[Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup
I only have good things to say about SDS and the 3E system with MSD hookup that I bought from them. Their service is unreal and the product is fantastic and no one else that answered my emails were even close on a similar product in price.
Getting the programing right, well close in my case has been tricky. Using a standard oxygen sensor and A/F meter for programing really doesn't work that well. I have two meters hooked up, one from Dawes Devices (seems to work best for the rich ranges, but drops off the scale at stoich) and an Autometer. I had a dual gauge EGT hooked up, one probe before and another after the turbo, this has been useless for tuning, but has explained the main problems with the standard oxygen sensor and A/F meter combination. Basically what happens is that if the mixture is too rich, the EGT's come down, which means that the oxygen sensor temp drops and the A/F meter may show that you are lean or at least leaner than you want to be. Going richer just makes the readings more inaccurate and you just get this kind of confused look on your face. If you slowly start bringing the RPM fuel values down, the EGT will come up and you'll reach a point where the rich LED's in the Dawes meter will light up ( the sweet spot seems to be leaner than though, somewhere between the 1st and 3rd light), but I have found the Autometer gauge almost useless in the rich ranges.
Getting the engine to run well isn't hard at all, it was drivable right out of the box. Getting idle, startup values, and engine temp values right is a piece of cake as long as you don't confuse startup and engine temp. Part throttle cruise can be tricky, because the car idles at 17-19 in hg and part throttle cruise can bring you down to the 20-23 in hg range. Once you learn to leave the MAP values alone and just change the RPM fuel values, this becomes easier to sort out.
I've made up a quick change wiring harness for the SDS system, that allows me to swap it from one car to another in about an hour if I leave the stock harness in place, but disconnected. I've programmed the system on 3 different cars now, a completely stock '85 Turbo, the N/A turbo (which is in an '85 Turbo) and my monster motor, which is also in an '85 Turbo. I wish I had before and after numbers for the stock car, because the SDS really wakes it up, even in fuel only mode without the MSD box. SDS does not reccomend using the 3E without MSD trigger on cars running over 7 psi of boost, but it seems to work very well with the stock SAAB ignition.
The monster motor is still running the stock turbo and intercooler, but now has the 3" header pipe with external Deltagate, adding this made a huge difference even before programming changes. I've also switched to a 3 bar FPR. Although I have a 3 bar MAP sensor on hand, I'm still using the 2 bar with a bleed, which allows me to program values up to 20 psi, but the ECU only sees 15 psi. I use a pressure switch operated soleniod valve as an MBC so I have no wastegate creep. The solenoid has 2 modes, 12 psi and 18 psi, this is controlled by microswitches placed in the shifter housing. The only thing I don't like about this setup is that 18 psi is the default mode, when the shifter is in the 1-2 gate it energizes the solenoid to the 12 psi mode. The stock turbo will hold 18 psi to redline, which is now 6750 RPM and the motor is strong all the way there. By the way, this is using 87 octane fuel, I can run leaner on 93 octane, but the fuel costs doesn't near make up the difference, since I spend very little of my my driving under high boost. I get 26 mpg around town and did a 2K road trip to Texas in March, average fuel usage was 32 mpg, by the way, no A/C or power steering on this car. The stock intercooler works very well when boost is keep to 18 psi up to about 4000 RPM, the intake temps run about 10 above ambient. Even though the stock turbo can push enough air to still make 18 psi of boost, it becomes very inefficient in the upper RPM ranges, temps may get as high as 80 degrees above ambient. So now I am using the SDS RPM switch to put me into the 12 psi mode at 4000 RPM. This feels stonger than the inefficient higher boost and intake temps only get to about 25 degrees over ambient. Heat soak in traffic will bring intake temps 50-60 degrees over ambient with a stock all aluminum intercooler. I've changed to the later plastic tank unit and thin walled aluminum intercooler piping. This dropped heat soak about 15 degrees and made the cool off, once you got moving, very quick. I'm not going to mess with fans or water cooling here, since I still have plans to mount this huge Spearco