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Old 09-21-2012, 08:37 PM   #51 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by serialk11r View Post
Okay so I didn't see anyone talking about these, but I think these are good places to pick up efficiency. Low boost turbos tend to have ****tier backpressure under cruise, if you can get an electronically actuated wastegate for them that would help. I imagine in the real world you only relieve a small amount of pressure but you have a large displacement engine so a small amount of pressure adds up to a lot of loss.

If I'm not mistaken the LS1 has "single cams" (1 for each cylinder bank with exhaust and intake lobes on it)? In that case retarding the cam doesn't work since that would increase the overlap and interfere with combustion stability. You might want to look into a regrind that cuts off a little of the overlap but maintains the same intake closure. If possible having the intake valves close even later is "ideal" in some sense, probably increases your top end power too.
I'll talk to my tuner about opening the wastegate electronically under cruise. I suspect my backpressure however is way lower than most so not sure if there will be much gain. I have full race 4 into 1 headers with merge 3" collectors going into twin 3" mandrill bent stainless pipes that have no sharp bends, that then via a smooth collector step down to a single 3" pipe to pick up velocity and into the turbo at the back. The only backpressure will be getting gas through the turbo opening itself and out the turbine.... turbos offer little resistance and will even flow enough to run if seized. Likewise the intake coming back has no sharp bends and steps up to maintain flow.

re Cam. Single cam OHV. Cam has negative 6 degrees overlap so there is no overlap. Picked up 50hp at the wheels with it so unlikely to improve it any further there. I think the big gains now will be better injectors perhaps helped by more ignition. After that it'll be small incremental things with diminishing returns I suspect.

re getting a bike - lol. Crotch rockets are cool, however although I am an organ donor I'm not ready to lose any yet. Have you seen Kiwi drivers? Bike riders are high risk around here.

If I needed to save money I'd buy a hybrid. This is about chasing power and efficiency for fun not a question of whether I can afford the gas. I don't even look at the gas pump price, I'm only interested in how much I put in the tank

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Old 09-26-2012, 12:26 PM   #52 (permalink)
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re getting a bike - lol. Crotch rockets are cool, however although I am an organ donor I'm not ready to lose any yet. Have you seen Kiwi drivers? Bike riders are high risk around here.
Well, my thought on that is you can still die in a car at high speed. A lot depends on the rider.
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Old 02-08-2013, 04:59 PM   #53 (permalink)
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Did you install the plasma ignition? I'm really interested in the results & it's affect on a leaner burn.
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Old 02-08-2013, 06:18 PM   #54 (permalink)
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Did you install the plasma ignition? I'm really interested in the results & it's affect on a leaner burn.
No I didn't because despite the promise it shows there has been enough neutral results to not wish to waste time and money on something yet to prove consistent gains. There is a small R and D going on however with plasma and an LS V8 using a programmable plasma that varies spark according to what the engine wants at any given moment. Now THAT has promise and I will be in line if it shows consistent gains. Existing units only offer a 1 spark fits all and that only offers a gain where the engine wants that.
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Old 02-08-2013, 07:46 PM   #55 (permalink)
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Plasma Results

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Originally Posted by bazman View Post
No I didn't because despite the promise it shows there has been enough neutral results to not wish to waste time and money on something yet to prove consistent gains. There is a small R and D going on however with plasma and an LS V8 using a programmable plasma that varies spark according to what the engine wants at any given moment. Now THAT has promise and I will be in line if it shows consistent gains. Existing units only offer a 1 spark fits all and that only offers a gain where the engine wants that.
thanks for the info it sure looked promising on paper . I guess what you are looking for is something similar to the old Jacobs electronics ignition but plasmafied .
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Old 04-03-2013, 11:52 PM   #56 (permalink)
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Well, I got 31.24mpg from the 550hp LS1 on a trip under perfect conditions but no hyper milling. Averaged 100kph (62mph).

Sadly that is imperial mpg, so that translates to 26mpg US or 9.09L/100km. Still not as good as the stock cam but I am yet to install the new state of art Bosch EV14 injectors which should gain another 3-4% over the bored out crappy injectors I am now using as there are several areas where the tune can be improved with better injectors.

We are getting there :-)

It's not bad for a 4000lb 4 door sedan with auto. Figures are no BS dash reading, these are actual kms and actual fuel used topping up by sight to ensure same level at each fill up.
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Old 12-26-2013, 10:49 AM   #57 (permalink)
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Thought I'd post up my current project - trying to get 30mpg out of my 550hp LS1. That is about 36mpg imperial - quite a hard thing to get out of a 4 door family sedan with an auto. No problem in a 6sp Vette.

Car is an Australian Holden Commodore SS. Model is a VT series 2 with the LS1 5.7 V8 and the 4160e auto through a 3.07:1 rear end. Car weighs aprox 3750lbs (not weighed it but based on specs). They are like a 4 door GTO.

