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you check for oil commin out the exhaust yet? Maybe a faulty compressor seal on the turbo allowin blow by?
Also did you verify all plugs are firing? I had a misfire that i never even knew about, i went to change all the plugs one day and check to make sure they were all firing and the one closest to the passeneger side wouldnt fire. I only noticed a little loss in mpg and no check engine light.
just some ideas to kick around, it dosent sound electrical at all, definatly sounds hardpart related.
Maybe a chunk of the honeycomb from the cat broke off and is lodged in the piping somewhere.
good luck either way

 
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I dont think its dyno problem, but I remember reading honda-tech about same type of problem.
As it turns out, it was some kind of vtec issue.

What you may have is cat+vtec both causing power cutoff.

 
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^^^^ thats the other thing I need to check, I need to make sure the VTEC solenoid is working. Gotta look up the test in the manual for that.

On what window in the e-manage support tool would I find whether VTEC is on or not, and what its engagement is set to?

 
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The "Auxillary Output Setting" window will show your settings. U can use the Real Time Display to monitor it (select AUX Signal Ouput in the Input Data Setup).

 
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well if anything u should see ur vtec kicking in on the dyno chart

 
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Does this VTEC window look right?


And... the other window... how can I adjust the voltage clamp to make it not idle like a nitro car?

 
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i say before u go messing with the settings get the eay **** out of the way u never know it might be the simplest thing that u could think of but what u are doing wright know is make it bigger then it needs to be start with the cat then go back..

 
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well before I go taking parts off the car, what do you say I check and see if the settings are right? Sounds a hell of a lot easier to look at the map and see if its right, if VTEC is off, then it explains a lot. I never said I was looking to change the VTEC settings, and the idle control issue is completely separate to the fact that the car makes no power.

 
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I don't understand, if VTEC is off and you're able to turn it on, is it gonna magically give you that 60 some horsepower you were missing?

I don't know much about e-manage or what not, but it doens't make sense if you don't have VTEC engaging right that you would be missing 60 hp?

 
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it may or may not, but it appears to be a compounding issue. If VTEC is not on, then the whole top end is corked up, if the cat is clogged, the whole thing is corked. Compound those.... you probably come up with 60 HP.
The issue right now is that its unsure whether or not VTEC is on, or if its off, or if the dials and jumpers need to be set to 4 8 C and reconfigured to let the ECU do it, or what.

 
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Boiler do you have an EX? If so i wouldnt touch the vtec controls. Make sure that the solenoid is working but adjusting the x-over points youll most likely get a CEL

 
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Well thats what I'm trying to figure out right now.
It may not even be engaging at all, and I'm trying to figure out if the settings in the e-manage are the issue.

 
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You can not tell from the shitty e-mangle datalogs if VTEC is engaging. You will get a VTEC failure CEL and hear a 'clunk' if it is not engaging. Take it from experience.

Go to Honda, ask a tech to ride with you, gun it and ask them to monitor it with the Honda Scan tool. THAT will tell you if you are working properly in VTEC. One note, VTEC was not THAT prevalent on the D17 boosted as is was N/A.

 
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A long time ago on a dyno we where playing with my vafc2 and adjusting vtec. We set it to around 5500 rpm just to see what would happen. There was around a 25-30 hp jump when vtec was engaged at that rpm. So his vtec not working on a boosted engine is a possibility. BUT... IMO the easy thing to do would be to unbolt the cat and run it around the block. easy 5 minutes of work.

 
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Oh the karma. Why dont you go search?

 
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Good one.


Boilermaker, Do you have an EX? If your vtec wanst working you wouldnt be able to rev above 4k rpm right?

 
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just suscribing to this thread cause im intrested in the outcome.

 
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That's got lots of pull when you're trying to buy a turbo kit off ebay. True sign of a ****in noob.
What's there to search for? It seems to me like a pretty in depth problem thats gonna take some diagnostics, and since no one seems to have a consensus, I'd say it'd be a pretty damn hard thing to just fire through the search engine smart ***.
Get a clue. I'd me amazed if you came up with a search string that found a solution. Cuz even the Emanage FAQ is inconclusive.

 
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pwnt. lol

 
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how does no1 have a consensus, everyone has said check your cat. and theres been plenty of methods posted. in fact i posted the easiest one, run it and check if its cooler after the cat. or see if it gets red hot after a beating before the cat.
vtec will not account for 60whp.
if theres one thing to remember when your working on a car, the fundemnetals. so b4 going into the software n ****, pull the exhaust down and see if it feels faster around the block. and you cant say that it felt faster just cus the exhaust is gone, that would only be a couple ponies. if it is faster, its the cat. other than that, how many miles are on your engine? i would hook up a gauge and check oil pressure, its possible your losing some power due to blow-by. in which case it will increase pressure in the crankcase. that could account for SOME of the power. and if it accounts for all, your in deep doo-doo lol.

