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LoveFab...

Joined
6 January 2009
Messages
1,069
Location
Cincinnati, Ohio
I spent about $20,000 and took a year for Cody to build and install an engine in my NSX.
7K miles later it blew up and it was discovered that a sleeve had cracked. After rebuild by SOS and Source One it was noted on tune day that to the AEM was not seeing IAT or coolant temp.
Tests of the sensors proved functional so wiring was traced and it was discovered that the AEM Series 2 did not have the sensors pinned (connected).
So the tune was a good one- as long as the ambient temperature was the same as tuning day. My car was tuned on a 90 degree day and blew up on a 40 degree one.
For a while there I was basically the only one here on Prime that had anything positive to say about Cody and I was happy to do it because I liked the guy. No good deed goes unpunished though, the only comment that Cody had- and this is anecdotal since Cody hasn't bothered to reach out to me- was "I must have missed that". That's a 13 thousand dollar oversight and 33 thousand dollars total to get a reliable motor...
CAVEAT EMPTOR
 
I am copying and pasting my exact response from your Facebook post.

"Curt, I see your points, and I thank you for your support over the years. However, as with everything, it is not that simple. We installed a "plug and play" system from another company that was anything but; with those sensor apparently completely missing.. Yes, it should have been "noticed" that they were missing, however, it's not that cut and dry either. The day of the 627whp tune was November 18th; my birthday(which I stayed late to tune your car), and there was no way it was 90 degrees outside. The IAT's defaulted at 72 degrees according to Brian@Source1, which would be about correct for the roughly ~50deg average temperatures of that time of year. The factory IAT sensor is a slow-responding unit, half of the time, they don't really change much during a pull anyway. I more than likely did not notice it, because it didn't seem "out of the ordinary" based on what I was seeing. That being said, ultimately, IF the car went lean and you stayed in it, it's your responsibility to watch the gauges and react accordingly. It would be no different than an oil pressure gauge going to zero, and you keeping your foot in it. I'm truly sorry the sleeve split, but pointing the full blame here is not appropriate. We don't even know if the missing sensors actually caused the failure in the first place; the sleeve could have simply failed, as two others have this year with the same stock block build. I was proactive in assisting you with the rebuild, but never got a response from you, as Brian seemed to have it handled. I understand your frustration, and am saddened by the outcome. I never want to see an upset customer, nor one who I consider a friend. You have my number, call me anytime."

I'm going to add several key points:

-We did not build the adapter harness, Science of Speed did. Where's the blame toward that party?
-We had 3 hours to tune the car while you were in-shop. Hardly enough time to examine an entire harness that is supposed to be plug and play.
-The car ran for 18 months after the initial tune. Through cold weather(winter of 2012 and 2013), through hot weather(2014) It isnt like the car "blew up" on the way home.
-I have not seen "detailed" pictures, but according to Brian, your pistons showed no signs of detonation or "leaning out".
-We offered assistance toward the rebuild, but did not get a response.
-The widbeband gauge would have shown an extremely lean condition for it to cause enough damage to detonate hard enough to crack a sleeve. It is your responsibility as a driver to monitor your equipment and react accordingly.
-My first question to you when you called with the problem was,
"Well, what did the wideband guage read when it happened?"
"I don't know, I wasn't watching".

Unfortunately, cars break. Two other "stock block" builds also cracked their sleeves. You were making far more power than any of them, per your request while I was tuning the car. Placing the blame here isn't entirely fair.
 
After further reflection on this matter, I have looked into the math of the calibration, and the differences of having the IAT sensor operation, or not.

*Note. I do not currently have Curt's Tune file, nor any datalogs. They were lost when a tuning laptop died shortly after tuning Curt's car. I am getting the following information from another car similar to Curt's build.

So, the car was tuned with the computer thinking the IAT was at 72 degrees.

Curt claims the car "blew up" in 40 degrees.