intercooler up front somewhere. Last week I changed injectors from the SD red series (30lb ?), to the 440 cc units that I got with the motor. I just used the duty cycle trim (about 30%leaner) to get these working right, still haven't reprogramed. I wouldn't even have made the change, except I had a set of Bosch disk type that I wanted to try. These turned out to flow way to little fuel, I had to trim to 50% rich and they hit 100% duty cycle at 10 psi of boost. These guy's were hot when I pulled them, and gave me good reason to heed the 75-85% duty cycle warnings. I already had the 440's on a fuel rail, so I said, why not try these. I can't explain why, but these injectors rock, the change is unreal. The SD injectors worked well with my 2.0:1 RRFPR and stock ECU at WOT, idle and cruise were way rich, but I could never get them to come to life with SDS and either the 2.5 or 3.0 bar FPR. Fuel pressure with RRFPR would approach 90 psi, so my only guess is that these injectors need the higher pressure to automize properly. The pressure of the RRFPR would be about 30% more than a 3.0 bar FPR at 18 psi of boost. Also the SD injectors ran 75-80% duty cycle at full boost with the 3.0 FPR, with the 440's I'm at about 65%, which is probably about what the SD injectors were running with the RRFPR. All I can say is you really do need to monitor duty cycle.
The Hall effect was almost in 3 weeks ago, but I somehow managed to break a magnet, very fragile they are. Once I finally realized that I had a good harmonic balancer on hand and got off my butt to make the bracket for the Hall effect sensor, using a core motor to set it up, it was easy and only took about an hour to make the bracket including going to buy the drill and tap. I setup the magnet mount points for the harmonic balancer at home, but took it to work to use the drill press for drilling the holes. I left the magnets in the holes and somewhere in transit, I broke one. It really didn't matter though, I realized that I had drilled the holes on the wrong side of TDC when I got ready to remove the harmonic balancer from the monster motor, I sure thought I knew which way that motor turned, that's what I get for not keeping a stock flywheel around which has timing marks. So, I had to get a new magnet, 3 of them to be safe, weld up the old holes, grind and file them back flush, and drill new holes. If I finish up my paying side jobs early enough tomorrow I might install it.
Yep Kevin K, I've looked hard at that Road Dyno several times, but I always seem to have other stuff that takes precedence over my money. The A/C in the house has been out since last summer, It really doesn't bother me, but I'm fixing to have some folks from PA come live here and I'm afraid that they will melt. Yesterday I picked up a head that I had ported, so I needed to pay him, less than $350 including the 3 angle valve grind and he really did a nice job on it. I've also decided to buy another car, for a future long term project, a deal I couldn't pass on. I'll post the details on that later and I would really appreciate your comments on it, it's way wild, what I want to do. I will end up getting a Road Dyno though, I can see it being useful for many things. I'd like to get to where, I could become a dealer for SDS, but with no local chasis dyno and the dyno time needed would get to be expensive anyway. You really need a before and after session, this would help sales, if you could document performance increases, but the main reason I'd like to do the before session is to find out the true torque curve of the motor. This would allow an easy initial setup of the RPM fuel values, I have found that the MAP values that are pre-programed can almost be left alone, especially the values in the vacumn ranges.
The N/A turbo motor was just to make things easier, swap an exhaust manifold w/turbo, with the engine out of the car or swap an exhaust system. The N/A motor from the '89 base 900 was going into the '85 Turbo car, which had one dead cylinder either way. Guess which I thought was easier, besides the exhaust system in the turbo car was almost new. The car runs great, better around town than the stock '85 Turbo. I'm using turbo ecu, injectors, intercooler, turbo distributer, turbo transmission and APC. The APC allows 10-12 psi boost with the standard taper, but the car feels more responsive than a stock turbo. I'm using 87 octane fuel and am getting 27+ mpg around town. This car is now my daily driver, it has A/C and it's getting warm here in the Florida Panhandle.
Guess that is enough for now.
, Mon, 28 May 2001 23:29:01, Tue, 29 May 2001 09:17:00
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
