**Technical Breakdown: Identifying and Resolving Issues with Engine Tuning**

As we continue to push the limits of engine performance, it's inevitable that issues will arise. In this article, we'll take a closer look at one such issue that occurred during our recent project - identifying and resolving problems with engine tuning.

When inspecting the injector on cylinder 4, we noticed that all three other injectors were functioning perfectly, while one of them was malfunctioning. This led us to suspect that the faulty injector might be the culprit behind the problem. To confirm our suspicions, we decided to perform a flow check on each injector, including the potentially problematic one.

The results showed that the injector in question might not have been flown as much as the other three, which could contribute to its malfunction. In situations like this, it's essential to use EGT gauges in each individual cylinder to ensure that the computer can detect any discrepancies and provide additional fuel to prevent overheating.

We had considered the possibility that the issue was related to excessive heat buildup on one of our cylinders, particularly after coming down from high elevation to lower elevation. The tune was calibrated for this transition, but it's crucial to adjust the settings accordingly to compensate for changes in air density.

To mitigate any potential issues, we decided to add 10% fuel to the tune, which should help prevent overheating and ensure a smooth operation of the engine. While this approach might seem like overkill, it's better to err on the side of caution when dealing with high-performance engines.

**Lessons Learned**

As we reflected on our experience, it became clear that identifying and resolving issues with engine tuning requires patience, persistence, and a willingness to learn from mistakes. In this case, our decision to perform a flow check and use EGT gauges in each cylinder helped us pinpoint the problem and find a solution.

The importance of calibration for coming down from high elevation to lower elevation cannot be overstated. With changes in air density come changes in engine performance, and it's crucial to adjust the tune accordingly to ensure optimal results. By doing so, we can avoid potential issues like overheating and optimize our engine's performance.

**Channel Update**

We're excited to announce that our YouTube channel has reached almost a million subscribers! This milestone wouldn't have been possible without the support of our loyal community, who appreciate our technical breakdowns and behind-the-scenes content. We're committed to continuing to push the limits of engine performance and share our knowledge with you guys.

As we move forward, we'll be exploring new ways to engage with our audience and provide more exciting content. We've been considering experimenting with shorter videos that showcase the action and success of our projects, which should make for an entertaining watch. By combining our passion for engine tuning with a focus on entertainment, we aim to create content that resonates with our community and inspires others to pursue their own automotive passions.

**The Importance of Transparency**

We've always believed in being transparent about our process, even when it means sharing the not-so-glamorous aspects of engine building. This approach has helped us build a reputation as trustworthy and knowledgeable experts in the field. We're committed to continuing this tradition by sharing our experiences, both successes and failures, with you guys.

