[James OLC]

Yeah... the ECM was a really trying and unexpectedly difficult part of this adventure. After our experiences at the NORC in May I spoke to Katech about the tune and eventually got the answer that their dyno tuning and calibration was limited to the power curve as idle and intermediate tuning can vary depending on the application. Fair enough. The problem that we encountered after that was finding someone who understood and was willing to tune the MSD MEFI4B stuff; there just were not that many people who were knowledgable and willing - enter Turn Key Engines and their tunig wiz Kory.

Once we were on the dyno we found that we really had two major 'system related' issues with ECM that was hindering any tuning - one was low voltage (especially under load) and the other was an erratic TPS signal that was hampering the idle calibration. The low voltage issue was blamed for the engine shut down on our mile passes at the NORC in May and was resolved by upsizing the alternator power wire, adding a ground on the alternator, and adding a relay for the ECM power circuit (seems simple now). The erratic TPS signal was eventually tracked down to 'noise' from the wideband O2 sensors - we'll need to do some rewiring before we can run closed loop but nothing major. When I talked to MSD after the fact about the O2 issue their response was "yeah, maybe we should put that on the FAQ - I run into that problem alot" - thanks...

Going in to this year I knew that there were going to be teething pains - that's why I chose to run the One Lap of America next year and not this year. Sometimes it's difficult to chase down the last little bit here and there - especially when you are finally "done" after a long build - but it has to be done. I'm just glad that David, Mary, and everybody else has been so helpful in the process!