Slight Timing Pulls under Normal Driving

[FreePreview]

I'm seeing 0.8 timing pull on all cylinders under normal driving 10-60% throttle or so. I'm wondering if I just have bad 93. Running JB4 Map 1 with HKS M45iL spark plugs (Didn't gap them). This cropped up recently and I put 1.3gal of e85 in, hoping that would help, but after ~50miles of driving there's no change.

I swear I have a dud of a motor. I blew out the first set of HKS M45iL's after 5k miles. Was seeing upwards of 6-7degrees of timing pulls. I had LAP3 change the plugs out for me, they advised it was the bits of octane boost I was running. They said that's bad for the plugs. Changed plugs and everything was fine...0-3.8 degrees of timing pulls under WOT. Now 2k miles since plugs changed I'm starting to see timing pulls I don't like.

I always run exxon 93. HKS Plugs were not gapped as Lap3 said not to gap them from what they come as, and they run big turbos @ 600whp on those plugs so I trust them.

I've had timing problems ever since I started running JB4, and timing doesn't change if I run map0. I've always had 0-3 degrees of timing pull, whereas I see so many people on this forum with clean logs, which makes me just think my motor is weak and can't handle the extra power, or even stock power.

Here's a log of me rolling into it at a light, followed by some driving normally where you can see all the 0.8's.

Paging @Terry@BMS for any suggestions.

 

[CraigS]

It's not worth much, but I have the same timing pulls at light throttle (.8 or less) on lozic ecu. HKS plugs are brand new and ecu tune is new as well. Just a week old. From what I've read, it doesn't seem that small low throttle corrections mean much. WOT is under 3 degrees on all cylinders. I've set jb4 to display 4 cylinders' correction on the gauges so I can keep an eye on things.

 

[CraigS]

I've also been curious, since it's on all cylinders, are we actually seeing .8 correction on cyl1 and the others are showing deviation from that? Meaning they are actually. .8 more advanced.

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[FreePreview]

Thats not a bad hypothesis. Someone else or BMS may have to weigh in. Glad I’m not the only one. I had cyl 2-6 up along with boost so I could keep an eye on it as well. I sent the log to BMS earlier and they said it looks fine for pump 93. I did buy their gapper tool and feelers so I’m going to pull cyl3 plug and check the gap. If its high I’ll gap it and see if the correction goes away on that cylinder.

 

[CraigS]

I will be interested to hear what you figure out.

 

[oddball]

in the JB4 logs, cyl1 shows the base timing advance before top dead center. This can be anything from 0 to 50.
cyl2 through cyl6 shows the delta, per cylinder, from the base timing. It's always how much timing is "pulled out". E.g. if cyl1 says "30", and cyl2 says "0.8" then the ignition on cyl2 actually happened at 29.2 degrees BTDC.
IMO, anything less than 3 can be ignored. That's just the ECU making minor changes from its base map. We're just spoiled that this ECU does this much timing work, which is somewhat new. ECUs have done extensive fueling changes for years, but this level of timing muckery is somewhat new.
Like you saw, lots of corrections over 3 is an issue, or one cylinder having a whole bunch of 2 degree corrections while all the others are 0 would be a concern.

But 0.8s? Nah, that's just the minimum the ECU can pull. You can try different brands of gas - there certainly is bad stuff out there and occasionally a good brand will have a bad batch. This aggressive timing management is there specifically to take care of that!

Octane boost can be hard on plugs. The stuff can coat the plugs and cause them to foul. Best not to run that long term. e.g. my sister put cheap gas in my old car, so I dumped a can of boostane in there to get that run through. But it's best to build a car for the fuel you plan to run.

 

[Terry@BMS]

Ignition advance under low load is much higher so you'll see a different timing correction pattern/behavior. We're only concerned with relatively full throttle corrections when evaluating tuning.

It appears you have some corrections on map1, so its just poor quality fuel likely.

How did you know you didn't have "timing problems" before the JB4 was installed?

 

[FreePreview]

@Terry@BMS , you’re correct and I’m not trying to bash your product. JB4 has allowed me to see the timing corrections, whereas before I obviously couldn’t. I meant that I’ve never had clean timing like so many people on this board that post 0-2.3 max logs and only small corrections, not the constant corrections I see. I guess northern Virginia just gets poor quality fuel. I’m going to switch from Exxon to Shell for a few tanks to see if that makes a difference.

Ignition advance under low load is much higher so you'll see a different timing correction pattern/behavior. We're only concerned with relatively full throttle corrections when evaluating tuning.

It appears you have some corrections on map1, so its just poor quality fuel likely.

How did you know you didn't have "timing problems" before the JB4 was installed?