By embracing transparency and honesty, we hope to create a sense of camaraderie among our audience members, who can relate to our struggles and learn from our triumphs. It's only through open communication that we can continue to grow and improve as engine builders and content creators.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enon the way to the airport to pick up another friend for the weekend what's up dude what's up buddy i'm so thankful to be on that plane oh my goodness how was your flight it was good minus the person next to me taking half of my seat also hey welcome to florida dude it's so nice down here i'm honestly a lot of people say they hate the humidity it's kind of nice to get out and just like not feel super dry but i'm pumped to be down here oh yeah check out the new place where you can see what's going on down here yep why it's going to be down for what four days uh three days three days yeah i fly back sunday so got to uh go back to the day job you know yeah your farmer's hands worse than mine dude that's colorado boys dad bob going chris in the pool with a fresh beer would be why it's made in voyage in the pool hell yeah bro send her down keep that thumb tight what a corona flavored pool how's she feeling i think he likes it attaboy nice we are straight chilling that's freaking awesome this is a life down here we've been cruising the river a little bit just pulled up to this spring they called a big blue blue buddy of mine showed me this last time i was down here yep down here with some wyatt's swamp boys eric and luke oh yeah there's a tight little spot you can see like this is all kind of browner water over here and then the natural spring over here is like crystal clear and blue over there you pull up on a badass badass v8 airboat back there and you build one of those oh she just jumped from the tree holy crap oh they're way up there i didn't even see them attaboy that water's freezing she's going to send it out of the tree bang all right eric your turn yeah you are take them jeans off hold on let's go oh she will do it oh she will that's a tough rope i'm not worried as much about the ropes oh the bra i can't say the same about that dinky branch up there if that branch holds you just fine then i know the one on my tree can hold whatever horsepower on some 300 that's 30 psi on stock internals right there look at that little branch he didn't tuck all right here we go cheeks clenched so yesterday we spent the day uh taking some john boats out going down some rivers we met up with some of wyatt's friends you know some real florida swamp boys down there and uh they had a whole bunch of john boats they also had a whole bunch of air boats but none of them were working our plan was to go out on an airboat but they get rowdy with those things and i guess they busted them up a little bit but we had an awesome day we went and checked out this natural spring we were hanging out down there that was really fun and the original plan was to work on the s14 a little bit more this weekend but the last video the mr2 uh you definitely hear it by the end of the video that it didn't sound too good and we did do a compression check on it and then in number three it was at 100 psi when the rest were at 160 so that told me you know something's up with the engine in this thing did the 9-1 first hit no issues at all and uh we spent all day today getting the head and stuff ripped off of the engine there and we do have some good news so we didn't really good and bad news so we didn't really find anything at all wrong visually so we got the head off just like i said and the tops of the pistons uh look perfect you know the top ring looks in good shape i'm not sure if there's anything underneath there that could be possibly messed up but the sides of the sleeves look good everything turns over fine everything looks great and you know when we did turn the engine over there was still a good amount of compression in each hole uh you know just from what we could feel but the bottom of the head looks fine too you know i was thinking maybe we'll find either a bent valve or the top of pistons melted we literally seen nothing wrong here i looked over the valve train everything looks good the lashes were good nothing was too tight on the lashes um and we even filled up the exhaust port right now the intake sides up but we actually had it on the exhaust side we filled it up with brake clean in the hole that we knew was down the valves weren't leaking any excessive fluid so they don't seem to be bent or anything out of whack we haven't done it to the intake side yet the only thing i think i can do now is just get the intake manifold pulled off probably bring the head over somewhere and just have it checked out but literally nothing seems wrong so it's kind of weird i'm thinking piston maybe possibly piston that's the next kind of spot to look for yeah so the next thing we're going to do is pull the pan off of this thing got a guy going down the street on a street bike but we're going to pull the pan off pull out the number three piston because that was the one that was down compression compared to the rest when we did the compression test and make sure that like the ring lands are nothing's melted up or broken that we just can't see right here but you know usually if that happens there's some lines on the sleeve you know some scores or whatever but there's nothing so it'll be curious to see considering they're forged pistons like usually you never have a problem with that like when i had my old car with cast pistons broken ring lands were like kind of a common thing like they were known to happen so i'm curious to see once we get this one out if if it's gonna happen any issues here it's it's super weird because it's definitely down a hole you can hear it when the car is cranking so it's not only just when it's running because you can hear when it's running and then maybe that could be like an injector or a coil being bad just being down a hole but during the cranking you can hear go and that means for a split second it's easier for the motor to spin because whatever holes on its compression