heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[ugaexploder]

That quality looks really nice but out of curiosity, why didn’t you go with probably the most commonly known guy that does steering wheel refurb, cobywheel?

the difference in stitching quality is pretty great between the two. if you can spare the extra money, it’s a no brainer to go with maar handels gmbh. not trying to bad mouth coby stuff, but the stitching on the maar stuff is immaculate.

[BADCLOWN]

That quality looks really nice but out of curiosity, why didn’t you go with probably the most commonly known guy that does steering wheel refurb, cobywheel?

[sbay]

Bit more messing around with Gauge.S. Turns out it's got an internal pullup resistor (R13, 510 ohm) for the D bus that messes with flashing/other DME diag tasks (no I didn't brick my car's DME in the work parking lot, what are you talking about). So I swapped it out for one of a larger value (10k ohm):




All Gauge.S features still work just fine and now I can flash my car without disconnecting the unit!

I then figured out how to get brake pressure data from the MK60 (more info here: https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/m...4#post266734):



Unfortunately, it requires sending out a D bus that's request different to the DME one, so displaying this alongside the DME parameters is not currently supported. Fortunately, Maciej (aka sorek, Gauge.S creator) is working on adding this feature to the firmware and it should be available soon!

I did also cave and ended up buying V5.1 of the board, as I wanted the upgraded hardware so that I could configure a stupid amount of parameters and not have the thing crash in wifi mode:



But of course nothing ever goes to plan and the new board doesn't work with the MSS54HP for whatever reason. It can communicate just fine with the MK60, so I'm fairly certain it's a firmware issue. Looks like I'm the first one to come across this, so waiting for my new logic analyzer to arrive to do some proper debugging.

And now moving on from electronics to interior stuff.

The fabric dye I used to dye the stitches on the Nogaros black was starting to wear off in high contact areas, so I gave it a quick touchup:




As long as you wipe the fabric marker off the vinyl quickly enough (on the order of a minute), it will not penetrate it at all, so retouching is super easy. Just sloppily paint over the stitches and then wipe away the excess. Took me ~5 min to do both seats.

Afterwards I swapped in something that I've been wanting to for ages. New steering wheel!




I realized I really liked the feel of an alcantara wheel after driving the grey ZCP car around for a while. However, I didn't love the grey alcantara on the ZCP wheel. I considered getting the ZHP wheel since it's ~$600 brand new, but for some reason I really wanted to keep the tricolor stitching (it's probably the only bit of color that I want in the interior). So instead, I opted for a wheel from Maar Handels GmbH (aka Tainik) in 9040 alcantara. Was $700 after tax and shipping from Germany, so about the same as the ZHP one, except with the tricolor stitching.

I'm honestly very impressed with the quality of the wheel. It's not 100% identical to the wheel that came with the car, but it's very, very, very close. So close that it's practically impossible to tell the difference once it's on the car. Here's some comparison pics:












And the best part about this wheel is that the old leather was removed and it's actually been rewrapped properly! None of that "rewrap over the existing leather" nonsense:



Overall extremely pleased with it. We'll see how much I come to hate regularly cleaning an alcantara wheel soon...

Not even mine but I’m also extremely pleased with it . Quality looks top-notch!

[heinzboehmer]

Bit more messing around with Gauge.S. Turns out it's got an internal pullup resistor (R13, 510 ohm) for the D bus that messes with flashing/other DME diag tasks (no I didn't brick my car's DME in the work parking lot, what are you talking about). So I swapped it out for one of a larger value (10k ohm):




All Gauge.S features still work just fine and now I can flash my car without disconnecting the unit!

I then figured out how to get brake pressure data from the MK60 (more info here: https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/m...4#post266734):



Unfortunately, it requires sending out a D bus that's request different to the DME one, so displaying this alongside the DME parameters is not currently supported. Fortunately, Maciej (aka sorek, Gauge.S creator) is working on adding this feature to the firmware and it should be available soon!

I did also cave and ended up buying V5.1 of the board, as I wanted the upgraded hardware so that I could configure a stupid amount of parameters and not have the thing crash in wifi mode:



But of course nothing ever goes to plan and the new board doesn't work with the MSS54HP for whatever reason. It can communicate just fine with the MK60, so I'm fairly certain it's a firmware issue. Looks like I'm the first one to come across this, so waiting for my new logic analyzer to arrive to do some proper debugging.

