators? $400?? That is halfway to a vented hood. Ya wanna play, ya gotta pay!
As for why it is running rich, the computer just reacts to the sensors that send it data. If you can’t scan it looking for the problem yourself, you’ll need to find someone who can.
I’ll have to mummy wrap it with tape as the manifold and pipe are in the way. The exhaust is completely wrapped up front, and left the turbo alone since it was directly on the fan. But yeah I’ll wrap it and decide on diy vented or spend the money for nice hood.
For my A/F gauge potentially reading inncorrectly, will the tuner have access to those stats on the hondata software?
And you thinking just get a clean 93 tune and if above doesn’t work, either bigger parts or e85?
Edit: lifetime warranty on the alts so cost: 15 minutes each time or if that damn belt slips off a bottom pulley I’d say a solid hour job each time
Suggest to no wrap your o2 sensors, A/F sensors with anything. Some of those technologies (perhaps all of them) require a small access port to outside air to work correctly.
Other than occasionally watching the Fast and Furious movies, I have no experience w/modified-for-racing Asian econobox based engines, so I’m not sure exactly what you are asking. For the computer’s engine algorithm to obtain the correct air/fuel mixture, it must know the exact amount of fuel injected for a specified injector pulse width. If the injectors differ from oem, then the algorithm’s parameters must differ from the oem version too.
I meant instead of the turbo blanket covering the O2 I could by the heat wrap like bandage roll style. And just cover the hotside and leave that alone.
My car is running perfectly fine currently, does not feel over rich or anything. I believe water could of splashed into the wideband wires under the car, or the sensors dirty and the car is not actually rich.
I was asking on tuning softwares can they see the exact A/F thru their computer if the guage is faulty ?
When running max performance you normally need to keep your A/F around 12.5 to 12.8 with gas, add boost and you need more fuel and should be around 11 to 12.5, and E85 are running much richer in the single digits (around 25ish% more fuel)… So what you may think is running rich may be normal for a boosted app…
All that can change from normal putting around town to running WOT (depending on tune)…
Not knowing how much boost you are running leaves some info missing… Was any internal mods made, pistons, cam, compression ratio etc…
You need to find a tuner and talk to them about your power combo, and get recommendations as to rather going E85 (100-105 octane) and all that is involved with running it or 93 octang as well as being able to swap back and forth with required sensor that Mustangman mentioned… E85 when running boost of any kind almost always make lower temps and more power on the dyno (as a general rule) so it is preferred over pump gas…
You really need to find a dyno tuner for best results, they can (depending on the computer) tune for driving normal and WOT, boost controller helps also…
My old Boss had an Infinity Q50 Red Sport with 800 HP to the flywheel, he had 3 different tunes in it, standard 400 HP tune, then around a 600 HP tune and then the 800 HP (E85 only) tune and it was a Stupid fast RWD car (sold it to fund a GTR)… He could run 93 or E85 depending on tune but the computer would only allow X boost if not running 100% E85, BTW It cost him $25,000 and they blew up 2 engines getting there… lol…
So as Mustangman said, if ya wanna play ya gotta pay…
Because it’s hard to find and there’s no cost savings to using it.
This isn’t a daily driver, is it? That would be nuts.
As stated above, the fuel type won’t have any measurable difference on the underhood temperatures. Time to vent some of that hot air out of there. I don’t really like wrapping things because they trap heat in what’s being wrapped and that can lead to other issues.
Like people with no money used to do, you can readjust the rear hood hinges so that the back stays open six inches or so. Rain will dump on the cowl and sides and not on the engine.
but thank you so much for the advice and experiences!