Thanks Jesse.....i appreciate that......and all the help you've contributed to the forum.......i'll let you know if i end up going that route

 

Alrighty, we're thinking about ending the group buy early since no one else has expressed an interest in it in a couple days.

 

By the way. It is a little discouraging when the guy I bought my procharger from starts a thread about blown engines from prochargers...

 

Yeah that is kinda messed up.

 

I do think alot of people have gotten carried away with this whole "PROCHARGER" blew my engine thing...The simple fact of the matter is whether you had an ATI blower or Vortech blower or a Stealin blower the people still would have blown their engines.It all comes down to engine management in these cases...Alot of forced air + not enough fuel + too much advance in timing =
There are two thing all that have popped their engines share,
1) they all ahd their car tuned for MORE hp by LEANING out the factory settings of the FMU
2)#5 or #6 cylinders went...
I do not claim to know everything but based on these facts I would say one of the two following things are apparent.
1)the VQ32 engine runs either LEAN in the 2 rear cylinders or has an aggressive timing curve prone to detonation or pre detonation..
2) the VQ32 engine under boost has little head room for tuning error or leaning of A/F ratios...
Thus being the case they would have popped regardless of WHICH blower or means of forced induction they used...
The method in which ATI delivers the extra fuel to the engine is crude but proven effective and reliable in the past and has been around for quite some time..It is the similar method employed by NOS, Holley,Vortech....ect...It is simple,crude,but effective...The problem is when people start tuning on the razors edge and beating the hell out of their cars it leaves ZERO room for error.. Not to flame but look at the guys that have blown their engines thus far..
MAXHAX-went to the track like 3 times a week and shot countless pounds of N2O through his engine..The guy really drove his car hard and paid the ultimate price for living on the edge..These things are accepted..
TopicsII- Drifter....need I say more...I am sure he NEVER bannged the car off the rev limiter and cut fuel to the engine while still under 8lbs of boost causing a lean condition..

I am not flaming these guys and maybee the tuners did screw up, but look at the way their cars were driven and the HP needs they had..I am sure they both tunned for MAX hp and had little or no knowledge of the outcome if something went bad for even a MICRO-SECOND...
I think the liability lies in the tuner to inform these people prior to tuning , of the potential outcome under some circumstances...I feel for these guys but if I blow my engine under boost its MY fault and MY fault alone..No one forced me to BOOST my car...No one forced me to go fast...I will to be to blame for rolling the dice and loosing if I suffer a catostrophic failure...Shizz happens..Just ask NASA..

 

I looked at all of the same info that you saw on the board when I made my decision to sell my unit. Everyone knows how dangerous this unit can be. I started the thread so that everyone can have the info on the blown motors all in one thread. For I while there I was hearing all kinds of rumors.

 

There could be a hundred reasons why things fail. If you purchased a VCR and plugged it into a European outlet and it blew then it is defintely your fault. But if a hundred peple bought the same VCr and 10 of them blew because they were plugged into the wrong outlet then something should be done to provide the consumer as to how to use this product. Just like any other product you buy. The vendor has the obligation to instruct the consumer as to what you can and cannot do to the product. It seems like it is a recurring theme here with the rear cylinders in the ATI product. It IS a consistent pattern.

Look at the Mcdonalds coffee case. A woman spills coffee on her and sues and wins. I know she deserved it. She had scarring from the coffee. Now everyone knows you dont pour coffee into your lap but the she was able to prove that the coffee was way to hot and she wasnt warned about the danger of this. Mcdonalds in turn had to brew coffee at a lower temp.

Now if ATI develops a product and people start using it incorrectly then of course they are no means liable for this. But if they suggest you take their product and they do not give you proper instructions to use it then I believe they are at fault. Is there an authorized ATI installer? When my Maytag appliance breaks down I know I can take it to the Maytag repairman.

If tuning is done incorrectly then ATI should set up a tuner program for shops that are now authorized to install their product. You can then feel at ease taking your car to these shops.

Anyway I am glad ATI is trying to help out everyone who has blown a motor. I suggest they take some preventive measures and rewrite their installation manual s othat it doesn't occur as often.

