AEM FIC on TSI Turbo Civic

[RedShiftChris]

Hi all,
I've been working with an AEM FIC setup on a TSI turbo Civic LX. I'd like to get some feedback from those of you running a similar setup. Please let me know your current performance of the following and what you did to fix it. Please see a webpage a put together to see what I'm looking at.
REDSHIFT'S TSI TURBO CIVIC AEM FIC DEVELOPEMENT
I show you this to let you know that we have a ton of data to look at. This is not a seat of the pants thing we are doing....we can actually see what is happening.

We've had the following issues, and the following resolutions:

1) Startup and then car dies - we've gotten it so it won't kill. Turned out that the Fuel adjustment from MAP had too negative a number in the low RPM's and was making the car kill when it was warmed up. It started ok when cold because of the extra cold start fuel, but when warm it would kill most of the time.

2) Startup crank time - we have to crank the engine for 2 seconds before the ecu sees rpm (seen on rpm gauge and Honda Datalog System). This is why the car takes so long to start. As soon as the ecu sees rpm, then engine immediately fires the injectors and starts... but for the first 2 seconds, I am seeing no fuel injector (because of no rpm reading). I suspect this is related to the FIC's handling of the crank position signal (becuase it goes through a processor before being sent to the stock ecu). Is anyone at all out there with a Civic able to see rpm immediately when starting the engine, or is everyone seeing it like 2 seconds after first turning the key.

3) Tip-in off idle - We are getting a fairly pronounced stumble with medium to heavy tip-in off of throttle (meaning the transition from no throttle input at idle to some throttle input to rev the engine). I am seeing inconsistent fueling at tip in. Anyone else have this same thing?

4) Actual driving tune (including fuel throttle) seems very good.... Shawn Church did a good job of that. Still the customer has noted a hesitation at mid-rpm under boost that feels a bit like a lean condition and may be related to vtec perhaps? Haven't spent much time with this... anyone else notice this. I think it's actually caused his car to set a check engine light.

I'd appreciate any exchange of information.
Cheers,
Chris at RedShift

[matt_hulsey]

I have the kit on my Si and having similar happenings. My car is with my tuner and he's trying to get it going.

1.The car takes a few seconds to start, although the tuner said he got it to start better now.

2.He said the trouble starts at about 3000 rpm so far as boosting goes.

My tuner has been doing a lot of research, he talked to TSI, Procivic, AEM, and Shawn Church, and it seems to be that the AEM FIC is just tricky as hell to tune just right. One reason being that the SI's are all slightly tuned different out of the factory. Anyway, I was told that once the FIC is tuned right, it will do a jam-up job.

[soxfan143]

I was having that slight stumble like that Chris and my tuner found out that the IAT sensor wasn't functioning with the Emanage. They didnlt have the PnP harness pinned right to read the factory IAT's. The temp difference between the MAF sensor and the actual intake temps at the TB are way different causing a lean condition after shifts. Also when I finally got my recirculation setup done it went away completely. Also what are you clamping the MAF and MAP voltages at? And what is the before Inector size set at? I'm not sure how the AEM F/IC is setup for the injector size perameters but when GReddy did their base map they had the before IJ size at 325cc and this is incorrect. it caused some starting and warm idle fluctuations. We changed it to 310cc and the idle and starting problems went away. I think you are having IAT temp problems causing that quick lean conditions. Good luck bro....

[RedShiftChris]

Originally Posted by matt_hulsey

I have the kit on my Si and having similar happenings. My car is with my tuner and he's trying to get it going.

1.The car takes a few seconds to start, although the tuner said he got it to start better now.

2.He said the trouble starts at about 3000 rpm so far as boosting goes.

My tuner has been doing a lot of research, he talked to TSI, Procivic, AEM, and Shawn Church, and it seems to be that the AEM FIC is just tricky as hell to tune just right. One reason being that the SI's are all slightly tuned different out of the factory. Anyway, I was told that once the FIC is tuned right, it will do a jam-up job.