stroke isn't making much compression compared to the other holes so yeah super weird but you know it's good it's nothing catastrophic everything looks to be in good shape but it's also kind of scary because i don't know exactly what it is and you know we can't just slap it back together until we find out what caused this issue so you know we had issues with the head uh we had issues with the head in the past with some valve train issues but everything looks good in the head as far as we can tell i won't know for sure unless i take it to a machine shop they could do like a leak down test on it stuff like that but yeah it's a really weird one boys so um we're gonna just have to get that pissed out like i said go from there keep figuring stuff out wyatt actually has to head back to the airport here soon so i'm going to take him he just hung out for the weekend and you know we were just kind of chilling having a good time while we were down here yeah but uh check out the new place freaking awesome down here in florida yep freaking really like it so huge congrats to kyle on getting the new place man yes done a hell of a job with this one it's been fun down here for sure and we're already tearing into the freaking cars haven't even been down here a month already broken again yep man always something i mean nothing's even really broken but something's off yep something's off something so you guys could give some suggestions but yeah visually you can't see a thing yep it's freaking weird so i have to it a bit further yeah what it is that's all you can do so i dropped wyatt off at the airport not too long ago and i came back and i was looking at the head some more and i think i found the issue guys so when we did a compression check on this thing i forgot which side we started on so we originally thought number three was the one we were having issues with we thought that one was the one with low compression it's actually number two i forgot we started from this side and worked our way over i thought we went the other direction but it is actually number two that was low on compression so i flipped the head over i'll just show you guys real quick so i have the head sitting just like that and if we just put some brake clean in this hole right here i don't know if you guys can see that but it is uh leaking out pretty good here hold on one sec wipe this off and you can see it just starts pouring out of the valves right there so they are leaking pretty good yeah you can see it just dripping right off here that is a bad leak these should not be leaking at all and if i turn off the lights in here and shine a flashlight you can actually see a sliver of light around the bottom of each of these so yeah you can just see all that brake clean running down so these valves right here are definitely a little tweaked they probably warped from the heat you know there's no sign of contact with the valve to the top of the piston so it's not like it floated and hit the piston and bent it a little bit i think this is a heat related issue they probably just got too hot and uh it got tweaked up in there a little bit luckily the damage was not bad at all all we need to do is bring this over to a machine shop just get those two exhaust valves replaced make sure the seats aren't damaged or anything and just have them go through it make sure nothing else is leaking get her all put back together and we can put this head back onto the car and we'll be ready to go so we were originally going to pull the piston out to look at that as well like we were talking about just because we thought it was number three number three wasn't leaking at all so we're thinking if it's not an issue with the head it has to be something with the piston or piston ring and after finding that it actually was number two i'm confident the bottom end is perfect ready to go but while the head is getting worked on and stuff i'm going to go ahead and pull the pistons out just double check the rings make sure nothing's hurt or melted in there even though i'm confident like i said that all that's good to go this is a different issue than what we've had in the past with the car before we were having issues with valve float and the piston was literally hitting the bottom of the valve and that would cause the keepers to either pop or that impact of the piston hitting the valve would just bend the valve because we were just turning so much rpms and boost and that's why we're getting that valve flop but we have stiffer springs now and the lashes looked great everything looked awesome as far as the valve train goes no issues there no weird markings on the tops of the retainers like we had before and the lashes weren't changing so i don't think it's an issue with the valve train like it was in the past this is more of an issue with too much heat in the cylinder not enough fuel the tune was probably a little bit off in that hole probably need to check the injector because all the other three were perfect and that one cylinder was the one that was the issue so that injector might not be flown as much as the other ones got to go flow check them in instances like this it would be good to have egt gauges in each individual cylinder and the computer could see that one is running a little leaner than the others and it can actually add additional fuel to keep it safe if you have like a desired egt temp but yeah not positive that that's the issue but i was talking to some guys at the track and that's what it's looking like is that that cylinder just got way too hot and tweaked those exhaust valves i didn't calibrate the tune at all for coming down to sea level last time we brought the car down from colorado to florida the tune was perfect and didn't seem to need any changing so i figured let's just try it again it's probably good to go let's just let her eat and there's a chance it was running a little leaner than it should have i didn't honestly see the y band whatsoever during my pass i was just focused on going straight and usually when you come down from high elevation to lower elevation you need to add some fuel to compensate so it would have been a good idea