I have a 94 Cobra 5.0 v8 stock engine,that I have removed the catalytic converters,blocked off the egr with a plate where it mounts,installed a cold air kit air filter.the car runs great but I am wondering if advancing the timing more than 10 degrees factory timing would make it perform even better than it does now,does anyone have suggestions on the timing.Scott
Engine 94 Cobra
- Thread starter kozy
- Start date
-
Sponsors (?)
My 94 performed best at 12* back when I didn't know any better, and thought that advancing timing was a worth while thing to do. Increasing timing will help improve your total power output, however the 94-95 Cobras suffer from an improper fueling calibration in the PCM. Being that the Cobras had this fuel issue, advancing the timing on a car that runs lean from the factory, can actually be quite detrimental.
jozsefsz
15 Year Member
If it runs great, for heaven's sake don't mess with it. 
I don't want your next post to be "surging idle" and "bucking at low speeds" followed by "blown head gasket."
Best case if the engine takes a few more degrees, you'll get a couple of hp if you use premium fuel. You may also increase your combustion temperature and emissions and put yourself at risk of damaging the engine. All for power you won't really feel.
Others can validly disagree, but imho you need to do something dramatic to get a substantial horsepower increase. The things you've done (remove cats & egr) have contributed to polluting the environment but probably have resulted in a net 2 hp gain if that. Save up for a supercharger, turbo, gears, or H-C-I if you're looking for power you can feel.
Messing with the timing, fuel pressure, defeating emissions, bigger injectors, a tuner (without the hardware to back it up), and underdrive pulleys are things I consider a waste of time/money when you're looking for feedback at the butt dyno.
I don't want your next post to be "surging idle" and "bucking at low speeds" followed by "blown head gasket."
Best case if the engine takes a few more degrees, you'll get a couple of hp if you use premium fuel. You may also increase your combustion temperature and emissions and put yourself at risk of damaging the engine. All for power you won't really feel.
Others can validly disagree, but imho you need to do something dramatic to get a substantial horsepower increase. The things you've done (remove cats & egr) have contributed to polluting the environment but probably have resulted in a net 2 hp gain if that. Save up for a supercharger, turbo, gears, or H-C-I if you're looking for power you can feel.
Messing with the timing, fuel pressure, defeating emissions, bigger injectors, a tuner (without the hardware to back it up), and underdrive pulleys are things I consider a waste of time/money when you're looking for feedback at the butt dyno.
Last edited:
I'm on board with this guy. The "bolt-on game" needs to be retired for our ole mare's. They do very little and aren't exactly cheap. If you tally the cost you could've had better cylinder heads, which is where the power comes from. We have too much ground to cover these days to keep up w anything on the road that's fairly "sporty", Hyundai and Kia's included. Since you being a Cobra you don't have quite as much ground to cover as the gt's.If it runs great, for heaven's sake don't mess with it.
I don't want your next post to be "surging idle" and "bucking at low speeds" followed by "blown head gasket."
Best case if the engine takes a few more degrees, you'll get a couple of hp if you use premium fuel. You may also increase your combustion temperature and emissions and put yourself at risk of damaging the engine. All for power you won't really feel.
Others can validly disagree, but imho you need to do something dramatic to get a substantial horsepower increase. The things you've done (remove cats & egr) have contributed to polluting the environment but probably have resulted in a net 2 hp gain if that. Save up for a supercharger, turbo, gears, or H-C-I if you're looking for power you can feel.
Messing with the timing, fuel pressure, defeating emissions, bigger injectors, a tuner (without the hardware to back it up), and underdrive pulleys are things I consider a waste of time/money when you're looking for feedback at the butt dyno.
As for the timing thing ehh it's probably best to leave it alone if your just adjusting with a light and judging by ear. Too much risk involved for little reward. What you could do but is kinda pricey is get a dyno tune. They'd adjust timing and add or take away fuel as needed and you might pick up a few horses. But the first tune is pretty expensive because you have to purchase the chip so you might want to wait until you've done something worth while.
PS: how fast are you trying to go? If you could swing a $3k Vortech kit and a $500ish tune you'd make around 400 rear horse and that's ample for a street car (bout what ya need to keep up or with or beat new gt's). I make 330 and it's fun.
Last edited:
This is not something I have heard yet and is scary. Can you swap for the 93 cobra computer without a lot of hassle and get a better tune?
Can you be more specific on what the differences are? It was not OBDII yet. I know the 93 Cobras had different programming, MAF and injectors than the GT. What did they change going to the 94?
