×

Sale ends todayGet 30% off any course (excluding packages)

Ends in --- --- ---

Practical Reflash Tuning: Step 3: Configure Base Tune File

Watch This Course

$229 USD

-OR-
Or 8 easy payments of only $28.63 Instant access. Easy checkout. No fees. Learn more
Course Access for Life
60 day money back guarantee

Step 3: Configure Base Tune File

31.29

00:00 - Now as we found out in the last step, we have got some relatively major modifications to this engine.
00:07 So we can't simply get started on the dyno straight away with some base pulse.
00:11 We have some work to do in our ROM file to set this particular ECU up to suit forced induction and we need to got through that particular process now.
00:22 Now I'm not going to be going through every step of this process.
00:27 EcuTek, are kind enough to offer some example files for forced induction engines, which we can utilize and simply compare between your base, naturally aspirated file and the example forced induction files.
00:43 And copy across any required changes.
00:46 So I'm not going to go through every step of this process.
00:49 However, we will look at the key aspects that we need to cover.
00:53 And look at how those changes can be made.
00:57 So let's start by opening our base file.
01:00 And we can do that by going to File, Recent ROMS.
01:04 And I'm going to be opening this file here, which I've saved as Bullet Supercharger.
01:09 I've given the identifier of the vehicle's registration plate, and I've called it base.
01:16 Now, there's a variety of way that we can view the maps inside the EcuTek software.
01:23 We can click on this little selection here and open up the tree for all maps.
01:29 However, this in itself isn't particularly useful.
01:33 It's going to simply list every map available, in the ECU, in alphabetical order.
01:39 Understandably, there are a lot of maps and that's not going to make it particularly easy to find what you're looking for.
01:46 I find the easiest way, is to click on the maps by function and this will open up a menu structure that breaks up the maps based on particular functions so, this way we can click on a particular function that we're interested in and we will see the maps relating to that particular function.
02:05 So for example, if we click on Cam Timing and we click on Intake, and then we have available our particular map for that function.
02:16 Okay, let's have a look at what we actually need to change.
02:20 And we're going to go through this in order.
02:23 I'm going to start by looking at rescaling some of our maps so that they'll be suitable for forced induction.
02:32 Let's start that by going to our fueling and we're going to be looking at our fuel map one.
02:40 So, Fuel Map Mode 1, this is the base fuel map and this is the air/fuel ratio target versus load and RPM.
02:49 You can see that we have four modes here, now this is because I have installed the RaceROM feature pack on this particular file.
02:59 And this gives us the ability to have four separate fuel maps, that we can switch between as we require.
03:07 If we're not running the RaceROM features, then we would only have Mode 1.
03:12 So you can see on the right hand side, we've got our fuel map opened up and the important point here is to look at our Engine Load axis.
03:21 Which we could see up here.
03:23 And we also have our engine RPM axis.
03:27 Now I've already made some changes to this particular file.
03:32 In a stock ROM, we're only going to be able to read out to around about 1.4 grams per revolution.
03:39 That's as far as the load axis is scaled on a factory, naturally aspirated ROM.
03:47 You can see here, we've increased that all the way up to 2.3 grams per revolution.
03:53 And that's going to allow us to work in the positive forced induction pressures that we're going to see with our super charger.
04:02 Now if we open a comparison ROM, we'll be able to see exactly what the stock ROM file looks like, in that respect.
04:10 And I'm going to open up the same map for a naturally aspirated ROM file here.
04:18 And we can see, if I just drag this down, and we can compare the two you can see as I said, our maximum load on this particular ROM is only 1.4 grams per revolution.
04:33 So we've extended this out, to 2.3.
04:35 How far we need to go is going to depend entirely on how must boost pressure we're expecting to run.
04:42 I'm quite comfortable and familiar with tuning on the Sprintex Supercharger.
04:47 I know that 2.3 is going to give me some headroom to work with.
04:51 We'll close down our stock ROM file again.
04:54 And the other change I'm going to make here, is I'm going to extend our RPM scaling a little bit.
05:01 You can see at the moment that the stock ROM files, RPM scaling, moves out to 7400 RPM, which actually coincides with the stock rev limit.
05:11 Now it's not uncommon for us to want to raise that stock rev limit slightly and we always want to be able to work within our maps.
05:19 So, in this case, what I'm going to do, is select the 7400 RPM zone.
