I had the opportunity this last week or so (~5 days) to get ahold of a truck with a VERY VERY rough tune setup on the new Code59 project. Let me preface everything from here out by saying I'm a newbie tuner at best, and I owe a great deal to Mike Hardman for letting me essentially cut my tuning teeth on his semi-fresh motor (less than 2,500miles). His patience, and trust is greatly appreciated, and I can't say enough about that....so on to other thoughts.
The build:
Forged pistons and rods with splayed 4bolt mains
Vortec heads, basically stock with newer (03 and up) roller valvetrain
Upgraded cam (412 I think)
Port matched, and converted stock intake
50lb injectors
PT52 from a buick
RPM A2A intercooler
Stock tranny, and convertor
<--Word through teh "vine" is 80E, and 3k stall are coming soon
Currently RWD only <--Jeff and Jeremy broke the propshaft a few weeks ago....those bastages
Equipment:
New NGK wideband
Ostrich
USB ALDL cable
TunerProRT with latest Code59 ADS, and XDF files
Autotune spreadsheet developed by Code59 guru's
Acer Aspire Laptop (1.3Ghz Turion, 1GB ram, 80Gb HD)
The tuner : (thats me)
26 year old Mechanical Engineer
I had a good understanding of the logic in the computer, but had VERY VERY little practice changing values, and doing any hands on tuning. Having watched it a couple times, I was confident I could pick it up pretty quick, but had never actually "changed a table" before. I was (still am) a newbie at best when I started.
The Story
When I picked the truck up, it had been setup by Jeff Scott to run on the Code59. He and the other Code59 guys have done a good job of getting that tested, and out and running. It seemed to work flawlessly, and as expected. The tune that was in it was just enough to make it driveable. There were a ton of lean spots, and trying to drive it around town was a study in frustration. It popped, and missed, and did lots of bad things in general. The fan was wired to come on from the IC pump relay, but wasn't working. The TC was locking at like 30mph, and all kinds of goofy crap. Tip in stumble that was harsh enough to make me almost hit my face on the steering wheel once......it was rough....but ran. Ironically cruise was pretty close on the expressway.
First challenge was to get TunerProRT up and working. I had an older release that was crashing anytime I tried to copy info from it, and had a few other minor issues with my version of Excell conflicting with the Autotune spreadsheet, so that took me a day or so to work out, and get going. Once I got the setup though it seemed to work OK. One hint I'd like to pass along, is ALWAYS tell TunerProRT to stop monitoring BEFORE you yank the ALDL cable from the USB port. If not it will hang, and cause all kinds of crashing in tunerpro issues.....I didn't figure this out till Sunday afternoon, but it's fitting in this section I think.
I started picking the problems apart one by one, and attacking each one seperately.
First on the list was the fan. It was set to come on at all times. Chip was set at like 19*c upper, and lower threshold. I did some searching, and posting, and couldn't get a great answer, so I set ALL LOW enables to 160, and all HIGH enables to 170....This provided the desired results, so I moved on to the lean spots.
I knew the VE table needed work. I'm not experienced enough to know what was a "logical" value on the table and what wasn't, so I proceeded to log a ton of data, and run an Autotune after each log. This was moving me in the right direction, but slowly (and safely mind you). After about 4 days of this, and only showing a few signs of good progress, I decided Saturday morning to hand smooth the VE graph with TunerPro's graph feature. I spent the better part of an hour smoothing the table down. This provided HUGE, I mean HUGE gains in driveability. It was also a tad rich though.
On to more datalogging. I drove around a good deal on Saturday, and did a ton more logging. At this point I started using AutoTune as a reccomendation moreso than a bible. If it suggested that one or two cells needed a big decrease, I would take that, implement it in the table, then re-smooth. This seems to be working good, and continued for a few more drives. 95% of this was driveability. Boost would come later I was told,and the truck was a bit rich under boost, and not knocking too bad, so I left that till later. After a bunch more logging and driving I was close.
