eViLRotor

iTrader: (2)

WOLF V 3.1.

From one minute to the next, my car has developed multiple problems.
It was after a hard 3rd gear pull, the car started hesitating.

1) I'm getting many signal count errors. We are talking 255+ just
from driving around a bit. At the same time the tach needle will
jump around like crazy and the car will sputter and hesitate.

2) Whenever a signal count error occurs, the voltage on the Wolf
drops about .4 Volts.

3) The battery will drain basically overnight!!

The only time the car is more or less driveable, is under part
throttle in 5th gear. That is how I managed to get it home 200
miles. It only signal error'd occasionally.

What I've checked to this point:

-CAS Wiring. No lose connections there. I am also running the green capacitor. We are going to test the signal output with an Oscilloscope to see if the signal is clean.

-Grounding Points on the Chassis. They all seem fine.

My first guess would be a bad CAS. But really, I have never heard of
a CAS going bad. Can the capacitor go bad? Faulty trailing coil (since it runs the tach
output)? But really, the car should run without trailings anyway.

Any suggestions?

eViLRotor

iTrader: (2)

Yes, sell the Wolf and get a Haltech...

eViLRotor

iTrader: (2)

Well, I removed the CAS, and re-wired in a new capacitor, to see if that was the problem. Nope, same issue, tons of signal errors.

So I used my friend Nik's pickups from his CAS, and it seemed to work fine. As my top CAS pickup is unused, I put that in place of my crapped out botton one. That worked well. Then I added the new capacitor.... tons of signal errors. Removed capacitor again, and it was all fine.

Now, I'm not much of an electronics guy, so I'm lost as to how a car can run fine for 4 years with a capacitor, then suddenly only run without one!!!! Oh well, at least that's one problem solved

Chris Ng

I had a situation where I would get a signal error everytime I was over 4000rpm and 5psi boost.. The car would backfire twice and stumble when this happened.. Added a capacitor and it didn't help at all.. I changed the pickup in my CAS and it still didn't solve it.. I ended up finding the problem in the connector itself.. weak signal through the pins.. I ended up just cutting the white connectors off and soldering the pickup wires directly to the wolf wireing.. even without a capactior I no longer get any signal errors.. not even when cranking over a cold motor (I always got 1 signal error when I tried to fire up the car in the morning)...

eViLRotor

iTrader: (2)

The capacitor made no difference, AFAICT.

One thing I did notice, is that when I ran an extra +12V from the alternator to the battery too close to the CAS wiring, it was signal error mania. Maybe without the cap, the signal is a lot more susceptable to interference?

eViLRotor

iTrader: (2)

Voltage issue fixed:

My FD alternator was toast. It was drawing 3 AMPs while the car was off No wonder.
Installed old alternator, added an extra +12V lead from the alternator to the battery, and an extra battery to chassis ground.

Now the car is running smoother than ever. The Wolf seems to be very susceptable to voltage fluctuations. Maybe my VComp isn't set up perfectly...

Chris Ng

In regards to your alternator issue.. I actually discovered something new a couple weeks ago...

I am running a s5 alt in my s4 car.. the s5 and s6(FD) alter hook up the same..

anyhow.. I originally just spliced in the s5 alt plug into the s4 harness (2 wire plug) .. what I ended up with was a voltage reading of 15.3V at idle.. with voltage dropping down to as low as 13.0V if I had my headlights on and foot on the brakes.. I also found that the car would only hold a charge for a couple weeks.. if left sitting for more than a couple weeks, I would find that my battery was completely dead (I have gone through several batteries).. Anyhow, this is what I found..

In the original wiring of the s4 alternator, the voltage regulator sense line was wired in AFTER the ignition switch.. however, in the S5 wireing, the sense line was wired into a constant 12V source, independent of the ignition switch...

By having the S5 alternator hooked up the same way an s4 alternator was hooked up, the voltage regulator would actually see less voltage than it was producing.. this lead to the overchargeing of the system (the 15.3v's I was seeing) .. this strains both the alternator and battery.. .it was also causing a current draw with the car turned off.. which resulted in the battery draining over a period of time...

Anyhow, I hooked up the voltage sense line straight back to my battery to get a constant 12V.. What happened? Well, I now see 14.3V's on the wolf display.. when I turn on my headlights, my battery voltage remains at 14.3V .. when I step on the brakes, the voltage may drop down to 13.9V.. but my headlights no longer dim as well.. voltage is much more stable...

Okay, what does this have to do with the wolf?...

