Sniv Speed Shop - Custom Parts and Design

That's incredibly frustrating! Man, my fingers are crossed for you/us! I get it though, small batch stuff always costs more and then you lose consumers...you may need to buy another shop and hire some folk to do it and clean houses on the side!

 

Trust me, the amount of times I look at buying a proper CNC and doing everything in house. Especially since a lot of places I work we run into trouble finding machine shops or getting good parts, just making the stuff I design in house to solve the supply chain issues would be a big selling point I think. Hell, a couple weeks ago I was machining flight hardware on my 1940s lathe since that was cheaper and faster than finding a shop to do it for a customer.

 

Lol will do!

 

That's wildly annoying and true!!

 

Man, that really bites the big one! Like you said at least you not a 100% invested on this go around!

 

Nick must try really hard

 

Just placed my order for 76mm pulley and tuning and other gauge mount. My painted one rocks, but i'm scratched the hell out of it and I'm getting a bare one now to have wrapped in black leather. I do not trust my skills, so I'll take the bare one to an upholstery shop to be done and then swap em out.

 

Rant/summary of throttle body operation for future reference:

Been screwing with the throttle body a lot lately. I got a good 3D printer so have been printing throttle blades trying to solve issues. I've both made progress and also kind of at the same point I've reached before. This process is extremely frustrating and slow going, I am essentially trying to reverse engineer the trucks software and learn the limits and then figure out a way to work within those limits.





I am now on RevF of the 3D printed blades and have pages of notes trying to learn things and find patterns. I'm pretty burnt out today so I'll post my findings.

There are three CELs I'm ultimately trying to work around:

-P2111 throttle body stuck open
-P0505 idle air control
-some code for stuck closed I haven't seen in awhile

The stuck closed code is self explanatory. The main thing it relates to is fully closing the blade and not having any sticky points, these blades all have varying angles on them to seal. My original blades from earlier this year were flat plates and trying to seal with the blade at 0deg, which I had some success with using a lip inside the throttle body. I wanted to avoid that here, so the blades have a bevel on them (6 or 10deg depending on the revision) and then I also have an extended center fin with a slight high point on it which acts as a hard stop that doesn't try to jam up. The center high point works on some, but the later revisions it's not really needed. With that said, a big issue I've run into is the throttle body bore was done on a mill and is not a perfect circle, which can be seen putting the TB to a light and you can see high points:



This blade is the RevF which has tweaks in the CAD and then needed some slight sanding and seals pretty well and doesn't stick anywhere. All of that light you see is a <.003" gap (earlier revisions had gaps >.010" in spots). Looking at the OEM throttle body, it is cast but has a machined center strip. What I want to do is put the TB on my mill with a boring bar and just vertically plunge it to get a perfect circle through it, that should help with the sealing I think. But at this point, the blades seal well enough to choke the engine off--better sealing would be good but I don't think it's a huge driver currently.

P2111 Stuck Open

The stuck open code is extremely difficult. Techstream files (thank you @mustang67408 for the help) list the code as the throttle body drawing in excess of 2 amps trying to close. That doesn't help much, there is no definition of what "closed" means. That one word provides a lot of headaches and is not as simple as just closing far enough to reach idle. There seems to be a variety of limits in my testing. The first broad limit is the TPS needs to read under 15deg to be considered "closed". My first iteration of blades had a 10deg angle on them which the TPS read as 17.65deg and the code would trigger even though fully closed the engine couldn't even start, I then went to 6deg blades to relax the TPS angle a bit and solved that hurdle.

But that's not the end of the story, if you are driving and let off the throttle and the blade closes past 15deg the code can still throw if it doesn't like what's happening. The throttle shaft gear has a complex torsion spring which outputs torque in both directions, with a tang that sticks off and engages what I'll refer to as an idle screw.



Once that tang hits the idle screw, the throttle shaft has reached a zero torque position where rotating the shaft in EITHER direction creates torque from the torsion springs trying to center it back to this zero torque position. What this means is when the tang hits the idle screw, the blade can be back driven and further closed. If power is not applied to the motor, the blade will stop at this zero torque position and can rotate fully closed or rotate open. It's totally different than a "conventional" throttle body where the idle screw sets the fully closed angle, in this case fully closed is mechanically set from the throttle blade contacting the bore, and the idle position is "somewhat" driven by this natural position it wants to go to.

However, if the idle screw is backed out too far so the blade is closes more, the P2111 code will get thrown. So there is a zone we have to find where the blade can be back driven far enough to not trigger the P2111 code, that angle has to be less than 15deg on the TPS, and the more open the idle screw is to avoid P2111 the higher the trucks idle will be (to some degree).

Why the P2111 is thrown if it can't be back driven enough I have no idea. As I said, if you chop the throttle the P2111 will get thrown. What I suspect is the blade snaps to the zero torque point, and the truck is aware of that because it sees that steady state angle at zero current, and then it wants the freedom to command the blade further closed or to overshoot the zero torque angle. If there was no zero torque angle maybe it wouldn't know the blade is closed? But it can check it's closed by....closing it more?

