Regarding the Trifecta logs, apparently only they (trifecta) can see the datalog information. When I get time from home I'll try to post a snippet of my torque pro datalogs which still allows me to datalog issues going on with the ecu or tune.
Regarding Steelmesh's post about the coked valves, the thing that sucks when I look at this website at work is for some reason the pics don't show up for me so I didn't know that was what Steelmesh was talking about until I checked on my phone. To that point, I have seafoamed it through a vac line and it did really clean up the crap in the valves. A cobaltss.net poster seafoamed his LNF every other oil change then at 70,000 had the heads taken off and checked the valves and they were very clean, so it definitely works if worked through the vac lines.
Ok. To start from the beginning of what I've done and what the car was doing.
So....I bought the car in Jan of 2017 from a dealership in New Jersey. It had 60,000 miles on. When I got it it idled nicely and ran well, but when I would go WOT it would "break up" (for lack of a better term) around 5700 rpms or so. I thought it was possibly the rev limiter being set too low (because that's what it felt like).
Anyway, I get the car home and research everything and find out that Trifecta's tune raises the Rev limiter some so I decide to go ahead and get the tune. I get the tune and it still does it, so now I know it's not the rev limiter. I proceed to tear through everything I could think of that would cause this sort of problem.
I found out that the EGR line from the valve cover to the intake wasn't attached, but kind of glued on (leaving an unmetered hole in the intake). First thing, I rip that off, plug the EGR line hole in the intake and vent the tube from the valve cover to a filter. I then start datalogging with my Torque pro app. I put 93 octane from a reputable gas station with octane booster bottles on top, and around the same time I also got new spark plugs (gapped them lower and lower) to test that theory. I also seafoamed it. After all of that the full rev limiter feeling "breakup" issue I was getting went away, and I was able to get it to pull all the way to 6000 rpms. Now it's possible I was getting this hesitation feeling then, but compared to the rev limiter issue it might not have registered as a problem (I can't remember). The other problem was I just wanted to fix the car, and I didn't do one thing at a time to see what actually fixed the issues. I did all of it around the same time.
Feeling better about the car I took it to the track and it ran a strong 13.6 at 102.
The track run was last September, and I didn't drive the car too much between September and March of this year. In between I put the downpipe on it (I do want to point out that I spoke with folks at Trifecta at the time and asked if I needed a retune and they told me it wasn't necessary because the gain is small and it wouldn't cause any issues). I get the downpipe put on and looking for any problems with the car I'm driving around and feel (what feels to me like) a hesitation above 5200rpms or so. It sort of lets up some, but continues to pull after until redline. I pulled out my torque pro app and have logged and logged looking for misfire events or leaning out of fuel or really high instances of KR, but I don't see anything that corresponds to the "hesitation" feeling I feel. There is no backfiring, and my plugs don't show signs of detonation. The one thing the logs do show is that at 5000rpms and up the afr goes from 11.9 to a low of 11. To me, that seems to be really rich, and, I guess, could possibly be part of what I'm feeling in the "let up" of the cars powerband that feels to me like it's hesitating. The spark plugs I put in it were NGKs originally, so three weeks ago I got the AC Delco 108s and gapped them down to .28 now verified and also changed the air filter to a brand new ac delco one. Right after I made those changes I took the car out, logged and tested it and swear I remember the "let up" feeling happening. Three weeks later I take it out and on the way to work I don't feel the "let up" feeling. On the way home I didn't get a chance really to test it again. I need to keep testing and logging to ensure, but I'm assuming those weren't the issues.
My other issue (and the things that frustrates me) is that I don't have a garage and ordinances say that I can't work on my car in the driveway of the house I own!!!! That means I can't even jack the car up. I am planning on taking the car to a mechanic that is pretty smart with these cars to have him check the intercooler piping, intercooler. I might have him put t-bolt clamps on everything. Beyond that, I'm still leaning towards something stupid like the evap purge solenoid, or something along those lines. I might also seafoam it again, which doesn't really hurt anything but will keep the valves clean.
Oh, also. My plan was to first take the car to the drag strip with just the Trifecta budget tune (which I did) and ran that 13.6, and then take it back with the new downpipe. After that I was going to pay the $400 to do the e47 tune and get track times with that. That's another reason why I really don't want to pay Trifecta to do the custom tune (if it won't fix anything) only to have to pay an additional $400 for the e47.
That basically brings us up to this point.