So, if we follow the "Air temp fuel trim" table, which adjusts the overall fuel levels to match the intake air temperatues, we see that at 72 degrees, correction is set at 1% positive. Since I missed the fact that a $1800 harness system did not come complete, the car was "tuned" at 72 degrees according to this fuel trim table.

Ok, so if we then scale down to 32 degrees, we see that this changes to 2.7% positive. For a difference of 1.7%. This is MINISCULE.

With the Series 2 boxes, I use 02 correction, which targets a specific air/fuel ratio by adding or subtracting fuel to hit that target. These LIMITS are set at +10% and -10%. If the air/fuel ratio was lean by 1.7%, there is still 8.3% of fuel left over to compensate. Obviously there was more than enough fuel to cover the 1.7% fuel that wasn't being adjusted for.

For the coolant temp sensor, this would only affect warm-up, and start-up. Curt had strict instructions to warm the car up to operating temperature before running hard. I'm going to assume that the car was at or very near operating temperature. Since the computer thought that the coolant temp was 104 degrees when it was initially tuned, and since the car is thermostated to hold that temperature, IF the car was at operating temperature, this would not affect the overall air/fuel ratio. If the car was not fully warmed-up, well, Curt did not follow instructions, and the blame cannot and should not be placed

Bottom line, YES I should have caught the missing sensors. But the fact they were missing did NOT blow the motor. Thanks.
 
We're a third party to this, and we don't want to get in to a debate. However, we want to provide some clarification so that the same error does not happen again.

Source1 shipped the harness to us for inspection. The harness is 100% correct. It does in fact have the coolant and intake temperature sensors wired. Due to the dual ECU environment, both sensors are inputed in to the aftermarket ECU on channels other than the default coolant and air intake temperature sensor inputs. This must be done, or there would be two pull up resistors on both the factory and AEM circuit boards which would cause the sensor readings to be inaccurate. The channels used are modified on the AEM circuit board by ScienceofSpeed to work properly for this.

This is clearly explained in our instructions and is pre-set in the base calibration we provide with the ECU as a downloadable link in our instructions as shown below:

Engine coolant temperature (ECT) sensor setup:
1. (this step must be first) Wizards > Setup Wizard > Sensor: Coolant Temperature – double click Honda (all others).
2. (this step must be second) Sensors Tab > Options – Coolant Temperature Sensor – select “ADCR15” for Coolant Analog Input.

Intake Air Temperature (IAT) sensor setup:
1. (this step must be first)
for factory AIT sensors: Wizards > Setup Wizard > Sensor: Air Temperature – double click “Honda (all except S2000)”.
for GM open element sensors: Wizards > Setup Wizard > Sensor: Air Temperature – double click “GM (P/N 25036751)”.
2. (this step must be second) Sensors Tab > Options – Air Temp Sensor – select “ADCR16” for Intake Air Temperature Analog Input.

Even if this is overlooked, if the sensors are in fault (which would happen if the channel is not set correctly), the "ERROR AIR" and "ERROR COOLANT" boxes would be bright red.

We're not sure why the product would be described as "anything but plug-and play" since it literally "plugs and plays" to the factory connectors in 5 minutes, includes comprehensive instructions, and well sorted base calibrations. Over 100 NSX customers are using our engine management systems with success. Cody, with respect, I would recommend contacting your others customers you have purchased ECUs for since this one and make sure this same thing was not overlooked.
 
Cody, did you suggest to have the motor sleeved? $20k to remove/replace a motor and it isn't even sleeved seems pretty steep.

I still wouldn't blame you for his motor letting go though. This sounds like a case of OEM sleeving failing.
 
Cody you did not READ THE INSTRUCTIONS that come with the S2 AEM from SOS. The documentation states to load their config file which enables the alternate ports on the AEM to see IAT and coolant temps. The pin outs for the stock pin outs are not used and alternate ports are opened/enabled by loading the SOS base config file.

SOS QC tests all their harnesses, serializes them and keeps the QC info on file. This harness was sent to SOS last week for serial number verification and original QC comparison- it checked out OK.

