Practical Diesel Tuning: 5. Confirm Tune on the Road
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5. Confirm Tune on the Road
01.54
| 00:00 | - With our calibration now complete on the dyno, I'm a big advocate where possible of confirming the tune on the road. |
| 00:05 | While the dyno is a great place to perform your tuning, it's incredibly difficult to accurately replicate the airflow and conditions we're likely to see with the truck out on the road at speed. |
| 00:14 | Since this is where the truck is going to spend most of its time, I always like to test and confirm that EGT is safe and the engine is smooth and responsive to drive. |
| 00:22 | It's not uncommon that we may need to make minor adjustments to the boost or fuel delivery when we test out on the road. |
| 00:28 | Or that we may find that the engine seems to create more or less exhaust gas temperature than we saw on the dyno. |
| 00:33 | This is where the datalogger really becomes valuable and we can scan the ECU while driving to see what is happening. |
| 00:39 | In particular, I like to datalog the engine performance in three different areas. |
| 00:43 | First I will scan the engine under normal cruising conditions at both highway speed and around town. |
| 00:50 | Here I'm looking specifically how much fuel is being delivered in respect to our fuel economy aims, this also needs to be considered alongside the exhaust gas temperature. |
| 00:58 | Next I'll look at the wide open throttle performance. |
| 01:00 | And specifically I want to look at how the engine responds under high load and sustained high RPM that we would expect under heavy abuse. |
| 01:07 | If we're dealing with a commercial truck or pickup that's expected to regularly tow heavy loads, then this is how we'd ideally like to test it. |
| 01:14 | This is essentially the worse case scenario for abuse for the engine and it's not going to encounter anything worse than this. |
| 01:20 | If everything checks out here, we can be confident in our tune. |
| 01:23 | Here we're looking at the exhaust gas temperature to make sure it's not getting out of control under sustained heavy load. |
| 01:29 | We should also be taking note of the air/fuel ratio if available and checking how well the boost pressure is tracking to target. |
| 01:35 | Lastly, I'll also check the engine performance under transient conditions such as fast throttle applications and gear changes for manual transmissions. |
| 01:43 | Here we're looking for smooth response to throttle input, no over boosting. |
| 01:47 | If any problems are noticed, we can address them and test again. |
