[Ecky]

Update:

I'm not super happy with these headlight bulbs in the Insight reflectors, and I think I'm now able to articulate why: They're bright, and have a clean cutoff, but the hot spots are in the wrong place. Compared with my work van, which has the most light being cast up near the cutoff line, or the Fit, which is similar even with the same LEDs, the Insight reflectors seem to throw a larger portion of the light on the ground closer to the car. This isn't great as the brighter foreground makes it a little harder to see distant objects. The high beams also don't have a terribly wide throw, whereas the Fit and Connect illuminate a much wider area. They're not bad, just decidedly unimpressive considering how much better the Fit does with the same bulbs. Part of this could be how much higher off the ground their lamps are, however.

I'm going through fuel and timing maps yet again, cleaning up fuel maps outside of what's normally used, as the fuel maps will help inform ignition timing. Lower fuel at a given MAP means lower cylinder pressure, means lower flame speed, means more advanced timing is needed in that area. Different can angles will have different fuel values at the same spot on the graph as they have more exhaust gasses pulled back into the cylinder, displacing fuel and air, so the timing maps will be slightly different too. Doing it this way is necessary as literally no tuner out there is going to want to fine tune part throttle timing, and I'm too picky for "well your timing map looks good enough."

On my way in to work this morning it was 14F outside and I managed 50mpg by the time I pulled into the office, with a peak of 52mpg before getting off the highway. Target speed was 65mph. I don't have enough data to say for certain that I'm getting better fuel economy with 20 degrees of intake cam advance rather than the 30 that is commonly recommended but it's looking that way. More cam advance is supposed to improve fuel economy because it has an EGR effect and reduces vacuum losses. I'll continue to experiment, and maybe some day I'll be able to do an apples to apples comparison.

Edit: an item of interest to me is that there's a large anomaly in the fuel maps around 1750-2500RPM that's hard to tune for. In all other areas, fueling at higher vacuum is proportional to lower vacuum, basically the curves look the same. However in that throttle region there is a huge lump in the top line where manifold pressure is the same as atmosphere, and the only idea I have is that the engine volumetric efficiency is well over 100% in this area, perhaps as high as 110-115% at the very peak. This is tough with tuning because there's little relationship with MAP.