Thanks for your reply.
1 from above) I can tell you for sure that the stock ecu doesn't recognize any crank signal for about 2 second and then when it does, it immediately fires. Since the FIC sends out a signal processed crank signal, but guess is that it takes the FIC a couple seconds to determine the crank signal, and that there is no way to change this fact.

2 from above) I haven't noticed any hickups after 3000 personally on the TSI turbo car I was tuning. It was noticed by the owner of the car. There is nothing in the tuning that suggests anything is wrong.

I actually think the FIC is quite straight forward. I havne't seen anything really strange about it. All I've heard about is bad wiring and bad tunes. So far so good in my opinion. Only issue that really remains for me is the tip-in throttle, and I'm still trying to determine if it's a problem with the tune or the fundamental FIC/stock ecu setup.

Chris

[RedShiftChris]

Originally Posted by soxfan143

I was having that slight stumble like that Chris and my tuner found out that the IAT sensor wasn't functioning with the Emanage. They didnlt have the PnP harness pinned right to read the factory IAT's. The temp difference between the MAF sensor and the actual intake temps at the TB are way different causing a lean condition after shifts. Also when I finally got my recirculation setup done it went away completely. Also what are you clamping the MAF and MAP voltages at? And what is the before Inector size set at? I'm not sure how the AEM F/IC is setup for the injector size perameters but when GReddy did their base map they had the before IJ size at 325cc and this is incorrect. it caused some starting and warm idle fluctuations. We changed it to 310cc and the idle and starting problems went away. I think you are having IAT temp problems causing that quick lean conditions. Good luck bro....

Those are all interesting things to note. They are also things that take a lot of time to determine if they are even causing trouble. The FIC does injector size not as a complete number (like injector flow rates) but rather like an Apexi AFC where you have to reduce the pulsewidth with a percentage based on maf or map.

As for the clamping, we are using the strategy started by Shawn Church in the tune, which uses maf all the way without clamping a specific voltage in the table... that's one of the strategies used with the other maf setups that I think would also work really well. But we're sticking with what Shawn Church started.

Chris at RedShift

Chris

[soxfan143]

That's how my tuner found out that the stock injector size wasn't 325 like GReddy put in the Emanage in the base tune. My MAF is clamped at 3.85v in the boost limiter cut setting table. And it is working perfectly. But he is clamping the MAP sensor at about 2.7-2.8v. But I'm almost positive your stumbling is from a large discrepency from actual IAT and what is being measured by the ECU at the MAF. My tuner found out from the Dynapack's IAT sensor that he had right on the charge pipe at my TB and from the IAT measurements through the ECU's OBD II port. The actual IAT's were around ambient at the time at about 90*F and the IAT at the MAF was about 160*F from it pulling the heat off the motor. The stock ECU was pulling extra timing and fuel to compensate for the hotter air and the actual air was ALOT cooler causing it to pop lean for a second until it pulled all the hot air from around the filter. But it happened so quickly that my AEM wideband didn't even catch it. It's more evident on the road when you are stopped at a light or something and the hot air just fills up the engine bay and causes this after the shift from 1st to 2nd. Then once you get moving the cooler air gets into the bay it goes way. It's so crazy annoying. Does the F/IC even read IAT's and compenste for it? The Emanage does but for some reason the way GReddy setup the PnP harness it isn't reading the IAT's and compensating. So my tuner did it with IJ duty. It didn't get rid of it completely but it's ALOT better. He is checking the pinout for the PnP harness and The Emanage Ultimate and see where everything is going and where it's supposed to be going.

[enter801]

So are all the IAT wires wrong on all the harnesses or just yours? I had to cut into my harness and fix a pin on the a/f sensor that wasn't connected. It was throwing a P1157 code as a result, but got it resoldered on and fixed that.

What voltages should you clamp the MAF and MAP sensor at? Do you do this right in the emanage software? edit - (NM, found it on your post above this one)

Why did you set the injectors to 310cc instead of 370?