 

By all apperances the main weakness of the Basic ATI kit:

a) isn't the compressor, plumbing etc
b) isn't the "simplistic" FMU
c) Is the lack of timing compensation under boost. Doh

The factory ECU doesn't know what "boost is" and can't de-time
appropriately. Hence why the J&S Safeguard is a really, really ,...good idea for use with the ATI or any other kit which provides not boost -vs- timing control. Sorry the early adopter had to find out the hard way, but this is the risk one must pay to be the "first kid on the block" with a new toy. Live and learn.

ATI really should consider bundling a timing controller with their basic kit and save some future face.

 

Oh yeh another input. From the pictures I saw of the damaged pistons,I am convinced that they were victims of "pre-ignition". Detonation alone would have been more subtle and taken longer. If you can detect detonation in real time, de-time dynamically , pre-ignition should never occur. Short periods of detonation are normal. Short period of pre-ignition are Kaboom.

Also why this pre-ignition risk was not obvious to the installers amy be due to the "learning" algorithm employed by the factory ECU. For example , ECU is reset, the offset variable is nulled, the fuel map is adjsuted on the dyno, everything looks cool, biz as usual. But drive away a few days later the ECU re-learns the gas, throttle habits etc. and bumps timing up more agressively to "improve economy". That's great if the Engine "stil"l saw normal atomsphere. But , oops, the atmosphere is now much higher than the ECU could ever know (and was not designed to know). Now we've got the formula for instablity and pre-ignition.
This is a postive feedback situation. The ECU assumes a gain < unity.

It appears that the main party at fault here is that ATI didn't do their homework 100% and the un-suspecting tuners/owners have paid.

IMO

 

Timing has no effect on preignition. The picture that I saw of Ravaz's blown piston, was definitely detonation, not preignition.

 

I'm not convinced that pre ignition is an issue here but I wonder if the ecu flash would solve that problem as well?

 

1. Should we call the 350Z ECU "Hal"?

2. If a company sells the product as a kit, then it should be operational as that kit. They should have prototyped the kit to see if the ECU was adapting to it (if that is in fact the issue). If they dont want to do their homework when they release the kit early, they are liable for sloppy engineering. Would you makes these type of excuses for Boeing if they released a plane that kept crashing because the plane adapted to the pilots flying habits or whatever comparison you choose to use?

This is simple, the consumer is not responsible for the kit failing unless they used it oustide the boundries of what is reasonable for that product. The bottom line is either the vendor or manufacture is liable for a faulty product.

 

But what if everything was operational for them, and they had no problems with their test cars?

 

If it was preignition, the only thing you can do for that is add more fuel or cool the intake air. No amount of timing change will fix that issue because preignition is by definition, the loss of timing control.

 

They're at a lot higher elevation than people in cali or on the east coast. Kansas is high plains so, they might not have accounted for the denser air at lower elevations during their R&D. I really don't know, just a shot in the dark.

 

 

Besides that, did they run their test cars on 91 octane?.......it seems kind of strange to me that most of the failures that i've heard of (5), have occured in California (4)

 

Well, I'm in Colorado and all they have available is 91 octane. However, my elevation is almost in the clouds.

 

I'm sure this has been mentioned (I know I poseted it either here or on 350zmotoring), since it's pretty straightforward, but I can't find the thread with my previous question, so here we go again:

When you guys with the Procharger had it tuned, where were you measuring the A/F ratio?

My theory is that most people are measuring it after the exhausts have merged, and are therefore getting an "average" A/F ratio for that bank of cylinders.

Since we already know that the rear cylinders run leaner than the fronts, we know that they will be leaner than the "average" that was measured during tuning.

Are any of you guys also measuring the A/F ratio of just the rear cylinders to see how they are running?

If I were putting a S/C (or any type of FI on my car with the stock plenum) I would be tuning for just those two rear cylinders, and let the others run richer.

Or I would put on a Crawford Plenum to help even out the average a bit.

Can anyone comment on this?

Thanks,
D'oh!

 

I think pretty much everyone is tuning the average. Reason being, without headers there's no way to tap into a single cylinder. Plus most Wideband sensors can't withstand the temps that close to the cylinder. Long tube headers would be best for something like that, to give the exhaust gasses enough time to cool.