Hey Guys,
I just wanted to give a quick update on what is going on with my wife's Explorer. The good news is that I PM'd AJP Turbo and asked him if he was willing to work with me on my Explorer and see if he could give me a usable tune and maybe help figure out what is wrong with this thing. AJP said he was willing to work with me. He might not be happy I share this piece of info, but he didn't even want any money unless he was able to get me something I was happy with. We are still working on it, but I had 3 tunes before I sent him any money. I do have a tune that has more power and less knock than the stock tune, so I sent him some money for the tunes.
Rev 1 was kind of a test with not much changed. Rev 2 launched a lot harder and had less knock than stock. AJP Turbo has been great to work with. I am hoping to get a couple more tunes, once I get this sling off of my arm (just had shoulder surgery) and can try to get rid of some false knock I have. Driving and datalogging with 1 arm is a PITA.
I am almost certain some knock detected is false. Back to back runs at the track in the same conditions netted a 3 degree difference in advance. This was also on 96 octane with only 6 degrees advance with a perfect 0.80 measured AFR, so there is no way it should have needed to drop the timing more than that. This was with less than 13psi of boost. It was a couple weeks ago, so I would need to double check the log for exact numbers, but it was somewhere around there. A couple of the runs had higher knock readings in 3rd at the track with 96 octane than it did on the street with 91. At part throttle, it adds a bunch of advance (knock reads negative). So I think I am still suffering from some false knock. The quicker passes had around 7-8 degrees advance and I think the ones that slowed down had 4-5 degrees. The temps were the same but the knock went up which brought timing down. I still never see the KR in the 7's like I did stock!
Anyway, this thing is fighting him because it just doesn't want any advance. He has had to lower the advance from stock to be able to keep the knock in check. I am pretty sure I have some false knock, eventhough the 2016 has some rubber insulation on the knock sensor wires and I tried to isolate them more like in the posts on this board. However, I know some was real since I could hear the knock with the *** tune. I couldn't log the knock however with that tune. I did see that he was only commanding like 10 degrees though so it didn't look crazy. The boost was hitting the peak at times of the 2-bar though, so it did have more boost and I don't know how much. It was probably way up there because it was really fast and spun the tires on the 1-2 shift. I did not like the drivability of the *** tune regardless.
AJP Turbo's tune launches harder than stock at somewhere around 40% or more throttle positions, shifts nicely, and still drives like stock at lower throttle positions. He also kept the paddle shifter functionality when in D and changed it to hold the gear you selected when in S, which is nice. Before in S, it would still downshift on you if it felt you were lugging it. You couldn't do a 3rd gear pull from under 4k stock because it would downshift on you. I like that feature and love how much quicker it is off the line.
AJP's Rev 2 picked up 2 tenths in the 60ft and 4 tenths in the 1/4. That was against a SUPER strong headwind and with the boost and advance fairly low because of whatever is going on with this Explorer. Even with these limitations, he was able to dial it in and give me a tune that feels much better than stock, especially on the launch which is where I really felt it was lacking stock, at the same time reducing knock. I need to run his Rev 4 at the track and see how it does, but I want to mess with the knock sensor wires some more and I have to get this sling off first.
I am hoping we can add a couple more degrees of timing without the knock jumping back up. I have never heard any audible knock accept when I ran the *** tune. The *** tune did not look that aggressive as far as timing, and AJP has never seen one require the advance to be lowered so much, so I still have some issues going on and ***'s tune would most likely work on a different Explorer that responds like most others.
Thanks AJP for getting this thing closer to where I want it to be! I look forward to some fine tuning in the future. I have an idea I want to run by you, but I need some more logs first.
Thanks again!
