Tuning Devices
 

So you purchased and installed your aftermarket performance kit. Turbo, MAF, MAP, Cam... You goot the car dialed in..

As we all know, we all get used to what we have and want a "bit" more. So we upgrade yet another system or part. When you make upgrades, you need to retune.

Let's talk about tuning. Well, modifying the chips may not be something you want to deal with. However there are some tools (PiggyBack, 4-knob devices..) that allows you to fine tune your car.

Share with us your ideas and experiences. Tell us which system you have used. How easy was it to install, learn. Did it have data logging? If it did was it helpful... Were you able to change fuel and timing? Does the system you are using allows you to control additional items (Water injection, shift light, warning light...)

Well you get the idea...

How about this for a mad scientist idea.....

I buy a setup from a company. I then plug in this 'black box' which effectively lies to the DME/KLR. A 'standard' setting could be supplied with each box. Go down the dyno, give it one run, and e-mail the downloaded, saved profile (?)from that 'black box' to the company. They adjust the A/F where needed, and mail it back. Upload, and off you go!

I expect that this is a little idealistic, but with all of the dyno time, and messing about installing a product, to basically plug something inline to the DME/KLR has to be the easiest route.

If that's possible, and with a service provided so that every time you change the exhaust etc. you can swoop in for a quick run, download and there we go again.

Simple enough for the end user. That's the idea!

I'm running the LR MAF, and a set of Kokeln chips, now whilst it's all relatively easy to setup, it still takes time on the dyno, and takes a lot of effort on my part. Get rid of that, and you have the wonder product, that people wouldn't mind spending a couple of hundred extra on.....

Such a product exists, check out the Vitesse PB. It data logs, provides you with a PlayBack mode. You'll be able to tell your AF at any given RPM/LOAD. Adjusting is just a matter of modifying (+-) a cell in a table based on LOAD and RPM and an optional Boost signal... You'll be able to email the data to your tuner where he can analyze it and recommend appropriate changes...
Of course having chips that are tuned to match your configuration help.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">Originally posted by fast951:
<strong>Of course having chips that are tuned to match your configuration help.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">That's the killer.... You shouldn't have to do that! The combination of PB/massager means that it should (in my non-electrical brain anyway :) ) be able to lie to the chip/brain enough so as not to have to mess around with.... oh, did i get the right chip, did i set it right for this time of year, did i....... I understand the point of the PB, and i like the idea, it just doesn't quite go far enough.

Plus, the idea would be to take the work out for Joe Bloggs, and have the tuning company reconfigure the unit. With enough info downloaded, it should be possible to just tweak the settings in the software, and finished.! It shouldn't have to be a 'recommendation' from the tuner, it should be THE settings.

"I'm running the LR MAF, and a set of Kokeln chips, now whilst it's all relatively easy to setup, it still takes time on the dyno, and takes a lot of effort on my part. Get rid of that, and you have the wonder product, that people wouldn't mind spending a couple of hundred extra on....."

Let me guess, you got a chip that ends in #00 98 right?

"You shouldn't have to do that! The combination of PB/massager means that it should (in my non-electrical brain anyway ) be able to lie to the chip/brain enough so as not to have to mess around with.... oh, did i get the right chip, did i set it right for this time of year, did i....... I understand the point of the PB, and i like the idea, it just doesn't quite go far enough."

Well, yes and no, we still have to work within the limits of the stock Bosch Motronic DME system. There's only so much you can do with skewing the air-flow signal to fool the stock computer. The effects of signal-massaging is diminished under full-throttle/WOT due to the limited width of the WOT map; signal-massaging makes a bigger difference under partial-throttle. Tied into the fuel look-up points on the 3D map is the ignition. If you adjust the look-up point to change the fuel-values, you'll also have to take the ignition value at that new look-up point as well.

So as fast951 says, it's best to have a chip that's optimized for your configuration. Then only do 2-3% changes with a piggyback. More than 5% changes indicates the chips aren't close enough and a re-burn should be part of the package.
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One feature that I've found very helpful in tuning an EFI system is a self-correcting fuel-map.

Some EFI systems have a 3D map with millisecond pulse-widths for the injectors. Others have a correction map of +/-% percentage changes overlayed on top of a calculated air-flow map.

The latest one I've played with allows you to specify actual air-fuel ratios in various operating zones (based upon load). Idle could be set at 14.7:1 to pass emissions. Steady-speed cruising can be set to 17-15.0:1 for fuel-economy and crisp throttle response.

At 10psi boost, we can specify an AF-ratio of 13.0:1. For 15psi boost, it could be 12.5:1. Up at 20psi boost, fuel can be 12.0:1.

The EFI system then constantly monitors the O2-sensor feedback and continually re-adjusts its underlying fuel-map. This auto-tune fuel-map is a tuning-tool, not an operational feature of the EFi system. So you have to make sure that testing conditions will be similar to actual operating specs. Such as a fully warmed up car, operatinoal o2-sensor, average outside air-temp, etc. Once the map is fine-tuned, you can save it and lock it down. This map can then be emailed to others with similar configurations.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">Originally posted by Danno:
<strong>Let me guess, you got a chip that ends in #00 98 right?</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">Mmmmm, not got a clue! That's the point again. It's good to know that you guys are here, and it's great that collectively, the knowledge on the board and in the tuners for our cars is so good. My problem, as a guy who knows if his engine is running right or not (plus a lot more when it comes to the mechanical side) shouldn't need to read up for 2 years on engine management systems before I take the plunge.

