I have an 03 ECM and 06 engine (dragonflys, intake, exhaust). Truck has run pretty well but has some haze due to the fundamental differences so I bought HpTuners to try and dial it in and learn more about tuning. Have played with many variables and am getting a pretty good feeling for the ECM.
My question is about the injection timing, main and pilot. I'm having a hard time creating a good map that produces little smoke, and no pinging, etc. I've used the timing calculator here for a few different tunes, but still getting better results from the stock 03 timing tables and scaling/smoothing those tables. I'm a little afraid of producing a map from the calculator (main) with numbers above the 'safe' 27-ish degrees. I used one today with 65% split producing peak timing values around 29. 75% goes into the 30's and I'm afraid to test that table without asking first....
I made a rough sketch of the fundamental differences and very roughly approximated the degrees of crank rotation vs piston travel. I know the piston bowls are different and my sketch is from rough measurements of an 06 piston, but it gives you a pretty good idea of what's going on.
I am coming up with roughly 6.33mm of piston travel from the two different spray angles which is roughly 23* of crank rotation. With the piston bowl differences, its probably much less than this, but I had to sketch something up.
So I'm assuming this will translate into my pilot event timing as well, but do I really just need to advance the heck out of my timing? I keep going back and trying to refine the stock tables, 03 and 04.5+, more to avoid using a map from the calculator that is like 75% or greater.
Just putting my pride aside here and asking for some re-assurance of my thinking so I don't ruin my setup.
Thanks for any help.