just to like highlight the whole map and give it like 10 percent fuel to keep everything safe because you're gonna make more power just because of the air density down here but uh yeah definitely could have been avoided but luckily like i said not huge deal didn't take us long to get the head ripped off and stuff so just get that guy buttoned up and get her all put back together i'm gonna try to get this thing ready for fl2k that's the plan it's in a little less than two weeks it's like 10 days from right now so if i can get a head figured out get it back on the car and uh just double check the tuning and stuff i don't see it being an issue so your boy just needs some good head and we're ready to go i did want to touch base with you guys real quick let me know how you like these kind of technical breakdown videos i know they can be kind of long and to some people probably boring um but i know a lot of people do like to see you know what happens especially if we break motor they like to see uh what to do to fix it just the curiosity of what even the issue was and you know so on so forth there's people that probably don't even care about this stuff they just like to see the car put together and watch it make passes down the track but this is how we've been doing it for a long time guys i do my best not to hide anything to show what happens this is what it is i could have easily you know got this fixed in the next few days put it back together and just not even talked about it and said you know it was a small issue oh but it's good now but that's not the case this is what really happened and uh you'll find that with a lot of people you know a lot of guys pushing like really high horsepower builds like this especially in the four-cylinder world uh they're breaking a lot of stuff to make things happen much more than us so you guys will be really surprised and then there's also people that do have more success than we do i'm not going to say that you know we're better than everyone or anything but people break parts to get far that's just how that's just how it works you know we're trying to push the limits we're trying to learn ourselves you can tell i'm just a young kid doing it i haven't had many years of experience and the only way to learn is to uh dive right into it and you know we have a youtube channel so you guys are seeing every step of the way so that's just how it is i might veer a little bit more away from this stuff in the future it's kind of a thing i thought about for the channel just try to show more of the action and the success of things and you know eventually if we can get some more help and stuff we can be fixing the cars off camera more and doing more cool fun stuff on camera and then we can make this stuff more brief and i think that will help excel the channel even better but obviously we're doing something right because you know we're almost at a million subscribers you guys like watching this stuff for whatever reason it may be but uh we're gonna keep on pushing boys and we'll get this thing back up and together no time and i don't really have too much else to say other than that you know fix break repeat and we ain't giving up so we'll see you guys later thanks for watching and uh yeah youon the way to the airport to pick up another friend for the weekend what's up dude what's up buddy i'm so thankful to be on that plane oh my goodness how was your flight it was good minus the person next to me taking half of my seat also hey welcome to florida dude it's so nice down here i'm honestly a lot of people say they hate the humidity it's kind of nice to get out and just like not feel super dry but i'm pumped to be down here oh yeah check out the new place where you can see what's going on down here yep why it's going to be down for what four days uh three days three days yeah i fly back sunday so got to uh go back to the day job you know yeah your farmer's hands worse than mine dude that's colorado boys dad bob going chris in the pool with a fresh beer would be why it's made in voyage in the pool hell yeah bro send her down keep that thumb tight what a corona flavored pool how's she feeling i think he likes it attaboy nice we are straight chilling that's freaking awesome this is a life down here we've been cruising the river a little bit just pulled up to this spring they called a big blue blue buddy of mine showed me this last time i was down here yep down here with some wyatt's swamp boys eric and luke oh yeah there's a tight little spot you can see like this is all kind of browner water over here and then the natural spring over here is like crystal clear and blue over there you pull up on a badass badass v8 airboat back there and you build one of those oh she just jumped from the tree holy crap oh they're way up there i didn't even see them attaboy that water's freezing she's going to send it out of the tree bang all right eric your turn yeah you are take them jeans off hold on let's go oh she will do it oh she will that's a tough rope i'm not worried as much about the ropes oh the bra i can't say the same about that dinky branch up there if that branch holds you just fine then i know the one on my tree can hold whatever horsepower on some 300 that's 30 psi on stock internals right there look at that little branch he didn't tuck all right here we go cheeks clenched so yesterday we spent the day uh taking some john boats out going down some rivers we met up with some of wyatt's friends you know some real florida swamp boys down there and uh they had a whole bunch of john boats they also had a whole bunch of air boats but none of them were working our plan was to go out on an airboat but they get rowdy with those things and i guess they busted them up a little bit but we had an awesome day we went and checked out this natural spring we were hanging out down there that was really fun and the original plan was to work on the s14 a little bit more this weekend but the last video the mr2 uh you definitely hear it by the end of the video that it didn't sound too good and we did do a compression check on it and then in number three it was at 100 psi when the rest were at 