It's really weird, but is extremely repeatable. I can screw in the idle screw all the way and no issues, if I back it off too far it will get thrown almost instantly.



P0505 Idle Air Control

The idle air control is once again a confusing and hidden code. It seems to have two trigger conditions: idle being outside a tolerance of -100/+150rpm, OR idling airflow exceeding the minimum or maximum???? The second part I have no idea what that's referring to. This code is also annoying because it first triggers as pending, and requires a decent amount of driving and confusing circumstances and drive cycles and minimum speeds to trigger. So you don't necessarily know if it did get thrown since you have to explicitly scan for it, and it takes awhile to make it happen.

The rpm tolerance is not a trivial issue either. As we just established, the throttle blade has to be somewhat open to prevent the stuck open code. And I can't really tell if the throttle body is actually moving the blade to target idle, the idle can move a lot and the TPS doesn't change. Via HP Tuners we know there is spark idle control (I use this same logic to control idle on my manual throttle body on my 2JZ) so it's possible the idle is somewhat if not mostly independent of the throttle body actively trying to control it. I suspect that is the case..... and the zero torque angle is effectively the idle angle and the rest of idle control is done through spark or fueling. Which is good and bad, that means we can use the idle screw to change the idle but if that's the case then we have a very small window to work with to reach target idle but leave enough room for P2111 to be happy.

Additionally, the truck can idle if you totally back the idle screw out or screw it in all the way. So there seems to be some level of active control of the blade when the truck is in idle... Oh and then there's the airflow values, whatever that means? Two tests ago I was within the idle tolerance consistently and still threw the IAC code and the truck was also idling at 16+ AFR, very lean. I datalogged with HPT and ended up adding 20-45% more airflow into the bottom bounds of the MAF table. That mostly fixed the AFR, and I haven't thrown an IAC code since then but it's hard to say if I did the proper drive sequence to trigger it.... I'm also not entirely convinced the idle airflow values being fixed is as simple as adjusting the MAF table, but maybe there is fuel trim limit in idle and that is what it means by "idle airflow limit remains at minimum or maximum"? Maybe the limit is like
+/-10% fuel trim, and if it's outside of that it throws the code?

As I said I haven't gotten the IAC code in awhile, but I was still concerned about the idle rpm triggering the code. My parked idle would be at 800rpm and in gear at 600rpm, but idle target is 700 and 650 respectively, so while I was within the +150rpm range, I was nowhere near centered in the tolerance zone which I didn't like. For my last test I increased the idle targets to 825rpm and 600rpm, my goal being the idle would not move but the truck would see it's closer to the idle target so have more safety from throwing the IAC code. And for whatever reason the truck now seems to idle at like 900-1000rpm??? It's almost like the idle control is open loop, and the tune changed so something else changed like more spark or throttle angle, even though the stupid thing was idling exactly at that value already and nothing mechanically changed!

To be fair the IAC code still hasn't shown up, but for all I know next time I turn the truck on it's already pending so I won't call it a win yet. The IAC code at least doesn't actually do anything either, unlike stuck open which turns the throttle body off completely.


There's still a lot of stuff I can screw with. I can go back to the previous tune, and then bore out the throttle body and get a tighter fitting blade, that should drop the idle a little bit. I could play around with the blade geometry. Ultimately right now the issue is I cannot close the idle screw more or it triggers stuck open, yet the idle is higher than I want still. And there's other tricks I can play with the geometry of the bore, but all of this is so time consuming it makes it really frustrating. One blade revision involves design changes, printing the blade, rebuild the throttle body, adjust anything, bolt it up, drive around, tweak things, repeat. The fact I don't even know where the goal posts are and just blindly shooting trying to bracket what the software wants makes it even more time consuming too.

 

So what you’re saying is it seems it’s easier to have a harness like i have and an LS tb lol so who wants to make these harnesses haha

 

Indeed, and hell just to proven I'm not absolutely insane, I just went to start the truck and now all of a sudden it's like the throttle blade gap is too big so it sits there pulsing between 1000-2000rpm. So I said fuck it, stock throttle body time, and because of whatever weird shit it learned from the big throttle body it now thinks the stock one that works fine is "stuck open". And this always happens, as if figuring out the mechanical side isn't enough there's some weird logic in the truck that seems to have to learn, and once it learns the big one then a stock one is incapable of working until it learns that one. For all I know there's nothing wrong with my parts and it just needs more learning time, but since none of that shit is documented anywhere and everything is one integrated electronics unit, it seems nearly impossible to solve it

 

Sounds like fun.... for you anyway

Seriously though I hope you work it out!

 

Without a single piece of actual knowledge on this, just as a payer to a bigger brain, I will share that your concern is shared. There's discussion right now (real time) about whether or not a hard reset of the ECU via techstream is required for some things. This specifically going beyond a reflash. I don't know if that is real or not ( having quarantined areas) be Ill keep you posted if it proves correct.