When you buy a chip, generally as far as *I* (and I would guess a lot more here too) know, a chip pretty much optimises what you've got. the problem of course is what DO you have? Obviously there are guys who have done a lot (3.0l, big turbos etc) and guy's who haven't. So what do the tuners supply???? that's the age old question.

So what ARE the possibilities of actually replacing the chip/massaging the signal/whatever in a pre-paid package, that after one run, to sned off, and get support basically in a day?

I can understand your points about the limitations of the motronic system, the chips and the massager, but somewhere in there must be a happy medium so that I can minimise what I need to understand from an electronic/mapping/AF ratio point of view, and just enjoy driving the car!? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

All I'm saying is that this would be a good product line somewhere along the line. Personally, I'm happy with knowing that I can go down to the dyno a couple of times to get things pretty much sorted (except for my rich chip <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> ), but it would maybe be nice for others to have more of a choice out there........

Mike,

I agree with everything you said. When you buy a product from a tuner, in this case a chip, the tuner should have a good idea (based on experience) if it's close enough to your particular setup. Then you fine tune things to match your car... That's why you find people providing products in a kit form. Or chips for a particular setup....

Also, it's nice to work with a tuner that provides you with the flexibility to update/upgrade in the future.

The tuning device should be easy to use. Once you know what your target is, getting there should be as simple as possible. However as Danno mentioned, there are limitations...

I guess you have to accept, that if you want to push the limits, you have to aquire knowledge or depend on someone else doing deep investigations. If you just want a small upgrade there are several modifications sold as kits that work just fine.

I prefer to push the limits (my limits), step by step. I am now testing my own chip number 12 and it is better than ever but I am still not satisfied with response under some conditions. I am considering using an emulator to be able to make the chip changes on the fly. Anyone tried? I guess a problem will be to know the actual cell being looked up.

I have a LINK with MAF which messes things up a bit since two maps are overlapping.

One problem that I haven't seen being discussed is the difference between static dyno conditions and dynamic driving. Load is not telling it all.

Cheers Bengt

Bengt,

How would you modify the chip without knowing the actual cell that is beeing looked at.

Based on RPM/LOAD and throttle position you should be able to know eaxactly wich cell is being used.

Tuning on a dyno for load conditions is much simpler than tuning on the street for off load conditions. Also, a load dyno makes things much closer to actual driving...

Sorry for all the spelling errors. FAT fingers :)

I need to know what cell is being used, but measuring DME input in parallel and doing the calculations outside is not very tempting. Better if the Motronic could tell you, as the LINK does, which condition you are running at the moment.

You can of course simulate actual driving on a dyno but just running cell by cell takes a lot of time. If you then want to test transition behaviour from one condition to another it is many more hours.

I have made the high load/low rpm cells into acceleration cells with a little more fuel. This is not applicable if you run part throttle and want better response since the system wont know if you are at constant conditions or accelerating.

Nice to talk with you
Bengt

If someone had big money, they could install an EFI system that has 2-way telemetry. Now, keep in mind, most racing organizations make 2-way telemetry illegal. But in either case, you could do the static, load based tuning on a dyno, then take the car out on a track and have a tuner sit there with a laptop and tune the car real-time for things like accelleration enrichment and so forth.

On the other hand, if your tuner is using a dyno that will allow them to tune dynamic conditions (i.e. not a DynoDynamics), then the tuner should be able to tune dynamic conditions.

Also, let me stress a point that Danno made... do NOT use an EFI's auto tune feature during normal daily operation. If you do, then your a/f ratios will be very dependant on your O2 sensor. What if the O2 sensor fails? The EFI might still try to tune the ratios and cause you to go very lean or very rich. Bad, bad, bad. But for tuning, this can be a very helpful feature. Get your mixtures about right, let the EFI make the fine corrections, verify the corrections, and you're done with the load tuning.

Also the signal coming out of the O2 won't be correct until it's warmed up. You don't want the auto-tune featuer active while the car's warming up.

Bengt, you can figure out which zone is being used by the DME by watching the air-flow voltage going into the DME. If the Link system is piggybacked on top of the DME, then just use the tuning-module to display its output voltage. Cross-reference this by RPM and you can tell what zone on the chip is being used.

Simple way to make quick changes is to use 28-series EEPROM. I have one in the car and one in the programmer. After the car runs, I make changes to the map and burn the new chip. Swap chips and erase the old one as the car makes its next run.

I just installed the new Link A/F gauge that Danno has been featuring recently:

<img src="http://www.gururacing.net/Images/LambdaLinkGaugeTrans2.gif" alt=" - " />

The interesting thing about this gauge is that it uses the standard narrowband O2 sensor that's already in the car, but has remapped the nonlinear sensor output into a relatively linear scale that can be read out in actual A/F ratio. It also costs much less than the high-accuracy wideband sensors. What's unknown (at least to me) is how accurate the Link gauge really is.

What I'm going to be testing very shortly is whether the Link gauge is accurate enough to be used as tool for fine-tuning. I have the GURU MAP kit, along with the Link tuning module and datalogging adapter. I'm going to take my best shot at fine-tuning the Link computer by doing road tests with the Link A/F gauge. Then I'll be going to the dyno (hopefully in a few days) and see how close I came.

I'll let y'all know how it works out.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">Originally posted by Danno:
<strong>
Simple way to make quick changes is to use 28-series EEPROM. I have one in the car and one in the programmer. After the car runs, I make changes to the map and burn the new chip. Swap chips and erase the old one as the car makes its next run.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">Wouldn't be easier to use a in-line circuit emulator. Load the EPROM on your PC, attach appropriate HW between PC and DME and tune without a chip, straight from PC. Once done, just burn a single chip.