It has averaged 18.75mpg over the last 50,000 miles combined city and highway. (We work in metric or imperial down under but all figures I quote will be converted to US to ensure comparability).

Well, I've achieved the first goal (550hp) thanks to a low boost turbo set up at the back (STS custom setup). Now I'm working on the 2nd part (30mpg at cruise). That bit seems a tad harder.

Best so far of 25.8mpg under pretty much ideal cruise conditions and it is as lean as it will run without stumbling on itself - so no more tuning is going to help (about 20 hours on dyno just doing drivability etc so I'm not exaggerating).

Before I changed the cam the car could get 27.5mpg on a long trip. The cam has cost me about 15% in lost mpg overall but the extra 50rwhp is not coming off anytime soon as I like it too much, so I have to get creative now.

Here are my thoughts to get it done:

1 - Fit Rhoads variable duration roller lifters. This will bleed off (depending on how much adjustment we give it) from 5 - 15 degrees of cam duration at low rpms. This will lift vacuum and make the cam behave like a stock one - lifting mpg and power at low revs we hope. As the rpms climb the cam will retain its current specs so this mod should retain top end while improving the bottom end.

The down side will be a requirement to run adjustable roller rockers and hence noise and lash adjustment checks every oil change - but I can live with that.

The lower duration at low rpms should enable us to run less idle and maybe a little leaner.

I'm hoping this alone will get me back to 27.5mpg at cruise (av 62mph or 100kph). That would be 33mpg imperial.

2 - Fit a Plasma ignition system - the Blue Phoenix unit tested by David Vizard. The bigger spark is worth a few extra hp I likely won't notice, but what it will do is greatly enhance our ability to run leaner - we should now be able to get into the 20's A/F without power loss at cruise....

3 - Fit another water/meth injection system (the one I have only comes on under boost and is not mappable). They can share tanks but I'm thinking of using a modern ultra accurate EFI feul injector and adapting any old ECU to run it then inject water/meth under lean burn conditions.

e.g. the GM computer we have set to bring in lean burn after a few seconds of steady light throttle cruise, if we could pick up the signal when it is triggered we could simply tell the water ecu to follow suit and start injecting.

We could run water/meth all the time in direct proportion to gas (about 20% by volume) but we'd then need to refill the 15L tank every tank of gas - and that'd get tricky seeing as methanol is not exactly at most service stations. Yes we could run 100% water, but at 10.5:1 compression with boost, I'd rather have the added insurance of 50% meth.

I'm hoping the plasma and water/meth will get me past 30mpg by allowing a much leaner mix than the engine can now tolerate while maintaining adequate power to hold cruise speeds.

A later project will involve a new built engine and then we'll go for 40mpg and 600rwhp, but I need to walk before I can run.

I believe we can have our cake and eat it too - we do not need small engines to get acceptable mileage. I know of a 500 cubic inch twin turbo Viper that makes over 1000hp (at crank) and can get 30mpg under steady cruise. That is no longer technically difficult. Getting to average 35mpg IS difficult.

Welcome anyones thoughts
30 mpg cruising w/ a V-10 Viper making 1000 hp? No friggin way in hell heaven or earth is this possible. Would love to hear a brief description of howhe is doing this, yes maybe going down a 6% grade...lol...:-)
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Old 12-26-2013, 01:13 PM   #58 (permalink)
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30 mpg cruising w/ a V-10 Viper making 1000 hp? No friggin way in hell heaven or earth is this possible. Would love to hear a brief description of howhe is doing this, yes maybe going down a 6% grade...lol...:-)
Yeah I made that up because I need to impress people online.

It's called very tall gearing in 6th coupled with more accurate injectors that allow the engine to tolerate a leaner burn at cruise.

My much heavier sedan can top 30 mpg imperial gallons with a 700hp turbo LS3 now in place of the old LS1. And that is with lower gearing than a Viper. That's real mpg not some instant dash readout.
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Old 01-02-2014, 05:37 PM   #59 (permalink)
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how tall are we talking like 2:56 and you say more accurate injectors, could you please be morespecific because we all would like better mpg's from our LS motors!!
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Old 01-02-2014, 05:38 PM   #60 (permalink)
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Yeah I made that up because I need to impress people online.

It's called very tall gearing in 6th coupled with more accurate injectors that allow the engine to tolerate a leaner burn at cruise.

My much heavier sedan can top 30 mpg imperial gallons with a 700hp turbo LS3 now in place of the old LS1. And that is with lower gearing than a Viper. That's real mpg not some instant dash readout.

how tall are we talking like 2:56 and you say more accurate injectors, could you please be morespecific because we all would like better mpg's from our LS motors!!

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