My maps before the wireing switch was done were quite good.. and I left them untouched.. however, after I had required the alternator, I found that my low load map points were suddenly way too lean.. I had to bump them up by a few ms. ... however, strangely enough, my on boost load points were suddenly showing quite a bit richer.. I had to back them off quite a bit ....

The car now idles rock steady.. better than it has ever before.. my a/f readings are alot more constant and steady.. Before, if I had my maps set to show 14.0-15.0 afr's during cruise, the car would actually surge abit and not like it at all.. however, my cruise afrs are now at 14.3-14.7 and it runs smooth at that point ...

What you say about the wolf being very picky when it comes to voltage fluctuations is very true.. and before rewireing the alt, i tried several things to try and keep things stable so the wolf wouldn't freak out.. I was not successful until now...

So, any of you guys out there runing s5 or s6 alternators in their s4 cars.. you may want to look into how you wired the alternator into your system... It worked wonders for me.. maybe it will do the same for you?

Chris

eViLRotor

iTrader: (2)

Yep., that is how I had my FD alternator hooked up. It was working great till it crapped out...

Hopefully Steve Kan will be able to extract the max out of my old V3.1 this Saturday.

Chris Ng

SO how much will I have to pay you to let me have a peek at your maps when Steve is done with them??

eViLRotor

iTrader: (2)

You don't have to pay me anything. I'll send it to you if you like.

But:

There was a problem during tuning anyway. It was great until 4600 rpm where my car would just hit a brick wall. It would get massive ignition breakup. And would not make anymore power. For some reason, the timing would suddenly retard itself. My engine survived a few pings

We are not sure if it is the CAS, the coils, maybe interference due to a lack of capacitor (I was not getting signal errors, though).

Steve was only able to tune the cruise and low boost/rpm maps. But he did a nice job with those.

My car still made 272 HP and 270 lb-ft at only 4700 rpm. This was about 10 psi...

Chris Ng

that's certainly a strange situation..When the timing retarded, were you able to verify this occuring with the wolf display?

I used to have so many issues with my ignition, it wasn't even funny..

1) I would get ignition breakup starting at about 5000 rpm.. car wouldn't see signal errors, however power definitly went down.. the dynograph would show the breakup... I solved this by installing an msd 6a ...

2) I had a situation where anything above 5 psi boost would result in backfires and a momentary cut in power at 5000rpm... as long as I stayed off the boost, the car ran fine to redline.. but the moment I went beyond 5 psi and 5000 rpm, the car would let out 2 backfires and I would record signal errors... This was solved by wiring the reluctor wires directly to the wolf wiring harness (no capacitor is used)... the white harness clip I was using (from the original CAS and wireing harness) was causing a problem.. either some corroded pins in the clip, or some other poor connection.. also make sure that the shielding on the igntion harness (the one that connects to the CAS) is not grounded on both ends.. it should be grounded on the ECU side.. but not the cas side.. if you groudn it, it turns the whole harness into one big antenna...

3) If I floored the car during a hard run, the tach needle would climb to past 6000rpm, then just die... car would still run, but tach was at 0 until I slowed down.... This was cause by a failing trailing coil .. the coil would just die... I replaced it and everything was fine...

another thing I had noticed on my system was the coil charge time..right now it's set to 4.8 ms. .. I played around with this for some reason and noticed that I did get missfireing when I had it below 4.8ms...

I'd like to peek at your before and after tuning maps if possible.. while my own maps seem to work pretty good for my car, I'm alway curious to compare it to others .. If you wouldn't mind sending them to me, I'd appreciate it ..

Chris

(272 by 4700rpm is damn good.. my td07 doesn't even reach full boost until 4500rpm) ...

eViLRotor

iTrader: (2)

No, it looked fine on the Wolf HC.
We verified it with a timing light....

I'll send the maps to you tonight.

eViLRotor

iTrader: (2)

Talking to some of the people there, apparently the timming marks on the main pulley were jumping 360 degrees out and jumping 20 degrees retard and advance when it was verified with a timming gun as we did a pull.

oneswtrx

iTrader: (3)

i had same same problems with my wolf the solution is a msd 8509 signal adjuster.it will get rid of all signal errors and run the cas in a sheilded wire not to pic up any interfearnce .

Chris Ng

I've got an 8509 signal stabalizer kicking around (don't ask why..) .. could you please let me know how you have yours hooked up ? wire colors etc would be great.. I unforunately misplaced the documentation for the 8509, so i have no idea what each wire does, and when I did have the documentation, I oculd figure out how it was to be hooked up to the cas wires on the wolf, so any help would be appreciated... thanks...