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Wait till you get to the dyno to fix the inductive delay and the timing offset. It can be a PIA to do it alone and the holley gets confusing with ignition changes cause the ones you are trying to make need the key to be cycled on and off to lock them in. If you mess up the order it gets tricky, been there done that, it is best to have 2 people who know the system check it together, one in the car, one with the light working the laptop.
 
You make a good point about the inductive delay. It's a very specific process. I'm going to go through it at least a little bit to familiarize myself with the process, because it's something I definitely need to learn to do. The car will be at the tuner sooner than later to get the final tuning done. I'm dying to finally enjoy this car.
 
She fired up fine. Still having the same cold idle issue as before, but I expected that. That idle is surging a bit once it's warmed up, but it will idle on its own. I couldn't get a good reading at idle because of the surging. Varied between 16 and 22 degrees. I locked out the timing at 25 degrees and disabled the idle spark. The balancer was reading 27 degrees. I revved the engine a bit and the timing didn't seem to move at all. Good sign that things are close. I want to change the oil again before I play with it anymore. At least we are in the ballpark and she is running that way she should be. I still think I have a tiny coolant leak from the water pump area though. Arrrgh!
 
@90lxcoupe, are you using the flying magnet wheel as well? In the crank sensor settings, I don't have an option for timing offset. I only have inductive delay. If my idle timing is off 2 degrees, I believe the only way I can compensate for that is to adjust the the cranking timing in the software, which then synchronizes the idle timing as well. Correct me if I'm wrong with my thinking.

It makes sense to me that you can't create an offset for a 1 pulse per fire crank trigger. I just want to be sure that the only way to synchronize the idle timing (with my style trigger wheel) is to synchronize the cranking timing first.
 
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Yes i am using the magnets, i have them right in my balancer, to offset the timing you need to adjust the ignition reference angle in the ignition settings. I believe that one needs to be set, then send it to the ECU, then cycle the key off, then resync and choose the get file from ECU option, then verify that the tune file changed, then check it with the light again. I am just going by memory on this so i could be off on the exact steps but the ignition reference angle is what needs to be adjusted. I do not recall messing with the idle timing setting much.

Good read on the holley forums...
Synchronizing Ignition Timing - Holley EFI
 
You must have one of those fancy innovators West balancers. Those are sweet.

I must have read that post 1000 times over the past few days. With the crank sensor being set for digital falling, that must mean that the wheel magnet should be lined up with the falling edge of the sensor at 50 degrees, and not dead center of the sensor. That may be where my 2 degree difference is coming from. I believe I have the magnet at the middle of the sensor right now. That brings be back to the cranking timing. I could either bump that 2 degrees or move the crank sensor. Seems like six of one, half dozen of the other. I just know something needs to be adjusted to get the timing synchronized, because it's definitely 2 degrees off right now.
 
I don't have any actual application experience with this so disregard it if you want, but to me, it makes more sense to line the magnet up with the falling edge on the sensor so that everything reads true. When you start compensating for it in other places, it can get confusing later on when you need to adjust it. 3 years from now, you may find yourself wondering why the cranking timing is advanced because you forgot what it is compensating for. Or am I missing something bigger?
 
I would just move it in the computer, I actually have the ati balancer so yea i cant move the magnets. My opinion is it will never be perfect on the balancer and that is why the ecu is adjustable. I think trying to move it 2 degrees mechanically will lead to you chasing your tail and you will end up fine tuning it in the software
 
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@hoopty5.0, Based on what I've read from Holley, the cranking timing is more of a synchronization setting and not a compensation setting. So in my case, I am seeing 22 degrees during cranking with a light. I need to tell the computer that the engine is physically at 22 degrees. That syncs everything up. If for whatever reason I wanted to change to 20 degrees of cranking timing, I would physically move the crank sensor, verify with a light, and then change the cranking timing setting in the computer.

The compensation is the inductive delay setting. That ensures the timing is accurate as the rpms increase. TFI setups seem to need a lot of inductive delay because of the slack in the timing chain affecting the how soon the computer sees what the engine is physically doing. That's one of the benefits of a crank trigger. Instant timing readings back to the computer.
 
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I would just move it in the computer, I actually have the ati balancer so yea i cant move the magnets. My opinion is it will never be perfect on the balancer and that is why the ecu is adjustable. I think trying to move it 2 degrees mechanically will lead to you chasing your tail and you will end up fine tuning it in the software

I agree with you. I'm at the end of the range for my pickup mount, so moving it mechanically means unbolting the crank pulley and clocking the wheel to allow the pickup to be further down the mount. I spoke with Kris at All Out and he said changing the cranking timing in the computer to 22 degrees will be fine. I'll do that tonight and verify it's synchronized. I may not even need to touch the inductive delay. It looked rock solid, but I'll rev it a little higher this time to be sure.
 
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When you rev it to check the inductive delay, dont just give the throttle a quick blip, that wont tell you much, when we did mine i kept it steady around 4000-4500 rpms for a few seconds to get an accurate reading.

We ended up setting the inductive delay so it is still like half a degree retarded to be on the safe side. It was pulling like 2 degrees when we started checking it. Dont worry about that number getting too high either, the holley engineer doug flynn says that anywhere from 10 to 300 is normal.
 
Yea i think so, Luckily, it will retard the timing as a default which is a good thing. I didnt even set mine for a long time and everything was good i was just probably leaving a little power on the table.
 