Originally Posted by soxfan143

I was having that slight stumble like that Chris and my tuner found out that the IAT sensor wasn't functioning with the Emanage. They didnlt have the PnP harness pinned right to read the factory IAT's. The temp difference between the MAF sensor and the actual intake temps at the TB are way different causing a lean condition after shifts. Also when I finally got my recirculation setup done it went away completely. Also what are you clamping the MAF and MAP voltages at? And what is the before Inector size set at? I'm not sure how the AEM F/IC is setup for the injector size perameters but when GReddy did their base map they had the before IJ size at 325cc and this is incorrect. it caused some starting and warm idle fluctuations. We changed it to 310cc and the idle and starting problems went away. I think you are having IAT temp problems causing that quick lean conditions. Good luck bro....

[soxfan143]

Because the before IJ size will never change. The emanage will compensate for the original IJ size. Which is 310cc's. If you put it at 370 it will overcompensate and supply less fuel per duty cycle because it thinks the stock ECU will be providing fuel for a value of 370cc's. This will throw the Emanage off and cause it to do weird ****. This might be one of the reasons alot of guys are having trouble keeping consistant AFR's with this unit and telling everyone that it sucks when it really doesn't. The duty cycle that the Emanage will measure is based on what the 310's will provide through the stock ECU. The Emanage also comes with the wrong size from GReddy. They have them at 325cc which is wrong.

Yes you clamp them through the boost limiter cut setting in the map selection tab in the perameters. If you select that map it will be in the map tree and you can set the clamp values according to rpm. And the MAP gets clamped through the analog output setting map. PM me and I will help you out with this.

[RedShiftChris]

Originally Posted by soxfan143

<snip>.....Does the F/IC even read IAT's and compenste for it? The Emanage does but for some reason the way GReddy setup the PnP harness it isn't reading the IAT's and compensating. So my tuner did it with IJ duty. It didn't get rid of it completely but it's ALOT better. He is checking the pinout for the PnP harness and The Emanage Ultimate and see where everything is going and where it's supposed to be going.

The FIC does not tap or interrupt IAT. The stock ecu obviously affects fueling with intake temp, and that is related to MAF flow (higher heat, less mass). It's worth looking into this, but it doesn't help our issues from what I can tell. This biggest issue being the tip-in off idle issue.

Thanks for your feedback!!!
Chris

[soxfan143]

That's exactly what I was tryng to say, higher heat= less mass in the air causing the stock ECU to cut fuel and cause a really quick lean condition. Because the actual air at the TB was alot cooler due to the intercooler actually working extremely well. It was cooling it by almost 60* from what the stock ECU was seeing at the MAF sensor. Wouldn't a 60* difference in actual intake temps cause a AFR problem in the combustion chamber if the stock ECU thinks the actual IATs are 60* warmer than they actually are? And once you get moving and the motor sucks in all the hot air under the hood it will even out a little and cause it to correct itself or the stock ECU sees the lean condition at the primary O2 sensor and dumps more fuel. My tuner has my car setup so that the stock ECU is handling almost all the fueling in vacuum. Except at idle with the AC on.

What about vacuum spiking in the onboard MAP sensor? Does AEM use an orafice in the MAP sensor? This would happen with the emanage ultimate if the pressure sensor orafice wasn't used. It would cause voltage dipping and spiking on the MAP sensor voltages causing the emanage to have fuel dilvery irregularities and inconsistant fueling in boost and sudden throttle change problems. But I think this would only happen in boost though, right? I even had to add something similar to smooth out my GReddy boost guage pressure sensor because my boost guage needle was bouncing all over the place in boost and vacum. Weird huh? Well good luck Chris, I'm completely out of thoughts since I only know about tuning the ermanage Ultimate and it's problems and have absolutely no idea how the F/IC even works. Well I know how it works in general but I don't know how it works specifically. later bro.....Keep on plugging and keep us posted to whatever it is you find that's causing this.

[Supa Ninja]

Hey Redshift, I just got my fg2 running after doing the TSI install. With the base map that it came with for my engine and the generic base map I'm having the same problem, I can't accelerate past 3000rpm. If I take the F/IC out of the equation with the jumper it runs and boosts. Do I need to make adjustment in the setup? Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this?

