eHoward wrote:Will, the AEM offers autotune with a wideband if you have one. I hear autronic does sophisticated self-tuning also. I have seen the AEM do it and it's impressive.
I think you are oversimplifiying things. What you are talking about doing is far from a FULL tune. Furthermore, WOT is pretty much the biggest concern for someone like shaun.
And you don't mention monitoring exhaust gas temps? What about wide 02 numbers? Spark plugs need to be checked after each run. And each of thier relationships to fuel and spark maps.
About shitty aftermarket units, I've been there. Electromotive Tec 2 = Garbage. Haltech experience was A-OK.
Hey, I will admit my use of OEM computers has been fine. We used the Power Comanader in 2003 which is a piggy back computer for the formula car and it worked great. I also used a hacked 85GT ECM (i know you know this) with miller woods code scaled for bigger injectors and it didn't kill anything.
I'm sorry, but I've seen too many engines break. That's what it comes down to. To me, this isn't about the hardware, but who is tuning it. And I know of exactly zero dyno operators/tuners that specialize in tunercat.
I'm sure it is impressive to see a computer tune itself... That would take the human out of the loop and save a whole lot of time and mental interpolation.
What I'm talking about is the OEM computer giving you valid tuning info based on the feedback of a narrow band sensor. It won't tune itself... mostly because it can't write to program memory... you still have to make the changes to the map manually, but to get the same information from a narrow band as the aftermarket systems do from a wide band is pretty sophisticated.
I know I'm not talking about a full tune. I'm just talking about getting the VE maps right. There are timing maps, idle parameters, AE parameters, PE parameters....
You've got to mess with ALL of it when doing a full tune... It's just that you've got somewhere to start when working from a factory calibration. That's why EGT monitoring isn't an absolute must.
Yes, plugs ought to be read when fine-tuning the engine.
WOT is nice, but for a car to drive, part throttle is WAY more important. For instance, with the 275 chip a 300 HP Northstar has a nasty idle surge. I spent a lot more time hating that idle surge than I did with my foot on the floor...
I think that the Haltech is crap. Part of that may just be lack of familiarity with it. A local guy in P'cola screwed around with an FD3 with Haltech and took weeks fixing a problem that would have been all too obvious with an OEM computer. There was an intermittent wiring fault in his CTS circuit... the kind of thing that would have popped a trouble code and triggered a compensation routine on an OEM computer... only way to tell on the Haltech was to notice that the coolant temp was way off... Which was difficult because the diagnostic program couldnt' communicate with the ECM most of the time... and all this while the car was
undriveable.
As whipped said... the OEM computers are immensely more sophisticated than aftermarket units...
No, most dyno operators don't know how to use specific DIY software... that's 'cause they never see it because the DIY guys are doing just that... doing it themselves...