VVT Solenoid- Red Bullet or Bull@*$% ?

Here's pictures of my old stock 2007 solenoid I saved. As you can see it looks much different than the one I showed in the Red Bullet site.

The operation of the Red Bullet is very simple. Its just a proportioning valve. For the same input voltage the solenoid opens up quicker than the stroke on the stock solenoid and also the oil output is higher as the cut outs are larger so timing is advanced much quicker than stock.

It works. The atkisson motor does not mind advanced timing like other engines apparently. Most normal engines it will ping on you. Kinda like power timing in the old days with a distributor keep advancing till it pings then back off slightly. That's the most advanced timing the engine will tolerate.

It does not change your life with power but it does help the G2. I only see a improvement in passing from around 45-50 miles an hour than if you punch it then I see some get up and go. My engine is 14 years old 175,000 miles so it is what it is.

The more horsepower you have the more dramatic the improvement will be. It will be fun in a G3-4.

 

How many people who claim to feel the effects of the Red Bullet have directly compared it to a new OEM part like the OP did in his tests?
Comparing a Red Bullet to a OEM with 100k miles isn't very useful in my option.

 

It is easy to understand everything you are saying. The question of interest is how much of it is true. Experimentation is a way of finding out.

 

The previous person who did this testing on here put the Red bullet in, then put their OEM one back in... Then dropped the ball and never posted about it again. What we really need is a Prius on a dyno so we can get solid torque and HP numbers down to 1/10th of a second increments. I'm willing to bet that the Red Bullet is a couple tenths of a second faster at providing power than an OEM one. But...

 

Wonder if @patcoghm still has that old OEM OCV that he replaced in this thread : https://priuschat.com/threads/no-power-on-hills-mpg-down-soc-low-problem-fixed.187202

Would be nice to compare a tired OEM to a new OEM, then figure out if the $12 POS OCV on fleabay would be a viable replacement or not.

 

The angle mr_guy_mann has taken is a pretty good angle. When the claim being made for the product is that the dramatic benefits you're supposed to notice driving the car come because "timing is advanced much quicker than stock", then the question "ok, does that even happen or not?" is a perfectly reasonable one to ask, and cuts through a lot of elaborate smoke about the claimed resulting effects.

 

Well this sucks…I had high hopes for installing the red bullet in my 2013. We need more data points from gen 2 & gen 3 drivers to confirm whether the non-red red bullet is a gimmic or decent mod.

 

Say, m_g_m, do you happen to have any non-Techstream OBD reader available that is able to do raw mode 6 monitor queries?

I've been noticing that Techstream displays an "IN VVT STUCK B1" monitor test value on the same screen where it shows the EGR flow test, but I've been frustrated at never seeing a test value other than 0.00, which makes me wonder if somehow the ECM isn't ever doing that test.



But then I spotted the info in the repair manual today on how to query that test with a generic scan tool: it is monitor ID $35 and test ID $81, and the raw value returned should be scaled by 0.01 to represent the time in seconds for a forced change of the intake timing by a certain amount.

It might at least be worth seeing what a generic non-Techstream scan tool retrieves for that value. If it always comes back zero, then that test is probably dead in the ECM, but if something nonzero comes back, maybe there's just a bug in Techstream.

 

If somebody really wanted to increase the advance slightly and still use the stock part it looks like it would not be too hard to do so with a FET circuit placed between that ECU line and the part. It would just use a little RC circuit and a couple of diodes to make each pulse from the ECU a little bit wider, which would increase the duty cycle at the same clock rate. So 60% might become 65%, for instance. When the duty cycle is low it might make things worse though, as it might not be low enough to retard when the car wants it to retard. It seems like a pretty pointless exercise though, since what are we really going for here with these slight timing changes, one or two horse power at certain RPM? A tiny performance boost like that might be obtained by changing the oil, oil filter, and air filter a bit more frequently. Or leaving the spare tire at home and keeping the gas tank less full.

It may be that that the "red" section of this part is no longer "red" because that paint/coating was causing problems. Perhaps it flaked off, or it affected the fit somehow. Or maybe they just decided to save whatever it cost to make it that color.

 

Or they outsourced the production and painting it is either too expensive or is no longer an option.

 

The most basic question mr_guy_mann's testing is getting at here is whether the product does the thing its marketing says it does. History has its share of products that got marketed as doing certain things they didn't do. This might or might not be one of those, but mr_guy_mann is trying to find out by testing, which is a fair way to do that.

For as long as that basic question's on the table, it might be premature to invest much cleverness in thinking of other ways to do something it's not even clear this thing itself does.

 

I thought the whole point was that it's red. That increases the cool factor, which itself is sometimes worth paying for.

 

If I remember right, even the original version only had the red on the part you never see after it's installed. You would have to be getting the cool factor from just secretly knowing it's red. I'm pretty sure there was more being claimed for it than mere redness.

 

While that's absolutely true, there's no reason you have to keep it a secret!

 

You could make a Plexiglas version of the valve cover, and install it in that. Now that would be cool.

For Gen 3 anyway. I've forgotten where the valve lives in the 1NZ. Cylinder head?

That could be more trouble. Transparent aluminum, maybe?

 

Kind of disappointing but good to know, thanks!