[matt_hulsey]

Welcome to the TSI kit! It seems everyone with this kit is having the same problem with the FIC. My tuner tried the base map it came with, he downloaded a new base map, and even created a new one from scratch and couldn't get it. I have a Greddy E-manage Ultimate on the way now. I know there are several people here running E-manage with very good results so I'm jumping on the band wagon. Anyway, hope you get it man.

[Supa Ninja]

Update, I had a bad ground thats why i was limitd to under 3000 rpms. Its running now and needs a tune. I hav been getting comfortable with the F/IC, on question, what size are our injectors on the k20 stock?

[frydrce]

Originally Posted by Supa Ninja

Update, I had a bad ground thats why i was limitd to under 3000 rpms. Its running now and needs a tune. I hav been getting comfortable with the F/IC, on question, what size are our injectors on the k20 stock?

310cc

[Supa Ninja]

Originally Posted by frydrce

310cc

Thanks bro, thats what I was tracking too but I wasn't 100% sure.

[enter801]

I'm actually jumping off of the e-manage and jumping on to the FIC. I'm not sure how far people here are from Utah, but my tuner spent over a month figuring out how to tune the FIC with AEM(I guess his partner knew the owner of AEM or something). The eManage definitely has some features the FIC doesn't(though I am not even using nor would on my Greddy kit), but the clamps and tuning off of the map sensor that is built into the FIC is supposedly better. It basically can be tuned so that your car doesn't even know that there is any boost there is how it was explained to me. You don't have the same problems with the MAF because of how it works also. Anyway, my guy has a map created for the Greddy kit that he has used on a couple other vehicles and they say the difference is night and day with driveability. These are people with the Greddy kit, though I am sure it would work on the FIC. I'll let you know how it goes with me once I get it all done, should be this weekend(9.20.08). Doing the street tune first, then a WOT tune on the dyno.

Originally Posted by matt_hulsey

Welcome to the TSI kit! It seems everyone with this kit is having the same problem with the FIC. My tuner tried the base map it came with, he downloaded a new base map, and even created a new one from scratch and couldn't get it. I have a Greddy E-manage Ultimate on the way now. I know there are several people here running E-manage with very good results so I'm jumping on the band wagon. Anyway, hope you get it man.

[Blackened Sky]

I have my 06 civic ex with the TSI kit on my car and I have not been able to get it tuned for months. My car is also in automatic. I am having one more person try tuning it tomorrow. My problems are tip in, revving down back to idle(having it die on me when coming to a stop) and WOT shifts peaking it high psi. Tomorrow I am going to watch what he does as we street tune it and I will have more info on it tomorrow afternoon, good or bad...

[soxfan143]

These are all the same problems that everyone is having with the Si. The F/IC is just not working properly. The daily driveabilty with the new Civic ECUs is horrible. I don't understand why no one can get this system to work 100% with these cars. But I'm glad I decided not to switch from the emanage to that thing.

[matt_hulsey]

I'm actually jumping off of the e-manage and jumping on to the FIC. I'm not sure how far people here are from Utah, but my tuner spent over a month figuring out how to tune the FIC with AEM(I guess his partner knew the owner of AEM or something). The eManage definitely has some features the FIC doesn't(though I am not even using nor would on my Greddy kit), but the clamps and tuning off of the map sensor that is built into the FIC is supposedly better. It basically can be tuned so that your car doesn't even know that there is any boost there is how it was explained to me. You don't have the same problems with the MAF because of how it works also. Anyway, my guy has a map created for the Greddy kit that he has used on a couple other vehicles and they say the difference is night and day with driveability. These are people with the Greddy kit, though I am sure it would work on the FIC. I'll let you know how it goes with me once I get it all done, should be this weekend(9.20.08). Doing the street tune first, then a WOT tune on the dyno.

I'm a little confused by what you're saying. Are you switching to the E-manage or AEM?

[soxfan143]

He's switching to the F/IC for some reason. I have no idea why but he is. I don't know one singe person that has it working on their car. At least as on a daily driven car anyway.