TestO Datalogger - what do you think?

[Pingu]

As anyone who does performance mods should know, keeping the intake air temperature low and the exhaust gas temperature high are two of the many improvements that you can make.

I've just done a mod to keep the intake temp low and TestO proves that it works!!!

Intake Temp Graph before...

You can see that the green line (Intake Temperature) went up and was generally about 10°C above ambient.

Max Air Mass was 840.25
and
Max Injection Time was 13.775

Intake Temp Graphs after...

This was the drive to work. It took 12 minutes and the intake temp rose by only 4°C.

I left work 14 minutes later (the intake temp had risen to 36°C) and in the 5 minutes that it took to drive to the petrol station, the temp had dropped to 29°C.

It took 5 minutes to fill-up and the temp had risen to 41°C. I then took it for a gentle drive and the temp dropped to 23°C. I gave it a blast (you can see when by the two blips in coolant temp). There was a negligible effect on intake temp and it kept going down. Previous blasts have made the intake temp rise, but not fall. The implication is that a new cool charge of air cools the hot charge as I have managed to keep the plenum cool. Previously, the latent heat in the hot plenum heated the new charge. The casual drive home saw the coolant temp rise (as before), but the rise in the intake temp was much more gradual than before.

What effect has this had on horse power?

I don't know the new horse power, but the new Air Mass and Fuel Times look good (previous values in brackets)...

Max Air Mass = 860.5 (840.25)
and
Max Injection Time = 14.859 (13.775)

I really need to take the car on the same test route as before to prove absolutely that the mod is an improvement.

 

[Cooper]

Great work. Now don't keep us hanging what was the mod? Lol

 

[pheno]

Nice work there! You can clearly see the difference in the graphs.

 

[Pingu]

Great work. Now don't keep us hanging what was the mod? Lol

I sprayed the MAF with half a can of Halfords Electrical Contact Cleaner (£3.99) which didn't make a lot of difference, as my MAF was very clean to start with. Apparently, this is a very good servicing top tip if your MAF has any dirt on it.

The main mod involved some stainless steel mesh (£4.99), some loft insulation (free), some tie-wraps (25p) and some gold heat tape (£2.59). I ran out of gold heat tape as I only bought 1 metre to see what it was like. I've just bought another 10m for £16.99. It must be good stuff for me to splash the cash, but makes your engine bay look very bling.

I've got a thermometer under the bonnet and the temperature after a run has dropped from 60°C to 50°C. Before the mod, if I put my hand on the plenum it would feel hot, now it feels slightly warm.

I'll post up details of the finished mod when it's complete.

 

[pheno]

Anyone seen this mod ?

http://mz3.net/1-9-fogged-airbox-modification.html

It's for M44 though

 

[Cooper]

Yes, I am planning on doing it one day I will run Testo before and after of course!

 

[Cooper]

Here is some interesting data for those considering a fan delete mod.
Note the huge differences in Intake Temp and Oil Temp.

The 'run' was down my driveway, across the river and up a 500m steep hill road, then winding back home the long way. Fan was ON first run, them OFF second run immediately after. Ambient temperature is about 13 degrees C. The Fan Speed data is always "0" so I don't know if something is wrong there.

 

[pheno]

That's a clear difference ! That probably gives positive effect on ignition angles etc.

Hmm.. anybody else seeing 'fan speed' 0 ?

 

[Cooper]

I am also keen to see if anyone else has the 0 for fan speed - I cannot get it to work even though the fan is spinning when the aircon forces it on. I have replaced the in-radiator thermo switch thing just in case it was faulty.

@pheno The latest version of TestO will also not detect my ECU either through the under bonnet pin or the under dash whateveryoucallit. The previous version did that is how I found out I have the MS430DS0 and use the serial version of that in the list to collect data. BTW, I did record Speed successfully but the screen shot was taken of the data at the top of the list. No big deal in my case, but thought I would let you know.

 

[the Nefyn cat]

That's one hell of a difference, be interesting to see the results of the test the other way round (no fan first etc). Being as engines are normally happier when hot (within reason, of course) does this set-up read the exhaust gasses as well? Given the choice I'd rather have the higher temperatures in the engine. And it could be time for a cold-air intake/insulation. Yet another job I'm intending to do, all I need is 48 hour days.

 

[Cooper]

My car reached normal operating temperature within a few minutes as per normal, and the ambient temperature was about 13 degrees so the heat was produced by the engine with little outside [boosting] influence. I don't think that running the test in the opposite way would affect the results as the engine will adjust quickly. I hope someone else can run the same test in their environment so we can compare results. The more the better!

Some good questions are,
will running with the fan off be detrimental to the oil - is it out of specification?
does it or how will it affect other engine components short and long term?
can some of the effects be negated with a cold air induction?
How does a really hot day affect the results? {I can test this in summer btw}
If I can get the electric fan to work how does this affect the results? I am not sure if the fan was working as the test reported '0' all the time. For this reason my results cannot be 100% trusted as gospel.

It is awesome that TEST0 takes all these readings and provided the test is done in a methodical way some conclusions can be reached. It is so helpful in determining if a mod is actually doing what we think it is doing!

I was really shocked at the Intake Temp - that was a massive difference.

Also, I keep meticulous fuel consumption records. Having the fan off or on makes almost no difference to consumption in a 3.0i and I certainly cannot feel any difference in performance.I travel the same roads at the same time of the evening week in and week out.

Interesting.