05:25 And by holding down control and pressing F, that will allow me to enter a new value.
05:30 In this case I'm going to extend to 7800 RPM.
05:34 Now, we want to try and keep a nice consistent change in our break point so what I'm going to do here, is change the 7200 RPM break point and I'm going to set that to 7400.
05:49 Press enter, and that change is made.
05:51 Now with the EcuTek software package, these changes aren't actually made until we close down this particular map and, the software will prompt us to ask us if we want to save that particular change.
06:06 We'll look at that in a second.
06:07 But first let's look at the numbers in this particular map.
06:11 Our AFR targets.
06:13 Now you can see at the moment I've set this purposely quite rich.
06:17 You can see that, in the boosted areas, particularly, I'm expected to be running around about 1.7 to 1.8 grams per revolution peak.
06:25 You can see that our values are sitting around 10.5, 10.7.
06:30 10.8 to one.
06:31 Now I'm just simply putting some values in the air that are safely rich.
06:36 And we can start working on those once we've got the engine running.
06:40 We don't need to have this AFR target map completely dialed in before we get started tuning.
06:48 Okay, the other thing we can do, if we've got our four maps operational as you can see here for our RaceROM option.
06:57 I generally tend to start by copying this Base Map here across to the other fuel maps as well.
07:06 We can do that by pressing Control + alt + C to copy the entire map and then if we open the other maps we can press Control + alt + V and you can see as I do that, the axis has been changed to suit the change I made to our base table.
07:27 At this particular point everything else in that map is the same so we haven't seen any changes to the actual AFR target.
07:35 And when I close that, you can see it prompts us here to confirm that we want to save those changes.
07:41 And I'm going to press yes.
07:43 So I'm going to continue and make that change to the other two maps as well.
07:49 And we'll save those changes.
07:51 Now last one here, and we'll save that as well.
07:57 Okay, so now we've got our air/fuel ratio targets altered, and we've changed our scaling to suit our forced induction application.
08:07 That takes care of our air fuel ratio or our open loop fuel tables.
08:11 We can move on and have look at our ignition tables as well.
08:14 So let's do that now.
08:16 I'll close down our fueling tab and we'll bring up Ignition Timing.
08:20 And before we move into these ignition tables, it's important to understand how the Ignition Timing control works in the Toyota 86 ECU because it is a little bit unusual.
08:34 Rather than a high octane and a low octane ignition table, which we may be used to.
08:39 We have what's known as a base Ignition Timing table and then we have an Ignition Advance table.
08:46 And let's have a look at those now.
08:48 So here is our base ignition tables, and we actually have two of them.
08:54 We have our ignition Base Map VVT Off, which is for when the variable valve timing is not functional.
09:02 Generally that's just after an engine startup and we should, other than if there's an issue with the system, we should always be running with the VVT on.
09:11 So our ignition Base Map VVT on, Mode 1, is our base ignition table.
09:18 Now as you can see, I've made the same changes here to our Engine Load axis.
09:24 We're scaled out to 2.25 grams per revolution, and I've also made the same changes here to our RPM axis as well, so we're scaled to make sure that we're always going to be operating within this table.
09:38 Now, again because we're going to be operating in positive boost, we know that we're going to need to retard the timing over what the engine saw naturally, aspirated.
09:49 And again, I'm expecting the engine to be running out in this region, when we are under wide open throttle operation.
09:57 What I've done is, I've preempted the fact we're going to need to retard the timing by doing that, in the map, I've removed some ignition timing from this table before we've started.
10:09 So this particular table is our base timing.
10:12 This is the minimum timing that the engine will run and this table needs to be tuned to make sure that no knock is occurring when the engine's running.
10:23 Now this table works in conjunction with our Ignition Advance table.
10:29 So this particular table, our Ignition Advance table defines, how much ignition timing the ECU is allowed to add over and above our base ignition table.
10:42 So you can see that, Ignition Advance table, particularly in the main area of operation, I've allowed it to add up to six degrees of additional advance.
10:53 You'll also notice if we compare this to, a stock ROM, I've smoothed the Ignition Advance table quite dramatically.
11:02 What we find in a stock ROM is that the Ignition Advance table is quite erratic.