And now moving on from electronics to interior stuff.

The fabric dye I used to dye the stitches on the Nogaros black was starting to wear off in high contact areas, so I gave it a quick touchup:




As long as you wipe the fabric marker off the vinyl quickly enough (on the order of a minute), it will not penetrate it at all, so retouching is super easy. Just sloppily paint over the stitches and then wipe away the excess. Took me ~5 min to do both seats.

Afterwards I swapped in something that I've been wanting to for ages. New steering wheel!




I realized I really liked the feel of an alcantara wheel after driving the grey ZCP car around for a while. However, I didn't love the grey alcantara on the ZCP wheel. I considered getting the ZHP wheel since it's ~$600 brand new, but for some reason I really wanted to keep the tricolor stitching (it's probably the only bit of color that I want in the interior). So instead, I opted for a wheel from Maar Handels GmbH (aka Tainik) in 9040 alcantara. Was $700 after tax and shipping from Germany, so about the same as the ZHP one, except with the tricolor stitching.

I'm honestly very impressed with the quality of the wheel. It's not 100% identical to the wheel that came with the car, but it's very, very, very close. So close that it's practically impossible to tell the difference once it's on the car. Here's some comparison pics:












And the best part about this wheel is that the old leather was removed and it's actually been rewrapped properly! None of that "rewrap over the existing leather" nonsense:



Overall extremely pleased with it. We'll see how much I come to hate regularly cleaning an alcantara wheel soon...

[Bry5on]

Is this tune available for public beta testing Bry5on Heinz is running the same setup as me down to the PCS tune, which I am happy with generally minus the fact that some of the adaptations/long term fuel trims are off. Been meaning to do the part throttle integrator tuning too.

Shoot me a PM and we can work something out It’s pretty dialed in at this point.

[repoman89]

On another note, I've been running Bry5on's mullet tune for some weeks now and have nothing but positive things to say about it. I'd say it's about as big of a jump as it was when I did the lambda integrator part throttle fuel tuning. No more weird hesitation at lower RPMs (there was a very noticeable one at ~2.7k that seems to be gone now), downshifts are super consistent now and there's torque!

I find myself downshifting a LOT less on the street now. Pretty great to have the car respond to throttle pedal inputs at lower RPMs. Feels very close to how I remember the stock tune (with stock hardware) feeling like. I'm super happy with the drivability and, as a bonus, my wideband is showing pretty much spot on AFRs everywhere.

Is this tune available for public beta testing Bry5on Heinz is running the same setup as me down to the PCS tune, which I am happy with generally minus the fact that some of the adaptations/long term fuel trims are off. Been meaning to do the part throttle integrator tuning too.

[heinzboehmer]

You should log engine speed with CAN instead of the k-bus. Much higher sample rate and it’ll be timed better with the AFR log.

Oh good call, for some reason I have it set to not log. Need to change that.

And with the brake-snorkel duct at 70mph I’m seeing about +4-5C above ambient, it makes a big difference.

Awesome. Project added to list!

[Bry5on]

Curve looks about right, but a bit leaner than mine around 6k and above 7.5k. I wonder if that’s because I have a pretty restrictive e36 muffler. AFRs generally look pretty safe though.

You should log engine speed with CAN instead of the k-bus. Much higher sample rate and it’ll be timed better with the AFR log.

And with the brake-snorkel duct at 70mph I’m seeing about +4-5C above ambient, it makes a big difference.

[heinzboehmer]

Alright finally pulled some data off of Gauge.s

Here's two WOT pulls.

2nd gear:

https://datazap.me/u/heinzboehmer/mullet-2nd-gear-wot?log=0&data=10-29-34&trim=0&tmin=25.00&tmax=5723.19

And 3rd:

https://datazap.me/u/heinzboehmer/mullet-3rd-gear-wot?log=0&data=10-29-34&trim=0&tmin=39.00&tmax=8504.55

Looks like it's following the pattern you described Bry5on, although it does seem to go to 13 at some points. Not a huge concern really for engine health. And hard to say that this is how it behaves always with just two datapoints.