 

[the Nefyn cat]

Don't know for sure but the thermostat for these is probably in the area of 85degrees C (just had a quick look on GSF and that says 97, sounds a bit high but what the hell), so the higher figures are going to be what the engine was designed to run at, anyone who's had a failed thermostat will know the difference it makes. The intake temperature surely can only be down to not having a fan blasting air about the place, makes me feel that with winter on it's way I'll be taking the mechanical fan off and re-routing the air intake, cold air being a lot better than hot when it comes to the intake. I'm going to have to try this new-fangled software stuff myself, see what's really happening under the bonnet. More things to do.

 

[Pingu]

I've used a thermometer to measure the under bonnet temperature...

It came with a coolant pressure tester, but it is the same as a food thermometer - just make sure the probe tip is not touching anything.

This was the reading after a 100 mile motorway drive .

Re the fan. It is doing more than just cooling the radiator "water". It is cooling the front of the engine. I don't know the impact of reducing this cooling.

Re your tests. I'm guessing from the data that you ran the "No Fan" test straight after the "With Fan" test. It doesn't look like you allowed the engine to cool down (this takes around 8 hours). I found that it is very difficult to cool the intake temperature once it had risen.

 

[Cooper]

In my case I suspect that the electric fan was not engaged at all which is reflected in the very high intake temp with no fan???? My guess is that if anyone does the fan delete mod it would be best to ensure the electric fan is engaged on high right from the start and/or put in a cold air induction system. There are several posts about how the cold air has an issue getting into the airbox from the front in our zeds and this test seems to confirm that! All this is assuming people actually care about the intake temp of course! lol

Exactly how the electric fan can impact the oil temperature rise of 11 degrees without the engine fan is yet to be seen however I do remember someone with a ///M go back to the engine fan due the high temp raise in the oil. In fact that comment is what motivated me to do this test, in that order. I still don't know if the raise in oil temp is bad, or how bad.........

The max intake temp with the fan on was 24 which means the engine brought the temp from 13 to 24. No great surprises there.
The max temp with the fan off went up to 41.25 which clearly demonstrates the engine fan move a lot of air from the outside and confirms that that fan does has a massive influence on the intake temperatures. Very surprising for me!

When I get around to it I will do all the tests again with the cold air induction setup I am planning [engine fan on and then off], and also with the electric fan jumpered onto LOW and then HIGH all the time [if I can find out how to do that apart from turning the air con on]. All in the name of science!

 

[the Nefyn cat]

The oil temperature will be affected by the water temperature, they're both in the same place (near as damn it) and so long as they go up and down together I wouldn't be too worried. Must admit I'm suprised by the difference not having a fan makes to the intake temperature, guess there's too much stuff getting in the way, really must get round to sorting out a cooler way for the air to get in. And less convoluted, too.

 

[Pingu]

All this is assuming people actually care about the intake temp of course! lol

If you care about fan delete, you really should care about cold air induction.

Cold air induction and hot gas exhaust are two of the most cost effective mods you can do if you want to improve volumetric efficiency and hence power.

I would repeat your test using the same test route if possible until you get consistent results. I often get anomalies that I can't explain at first glance - for instance, my intake temp was very high on one of my tests. It was caused by me driving too slowly behind a tractor in town traffic.

 

[Dalek]

Is this trying to change base metal into gold?

 

[Pingu]

Is this trying to change base metal into gold?

Works an absolute treat. I took it for a blast last night and the temp on the thermometer was 40°C - the plenum was actually cold to the touch.

 

[Pingu]

More TestO stuff...

Resistance Co-efficients. Find a long, flat straight, get the car going quite fast and knock it into neutral and record the speed and time as it decelerates.

As you can see, it decelerates faster with the roof down. This is what you would expect, but it proves there is more drag with the roof down.

Resistance comes in many forms - Aerodynamic, Rolling, Gradient, Braking.

We can reduce Braking Resistance to almost zero by fitting floating discs (or correcting the run-out of standard discs), correctly adjusting the handbrake and ensuring that our brake pads are well serviced.

Gradient Resistance can be eliminated by driving on a flat road.

Rolling Resistance is caused by friction in the bearings of the transmission and by the interaction of the tyre tread on the road. We can measure this from the data.

Aerodynamic Resistance is very low at slow speed, but becomes the dominant resistance at high speed, and can also be calculated from the data.

Crr (Rolling Resistance Coefficient) is calculated using data from the lower end of the curve...

Crr = (v1 - v2) / (g . t) = 0.011
v1 is initial velocity (m/s)
v2 is final velocity (m/s)
g is gravitational acceleration (9.81 m/s²)
t is the time between the velocity samples (s)

Cd (Drag Coefficient) is calculated at the upper end of the curve...

Cd = (8 m ( (v1 - v2) / t ) - ( g . Crr) ) ) / ( p . A . (v1 + v2)² ) = 0.46 (at the fastest speed tested)
m is the total mass of the car (kg)
v1 is initial velocity (m/s)
v2 is final velocity (m/s)
t is the time between the velocity samples (s)
g is gravitational acceleration (9.81 m/s²)
Crr is the Rolling Resistance Coefficient that was calculated earlier. It is a constant.
p is air density (1.22 kg/cu m)
A is the frontal area of the car (m²)

Below is a graph showing how the calculated Cd differed at different speed ranges...

I've not included the speeds, but the high speeds are on the left of the graph (where the Cd is most stable at around 0.50).

If I were really bothered, I'd investigate the spike, but I suspect that it is caused by anomalies in the data that could be eliminated if more test runs were made.


Conclusion

Again, although TestO data can be used to calculate values, it is best used as a comparative tool. I now have a baseline for any changes that I make that will affect the rolling resistance or the drag resistance.

 

[Cooper]

@Pingu absolutely brilliant, and I love reading all your reports.