 
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There's no consensus that its any one thing. I still think its a compounded problem, because I don't think the cat is going to make up 60 HP. Besides... I said the shop thought it was the cat..... everyone else agreeing doesn't pull much weight. It still could be the tuning, it could be that I don't have the cam shift, it could be the plugs, it could be a leak. There's no consensus to the final solution. Its not like a suspension problem with a definite answer. Its just a step by step diagnostic thing.
If I didn't post the potential culprit and what had been eliminated, I guarantee you that anything from boost leak to head gasket would have been guessed by now, but instead, I threw as much as I knew which narrows it, but doesn't solve it.

 
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thats true, but know what else doesnt solve it? NOT CHECKING IT lol.
i doubt its the plugs, you would be knocking like hell. it would be more noticeable. and there is ways to check if its a headgastket. plenty of them. plus i thought you ruled out boost leak.
it just seems like you want us to tell you what it is. we can only help you think, it doesnt matter though if you dont listen and check these things. and id say the cat clogged is more likely to rob you of 60hp, ive driven cars with clogged cats, it feels so slow. plus you ran so damn rich for a while. im tryin to help ya, i would like to see everyone have working happy cars lol.

 
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I said I needed to get under it this weekend. Its a bit tough to jack a car up in downtown DC. Saturday morning when I can get the car out to the burbs with some time to frick around, I'll get to the bottom of it. I didn't want to know what it is, no one knows what the hell it is. I was looking for ideas, and as usual around here, **** gets way off what it starts at and I should have known better than to try and post complex issues. I spent an hour on the phone with Dezod this afternoon talking about the issues with the idle stumble, what may be causing the power issues and why the curve looks so funny. It seems as if I'm on the right track as it is. Diagnostics will continue this weekend.

 
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i do agree that you need to check basics. Run a leakdown... You never answered if you've had headwork done. The curve hits a wall at 3k which is when the car starts seeing some boost as well as around VTEC.

All else fails, pull the turbo and e-manage and re-dyno stock and make sure the base curve is OK.


As they say, don't let a bad apple spoil the bunch (or whatever it is)...

 
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my bad, didnt realize you cant jack it where u are. i dont see this thread getting much off topic of what you originally asked. and yes its a complex issue, but from just looking at some dyno results and hearing your opinion its tough to really know what it is until the basics are addressed first, and how it does in certain things could end up leading to an idea for whats wrong. but it sux u have to wait for the weekends.

 
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a bottle neck in ur system can account for 60hp.... if your bosst kicks in and the cat has a bottleneck at the same time the vtec is kicking in then its pointless for vtec to kick in if the exhaust system has a bottleneck.. opening up the air flow with vtec wont do anything...

on a secondary note ur car is tuned for the bottle neck right now which is another account for the loss of 60hp or so... when u open the header u will need a retune cause then u will be running lean... im surprised the tuner didnt take the time to see and unbolt the headers and try it... my tuner tunes the car the way u bring it to the shop then saves the calibration... then opens up the header and tunes it again to see if he can get more out of the car then saves it... then now you have to saved calibrations for open and closed headers...

anyways imo before you go messing with settings which could screw up something.. wait till the weekend and try the simplest thing by unscrewing the cat.... then once we eliminate that problem let us know the results and we can go from there

 
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I agree completly it does sound as if something is restrictive as in the exhaust/cat. Does it sound like its being choked, or does it sound like its taching up normally?

 
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I acutally had my vtec sol wire unhooked for a day and noticed a HUGE loss in power past about 3500 rpm. I would say the vtec could account for this loss because of such a loss of flow. The head is ment to flow with the cross over and when it dosent it loses a shitload of power. For some reason the vtec on the d17 dosent work like the d16. When you have no cross over on the d16 it will still run ok and seem sluggish....but on the d17 it just seemed like the car just didnt want to move and was running on 2 cyl. just food for thought..

good luck on finding the problem and props to your set up its super clean.

 
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a few questions. i read through this whole thing. are you running a stock exhaust also? or just the cat? to see if your vtec is engaging, can you try to hook up a vtec light or can you not cause you are using e-manage? have you tried to use a pre-made map for emanage first before tuning it and seeing what it would do?
good luck

 
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You can't really test if VTEC is engaging by using a light all those people make when they hit "M4D TYt3 VTEC" because VTEC isn't only dependent on that voltage signal.

I am betting at least one of the problems is your cat is clogged.