11:07 And generally I find that when we're running the car on the dyno, we also see the same behavior in our overall ignition and this tends to make the engine a little bit erratic in terms of its torque production on the dyno.
11:22 When I'm tuning one of these engines, I like to smooth out the Ignition Advance table, so I have a better idea what the overall ignition timing is going to be.
11:34 So these two tables work in conjunction and it's important to understand their interaction.
11:40 So our base table here, this is the minimum amount of timing the engine with run, or base timing.
11:47 And then, based on the feedback from the knock control system, the ECU can add up to a maximum of, in this case, six degrees at low RPM and high load.
12:00 You can see that as we move up to high RPM and high load, I've reduced the amount of advance that's allowed down to about five degrees.
12:09 Now how the ECU decides how much of this Ignition Advance table to add, is based on an aspect or a parameter, known as the Ignition Advance Multiplier, or IAM for short.
12:23 So the Ignition Advance Multiplier is a direct result of the knock control strategy in the ECU.
12:31 How much knock is being detected by the ECU.
12:35 The IAM is a number that varies between zero and 1.0.
12:41 If the IAM is sitting at zero, what it means is that the actual ignition timing being delivered, will be solely the numbers from this base table.
12:51 If on the other hand, the Ignition Advance Multiplier is 1.0, then that means that the actual ignition timing will be the base table plus all of the Ignition Advance table.
13:04 So the IAM number, the Ignition Advance Multiplier, will vary based on the feedback from the knock control system.
13:12 If we want to see the effect on our total ignition timing that the engine will be delivered, we can click on Ignition View, here.
13:22 And what we can do is, click on Show Effective Ignition View.
13:26 So this table now, will show the effective ignition timing that the engine will receive, and we can move the little slider here, to adjust our IAM.
13:40 So let's have a look at that now.
13:42 So if we look at one particular point in the table, let's look at 5600 RPM and 1.7 grams per revolution.
13:52 So if our IAM is zero, which we've got right now, remember we'll be taking the numbers straight from the base table and you can see that right now, we have 13.5 degrees of Ignition Advance.
14:06 Now if I move that slider all the way up to 1.0, you can see that now, all of the Ignition Advance table has been added in, and now, our Ignition Advance, delivered to the engine will be 19.2 degrees.
14:22 So it's very important to understand the interaction of these tables and how they work, 'cause they can have a dramatic effect on the overall Ignition Advance that the engine is actually receiving.
14:36 A little bit later, we're going to talk about how to use the logger to decide on what the knock control system is doing and whether or not the engine is knocking.
14:46 Because again that interaction is quite advanced.
14:50 Okay, so we have now set up our ignition tables.
14:53 I'm going to move back to our maps section.
14:56 And again, once I've done this, I would tend to simply copy the advance table, our Mode 1 Advance table into the other tables, Mode 2, 3, and 4.
15:09 Generally as well, I set the Base Map VVT on Mode 1, this is the normal map that we would expect to run.
15:17 I would also copy this to VVT off as well as our Modes 2, 3, and 4.
15:24 This just ensures that if we end up operating on a different map for any reason, without being aware of it, we're going to have identical numbers.
15:33 Okay, so we've got those two tables set up now.
15:36 Let's move on and we'll look at the next parameter we need to adjust.
15:41 The next table we're going to have a look at in Toyota 86, is our port injection to direct injection ratio.
15:49 So this is how much of the port injection is being used at any particular time.
15:55 Now, in this particular situation where we're running the Sprintex Supercharger kit, it doesn't actually put a lot of stress on the fuel system, and we don't need to change this.
16:07 However, if we were running more boost pressure, more airflow, we would need to look at some changes here.
16:13 So if we move down to Injection Control.
16:15 And I'll just slide down so we can see what we have available.
16:19 We have our Fuel Injection Ratio Port to Direct.
16:22 And we actually have three tables here, #1, #2, and #3 for cold, warm and hot.
16:28 Now as per the factory configuration, these are all set the same.
16:34 And if we're making any changes, to these, unless we had a very good reason to, I would retain exactly the same setup as well.
16:42 Now, the important area here is, in our high RPM, above 5200 RPM and 1.2 grams per revolution.
16:50 You can see we have a value of 20.3.
16:53 So remember, this is the factory DI/PI ratio table.
16:57 I haven't changed anything yet.
16:59 What this means, is that we are going to be using 20% port injector above 5200 RPM.
