Smiffy69

Hi Tomiam, Thanks very much for taking the time and trouble to run these tests for me it is much appreciated. Apologies for not replying sooner but I have been out of the country for a bit on business and only just back. Glad you do not have the same problem as me and all is OK. From your logs your Lambda acts slightly different to mine. In the early stages and it seem to start to read correctly faster then mine - I did a comparison of my logs on my lambdas ( I have the one I thought was faulty and compared it to my new one) and they are comparable, yet slightly different to yours. When mine get to a certain temp they drop from a high voltage reading down to about .4V then after a few more seconds they rise to about .8V and then suddenly switch on and read normally (after about 60secs) . Yours stays at the high voltage and then switches on with out the drop to .4V ?? Therefore I explored the heater side of both thinking mine are warming up slower - I get 3.6 Ohms across and when plugged in (and not in the Cat) you can feel them heat up so the heater side works - which scuppers the theory of the heaters not working. I still think that both Lambdas are OK and this is is just a quirky set of conditions as the car drive perfectly OK Next step is to get CC to increase the Warm up timer and whilst there I will get them to check the Sensors as well (but this will have to wait until well into the new year. Just for info is the probe you have the bosch 0258 003 229

Many thanks Tomiam - PM sent :-)

Thanks much appreciated ................. I don't think small throttle input to start will be a problem and not overly effect the result (mine BTW will start without throttle) Symptoms are that mine will start to read normally but only after about 50secs once it warms up. It starts off steady reading about .86 then drops down to .45 for about 10 secs then it starts to read +- 1 after about 50secs. Hence why I think its temp related as its very repeatable. I think the warm up timer is too low to allow the sensor to heat up enough to start to read properly before it uses the sensor ..... once it warms up all seems to be OK.

Great news Tomiam for finding the problem I am very interested to see that you had a broken sensor. I changed mine but had exactly the same problem before and after so discounted the sensor. Can I ask a favour if you get time ? Can you log the following inputs Coolant temp, Lambda, engine speed, and warm up timer. Under the following conditions ..... engine is up to temp i.e. coolant above 70C. switch off and leave to cool down for 15 mins. Then start (no throttle input) and leave running for 2 mins. The reason I ask is to see if your engines behaves the same as mine as mine will stall out once the warm up timer expires due to a low Lambda reading and the fuel then getting leaned out. I can send you my easimap data if you want to have a look at mine but as stated previously i was convinced I had a warm up timer issue but if you had a second dodgy Lambda I might have the same. Therefore a comparison would be good. cheers Ian

No neither could I !!

One other thing to look into is the spec of the lambda sensor and at what temperature it will start to work as they need to "up to temp" to start to read properly. This is normally OK from a cold start as the ECU ignores the sensor until the coolant gets above 60C and by which point the ehaust gas has heated up the sensor. If you get a scenario where the coolant is 60C + but the exhaust / Lambda probe have cooled to a point where its not in its operating zone then you will get rough running and possibly it will stall one th warm up timer expire. IMHO the warm up timer is not set long enough (mine is 40sec) by CC recommend that it should be around 60 seconds. I can see from my Lambda trace when it come up to temp and switches on. Try looking at your trace with coolant / Lambda / warm up timer and see if it corresponds to my findings This is a feature as I can't change it but if i could I would set it to around 80 secs which I am convinced would solve this issue.

Hi JK - yes a modine is a heat exchanger ..... Drama over I have since discovered that the Duratec does not come with an Oil Temp Sender so the readings I have off the easymap logger are not valid. I therefore assume this data is not required in the Native CC ECU map. Ian

Hi Mark, That's what I thought and it does seem to be the inverse of the pressure - I also would have thought that there would be some thermal inertia to the oil (like the coolant does i.e. it doesn't suddenly change temp )which then makes me think "do I have a faulty Sensor" ? Does anyone know where the ECU on a Duratec gets the Oil temp reading from ? cheers Ian

Air Temp 11 Deg water 90 deg +- 5 deg

Just been out for a Blat (taking SM25Ts advice on driving it more ) and plugged in the easy map and did some logging - Not to find a particular problem just for interest. The run was for about 30 mins and from a cold start with a mix of road types and a bit of motorway. Everything looks ok except the the oil temp when sitting idling say at lights or low revs the oil temp was around 80 deg when giving it some effort it would drop down to about 35 deg which seems a bit low. My original thoughts were that under revs the oil pump is working harder and the pressure is up so the oil would cool more as its flowing around the engine faster but I would have expected the oil temp to rise over time I was out . The only heating / cooling would be via a modine so I had expected it to run more consistently at around 80 degs I'll go for a longer run to see if it just takes longer for the oil to heat up than I expected. Is this something you would expect to see or do I have a problem ... with the car that is not personally !

Fair one Ian - yes I should drive it more !

Mine has Watts and I have never had an issue with it... no noise and clunky bits but they have only done 10K miles. However given I have never tried using radius arms I can't compare so my view isn't worth a lot

Thanks Guys Both good options and Given I am in Warsash its not far to either ! Cheers

I have a spare set of CR500' I need to get fitted. Can anyone recommend a good place to get them swapped over and balanced near Fareham? Also I seem to recall that if yo ucan get them done at ~ £10 / Corner thats not bad value - is that about right ? cheers

Thanks Aerobod - As mine is the CC ECU its locked so no mapping exports for me then.