I also noticed that the torque convertor wasn't locking normally. Started looking around throughthe chip, and talked with Jeff some, and found there was a setting in the chip for min temp for TCC lockup.....Dropped that down a bit, and all was well. I also raised the lock speed to about 55 or so, and that seemed to make a good difference as well around town. It wasn't locking up, and lugging the motor like it used to, making it alot easier to drive. It was nice to be seeing changes made, and results moving accordingly.
Yesterday I took the truck up to Jeremys place to get a few otehr issues sorted out (efan wiring cleaned up, battery tie down fixed, etc). While there I had Jeremy go for a ride with me. He noticed while under boost it was knocking more than I could see whilst driving so we started in on the timing table. Started pulling timing (it was running like 27 degrees at WOT and 15psi !!!!) back to a more acceptable level. This livened up the truck a good bit, and made it feel a ton better. Alsonoticed that it was a bit lean according to normal Sy/Ty standards (near 11.5:1 at WOT). Mike wants to run it a bit leaner, but I thought that was a safe AFR at 15psi, and if he wants to push more I'll be glad to help when he is around more.
Leaving Jeremys after some more tuning help from him, I forgot to upload the new bin I created at his shop, so I pulled over did that and it improved a bit more. Taking a few more laps around Southern Indiana proved to be helpfull. I was finding that I could spot a trouble area while driving, and glance at the screen and see where it was in the table (thanks to the bubble in TunerPro), pull off to a safe spot off the road, and change that area the direction it needed to go by 5% or so.....This created a "spike" in the graph, and I could go in and change/smoth the graph, and get some decent results....I proceeded to drop the truck at Jeffs, to await Mikes coming to pick it up on Wednesday of this coming week.
In the end I've learned that Autotune will get you where you want, but is ultimately more usefull as a tool for organizing data than it is as a tool to create new VE tables. By nature it is very exact, and by nature the VE table isn't, as it is always interpolating between cells. Once I had that figured out, and learned that a smooth graph was a happy graph, all is well.
I'll post some screen shots for examples when I get home tonight, as well as some more thoughts on the entire setup. Again I have to give a huge thanks to Mike Hardman on all this. His trust in me to not completely fork up his truck is unparralleled. Jeff and Jeremy were also big helps in the theory of tuning, and what AFR to run, and things of that nature. Although being the team that put a stock turbo into the 11's I'd certainly think they'd know what they are doing.
The build:
Forged pistons and rods with splayed 4bolt mains
Vortec heads, basically stock with newer (03 and up) roller valvetrain
Upgraded cam (412 I think)
Port matched, and converted stock intake
50lb injectors
PT52 from a buick
RPM A2A intercooler
Stock tranny, and convertor
<--Word through teh "vine" is 80E, and 3k stall are coming soonCurrently RWD only <--Jeff and Jeremy broke the propshaft a few weeks ago....those bastages
Equipment:
New NGK wideband
Ostrich
USB ALDL cable
TunerProRT with latest Code59 ADS, and XDF files
Autotune spreadsheet developed by Code59 guru's
Acer Aspire Laptop (1.3Ghz Turion, 1GB ram, 80Gb HD)
The tuner : (thats me
)26 year old Mechanical Engineer
I had a good understanding of the logic in the computer, but had VERY VERY little practice changing values, and doing any hands on tuning. Having watched it a couple times, I was confident I could pick it up pretty quick, but had never actually "changed a table" before. I was (still am) a newbie at best when I started.
The Story
When I picked the truck up, it had been setup by Jeff Scott to run on the Code59. He and the other Code59 guys have done a good job of getting that tested, and out and running. It seemed to work flawlessly, and as expected. The tune that was in it was just enough to make it driveable. There were a ton of lean spots, and trying to drive it around town was a study in frustration. It popped, and missed, and did lots of bad things in general. The fan was wired to come on from the IC pump relay, but wasn't working. The TC was locking at like 30mph, and all kinds of goofy crap. Tip in stumble that was harsh enough to make me almost hit my face on the steering wheel once......it was rough....but ran. Ironically cruise was pretty close on the expressway.