The entire computer is different. wiring, pin-outs, and components. Swapping to a 93 and older ECM is just a plain stupid idea. Back 15 years ago, when "tuning" wasn't common place, it was the only option. These days, it shouldnt even be considered.
You could have left out the "stupid" part of the reply and been just as helpful.
An Eight hour round way trip to the tuner (if you want it dyno tuned) is no small obstacle for some of us. Cows and diesel shops are not much help.
So many parts were not changed or just tweaked in the cost cutting process that "what changed?" seems like an intelligent question. Why they would have messed with the wiring pin out when the modular motor was coming up (and the car was nearly a Probe) is another interesting question. But only insiders can probably answer that.
An Eight hour round way trip to the tuner (if you want it dyno tuned) is no small obstacle for some of us. Cows and diesel shops are not much help.
So many parts were not changed or just tweaked in the cost cutting process that "what changed?" seems like an intelligent question. Why they would have messed with the wiring pin out when the modular motor was coming up (and the car was nearly a Probe) is another interesting question. But only insiders can probably answer that.
For a typical pushrod 5.0 build, dyno time is not a requirement. People have been conditioned to think that their car NEEDS to be tuned on a dyno. But the truth is, the tuning that is done on a dyno... only accounts for about 10% of your typical drive cycle. I could sit here for hours, listing countless vehicles that I have fixed. Many of them have gone to "professional high performance shops" and spent hundreds of dollars on dyno tuning.
Riddle me this though. What if i told you, that your car could be tuned simply by your driving it around as you normally would. That the only effort that YOU would have to put in would be attaching a file to an email, sending said email... and loading/saving data collected from in your car. Would it be something that you would be interested in? Would it be easier than your cow dodging eight hour trip to the dyno tuner, who wont even fully tune your car?
Riddle me this though. What if i told you, that your car could be tuned simply by your driving it around as you normally would. That the only effort that YOU would have to put in would be attaching a file to an email, sending said email... and loading/saving data collected from in your car. Would it be something that you would be interested in? Would it be easier than your cow dodging eight hour trip to the dyno tuner, who wont even fully tune your car?
I agree that tuning is not always necessary and it's kind of "faddish" now, you'v all heard the phrase, "you'll get more out of it after a tune." Yes back in the day they'd "tune by ear" to"get he most out of it" ie adjustable fuel pressure regulator and playing with timing. However, if a car is having driveability issues due to a change in air/fuel parts then some sort of tune is required.
If I had a car that didn't have any driveability issues and was basically stock like the Cobra in question I'd opt for no tune at all until I did something worth while like a head swap. You're not going to gain all that much so it's probably not worth the money even if it is a mail order tune. Which brings me to mail order tune vs dyno. Mail order tunes are an educated guessing game based on what parts one has and what the tune writer thinks would be the optimum amount of fuel and timing etc to "get the most out of your engine." With a dyno tune the tuner sees what's going on in real time and makes adjustments as necessary. While the dyno tune is more expensive seeing and knowing how much power you have after spending money and putting forth effort to install parts is worth the price of admission.
The gist of this long winded tale is if I were you I wouldn't bother with any tune right now be it mail order, hand held programer, or dyno. You won't gain a whole lot and it's definatly not worth an 8 hr trip. If you ever do mods that actually make power ie heads or forced induction (no bolt on parts)make that 8 hr drive. Until then I'd skip on a tune and put that money elsewhere in the car for now.
We aren't talking about "tuning by ear". You have completely missed the entire point of my post.
Would you like to see a dyno plot of a stock 94 Cobra? One in which the fueling problem is blatantly obvious?
Stock 94 Cobra: Shorties, O/R X-pipe, Mac dumps, UDP's, and an Ebay CAI. 253rwhp befor tuning. 276hp after tuning. The stock programming sucks.
See this is where the falsehood about dyno tuning comes into play. Mail order tunes are far more than an "educated guess"... At least when it comes to mine. There is no mystery to these engines. Certain heads, based on their design and construction, will achieve MBT at roughly the same timing values. +/- a degree. Anything beyond that can come down to a mechanical issue.
I'm not sure how much time you've spent in dyno shops during the tuning process, but I can guarantee you that this particular "Mail Order Tuner" puts significantly more effort into tuning a car, than ANY dyno shop out there.
The "gist" is that you don't understand just how far the tuning support for our cars have come. And because of that, you are losing out on grat power gains, and great driveability improvements. Even if it's something as simple as only having to crank the car once, to start it... rather than 2-3 times.
