O/T - MEMS3 Mapper, Northampton Motorsport, Single Seater Racer

[revilla]

On Friday I spent the day with a couple of the guys from Formula Sheane Racing https://www.formulasheane.ie/ from Ireland at Northampton Motorsport, remapping a single seater racing car with MEMS3 Mapper.

The Formula Sheane uses a 1.8K Series, in very close to standard spec complete with plastic plenum, 48mm throttle body standard head, but with some unusual uprated Kent camshafts. The formula is centered around being fast, reliable and inexpensive. According to the guys who were here (Enda O'Connor and Keith Hogg) they "run rings around Formula Ford cars costing four times as much to buy and operate". The series founder and "Godfather to them all" recently passed away, and the committee are now trying to "raise the phoenix from the ashes" with the formula, refurbish and improve the fleet of cars and get the numbers back up to where they used to be.

They've been having a higher than expected failure rate and we wanted to check that the mapping was OK. The car they brought over had recently been purchased by Keith and needed a bit of TLC, but the plan was not to map this car to gain any kind of advantage but to develop a map on behalf of the committee that would be mandated for use across the whole fleet. The objective was to get as much performance as possible whilst remaining well withing safety margins that should give good reliability.

They actually came over the afternoon before and we prepped the car, wired in an OBDII port direct to the ECU, installed the live mapping patch on the ECU etc.

I'm happy to report that the day went really well! It's the first time I've used the Live Mapping firmware patch "in anger" on the rollers myself and it didn't miss a beat. Troy was driving the car, I was working the laptop, he was giving me hand signals for increase and decrease fuel, increase and decrease ignition, and we did it all live with the engine running.

The map they were running already (which was actually based on a Caterham SuperSport map with ignition and fuelling changes) turned out not to be too far wrong. The fuelling was a bit out of kilter at full throttle, but pretty safe all over. A bit lean of ideal in the mid range RPM but still well under Lambda 1 and a bit too rich below that and right at the top, but we were able to fix that nicely and got it between 0.88 and 0.92 all over at WOT, and we dropped the target AFRs in the mid range to bring it out of closed loop lambda control earlier.

Troy reckoned he could maybe hear the first signs of very light detonation at tip-in in the mid range, so we took a couple of degrees of ignition out in that area and at all RPM at WOT, did a power run to see what we had lost - and found we had gained! So we took another couple of degrees out and gained a tiny bit more and left it there ... more torque and safer at the same time. I smoothed out the changes in and we flashed the new map onto a pile of ECUs before they left.

I did identify one problem that probably wasn't helping engine reliability. Their engines have no bypass hose and so they run without a thermostat, and with two massive VW Golf radiators in side pods. Apparently around a typical lap the coolant temperature fluctuates between 50°C and 70°C! Far too cool for pushing them hard under race conditions and far too much cycling. They're going to look at moving to a more standard setup there. Also they have some cars with forged pistons but some with stock pistons, and the map they were running had the rev limit set to 7600rpm. With standard plastic plenums, 48mm TBs and mostly stock heads and mild cams, the rolling road confirmed there was absolutely no justification for it, so we cut that right back.

Still, even at that spec we ended up at over 161bhp around 7000rpm which I think was pretty healthy, and a very flat torque curve to go with it.

So if there's anyone out there running a modified K Series on MEMS3 who wants to get it remapped properly ... what's stopping you? My tool is still and always will be absolutely free, including all of the live mapping system. And it really does work! This is the second car I've helped remap at Northampton Motorsport (the previous one for another club member, predating the Live Mapping system). Troy and his team certainly know their stuff and take care of the cars. The previous car has subsequently proved reliable and competitive over time. The quality of the maps produced is down to their expertise not mine, I'm only providing the tools and access to the ECUs.

[Wrightpayne]

Another good read and great effort Andrew.

[Jonathan Kay]

What Ian says. Thanks for sharing it.

Troy reckoned he could maybe hear the first signs of very light detonation at tip-in in the mid range, so we took a couple of degrees of ignition out in that area and at all RPM at WOT, did a power run to see what we had lost - and found we had gained! So we took another couple of degrees out and gained a tiny bit more and left it there ... more torque and safer at the same time. I smoothed out the changes in and we flashed the new map onto a pile of ECUs before they left.

What's next... automated Simplex optimisation?

Jonathan

[Dave Hardcastle]

Interesting article, thanks for posting that.

[Alan Bowler]

The "previous car" is indeed fully reliable, you did a fantastic job with my map and fixing the fuelling, probably saving an untimely engine demise. As for competitive, the limiting factor is me at the moment!

 

 

[revilla]

I didn't want to.mention names Alan, but as you've "owned up" ...