First challenge was to get TunerProRT up and working. I had an older release that was crashing anytime I tried to copy info from it, and had a few other minor issues with my version of Excell conflicting with the Autotune spreadsheet, so that took me a day or so to work out, and get going. Once I got the setup though it seemed to work OK. One hint I'd like to pass along, is ALWAYS tell TunerProRT to stop monitoring BEFORE you yank the ALDL cable from the USB port. If not it will hang, and cause all kinds of crashing in tunerpro issues.....I didn't figure this out till Sunday afternoon, but it's fitting in this section I think.
I started picking the problems apart one by one, and attacking each one seperately.
First on the list was the fan. It was set to come on at all times. Chip was set at like 19*c upper, and lower threshold. I did some searching, and posting, and couldn't get a great answer, so I set ALL LOW enables to 160, and all HIGH enables to 170....This provided the desired results, so I moved on to the lean spots.
I knew the VE table needed work. I'm not experienced enough to know what was a "logical" value on the table and what wasn't, so I proceeded to log a ton of data, and run an Autotune after each log. This was moving me in the right direction, but slowly (and safely mind you). After about 4 days of this, and only showing a few signs of good progress, I decided Saturday morning to hand smooth the VE graph with TunerPro's graph feature. I spent the better part of an hour smoothing the table down. This provided HUGE, I mean HUGE gains in driveability. It was also a tad rich though.
On to more datalogging. I drove around a good deal on Saturday, and did a ton more logging. At this point I started using AutoTune as a reccomendation moreso than a bible. If it suggested that one or two cells needed a big decrease, I would take that, implement it in the table, then re-smooth. This seems to be working good, and continued for a few more drives. 95% of this was driveability. Boost would come later I was told,and the truck was a bit rich under boost, and not knocking too bad, so I left that till later. After a bunch more logging and driving I was close.
I also noticed that the torque convertor wasn't locking normally. Started looking around throughthe chip, and talked with Jeff some, and found there was a setting in the chip for min temp for TCC lockup.....Dropped that down a bit, and all was well. I also raised the lock speed to about 55 or so, and that seemed to make a good difference as well around town. It wasn't locking up, and lugging the motor like it used to, making it alot easier to drive. It was nice to be seeing changes made, and results moving accordingly.
Yesterday I took the truck up to Jeremys place to get a few otehr issues sorted out (efan wiring cleaned up, battery tie down fixed, etc). While there I had Jeremy go for a ride with me. He noticed while under boost it was knocking more than I could see whilst driving so we started in on the timing table. Started pulling timing (it was running like 27 degrees at WOT and 15psi !!!!) back to a more acceptable level. This livened up the truck a good bit, and made it feel a ton better. Alsonoticed that it was a bit lean according to normal Sy/Ty standards (near 11.5:1 at WOT). Mike wants to run it a bit leaner, but I thought that was a safe AFR at 15psi, and if he wants to push more I'll be glad to help when he is around more.
Leaving Jeremys after some more tuning help from him, I forgot to upload the new bin I created at his shop, so I pulled over did that and it improved a bit more. Taking a few more laps around Southern Indiana proved to be helpfull. I was finding that I could spot a trouble area while driving, and glance at the screen and see where it was in the table (thanks to the bubble in TunerPro), pull off to a safe spot off the road, and change that area the direction it needed to go by 5% or so.....This created a "spike" in the graph, and I could go in and change/smoth the graph, and get some decent results....I proceeded to drop the truck at Jeffs, to await Mikes coming to pick it up on Wednesday of this coming week.
In the end I've learned that Autotune will get you where you want, but is ultimately more usefull as a tool for organizing data than it is as a tool to create new VE tables. By nature it is very exact, and by nature the VE table isn't, as it is always interpolating between cells. Once I had that figured out, and learned that a smooth graph was a happy graph, all is well.
I'll post some screen shots for examples when I get home tonight, as well as some more thoughts on the entire setup. Again I have to give a huge thanks to Mike Hardman on all this. His trust in me to not completely fork up his truck is unparralleled. Jeff and Jeremy were also big helps in the theory of tuning, and what AFR to run, and things of that nature. Although being the team that put a stock turbo into the 11's I'd certainly think they'd know what they are doing.
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