How do you know how much timing his car can take and how much fuel he needs? Based on a couple of cars that you've tuned with similar combos? How do you know where his a/f is now and which way it needs to be adjusted + or - fuel? Can you burn a tune for any combination? If so how do you know what each motor needs with out reading the a/f via wideband? Would you sell a guy a tune if he was using e7 heads and vortech 6-8 lb boost using 19# injectors and fmu? Do you think you could get the a/f ratio spot on? What do one of your tunes cost?
Before tuning. Look at that AFR through out the pull. Factory 24# injectors, a CLEAN stock MAF, stock fuel pressure (gauge verified), and a walbro 255lph fuel pump.
Ive tuned N/A 302's with simple E7 and GT-40 builds, all the way through my own turbo windsor. The trick is taking the "guess work" out of the equation.
I could (and would) go into much deeper detail, however I am not a vendor on this forum... nor do I wish to be. So Posting price points would lead this thread towards being an advertisement for my services.
The short story is that you rent a device from me and install it in your car. you then datalog what the car is doing, and e-mail the datalogs to me. I then adjust your map and send it back for you to load back into the car. Once the tuning is complete (which can take less than 5 revisions, and less than a week if you are dedicated to it) The tune is burned onto a chip and mailed to you. Once my device is returned, you are refunded a large portion of the rental fee, and we're done.
Getting fueling correct is pretty damn simple. Every MAF has a "known" set of flow vs voltage parameters. Injectors are much the same. In fact, Ford puts their injector data on these neat little sheets.
(42# green top calibration summary) https://www.fordracingparts.com/parts/ics/m-9593-f302.pdf
These values can be almost directly input right into the computer. So for any of my customers, if you're running a MAF that I have a transfer function for, and a set of injectors that I have flow data for, typically I get your fueling within 3-5% (which is compensated for by your o2 sensors).
I think my 351 has about 40 minutes of ACTUAL tuning time in it. Some of which was making a few pulls on the highway to check my WOT tuning. Drove it right to the dyno and put down 565rwhp.
Ah I get your operation. Has anyone blown up their car while data logging? With out getting into specifics is the price significantly lower than the ballpark figure of $500 for an sct chip and first dyno tune?
Last edited:
jozsefsz
15 Year Member
+1 to mr. addermk2, on all counts. I self-tuned my '95 Turbo and he describes exactly what I went through (without the steep learning curve). With a wideband O2, a good datalogging chip, injector parameters, an MAF transfer, and knowing what the heck you're doing (not impossible but not easy to figure out very quickly), you can make a heavily modified car run as good / better than stock, have it pass emissions, be completely street-able, make more power, and live a longer life. Or you can pay someone skilled and experienced to do it remotely, time is money after all.
I'd only add that I consider "mail order" tunes (a best-guess Bama tune for example) and remote-tuning (what addermk2 describes) very different - maybe the source of confusion here. I'm also unimpressed with the shortcuts (and high prices) of dyno tuners in my area. Time is money - I've heard of them updating the tune's displacement rather than fussing with new injectors, which completely throws load calculations, timing, and everything else under the bus.
My order of preference is DIY (for those who have time, patience, and technical skill - also not cheap in itself as a QuarterHorse with BE ends up being around $350), remote-tuning by a skilled person like addermk2 or decipha I've interacted with on these boards (and who have educated me a few times), a canned mail-order tune, followed by dyno-tune, followed by nothing, followed by swapping to a carb, followed by selling my car, followed by a GUFB swap.
I'd only add that I consider "mail order" tunes (a best-guess Bama tune for example) and remote-tuning (what addermk2 describes) very different - maybe the source of confusion here. I'm also unimpressed with the shortcuts (and high prices) of dyno tuners in my area. Time is money - I've heard of them updating the tune's displacement rather than fussing with new injectors, which completely throws load calculations, timing, and everything else under the bus.
My order of preference is DIY (for those who have time, patience, and technical skill - also not cheap in itself as a QuarterHorse with BE ends up being around $350), remote-tuning by a skilled person like addermk2 or decipha I've interacted with on these boards (and who have educated me a few times), a canned mail-order tune, followed by dyno-tune, followed by nothing, followed by swapping to a carb, followed by selling my car, followed by a GUFB swap.
jozsefsz
15 Year Member
Dang that's lean. Though I'm amazed it still made pretty decent power. Was it pinging the whole way?
Similar threads