I did also take a much longer data log on a day that I drove up the bay, which should give a good idea of part throttle behavior (had to cut out columns as file was past the datazap size limit):

https://datazap.me/u/heinzboehmer/mullet-long-normal-drive-bay?log=0&data=1-3-11

As expected, lots of stoic!

Also, seeing 40 C IATs at ~70 mph isn't great. I really need to print myself a brake duct -> airbox snorkel adapter to help with that.

[heinzboehmer]

How’s your WOT AFR looking? It should be 12.5:1, slowly ramping down to 12:1 after about 6k rpm. I put a bunch of effort into changing the interpolation targets to smooth it out. Curious to see if it translated to your car with some of that funky higher rpm stuff you had going on.

To be honest, I haven't gotten any logs out of the car yet to be able to make any truly data backed claims. I try to go out one of these days and grab some though.

But yes, from looking at the gauge while driving, they're between 12-13:1 at WOT and right around stoic everywhere else.

[Bry5on]

On another note, I've been running Bry5on's mullet tune for some weeks now and have nothing but positive things to say about it. I'd say it's about as big of a jump as it was when I did the lambda integrator part throttle fuel tuning. No more weird hesitation at lower RPMs (there was a very noticeable one at ~2.7k that seems to be gone now), downshifts are super consistent now and there's torque!

I find myself downshifting a LOT less on the street now. Pretty great to have the car respond to throttle pedal inputs at lower RPMs. Feels very close to how I remember the stock tune (with stock hardware) feeling like. I'm super happy with the drivability and, as a bonus, my wideband is showing pretty much spot on AFRs everywhere.

How’s your WOT AFR looking? It should be 12.5:1, slowly ramping down to 12:1 after about 6k rpm. I put a bunch of effort into changing the interpolation targets to smooth it out. Curious to see if it translated to your car with some of that funky higher rpm stuff you had going on.

[heinzboehmer]

On another note, I've been running Bry5on's mullet tune for some weeks now and have nothing but positive things to say about it. I'd say it's about as big of a jump as it was when I did the lambda integrator part throttle fuel tuning. No more weird hesitation at lower RPMs (there was a very noticeable one at ~2.7k that seems to be gone now), downshifts are super consistent now and there's torque!

I find myself downshifting a LOT less on the street now. Pretty great to have the car respond to throttle pedal inputs at lower RPMs. Feels very close to how I remember the stock tune (with stock hardware) feeling like. I'm super happy with the drivability and, as a bonus, my wideband is showing pretty much spot on AFRs everywhere.

[heinzboehmer]

Alright, another iteration to the Gauge.S install. First, jumped on DigiKey and ordered a bunch of TE connectors and housings. Then I added a FET-based relay board (so no annoying clicks) to the USB C charger so that it only comes on when the key is in the ignition.

Connectors added and harness modified:






This new connector makes removing/installing Gauge.S sooo much simpler, it's pretty great now.

I also found this nice TE housing for the right angle cigarette lighter ground wire. Really no need to have this as it's a ground, but it makes my brain happy:



I then reinstalled the SAP cause I was tired of the ridiculous stink on cold starts:



It did make it better, but it definitely doesn't smell like stock. I guess that's just down to the composition of the cats. Seems like they need a good bit of heat in them before they start doing anything. I'll take any improvement though, so still worth having this thing back on.

And lastly, all that key on engine off work made it clear that my battery was truly dying. So I finally jumped on the lithium train with an H5 40Ah Antigravity LiFePO4 battery:



Old battery (H5 CSL/mini sized lead acid) weighed in at 32.6 lbs. Lithium one is 13.8 lbs. Happy with the 18.8 lbs saved!

Also very entertaining to hear the starter turn the engine over so quickly now. I'm also fairly certain the locks actuate faster with the lithium battery, but I might be making things up with that one.

[heinzboehmer]

Great write up Heinz! This thread is motivational, now I really need to get off my butt and start working on the ///M again.

Thanks man! We should get that airbox installed on your car

[WestBankM4]

Great write up Heinz! This thread is motivational, now I really need to get off my butt and start working on the ///M again.