Completed Project My 98 super charged EX

1998 Explorer 4.0 SOHC
Bought it with a melted alternator/wiring harness from a junkyard for $1,000
Fixed it, drove it for two weeks, then I boosted it.
Started with an M90 supercharger kit from www.Bansheesuperchargerkit.com
Upgraded to an M112 Lightning supercharger that was a prototype kit.
Next was the M122 off a 2012 GT500
I have reached 20 lbs of boost (with ARP head studs) and a 12.83 in a quarter mile.

Pictures
1. How it looked when I brought it home.
2.The M90 supercharger installed
3.The GT500 supercharger installed
4.How it looks now
5.Wheelie

 

[ahodges]

fixed it for you andy

 

[4pointslow]

Life Time Warranty

Definition by Wikipedia

A Lifetime Warranty is usually a warranty against defects in materials and workmanship that has no time limit to make a claim, rather than a warranty that the product will perform for the lifetime of the buyer.

Definition by me

A Lifetime Warranty is a marketing bullsh1t scheme to sell more products because it makes many people think that the product will last a lifetime which it never does.

 

[2000StreetRod]

lifetime battery - not!

When I was in the Air Force and learned that I was going to North Dakota for four years I purchased an Exide lifetime high current battery for my Wagoneer. After 2 years it had to be replaced (free) because of numerous -30 deg. F starts. Two years later it had to be replaced again (free) and I was notified that would be the last time since too many people were getting them replaced free who were not the purchasers of the original battery and the vehicle. I complained that wasn't my problem but the fault of the dealers who should have demanded the proper documentation which I still had. I owned my Wagoneer for 24 years but only got two free replacement batteries.

Now when a battery is purchased that has a warranty it is basically a lease. When a five year battery fails after three years you get a 2/5 credit of the original purchase price toward the next one. That way the seller has no risk of losing money. Since after three years the price has usually increased you get less than 2/5 years credit for the replacement battery cost.

 

[vroomzoomboom]

here is my rant about aurora wires.
i cant remember the entire phone call with them because it was so long ago, but i do remember the guy asking me if i have headers. when i said yes he had told me something like "well, YOU destroyed them because of the heat from your headers. you should have put boots on them" when i told him i have boots there was a long pause then he came at me with another excuse and i shot that one down as well. thinking back at this i am surprised that he didnt say something like "taking them out of the box voids warranty"
the motorcraft wires lasted longer. the auroras didnt even make it to 100kms (60 miles) before i pulled them off and tossed them in the garbage.

and heres the video of how well they worked



that was full throttle. we hooked the truck up to my friends scanner and in the driveway under a light load in reverse i think all but 3 cylinders misfired.
to make things even worse this is a canadian company. as most of you know i live in canada. i felt ashamed that a company in my own country would treat me, and others with their kind of service

 

[4pointslow]

Racing at Atco Raceway

I got to the track again this weekend, Friday and Sunday.
Friday night my first two passes were 13.02 and I had belt slip so bad I could hear it through my helmet. I made a third pass and my truck slowed down to a 13.15
These runs were all with a 2.8 inch pulley because I was trying to stop belt slip. Didn't work. I decided to put the 2.5 inch pulley back on since I thought that belt fit tighter. It did not, the belt slipped with that pulley also. I also had tire slip problems and was bouncing off the rev limiter or having spark blowout again. Pulled a 13.13 and 13.31 and called it a night.

That night I was thinking about my belt problem and then thought maybe the tighter belt that I was using for my 2.5 inch pulley would work on my 2.7 inch pulley and not slip. Saturday I got out to the garage and gave it a try. If it were any tighter the belt would not have fit. This thing is tight. I gave it a thorough beating to make sure it was good to go and there was no slip and no belt stretch.

So today (Sunday) I decided to get back to the track. There was a SUV bracket race along with a lot of other brackets races today. Funny thing is that there were only 5 SUV's during time trials, and 4 when it came time for eliminations. A couple of cars wet down the track with oil or antifreeze so we spent a lot of
time waiting around. My fist time trial I had slight knock, some tire spin, and major bouncing off rev limiter(or spark blowout) right before shifts. Ran a 13.11
I adjusted the tune making shifts happen sooner and pulled 2 degrees of timing.

Second time trial there was very little tire slip, no rev limiter or spark blowout(what ever it is), and no knock activity at all. Ran a 12.94

Since there was only 4 of us during eliminations, there was only two more races. I won the first one with a dial in of 12.90 and a run of 13.08
The last race I changed my dial in to 12.99, ran a 12.96 so I "broke out" and lost. I would have lost either way, the guy I went against ran a 16.62 on a 16.61dial in, and he beat me at the tree with a .065 light against my slow reaction time of .105
Here is hoping that next weekend is not all rainy like they are predicting.

