SCAutos.net

After seeing some of the pictures you've been posting, one of the buildings looked familiar. I realized it was because I've actually been to your shop before for a tuning session, lol. It didn't even dawn on me that your shop was the one we went to when Steve was in town to do what he does best.

My car parked infront of your shop.


Steve working his magic.

I know where that is now, too. I use to pass that place every Saturday last year when I was working for GMC.

Yea that's the old place. Our new place is like 2 times bigger then that one

Good ole Steven Kan... He will be getting a call when it's time to tune the Miata for sure.

Bringing Steve Kan out from Texas to tune the miata?

we did that meet a while back. We were new. I think we had only been open for a few months. If I recall, it was super hot that day.

Since then, we've all but stopped renting out the dyno for tuning. We have a more than competant tuner in house, and prefer to do things that way. But for the RX7's its a little different.

Where have you guys moved to? And yes, the Miata will be a full-blown race car so tuning will be a key component to the build.

off 295, across the road from SunShield. if you know where that is

Check it out.

http://tdcauto.com/us.html

It's practically 5 minutes from the old shop and in a business park.

We understand your concern. We consider tuning to be a key and crucial component of any setup as well. The main component that generally dictates how much time is spent on a setup depends not just on goals and modifications but also on the EMS of choice. Generally standalone ECU's such as AEM EMS, Motec, and Haltch, require the most time. Unless you have tuned maps to work off from, and even then it's pushing it, there is no way you can effectively tune a custom full-blown race car for partial and light throttle conditions simply on the dyno when dealing with standalone ECU's.

A recent and perfect example of this was one of our customers who has a "full-blown" twin charged B16 Civic Hatchback. His EMS of choice was AEM EMS. Tuning WOT conditions was as standard of a process as any other setup. We were able to find more power the the same boost levels and also bring in his a/f ratios to a more linear and acceptable levels for his intened purposes (autocross). 12.2 at 18psi on a twin-charged setup is not safe considering an application such as autocross where the setup maintains high rpms levels for extended periods of times.

This particular customer was tuned by another shop/tuner who's name we won't mention but let's just say he was not able to enjoy driving his car on the road for daily driving. Some of the noticeable symptoms were constant bucking and jerking aggressively during throttle tip in, accel & deccel conditions while cruising. Keep in mind that accel and deccel parameters in AEM EMS, Motec and Haltch break down into a greater array of sub parameters. I noticed that these parameters were of stock values provided by AEM which would of probably worked fine on your average setup but not a setup as involved as this one. His base tune had several tables that were interfering with each other and that was actually the most time consuming part of this particular tune. Keep in mind there are usually a couple dozen parameters and a total of sub tables steming from each parameter which is several dozens in number. To give you an idea, the tables that control WOT conditions is probably 2 or 3 depending how you look at it. So WOT is basically but a small part of tuning a standalone ECU vs non WOT conditions.

In case you are wondering which tables caused these issues, it was several tables interfering with the parameter that specifies at what rpm to activate the injectors under deccel conditions. For the record, this parameter was set to 1700 rpms. There's another parameter that defines what deccel and accel means (below or above "X" load after "X" milliseconds, with "X" throttle position,etc.) and then there's another table that controls sensitivity or sampling rate to throttle input. These parameters had to be adjusted to keep from interfering with one another. This took about 20-30 miles of driving but we got it done. Each setup is different and having both a supercharger and turbo make tuning non WOT conditions that more interesting. Needless to say the customers joy was priceless. He was actually (and understandably) more happy about the driveability aspect of his tune than the extra 40whp we were able to safely extract.

That was the main issue but not the only thing. There was an issue with staring up the car. Remember how I mentioned that the fuel injectors activate below 1700 rpms under deccel conditions? Since technically during warm up, you're not accelerating, if you exceed 1700rpms the injectors would cut off. This made warmups erratic since it was fluctuating between 1600-1730rpms constantly due to conflicting tables "fighting" with each other. The same thing happened even when cranking the car after it was warmed up but it only lasted about 10 seconds... There's a table that tells the ECU at what rpm to idle based on engine coolant temperatures and intake air temperatures which was actually set to 17XX rpms during cold engine temps and this was causing a problem during cold starts by interfering the with 1700 rpm fuel cutoff. We lowered the values in these tables to below 1700rpms so it wouldn't interfere with the fuel cutoff table which in reality it's the "fuel activation below "X" rpm table"as stated earlier.... Well, it fixed it somewhat but there was still another table missing in the equation that was causing a problem even if cranked after the car was warmed up.... You see, there's another table that basically says "add or take away "X" amount of rpm's after "X" seconds of cranking. This table obviously goes down in value as each second passes but the problem was that it was still adding enough rpms to the engine coolant table to once again cause it go over 1700 rpms and again fluctuate with the same irratic idle for several seconds after cranking up the car. We fixed that conflicting table as well by reducing the rpms added for each second after cranking the car. Now the car can be enjoyed as not just a full blown track car but also as a reliable daily driver.

I realize to some, reading this can be confusing. Trust me, I'm not trying to write a book. I simply like to explain with real life examples and be as detailed as possible when discussing specific subjects so that even people who are not familiar with the tuning process can get a better understanding of what's all involved and hopefully learn something from it.