Electronic Fuel Injection and the 22R-TE engine --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What the hell *is* an AFM? In stoc form, the 22RTE uses an air flow meter, a a AFM, flapper door, or vanetype meter, to measure the amount of air entering the engine. Please get this bi t of terminology right, as an AFM is not a MAF (mass air flow meter), nor is it a MAP (manifold absolute pressure) sensor. An AFM measures air flow through what is essentially a mechanical process, where incoming air deflects a flap in an enclosed space. More air coming in = more de flection of the flap. Crudely spea ing, a potentiometer is connected to the flap , and as the flap moves, the potentiometer moves, and this shapes the electrical signal that is sent to the ECU. To control the movement of this flap/aramture, the AFM is fitted with a flat-wou nd spring that is used to apply tension to the flap. This spring is held in plac e, and adjusted, via a plastic gear and a wire "holder". When this gear is tight ened (turned cloc wise) relative to the flat wound spring inside of it, it becom es harder for the door to open, and this translates to a leaner mixture (more ai r needs to flow in to move the door by a given amount, meaning theat the mixture is leaner relative to its starting point before adjustment). Turning the gear c ounter-cloc wise has just the opposite effect, as the looser gear lets more air in relative to "stoc ".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Remember: Turning the gear CLOCKWISE LEANS OUT THE MIXTURE. Turning the gear COUNTER-CLOCKWISE RICHENS THE MIXTURE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Generally spea ing, each tooth of the gear is equal to about a 2% change in the transient mixture (with stoc injectors). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Why would you want to adjust this thing? The AFM is a curious device. It is simple to adjust, but difficult to adjust co rrectly. Most people seem to believe that their engines *must need more fuel*, s o they quic ly head to the AFM and begin dialing in more fuel...and then their e ngine bogs down and bellows blac smo e and they wonder why it doesn't run bette r. In my opinion, the ey to properly adjusting your AFM is go slowly and don't ma e the engine burn more fuel than it's capable of burning. Two other rules of thumb for dealing with the AFM: **ALWAYS** mar the stoc starting position of the gear. Since all adjustments a re relative, failure to mar the starting position ma es it impossible to now w here you are relative to stoc . If you don't now what you're doing, you're more li ely to screw things up than ma e them better. Things that improve the engine's ability to breathe, li e a header, a free flow

Part 2: Modifying the stoc

EFI system

exhaust, and a cam, and, (most especially) more boost generally cause the engine to run leaner with the stoc AFM setting, because more air is able to move thro ugh the engine on a given combustion cycle. Consequently, if you've made these c hanges, you can gain better performance and realize a better air/fuel ratio by r ichening the mixture by a few "clic s", or gear teeth. How many really depends o n the exact nature of your mods, the size of your injectors,and your altitude ab ove sea level, though I offer a few rough guidelines below. One piece of advice that can't be overstated is to ALWAYS pull the EFI fuse for a couple of minutes after ma ing any adjustment, so that the ECU has the opportu nity to reset itself, and then drive around and see how things run. If the AFM i s set too rich, the engine will bog down and mileage will suc . If it's set too lean, it will perform better up to the point where the in-cylinder temps get too hot and the mixture too volatile, and then you may experience detonation. If yo u experience ANY noc ing or pinging, STOP and enrichen the mixture. So ta e sma ll steps, and don't equate a rich mixture with better performance, as the engine can only burn so much fuel at a time. If you haven't made changes to the engine 's compression ratio, head, cam, throttle body, or boost, your AFM adjustments a re going to be modest at best. Here's a quic cheat sheet of some possible AFM adjustments, based on some commo n modifications. Remember, this is intended as a rough guide, so use your own be st judgement and always proceed with caution. I ta e *absolutely no responsibili ty* for anything you decide to do as a result of reading this page, and it will be SOLEY YOUR PROBLEM if you melt your engine. The following are intended to be additive, and follow what I see as a common ord er of modification. Your mileage may vary **greatly** from what's listed below!! If you've added a free flowing exhaust and a K&N (or similar) filter, you can pr obably adjust your AFM 1 tooth richer. If you've changed cams, you can probably adjust your AFM 1-2 teeth richer. If you've installed a big bore throttle body, you can probably adjust your AFM 1 -2 teeth richer. If you've ported and polished your head and installed bigger valves, you can pro bably adjust your AFM 1 tooth richer. If you've modestly increased boost, you can probably adjust your AFM 1-2 teeth r icher. If you've added an intercooler and aggressively increased boost (say, in the 13. 5 - 15 psi range), you can probably adjust your AFM 2-3 teeth richer, although y ou may hit the ECU's fuel cut parameter. If you've added an intercooler and a bigger turbo, and are running over 12 psi o f boost...you had better get some bigger injectors in that puppy, as you won't b e able to increase the fuel delivery via the AFM enough to meet demands without hitting fuel cut! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------The AFM loo s li e it's really restrictive...is there anything I can do to ma e it flow more air? For many engines, an AFM is a perfectly adequate, albeit old fashioned, way of measuring the air entering an engine. It is fairly simple, it is reasonably accu rate, and it wor s well much of the time. But it is restrictive. On a turbocharg ed engine, any restriction seems to become magnified, because the restriction li terally compounds itself as engine load increases. At some point (usually after you've fitted a bigger turbo and have cran ed the b oost up to around 15 psi), the AFM is simply flowing as much air as it can -- th e opening is too small, you're trying to draw in too much air, and the meter doo