160 so that told me you know something's up with the engine in this thing did the 9-1 first hit no issues at all and uh we spent all day today getting the head and stuff ripped off of the engine there and we do have some good news so we didn't really good and bad news so we didn't really find anything at all wrong visually so we got the head off just like i said and the tops of the pistons uh look perfect you know the top ring looks in good shape i'm not sure if there's anything underneath there that could be possibly messed up but the sides of the sleeves look good everything turns over fine everything looks great and you know when we did turn the engine over there was still a good amount of compression in each hole uh you know just from what we could feel but the bottom of the head looks fine too you know i was thinking maybe we'll find either a bent valve or the top of pistons melted we literally seen nothing wrong here i looked over the valve train everything looks good the lashes were good nothing was too tight on the lashes um and we even filled up the exhaust port right now the intake sides up but we actually had it on the exhaust side we filled it up with brake clean in the hole that we knew was down the valves weren't leaking any excessive fluid so they don't seem to be bent or anything out of whack we haven't done it to the intake side yet the only thing i think i can do now is just get the intake manifold pulled off probably bring the head over somewhere and just have it checked out but literally nothing seems wrong so it's kind of weird i'm thinking piston maybe possibly piston that's the next kind of spot to look for yeah so the next thing we're going to do is pull the pan off of this thing got a guy going down the street on a street bike but we're going to pull the pan off pull out the number three piston because that was the one that was down compression compared to the rest when we did the compression test and make sure that like the ring lands are nothing's melted up or broken that we just can't see right here but you know usually if that happens there's some lines on the sleeve you know some scores or whatever but there's nothing so it'll be curious to see considering they're forged pistons like usually you never have a problem with that like when i had my old car with cast pistons broken ring lands were like kind of a common thing like they were known to happen so i'm curious to see once we get this one out if if it's gonna happen any issues here it's it's super weird because it's definitely down a hole you can hear it when the car is cranking so it's not only just when it's running because you can hear when it's running and then maybe that could be like an injector or a coil being bad just being down a hole but during the cranking you can hear go and that means for a split second it's easier for the motor to spin because whatever holes on its compression stroke isn't making much compression compared to the other holes so yeah super weird but you know it's good it's nothing catastrophic everything looks to be in good shape but it's also kind of scary because i don't know exactly what it is and you know we can't just slap it back together until we find out what caused this issue so you know we had issues with the head uh we had issues with the head in the past with some valve train issues but everything looks good in the head as far as we can tell i won't know for sure unless i take it to a machine shop they could do like a leak down test on it stuff like that but yeah it's a really weird one boys so um we're gonna just have to get that pissed out like i said go from there keep figuring stuff out wyatt actually has to head back to the airport here soon so i'm going to take him he just hung out for the weekend and you know we were just kind of chilling having a good time while we were down here yeah but uh check out the new place freaking awesome down here in florida yep freaking really like it so huge congrats to kyle on getting the new place man yes done a hell of a job with this one it's been fun down here for sure and we're already tearing into the freaking cars haven't even been down here a month already broken again yep man always something i mean nothing's even really broken but something's off yep something's off something so you guys could give some suggestions but yeah visually you can't see a thing yep it's freaking weird so i have to it a bit further yeah what it is that's all you can do so i dropped wyatt off at the airport not too long ago and i came back and i was looking at the head some more and i think i found the issue guys so when we did a compression check on this thing i forgot which side we started on so we originally thought number three was the one we were having issues with we thought that one was the one with low compression it's actually number two i forgot we started from this side and worked our way over i thought we went the other direction but it is actually number two that was low on compression so i flipped the head over i'll just show you guys real quick so i have the head sitting just like that and if we just put some brake clean in this hole right here i don't know if you guys can see that but it is uh leaking out pretty good here hold on one sec wipe this off and you can see it just starts pouring out of the valves right there so they are leaking pretty good yeah you can see it just dripping right off here that is a bad leak these should not be leaking at all and if i turn off the lights in here and shine a flashlight you can actually see a sliver of light around the bottom of each of these so yeah you can just see all that brake clean running down so these valves right here are definitely a little tweaked they probably warped from the heat you know there's no sign of contact with the valve to the top of the piston so it's not like it floated and hit the piston and bent it a little bit i think this is a heat related issue they probably just got too hot and uh it got tweaked up in there a little bit luckily the damage was not bad at all all we need to do is bring this over to a machine shop just get those two exhaust valves