Sorry but I don't believe that a 10deg swing in timing made no difference, especially at -4 it should start smoking heavily. Did you datalog it to ensure it was actually commanding -4 and not hindered by a limiter or multiplier?
Why would it smoke at -4? -4 is the stock timing in my OS. It has a very slight haze and smell (can only see it at night with a light), but definitely isn't heavily smoking. Main mm3 is 7.5, and all balance rates are +/- 1.5. I shut off each cylinder individually and the smoke output never changed, so it seems to be a system-wide issue rather than an individual injector.
I just checked my tune and realized I slightly mis-spoke earlier: the max timing was +4, and the max fuel pressure was 75 MPa. I did the timing at -4, -2, 0, +2, and +4, the fuel pressure at 35, 45, 55, 65, 75. Did each variable independently, and both together. All at 175+ ECT, in neutral and AC off. I datalogged and verified everything was changing as expected. It got very slightly louder with each timing advance, and noticeably louder with the higher pressure. But if the haze output changed, I couldn't tell it.
Again, it's very slight, but the fact that it hasn't responded to timing or fuel pressure changes tells me either:
1. The orifice size/angle and/or SAC chamber void below the pintle isn't as optimized for efficiency / clean burns at idle, or
2. There's some ideal relationship between pilot quantity and timing for a smokeless idle, and the stock LB7 tune doesn't match up with that ideal relationship of the aftermarket, oversize SAC injectors
The fact that advancing the pilot timing a bit
did make a small, but noticeable, improvement makes me optimistic that it's #2, and I just need to spend a bit more time on it.
On top of that, I thought I remember a bug in the DSP tunes where it ignored the pilot tables and didn't change them when switching tunes. Might extend to other areas too
I remember hearing that too, but I've never seen it. Pilot timing absolutely changes in my DSP5 OS. Pilot quantity is only in DSP2; I haven't gotten around to trying that yet.
I read through all that (and a couple others, too) a few months back when I was getting started on my tune. Was definitely a big help.
The biggest issue is that it seems not all SAC nozzles are the same, and the even same brand may have changed a bit in the last 8 years, so some of the advice / findings seemed specific to the exact injectors and setup being used at the time. I haven't seen much discussion of it in recent years, and had actually considered starting a new thread at some point once I got back to playing with it, but vmyrhaug beat me to it.