alright...maybe Friday late morning...I need a leakdown tester

 

i always thought you two were related

 

I am just trying to help troubleshoot. I would really hate it to be the motor, but at this point, most logic points at the motor.

I'll keep my fingers crossed that it is something simple and just blindly overlooked.... best of luck

 

I'll talk to Greg and try to get his from the guys at the shop. I know they have one being that they blow a lot of engines.

 

As far as the JWT springs/retainers, I guess it could be possible but theres no way to tell if they were of the same batch or how long they had been on the shelf. My motor was built in the July-Aug timeframe so I'm not sure if that synchs up or even matters.


I'm looking forward to your findings and hopefully your fix. Good luck.

 

I would start with the basics. This dyno graph is pretty choppy even with some smoothing turned on, which is usually caused by the engine misfiring (or detonating). The key is to figure out why it's doing it. If you are using the dyno jet wideband meter and still using the LSU4.0 sensor the engine is being over fueled. If you have a have some runs of it running correctly at lower boost level, you can calculate what it should need PW wise when you turn the boost up. Another thing to consider is when the engine misfires, the AFR reading are useless.
Try changing the spark plugs, put some 100 octane unleaded fuel in it and lean it out. See if the graph smoothes outs then.

 

Spark could be breaking up? Maybe give a set if IX plugs a shot? Or a fresh set of coppers gapped down further? Maybe a boost-a-spark or the over priced HKS diamond and gold trimmed DLI . The BAS took car of all my spark issues on the built 3.5 I had in my Max. Good luck!

 

If anything that's a little light knock...we really cranked the timing up to MAKE SURE it wasn't that that was the issue. We could hear a little knock on a couple of the runs and that was probably one of them. I highly doubt the car is misfiring, I've NEVER had a misfire code.

As for spark plugs...I just changed them prior to that dyno session since and it made no difference from before. Plugs are copper gapped to .028. I previously had IX plugs in there.

 

It's not breaking up at all. I had IX plugs in there before and they were no different. I now have the coppers brand new gapped as previously stated.

No one else needs a BAS or upgraded ignitions at the power levels I want so I don't see why I would need it.


I'm still working on borrowing a leakdown gauge from someone but it's getting cold up here and I'm really not up for spending much time in the garage on a car that I won't drive until at least March so who knows when I'll get around to working on it again.

 

All signs now point towards a weak motor, or mistimed cams, its THAT simple at this point. Im sorry.

 

I kind of skipped through this thread..

If the cams were mistimed it would be throwing a CEL. Did he say it was?

 

nope...no CEL

 

Then there is no mistimed cams.

 

That's what I would like to hope...but other "experts" on here seem to think that the cams could be off by a tooth and it wouldn't throw a code.

 

bTW when it comes time to double check cam timing, i really doubt you need to pull off the front cover for that... cause that is a **** ton of work. just take off the valve covers. ask someone who has their engine apart to reference how the cam trigger notches line up with TDC and it should save you a good dozen hours or so. you can see the cam trigger notches easily with the valvecovers off, they are right there on the back of the cam, well the intake cams at least. for the exhaust cams you can compare the lobe angles to the intake cam.

get someone who is building their engine to take a bunch of pics showing the lobe angles at cylinder one TDC and you can do this without taking it all apart.

 

ok food for thought here on the cam timing issue.

your engine has 3 chains. one chain goes from the crank around each intake cam. the other chains connect the intake cam gear to the exhaust cam gear. so, in other words; have one of your exhaust cams timed wrong with its chain connecting it to the intake cam and the ECU wont know the difference, because the sensor is on the intake cam which is still referenced to the crank correctly.

you can have an exhaust cam off, backwords, upside down, missing, etc... and the ECU wont know the difference so no CEL.

if you had a rev-up, this would be an entirely different story. but for our old *** shitty 03-04 motors, there is no cam sensor on the exhaust cams.

 

+1 but didn you know that "expert" to the OP

I think the OP needs to be more open minded to check what the issues are and that so far he has been giving an advice and he took it as a "witch hunt".
Having seen some issues, that produce similar dyno-sheets as the ones posted, makes me think that the problem might be where it was found out to be when i saw it in another case, the engine. But we could be wrong, I hope you get your setup working well soon, i am sure the "delay" is "killing" the OP, patience will pay off.

 

If the intake and exhaust cams were mistimed, but correctly timed on the main chain it would still throw a 20XX code stating the intake cams are out of time.

 

if the intake cams were correctly timed with the crankshaft... why would the ECU throw a code stating that the intake cams are out of time? the exhaust cams are on auxillary chains and are not monitered with a cam trigger. the ecu would have no idea unless it was so bad that the car was running poor enough to trip a misfire code.

 

What was that supposed to mean?


I'm not being closed minded, I just don't have the time or inclination to work on the car right now when it's on storage insurance and it's below freezing outside. That's why I haven't done anything since posting this thread. I just wanted discussion on the topic, and I got some good advice and some bad advice. I'll act as I see fit when the time comes.