I've stumbled a few times across what I think might be a bug in the FAST Windows software, and if I'm right, it cost me a motor. But this is merely what I -think- happened, not an indictment of the software per se. But if others have noticed it, I'd be interested to hear about it.
I've found that if you somewhat rapidly change a cell using +/- keys, it can corrupt that cell and NOT have the value reflected in the table until you completely refresh it.
My first experience was with the idle speed... I was trying to bring it down, so I was hitting the - key repeatedly, and all of a sudden it would jump up to 1200 rpm, while the screen showed 500. If I closed the table and re-opened it, THEN the high value would appear. I believe I talked to FAST about this issue and they confirmed it, and that it only happened in the Windows version. I'm a little bitter it wasn't fixed, but at that point, I didn't care much, because it was annoying but generally harmless.
A few months later, however, I was working on my timing curve, and trying to bring the advance in a number of boost cells down. I brought them down from the stock 20s down to the 15 range and went out for a pass.
As soon as I hit about 4000 rpm there was a horrible sound (massive detonation) , a bang (the sounds of my ring lands bouncing off the oil pan, no doubt), and smoke. Long story short, it blew a hole in a piston and the ring lands off several others. I lifted immediately of course, but it wasn't quick enough.
I limped it home and checked the tables, and two of the advance cells had 63 as their values. That's a LOT of advance under boost, to say the least. I'm guessing 63 is (2^6-1), the max that cell can hold.
I'm also guessing that this cell was corrupted by the alleged bug in the software that trashes cell contents when you're using the increment/decrement keys faster than the screen refresh time.
Has anyone else noticed this issue with cell data and fast use of the inc/dec keys?
Thanks,
Dave
I've found that if you somewhat rapidly change a cell using +/- keys, it can corrupt that cell and NOT have the value reflected in the table until you completely refresh it.
My first experience was with the idle speed... I was trying to bring it down, so I was hitting the - key repeatedly, and all of a sudden it would jump up to 1200 rpm, while the screen showed 500. If I closed the table and re-opened it, THEN the high value would appear. I believe I talked to FAST about this issue and they confirmed it, and that it only happened in the Windows version. I'm a little bitter it wasn't fixed, but at that point, I didn't care much, because it was annoying but generally harmless.
A few months later, however, I was working on my timing curve, and trying to bring the advance in a number of boost cells down. I brought them down from the stock 20s down to the 15 range and went out for a pass.
As soon as I hit about 4000 rpm there was a horrible sound (massive detonation) , a bang (the sounds of my ring lands bouncing off the oil pan, no doubt), and smoke. Long story short, it blew a hole in a piston and the ring lands off several others. I lifted immediately of course, but it wasn't quick enough.
I limped it home and checked the tables, and two of the advance cells had 63 as their values. That's a LOT of advance under boost, to say the least. I'm guessing 63 is (2^6-1), the max that cell can hold.
I'm also guessing that this cell was corrupted by the alleged bug in the software that trashes cell contents when you're using the increment/decrement keys faster than the screen refresh time.
Has anyone else noticed this issue with cell data and fast use of the inc/dec keys?
Thanks,
Dave