17:07 And in this case, above 0.9 grams per revolution.
17:12 Now the key here, is when we actually start running the power on the dyno, we want to watch the injector duty cycle.
17:20 And we want to be watching the port injector, sorry the direct injector, millisecond pulse width.
17:27 With direct injection it's quite unique in that we have a very limited window across which we can inject fuel.
17:34 And that really begins around the start of the intake stroke and it ends just before the ignition event occurs.
17:44 So, we really have a little bit under 50% of the complete engine cycle available to inject fuel.
17:52 For the port injector on the other hand, we can literally have the injector open 100% of the time and it's not going to be necessarily detrimental.
18:00 When the intake valves are closed, the fuel simply will pool in the port behind the intake valve waiting for the next intake stroke to occur.
18:09 Now as I said, for this particular combination for our Sprintex Supercharger, I haven't found the need to vary this number above 20%.
18:20 If we were increasing the boost pressure, or perhaps, moving more air with a larger supercharger or a turbocharger, we might well need to increase this value to bias us more towards our port injectors.
18:34 And what we're looking for here is two things.
18:36 We obviously want to watch the port injector duty cycle and ideally we want to see that sitting below 90% maximum.
18:44 At the same time we're wanting to watch the direct injector, millisecond pulse width and my rule of thumb for these engines is to try and keep the injector pulse width for the direct injectors at around about six milliseconds peak.
19:00 So we don't need to make any changes to this particular table.
19:03 It's just important to know that if we're running more boost and expecting more power, we may well need to adjust this.
19:11 And again, any changes I'd make in the cold table, I would simply copy and paste into the warm and the hot table's just to keep them all the same.
19:20 Alright, let's move on now.
19:22 One of the really important aspects that we discussed when we were looking at the combination that's on this engine, the supercharger.
19:30 Is that we may well need to revise any load limits that are placed on the factory ECU.
19:36 This is really typical when we're adding force induction to a naturally aspirated engine and the Toyota FA20 engine is no different.
19:46 So let's close down our Ignition Timing and our Injection Control.
19:50 And we're going to have a look at our Engine Load limits.
19:54 So we can find that under the Engine Load tab here.
19:57 And there's a couple of parameters that we can adjust.
20:01 You can see here in the main body, we have Engine Load Limiter #1 and Engine Load Limiter #2.
20:07 Because I'm running the RaceROM pack here, we also have a second option available which is our Limiters tab, and this gives us our Engine Load limit RaceROM.
20:20 Now if we open up this map, as well as our Engine Load Limiter #1 and #2, you can see that what I've done here is I've maxed out all of these values, so that we will never be anywhere near these load limits.
20:37 This makes sure that the engine can correctly read the air flow over and above the factory naturally aspirated limits.
20:47 And this is a really common place that people make mistakes when they're adding forced induction to these engines.
20:53 They don't realize that these load limiters, need to be reconfigured, so really important and if you find that when you start running into positive boost pressure, the engine is moving lean, then it's likely that you've overlooked one of these load limit tables.
21:09 Okay, along with the load limit table, we also need to look at the way the port injection fuel is controlled.
21:18 So this needs to be modified when we're adding forced induction to the FA20 engine.
21:24 So let's have a look at that now.
21:27 If we move down to Injection Control here, and at the bottom you can see we have Port Injector Manifold Relative Pressure Comp.
21:36 If we open this up, I've already modified this table, but let's open a stock ROM file so we can see exactly what the stock map for that particular function looks likes, so you'll be able to see the comparison, and here's our stock map.
21:56 I'll just open this up a little bit larger so we can see it.
22:00 So obviously with naturally aspirated engine, we're never expecting to see positive pressure.
22:07 And you can see that this particular table, this compensation table has values of 1.0 into the positive pressure values.
22:17 So what that's going to mean is as we move into positive pressure, we're going to find that the engine begins moving leaner.
22:24 Which is obviously not what we want.
22:26 You can see here, graphically the step where this flat lines at 1.0.
22:33 So what we've done here, is we have just extrapolated the shape of this curve and we've moved it so it retains a consistent shape, as we move into positive pressure.