 

Frustrating is an understatement! I had to disconnect the battery for like 20 minutes when I was switching throttle blades and tunes for your throttle body. I did have it idle around 800 rpm but would throw codes after I got home and did a re-start.
Most throttle bodies are a bit oval and the bevel does help. But then again I've seen non-bevel work good too on other TB's.

 

I unplugged my battery too for the stock one. And of course that throws another variable into the mix---Did all the times I adjust the idle screw it needed a full reset? Maybe everything I did was compromised purely from that, who knows.

 

I have no confirmed proof. It's just a theory right now, but it seems there could be a discussion about an actual hard reset of the ECU to force a purge of some codes/relearn some parameters. My only info so far is that it is how Subaru's operate and there is question if Toyota is work the same

 

Anytime I unplug my GM 95mm TB I get 3 codes. Forgot which ones but frustrating. So I just disconnect the battery then everything needs to relearn. I know it's suggested to do a hard reset once the MAF/TB has had any maintenance to it. Like @bflooks said it probably needed a reset. But who knows??

 

I miss carburetors . . .

 

Or just cable throttle bodies

 

If I remember right, when I was diagnosing an obscure error code on the 21 Tundra (turned out to be the fuel pump), the Toyota troubleshooting tree had specific steps to recalibrate the TB that required it be done in Techstream. @Jowett ?

 

There is also a special function in HPTuners to perform a throttle relearn

 

I've never seen that and I thought I had looked, I'll have to check again. You guys are giving me some confidence maybe this isn't a lost cause

 

Oh yeah, give it a try. I tried the hpt one without any luck not hpt but snap on. Kept getting errors that it couldnt be done or something. Didn't have Tech Stream Maybe it will work for you.

Edit: it was actually on a Snap On OBD that couldn't do it.. I submitted a ticket to hpt and they said my ecu doesn't support it..

 

So motec and cable TB got it lol with the turbolamik tcu for an 8 speed lol

 

I remember on tundratalk where Joe drifter put a 5.7 SC'd with a cable TB in a Lexus SC430.

 

Today I tried to tighten up the drivetrain on the throttle body and then test the HPT and battery disconnect to see if anything changed. The throttle blade/shaft had some play relative to the OEM drive gear/shaft due to them being a slip fit into each other, I was worried that would be causing some issues with the added backlash. Ultimately I welded the two together but needed some trial and error to get the lengths right, which just ended up being a cluster fuck and lead to me scraping that shaft and gear setup.

I decided to pivot the project and create my own drive gear and shaft and completely forgo the stock drive gear. Originally I tried to keep them OEM and adapt to my hardware because I was worried about recreating the molded plastic/metal/magnets that make up the drive gear. I ended up smashing an OEM drive gear and realized it's just two magnets touching some steel tubing essentially. I was able to take those pieces and 3D printed an electronics test unit and was able to turn a knob and get TPS readings from the truck:



What this proves is that I can certainly repurpose (at a minimum) the hall effect sensor components in the drive gear. My hope is I can buy some magnets off of McMaster and have a from scratch solution that works with the OEM hall effect sensor. This opens up a lot of options, namely that instead of a hybrid throttle blade shaft using OEM and my own hardware, I can have a "one piece" throttle shaft that has no backlash whatsoever and doesn't require people to modify and cut down a stock shaft. Additionally, using my own drive gear and hall effect components, I can make a setup where the TPS angle can be adjusted independent of the throttle blade angle (like an "old school" throttle body).

I will still be at the mercy of whatever weird logic the truck is using, but I think there's potential, and the best part is I can still use my existing TB bodies which is the expensive part. I might even be able to 3D print all of the components and then machine a new shaft and that's it. I had thought about getting a TPS sensor off of something else and making an adapter, but that's really getting away from the ethos of having a hybrid OEM electronics in a larger housing. This new setup will still use the factory sensor body, the drive motor, and idler gear. And as touched on, this will make a "DIY kit" much easier where someone just drills out the sensor body rivets and then slides a few parts over and that's it.

We'll see if this goes anywhere, let alone actually fixes the software hurdles!

 

I just went out to see if mine has this. Nope, my first guess would be that maybe it's only supported in 14+ ECUs.

 

That what hpt stated to me. I put in a support ticket along with @armyoffoo and only his was supported.

 

Sounds like Techstream is the next place to check

 

Booo, that sucks! I didn't realize that feature was so limited...

 

Fresh parts from China Julia! And she hit it out of the park! I've found one trivial cosmetic flaw in one pulley, otherwise everything looks and measures and fits great! I've still been ordering parts from China Nick for some other customers and he's done great lately, so not sure if I'll try him again for the pulleys. The hubs were the only part he really struggled on so maybe leave those to China Julia, she is way more expensive than Nick though, these parts were nearly 3x the price compared to Nick, around the same as when Mark (RIP) was making parts. So maybe leave the high precision stuff to Julia, we'll see. But pulley kits are back in stock on the website! As if anyone viewing this post doesn't already have a pulley setup from me