r is as open as wide as it's going to go. This is called saturating the meter, a nd it is a true limit on engine performance: your engine would be capable of bur ning more fuel if only it could get a sufficient amount of air into the cylinder s... So, what to do? There are essentially three approaches you can ta e at this poin t: You can fit a bigger AFM from another vehicle. You can fit an AFM replacement device, li e the Lin ElectroSystems "AFM Lin " o r the Split Second MAF it. You can dump the whole stoc EFI setup -- AFM and ECU -- and replace it with a s tandalone, MAP based system, li e those made by SDS, Haltech, Electromotive, Spe edPro, Accel/DFI, Motec, etc. Let's loo at the first of these options (the other two will be dealt with in Pa rt 3: Aftermar et EFI systems): -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Installing a bigger AFM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Luc ily for 22RTE owners, Toyota made AFMs in two sizes, and for some reason, t he 22RTE was fitted with the smaller of these. Swapping over to a larger AFM isn 't particulary hard, but it does require some modifications to the new (and poss ibly old) AFM. Obviously, in order to put one of the bigger AFM's into your 22RTE, you will nee d to first acquire one. The bigger AFMs can be found in most jun yards fairly ch eaply. The one I used came from a 5M-GE Supra, but they can also be found on Cre ssidas and 3SGE MR2s, too. There are a few nice bonuses about getting the AFM from a Supra, though: the Sup ra AFMs have a built-in 82 MM cone filter adapter ring, so you can put a free-fl owing air filter on without having to buy another adapter. Additionally, you can also pilfer the two hoses on either side of the AFM: the short 45 angles hose, a nd the slightly longer (5"?) straight hose. You will need one or both of these h oses to mate the bigger AFM to the stoc turbo hose, although this might be a go od time to rectify that situation , too. OK, I've got the larger AFM; now what? Even though Toyota essentially used two sizes of AFMs, they custom tailored the electronic "traceboard" or resistor ladder that the AFM's armature s ates over f or each application. This means that your new AFM is not plug-and-play. To ma e the larger AFM wor on my engine, I removed the 5MGE AFM's traceboard an d replaced it with the one from my 22RTE. I had a couple of reasons for doing it this way: the 5MGE AFM puts out a signal that is the inverse of the 22RTE AFM's signal (greater-to-smaller voltage instead of smaller-to-greater voltage), and I had been told that the 22RTE AFM signal was non-linear, and had a "hump" in it to accommodate boost. I don't now if the last point is true, but the traceboar d swap wor ed fine for me, and my air/fuel ratios (and performance) have been ve ry good. This is the "crude" method of doing this swap. Someone one the Old Celi ca Club mailing list did some research and has come up with a more sophisticated method of performing this modification, which I list here. Please don't as me questions about his method; if you use it, you're on your own ;-) Once you've swapped over the internal electronics, you have the matter of plumbi

ng up the new AFM to the old system. Here's where I found the pilfered 5MGE hose s to be helpful. I literally stuffed the old hose into the new hose and sealed w ith a clamp and some silicone sealant. Not good enough for NASA, but it wor ed O K on the street. A few interesting notes: The 22RTE AFM's traceboard was designed to provide a si gnal to the ECU to fire four (4) 295 cc/min injectors at 6 psi of boost, for a t otal load of 1180 cc/min (@100% duty cycle). The 5MGE AFM was designed to provid e a signal to the ECU to fire six (6) 195 cc/min injectors, normally aspirated, for a total load of 1170 cc/min (@100% duty cycle). In other words, these two AF M's are each designed for virtually identical fuel volumes, so it's interesting to me that Toyota spec'd the smaller AFM for the 22RTE. One of the historic problems with the 22RTE is that, as you increase boost, you raise the li elihood of hitting fuel cut with the stoc ECU. Because the 22RTE E CU is such a crude device, it uses only two parameters to determine fuel cut: in jector pulse width and throttle plate angle. If injector pulse width is too grea t, and throttle angle increases too suddenly, you will trigger fuel cut. One of the tric s that I discovered for fooling the stoc ECU is to fit much larger inj ectors and tighten the tension on the AFM's spring. This has the effect of allow ing you to deliver more fuel in less time, at greater boost, without triggering fuel cut. By using the larger AFM, you can let in more air for a given AFM vaneangle than you can with the smaller AFM, which ma es this tric wor . However, a nd this is important, tightening down that spring also limits the amount of air coming in, so you have to stri e a balance between injector size and spring tens ion. I've been running 470 cc/min injectors and fairly high spring tension, and I believe that 420 cc/min injectors and less spring tension would be better. If you didn't have to concern yourself with fuel cut, you could run even smaller in jectors and ta e further advantage of the bigger AFM. As I said, it's something of a balancing act to get this right.