Then Source One sent my tune file to SOS to review it was noted that you did not follow the instructions. The SOS base tune/ config was not loaded initially which would have enabled those alternate ports and sent IAT and coolant temp data to the AEM.

Cody, I deserved better than this. You WERE a good friend of my brother's, you had the car for a long time and you did not take the time to read the instructions that came with the hardware that you told me the car needed.

I never balked at any expense at any time during the project and in fact went over and above. When you transported the car I never tried to nickel and dime you, I paid you exactly what you asked for and more. When you showed up with your now wife I asked you if you were going straight back to Traverse and when you said yes I gave you extra money for a hotel and dinner for Tabitha. When you returned to Traverse after PP and your hearing was shot you were doing street tuning and relying on Tabitha's ears. She said that she heard noise and you shut down tuning as a result, afraid that the final drive was giving way. I ordered a replacement from Kip and believe that with R&R that expense came to another $1300 which was not necessary because the FD was intact. Then 700 miles later the RPS clutch that you thought would be fine went- along with over another $2,000.

After the build was completed I offered to loan you funding to help you rebuild your business which you declined.

I did everything that I was told to do. This car- like every car that I own- is not driven hard when cold and not until up to temperature. I spared no expense and I always tried to go over and above for you. The least that you could have done was read the instructions, paid attention while tuning and not sent me off with a high-strung car with a poor tune. Yes, you did offer assistance and to get the car to you would have cost $2,000 in transportation cost alone. You would have had the car for who knows how long, at what total expense and at the end of the day would have probably still had the same tune without input from sensors that in my opinion, matter.

Bottom line you had a shot at this and your build/ tune did not stand the test of time. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. That adage is why you did not get the opportunity to build it a second time.

I believe that it did not go more than 7K miles because the tune was shoddy and did not incorporate IAT and coolant sensors. These were not active because you did not bother to read the instructions provided by the supplier.

You believe that the harness was bad (be careful burning that bridge...) or that I did not pay attention or did not warm it up.

We each have our opinions and I have some facts but the reality is, this is my vendor experience with LoveFab...
 
I was going off of information provided to me, which at the time of this posting, was that the harness was missing wiring. I wasn't notified of this until speaking with Brian over a week after the initial post. I owe SOS an apology regarding the assumption that the harness was incorrect.

I DID read the instructions, but failed to notice that the settings auto-corrected when changing sensors. MY FAULT. I'm not shying around that fact, nor that I missed the settings during tuning.

However, I still maintain the tune was fine and did not "blow" the motor. If the tune was off, or "lean", it would not have lasted almost two years, and it would have destroyed pistons(which to my current knowledge are fine?).

The factory sleeve that was designed to hold 45HP(270hp/6cylinders) failed plain and simple. You've taken a lesson from this, and so have I. We will no longer run more that 500whp on this level of engine build because customer expectations are too high when something fails.
 
I'm not sure what's happening with the delays of this particular forum, but here we go again.

I will re-itterate.

Chris, and SOS, I posted my above responses based on the information that was provided to me at the time; which was that the wiring was missing. I was not updated on this until many days after the 4 day delay of my first responses. Again, apologies there. The response delay of this forum is not helping anything here. In fact, I just ordered another EMS system from SOS. No issues with this system, and yes, I have begun contacting other customers to adjust their calibrations if-needed.

I had Curts car for 5 months, not a year. And it was supposed to be a turbo system installation, but the engine failed a leakdown test, so we recommended a build. Curt declined sleeving because of the downtime and cost. At the time, virtually no NSX blocks had split sleeves, which is why I even entertained approaching the power levels that Curt requested during the dyno session. 627whp on our dyno is approximately 750HP, or 125HP per cylinder. Obviously, way above the 45/hp that the factory sleeve was designed to hold. Lesson learned.

I will check back here in a week so all of the rest of the laggy responses are posted. I think everything(and more information than needed) has been said. Thank you.
 
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