 

[CDW6212R]

Excellent, de-tuned it and went faster. A little fine tuning of the belt(8 rib) and the bigger tires, it'll be even better with no drama.

 

[2000StreetRod]

torque converter?

One thing I don't remember you mentioning is replacing the stock torque converter with one having a greater stall speed. Are you still running the stock torque converter? If so, have you considered changing it? What stall speed do you think would be a good compromise for street vs track performance? With boost at lower engine speeds your torque is better than an NA engine. You may not benefit as much with an increase in stall speed.

 

[4pointslow]

There will still be drama, just a different kind I am sure. lol.

As far as the torque converter goes, I thought about it once and dismissed it since there is a lot of torque at 3,000 and that is where the stall seems to be.
If I found out that a 4,000 stall speed would get me a 12.5 I would be ordering a converter like yesterday. lol.

I have thought about getting a converter with a stronger clutch (for lock up) but when I started getting into transmission tuning I ended up changing the supercharger and my focus left the trans and went back to the engine.
I have to datalog a different set of pids to do the transmission tuning.

I scheduled to have off from work the next 4 Friday's, in hopes to be at the track on all of those days (weather permitting).

Just got my replacement spark plug wires so I am going to install them and reinstall my Screamin Demon coil pack since it has been out of the truck since I was diagnosing the misfire I had in the past. Then if the rev limiter sensation is still there I am going to play with the datalogger to see if I can find a pid that shows if I am hitting the rev limiter or not. I am going to post a screenshot of one of my recent runs in Live Link so you guys can see what I am seeing, in the next post.

 

[4pointslow]

Rev Limiter or Spark Blowout

Here is a screenshot showing the A/F going crazy from either the Rev Limiter or Spark Blowout. My rev limiter is set to 6250. Datalogger is showing 6147 RPM's while this is going on. One thing to note is that the datalogger refresh rate is slowed down when there are a lot of pids being recorded so maybe the rpm's really did hit 6250 and Live Link is just not showing it. On the other hand I have had this happen at 5400 rpm's in the past and that made me believe it was spark blowout. I gapped the spark plugs down to .030 (I believe) and thought the problem had gone away. Maybe it is because I have my old stock coil pack on. I will swap that out Friday before I go to the track.

 

[ahodges]

I had similar problems with mine when I first got it together. In my case it turned out to all be from the faulty spark plug wires.

 

[CDW6212R]

A stronger torque converter(better clutches) may be a good idea, but I'd think about that along with a trans build. Maybe it's time for a second trans to build and see what may be available now for internal hard parts. I haven't heard of anything, but sometimes you have to hunt to find those new tricks. Getting a look inside that fine running 5R could be helpful to you and others. But that's all part of finishing touches hopefully, work on the important things first.

 

[2000StreetRod]

not rev limiter

It doesn't look like the rev limit I experienced on the first 4th gear pull I did with my own tune when I forgot to disable the max speed limit.

 

[4pointslow]

Pids

What pids were you comparing?

I noticed that your torque source pid was working, source 3 is vehicle speed limiter. I stopped datalogging Torque source because I didn't remember seeing it change so I thought it did not work. That was with Live Link 6.5
I was thinking I should try it again in LiveLink Gen2 to see if it works. That will be a good experiment to try this weekend. I will also be installing my new ignition wires and putting my old screamin demon coil back in.

Knowing that my rev limiter shuts injectors down, I expected to see more of a change in injector pulse width if it was the rev limiter. I thought I would see zero but did not. It did drop down some in this datalog below, but not the second one down.

 

[2000StreetRod]

cylinder cutout

The PCM uses the torque control logic to limit torque when engine speed or vehicle speed limits are exceeded. The PCM calculates the pulsewidth normally for engine conditions and this is the value of the pid. Notice in your and my plots the puslewidth remains normal.

Torque control uses fuel control to disable injectors:

"Lean A/F's do not contribute to catalyst exotherm temperatures, but can be offensive to exhaust valve temperatures, so a minimum number of injectors should be turned off when running lean to allow the round robin routine in the TQCTL_INJOFF() module to rotate and cool the exhaust valves. The rule of thumb for the number to turn off, is at least one per bank (1 for a 4 cylinder, 2 for a 6,8,10 cylinder)."

What surprises me is that for my case of max vehicle speed the fuel source is 9 (cutout for cold engine) instead of 3 (cutout for torque control).

"Engine speed limiting utilizes both the background torque control logic and the foreground fuel scheduling logic to control to an engine speed limit. Where as before there were three stages, now there will be two basic modes to limit engine speed, full cylinder cutout mode and a torque reduction mode. Full cutout mode is activated in foreground when the PIP time becomes smaller than the PIP time that is associated with a set engine speed limit. The foreground mode will primarily be used to safeguard against extreme engine speeds that can occur before the background can be updated (neutral rev ups for example). Once the background is updated, the torque based mode will become active and relinquish control of the full foreground cutout mode."

