We were recently contacted by Vortech Engineering to help solve what appeared to be an injector problem.
Their engineers had identified several problem injectors out of a batch. These injectors were triggering the misfire detection in the ECU and setting a check engine light.
Static flow tests showed them all to flow within a reasonable range, but our dynamic characterization showed quite the opposite with a variation of nearly 38% at 2milliseconds.
Once our technology proved its worth to the Vortech engineers we moved on to other projects and were asked to provide the fuel injector "model" to be used in a factory GM ECU.
This amounts to characterizing the injectors at various differential pressures and voltages, and generating 3 dimensional tables that describe the dynamic flow rate of the injector.
Unlike most aftermarket ECU's where we simply adjust the fuel table until the mixture is correct, the OEM's take an entirely different approach.
The ECU determines an air mass based on either a mass air meter, or a VE model of the engine, and then calculates the pulsewidth required to achieve the target lambda value.
As you may have guessed, proper functioning is based on having an accurate injector model.
Especially when you are working to attain emissions certification.
I received this message yesterday, and Vortech was nice enough to let me post it.
"Just got the injectors in the truck that we will be testing and did some preliminary street drive time with the Data that you provided.
Excellent work, with some minor tweaking of the Mass Air transfer function the data from the vehicle is almost perfect.
It does make life so much easier when one has quality data to work with."
Lance Keck
Research & Development
Vortech Engineering LLC
So now that I'm done blowing my own horn, let me take a minute to talk about Vortech. Working with their engineers made it clear to me that they are a company devoted to proper engineering of a quality product.
In an industry filled with BS claims for substandard products, Vortech stands out as a leader who rises above all that by providing a quality product with no BS.