Thanks for the update and an interesting read. Slight thread hijack but how do you get these plots in easymap? If I try and download my ECU it gets to 50% then gives up. I had assumed that this was as a result of them being "read only" Am I missing something and this is "user error" ? or do you know the password ?

Red left hand drive... Lovely day for a Blat ...... But where do you go on Guernsey when the fastest road I found was 35 mph??!! Lovely lunch though and then we saw an orange SV 2 up leaving the car park opposite and then another one purple ish in colour a few mins later. 3 in one day !!

So its as I suspected - they need balancing. What is surprising then that the setup I have had from new has no wheel balancing. The Tyres and rims are Avon CR500 on 15" rims . Given the feedback above then maybe new builds should go and get their wheels balanced as a matter of precaution. As always thanks everyone for the feedback

Todays daft question....... I am about to change the tyres on the 7 as the old ones are just about legal. The ones currently fitted are the originals when I built the car but do not seem to have any balancing weights on them. I assume this means that either a) they are not balanced or b) when fitted as new balancing is not required (which seems unlikely). So If I therefore assume a) is true they are not balanced. Given that I have not had any noticable vibration does that mean you can get away with not balancing the wheels on a 7 ? Said it was a daft question .....

Hi JV I just use easymap and the CAN adaptor to my Laptop. ( The CAN can be a bit pricey though bt a useful investment for this kind of issue ) Where in Dorset are you ? I could pop over of you could come over here or we meet in the middle if you want to use mine? I also have the Pipercross Filter mounted on a CF box (hence why I called it an AIrbox but might have oversold it ) cheers

Saw you heading south on the A3 just past the shell garage at Liphook at about 18:00

It would seem us Duratec guys might have an inherent design probem witht the way the sensors / mapping works when you have a RB Throttle set up. I recently posted about the same symptoms on my car and ran various "controlled"tests to see if its a reapeatable set of symptoms given certain conditions. My finders were. The car will start up and run from cold perfecly well with no problems. If you stall "ahem!" or switch off breifly the car will start and run OK if you let the car stand with engine off once it is up to temperature for a period of time and restart things get interesting. Looking at the Map traces mine would start OK until the warm up timer expires (Lambda ignored and has a low value 0.4) once the timer has expired and with the lambda being low the ecu then starts to lean out the fuel mix until the point it starts to stall. It then injects more fuel to try and recover and does this 2 or three times until it stalls. Its only one you get the Lambda reading in its usual steady state of 0.75 - 1.12 (it oscillates around these values) that all things return to normal. So this led me to believe that I had a Faulty Lambda probe. I have swapped it for a new one and now change with the same results and traces ( ) My conclusion is that the warm up timer is not long enough for this configuration. I did some research on how these probes work and they only start to read properly once they are in the right operatng temp band and you can see this from the Map traces. When starting from cold values start low when 0.4 for about 90 secs then settle down to low .60 for 90 - 255 secs and then suddenly switchs on. Every time the probe is cool and the engine map thinks the car is warm i.e. coolent is over 60 degrees the car runs lmpy until the Lamda switchs on then all is good (hence when after a few mins of driving or revving all is good again) . As I can only read from the ECU I can't change anything so I can't prove this. I also did consider the other side of the equation regarding air temp and that if the car is sitting hot but not running the airbox sinks heat from the engine bay and causes an artificailly high reading so as a result the ECU leans out the fuel until the temp in the airbox dropped due to flow. However I have discounted this for 2 reasons - I saw no noticeabe change in temp after running and the Lambda should have compensated. This looks to be a TADTS problem for this particular combo.

Thanks everyone for your input (and correcting me on my terminology )- I shall try a new probe and report back as after further testing I think its a coming up to temprature problem (after ensuring all connections are good and that I get 12volts on the heater circuit) Another question - whats the best way of mearing the fuel flow through the injectors? I was using the injection time as a proxy for fuel flow to see how it varied with the Lamda readings to try and make sense of the data.

I have a bit of an intermittent issue where once the engine is warm and I swtich of the car for a few mins then restart it will run for a approx 45 seconds and then the revs drop and it will stall ( not good when trying to get on a ferry). After reading various threads on the topic I did some tests and logged some of the parameters through easymap and came up with the following theory. My question is have I understood how this works correctly and therfore is my thoery valid...... Test 1 ...When you start the car there is a Lamda warm up timer (40 secs) which will cause the ECU to close loop i.e. ignore the sensor and use a default value. After the warm up timer expires it goes open loop and looks to the Lamda sensor for a reading. During the intial 40 secs the engine idles perfectly as soon as the timer expires it goes all lumpy and stalls. The default lamda target is 1. My trace shows that when the timer expires the Lamda is reading 0.45. engine starts to stall (fuel mix being leaned out?) then suddenly lamda jumps to 0.96 it then hunts around 0.6 to 0.96 engine almost stalling each time until it finally gives up and stalls. Test 2 ....When restarted sraight away the Lamda probe is hunting around 1 +/- and engine run fine even when timer expires. Test 3 ... disconnect Lamda (run in closed loop) all runs fine and no problem Test 4 ..... Reconnect and restarted after approx 5 mins and same results as test 1. Conclusion - the lamda probe is intermittently reporting whilst it gets up to a proper temperature and is therefore faulty ? Is that a fair conclusion ? if is there a way to repair it (clean it ?) or is a new one required ?

Thanks Guys - I don't think i have a problem but given it's 5 years old, MOT time and these seem to have a high failure rate I think i'll stick the easymap on mine and just double check.