 

[4pointslow]

limiters

Thanks!
I wasn't thinking straight, I knew about rev limiters shutting off one cylinder at a time randomly but wasn't putting it all together in my mind.

The pulse width wont go to zero because the pid displays what it "would" need for pulse width. And the PCM is not shutting off all the cylinders at once with the vehicle speed limiter, but can with the engine speed limiter, if I read that correctly. It would make perfect sense since an engine over speed condition would be worse than a vehicle over speed condition.

Interpretation of this statement.....(for anyone reading this)
"Lean A/F's do not contribute to catalyst exotherm temperatures, but can be offensive to exhaust valve temperatures"
is....
Lean A/F mixtures do not over heat and damage the catalytic converter (rich mixtures and misfires do because of the un-burnt fuel going into the cat), but lean mixtures can burn the exhaust valves as they are hotter in temperatures reaching way above 2500 degrees in the cylinders. The hot exhaust gases passing over the exhaust valve on the way out can burn it like the concentrated heat of a torch would.

2000streetrod,
That statement about the three stages of torque control logic, what do you interpret them to be?
I know when traction control uses torque control logic it can cut injectors, retard timing, and close the throttle plate if it is drive by wire(electric throttle control). But this is not traction control. (I was also thinking that the 98 Cobra was also not drive by wire).

The two modes mentioned in the last paragraph are completely understandable, one cutting injectors randomly and one cutting all of them at once.

One way of explaining background mode and foreground mode in the PCM might be that foreground mode happens more times per second than backround mode so it monitors and controls things faster.
For example the rpm signal(crank sensor) would have lots of ac sign waves coming in real fast(input), the PCM uses these to create injector pulses and spark pulses(output). That would be foreground.

Lets say the pcm gets a signal from the overdrive switch to shut off overdrive. That signal happens once. The PCM would not have to watch that so closely since it is not necessary to shut off overdrive the exact millisecond you turn the switch off.

Does this sound correct?
Thanks again.

 

[2000StreetRod]

processing modes

. . . That statement about the three stages of torque control logic, what do you interpret them to be?

The previous third mode that was deleted may have been ignition disabling which resulted in unburned fuel increasing the temperature of the catalytic converter.

One way of explaining background mode and foreground mode in the PCM might be that foreground mode happens more times per second than backround mode so it monitors and controls things faster. . .

From what I can tell each major module (fuel control, spark control, etc.) has a foreground or background (or both) executive that executes routines at scheduled rates. The foreground executives seem to schedule the more critical routines more frequently than those scheduled by the background executives.

 

[4pointslow]

PCM tuning

Just to add to foreground and background,
For what it is worth,
I read some stuff about people turning off things in their tunes(like emission monitors) to allow more processing power to go to things that were more important like spark, fuel, or automatic transmission shifting. It was enabling them to rev the engine to a higher rpm than the PCM would normally be able to keep up with. Cool concept, but not anything I would ever need since I never plan to rev the engine past the stock limiter.

 

[4pointslow]

8 Rib pulleys update

I spoke to ASP today and gave them the go ahead to have the custom pulleys made in 8 rib.
I think they said the crank pulley would be .01 or .001 larger, cant remember which one it was, but it was insignificant. They are going to make a pulley, then weld it on to what's left of the old one after cutting it down.

So the other pulleys will be stock sizes too, I am having them make the power steering, water pump, and an alternator pulley. They said they thought the alternator pulley is the same as the 4.6 so that one might be "off the shelf".
The Alternator pulley I got and grinded down is working just fine but I wanted to get one from them and compare, and have a spare.

I will post pictures and more information when I receive them, I did not even ask for a turn around time. When you find someone who will do custom work like this, you have to just let them do their job and be patient.

 

[ahodges]

The 8 rib pulleys are exciting! I can't wait to see the results.
That would be one of the hurdles for me in the future. I the power steering pulley and crank pulley are the hardest to get. Have you run across any off the shelf options for a zero balance 8 rib crank pulley for a 5.0?

 

[4pointslow]

Pulleys

the power steering pulley and crank pulley are the hardest to get. Have you run across any off the shelf options for a zero balance 8 rib crank pulley for a 5.0?

Doorman list the 5.0 power steering pulley with the same part number for the 4.0 SOHC so.... If mine turns out ok it should work for the 5.0 too. If there is a part number or engineering number available from ASP when it is done I will post it, then anyone who wants one can just reference that to get one.

As far as the crank pulley goes, you would probably have to send one to ASP. After speaking to ASP on the phone, I am sure they could come up with something. I was very impressed with how knowledgeable they are, and how fast they came up with solutions.