replaced make sure the seats aren't damaged or anything and just have them go through it make sure nothing else is leaking get her all put back together and we can put this head back onto the car and we'll be ready to go so we were originally going to pull the piston out to look at that as well like we were talking about just because we thought it was number three number three wasn't leaking at all so we're thinking if it's not an issue with the head it has to be something with the piston or piston ring and after finding that it actually was number two i'm confident the bottom end is perfect ready to go but while the head is getting worked on and stuff i'm going to go ahead and pull the pistons out just double check the rings make sure nothing's hurt or melted in there even though i'm confident like i said that all that's good to go this is a different issue than what we've had in the past with the car before we were having issues with valve float and the piston was literally hitting the bottom of the valve and that would cause the keepers to either pop or that impact of the piston hitting the valve would just bend the valve because we were just turning so much rpms and boost and that's why we're getting that valve flop but we have stiffer springs now and the lashes looked great everything looked awesome as far as the valve train goes no issues there no weird markings on the tops of the retainers like we had before and the lashes weren't changing so i don't think it's an issue with the valve train like it was in the past this is more of an issue with too much heat in the cylinder not enough fuel the tune was probably a little bit off in that hole probably need to check the injector because all the other three were perfect and that one cylinder was the one that was the issue so that injector might not be flown as much as the other ones got to go flow check them in instances like this it would be good to have egt gauges in each individual cylinder and the computer could see that one is running a little leaner than the others and it can actually add additional fuel to keep it safe if you have like a desired egt temp but yeah not positive that that's the issue but i was talking to some guys at the track and that's what it's looking like is that that cylinder just got way too hot and tweaked those exhaust valves i didn't calibrate the tune at all for coming down to sea level last time we brought the car down from colorado to florida the tune was perfect and didn't seem to need any changing so i figured let's just try it again it's probably good to go let's just let her eat and there's a chance it was running a little leaner than it should have i didn't honestly see the y band whatsoever during my pass i was just focused on going straight and usually when you come down from high elevation to lower elevation you need to add some fuel to compensate so it would have been a good idea just to like highlight the whole map and give it like 10 percent fuel to keep everything safe because you're gonna make more power just because of the air density down here but uh yeah definitely could have been avoided but luckily like i said not huge deal didn't take us long to get the head ripped off and stuff so just get that guy buttoned up and get her all put back together i'm gonna try to get this thing ready for fl2k that's the plan it's in a little less than two weeks it's like 10 days from right now so if i can get a head figured out get it back on the car and uh just double check the tuning and stuff i don't see it being an issue so your boy just needs some good head and we're ready to go i did want to touch base with you guys real quick let me know how you like these kind of technical breakdown videos i know they can be kind of long and to some people probably boring um but i know a lot of people do like to see you know what happens especially if we break motor they like to see uh what to do to fix it just the curiosity of what even the issue was and you know so on so forth there's people that probably don't even care about this stuff they just like to see the car put together and watch it make passes down the track but this is how we've been doing it for a long time guys i do my best not to hide anything to show what happens this is what it is i could have easily you know got this fixed in the next few days put it back together and just not even talked about it and said you know it was a small issue oh but it's good now but that's not the case this is what really happened and uh you'll find that with a lot of people you know a lot of guys pushing like really high horsepower builds like this especially in the four-cylinder world uh they're breaking a lot of stuff to make things happen much more than us so you guys will be really surprised and then there's also people that do have more success than we do i'm not going to say that you know we're better than everyone or anything but people break parts to get far that's just how that's just how it works you know we're trying to push the limits we're trying to learn ourselves you can tell i'm just a young kid doing it i haven't had many years of experience and the only way to learn is to uh dive right into it and you know we have a youtube channel so you guys are seeing every step of the way so that's just how it is i might veer a little bit more away from this stuff in the future it's kind of a thing i thought about for the channel just try to show more of the action and the success of things and you know eventually if we can get some more help and stuff we can be fixing the cars off camera more and doing more cool fun stuff on camera and then we can make this stuff more brief and i think that will help excel the channel even better but obviously we're doing something right because you know we're almost at a million subscribers you guys like watching this stuff for whatever reason it may be but uh we're gonna keep on pushing boys and we'll get this thing back up and together no time and i don't really have too much else to say other than that you know fix break repeat and we ain't giving up so we'll see you guys later thanks for watching and uh yeah you\n"