Yes. If the timing is retarding as the engine is revved, the delay needs to be increased. So a low delay keeps it more retarded.

Now that I finally understand how the Holley works in terms of the ignition setup, it's really not too complicated. Just a real b*tch to decipher the first time around.
 
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Yes there are all kinds of little tricks that need to be figured out with it and everything needs to be checked 100 times. Over the winter i rewired the entire holley with the unterminated harness a with the help of a friend who does some really clean work, and doing that job really got me knee deep in how everything works together.

It is nice that standalone EFI systems have become so accessable to guys like us, cause 10 years ago we would probably have been so lost without the wealth of knowledge that is shared by everyone. I think thats where companies like bigstuff and FAST went wrong, they catered towards the professionals and made working with these systems very exclusive to the casual hobbyist, where as holley, in my opinion, took the right approach by sharing all kinds of knowledge and letting the little guys in on all of the secrets and tricks with their hardware and software, which only leads to better, more user friendly products will all of the feedback they get.
 
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I completely agree with you on that. The wealth of information on the Holley forums is what ultimately made me choose the Holley over Fast or BS3. I wanted to be able to know enough to be dangerous so I could make my own adjustments in the future without having to take it somewhere to make minor changes. The help section in the Holley software is also amazing. There is hours upon hours of reading material in there.
 
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I was able to get the timing where it needs to be as far as synchronizing it goes. What I ended up needing to do was change the ignition reference angle from 50 degrees to 60 degrees. When the balancer is at 60 degrees (or at least close, mine only reads to 50), the magnet on the trigger wheel is sitting on the very edge of the pickup. When I had it at 50 degrees, I had the magnet sitting on the wrong side of the pickup. The whole digital rising and digital falling got the best of me. With the timing locked at 25 degrees, that's exactly what I see on the balancer. I did some revs to about 4k, and after half a dozen times I wound up with an inductive delay of 85 microseconds. I'm going to do it again later this week while logging the timing to see exactly what everything is doing. What's interesting is that the software now brings up a warning that says an inductive delay over 50 microseconds with a hall effect sensor may result in over-advanced timing at high RPMs.

The tune still needs a lot of work. Idle is surging until the engine gets up to operating temp. When I lock the timing, it idles a lot better and the AFR stays tighter at idle. I'm only pulling 7in of vacuum at idle, but I think it's always been that way. I honestly can't remember what the vacuum was prior to the rebuild. I was concerned about a vacuum leak, and I'm still going to check things to make sure that's not an issue.

In non-engine related news, I need to work on adjusting the hydraulic clutch a bit. I think it needs another round of bleeding. I'm having a difficult time getting the transmission into gear with the engine running. I went as far as backing the car out of the garage and pulling it back in. I will say that this clutch feels like an absolute dream. Between the twin-disc setup and the hydraulic clutch, it has amazingly light pedal feel. Two fingers will get the clutch pedal to the floor. I just need to fine tune it a bit to get the engagement where it needs to be. Fingers crossed that I didn't setup the adjustable pivot stud incorrectly. I'd hate to have to pull the trans to get the clutch setup right.
 
I got the clutch bled properly. Finally! I wound up having to take the hydraulic bits out of the car to bench bleed it again. I first gravity bled the lines, but that didn't seem to help much. I decided to put in a call to McLeod to see what kind of advice they could offer. Their tech told me to read the instructions on their website. I reminded him that their instructions only explained how to bench bleed their hydraulic TOB. I also explained that I watched their installation video online and went through the bench bleed process but still had engagement issues. He told me that I also need to pump the master cylinder in addition to the slave cylinder. It would have been nice if their video explained that. I hung up with their extra grumpy tech department and proceeded to pump the slave cylinder about 100 times and then pump the master another 100 times. After all that pumping, I got all the air out. I was able to confirm that I had instant engagement of the slave cylinder as soon as I started pulling on the master.

I got the hydraulic bits back in the car and hooked up up the clutch fork. With the hydraulic clutch, there is no air gap between the TOB and the pressure plate fingers. You set it so the TOB just rests on the fingers. I started up the engine and pushed in the super light clutch and then attempted to put the transmission into first gear. It fell right into place. :banana:. I let the car warm up and took it for a spin around the block. The clutch is amazing. The engagement is incredibly smooth and it catches in the perfect spot. No more on and off switch! My other half has a Focus ST, and the clutch in the Mustang actually closely resembles the pedal effort and engagement of the ST clutch. Not bad for a clutch that will handle 900hp. We'll see how it does holding the power on the dyno.

Once I hear back from Kris and get the tune dialed in a little better, I want to put a 100 miles or so on the engine before we do more dyno pulls with it. There is some smoke coming out of the breather at idle, but I guess I should expect a small amount. It's nothing like the amount that was previously coming out of it. I have it packed with steel wool as well as a headband wrapped around the filter to tame the smoke some.

I've been reading a lot about Alpha-N tuning for the idle. The Holley offers a combo mode where you can use Alpha-N for the idle and speed density for the rest of the fuel map. The Alpha-N just uses the TPS and lbs/hr fuel to tune at idle, and can be set to turn over to speed density at a specific TPS or RPM value. That may be the way for me to go due to my low vacuum at idle. I think the ECU is going to have a hard time at idle because of my cam. I'll see what Kris thinks, but it may be a viable option.

Oh, and my water pump is still leaking from the weep hole. I think it's a bad motor seal. That's what I get for trying to save money by purchasing a used pump. I have an e-mail to Meziere to see what they recommend.