22:45 So again, this is another really common table, that tuner's overlook when they're setting up a Toyota 86 for forced induction and you will find if you don't do this, that the engine will move leaner than your targets.
23:00 Okay, let's carry on, and we'll look at our next aspect.
23:03 A unique aspect when we're running the stock map sensor on a supercharged or turbocharged engine is we can get into a problem if the MAF sensor is deemed to be faulty by the ECU.
23:15 And what it will do is momentarily revert to a load signal generated by the map sensor.
23:22 Now in this case, what we would end up with is a load signal that's much lower than the actual load the engine seeing.
23:29 This would result in overly advanced ignition timing, and it would also result in an air/fuel ratio that's too lean.
23:37 So we need to address that.
23:39 So if we move into our Engine Load tab and we have our MAF Failsafe Load Calculation Multiplayer.
23:49 Now, if you click on the help button, it's going to give you a little bit of information about this particular function and it tells you what is does.
23:58 You can also see that is actually tells you here to set this multiplayer to 0.004, on the forced induction cars that are using a standard map sensor.
24:11 So that's exactly what we're going to do.
24:13 If I press Control + F to fill and enter 0.004, that new value will be locked in.
24:21 And when I close, the ECU will ask me if I want to lock in that change, or save that change and I'm going to press Yes.
24:31 The other thing we're going to do in conjunction with our MAF Failsafe Load Calculation Multiplayer, is we're going to raise the maximum voltage limit for our map sensor.
24:42 So we can find, that.
24:44 I'll just close down our Injection Control and our Engine Load.
24:47 We can find that in our DTC Limits and what I'm going to do, is go down to Map Sensor Voltage Max, and at the moment you can see that's set to 4.85, that's a voltage we can expect to exceed in this situation.
25:04 So what I'm going to do is I'm going to set that to 4.99 volts.
25:09 Okay so that takes care of that situation making sure that we're not going to have any problems with a falsely, false low load signal being generated in that situation.
25:23 Let's carry on now.
25:25 The next thing we're going to discuss is, our cam timing, so this particular engine runs quad variable cam timing, or four variable position cam shafts, so we control the intake and exhaust cam positions independently.
25:42 And that can be done through these particular tables in here.
25:46 So for this particular demonstration, I'm not going to be looking at the cam shaft position tuning.
25:54 We're going to be focusing solely on the fuel and ignition delivery.
25:58 It's enough right now to simple know that these cam target tables exist and we can alter these the same way we would for any engine.
26:06 We would simply make a tuning change to our cam target, run the engine on the dyno and then see if the result of that change was positive or negative and that's going to help guide us in the right direction for optimizing these cam timing tables.
26:22 So as I said, for right now, we're not going to discuss these further.
26:26 Now I want to look at our Ignition Advance Multiplier, which we're going to find under our Learning sub-menu.
26:35 And the Ignition Advance Multiplier, as I mentioned, this defines how much of the Ignition Advance map can be added over and above our ignition base timing.
26:46 So our Ignition Advance Multiplier remember, is a value between zero and one.
26:52 Every time we start the car, or we re-flash the car, we're going to end up reverting to our Ignition Advance Multiplier, initial setting.
27:02 Which is right here.
27:04 And from stock this is set to 0.7.
27:07 And what I'm going to do, to both speed up my tuning as well as make the car more responsive initially, is I'm going to start with that value set to 1.0.
27:18 So by default this is going to mean that the ignition advance will be using all of the Ignition Advance tables.
27:25 It's all going to be added in over and above our Base Ignition Timing table.
27:30 It's important to understand, when we're actually tuning the engine, we're obviously optimizing the particular tune to suit our car, the fuel we're running on and any modifications performed to the engine.
27:42 We are always going to be monitoring to make sure that knock isn't occurring.
27:47 This should result if we're doing our job properly in a tune that's much more accurate for our particular car, than what the factory tune is going to be.
27:56 Remember, the factory tune needs to cope with numerous types of fuel and different atmospheric conditions.
28:04 That's why the Ignition Advance Multiplier is a little bit more conservative from the stock tune.
28:11 So we're going to set that to 1.0.
28:14 So we're getting fairly close now to a point where we can actually flash this map into our ECU.
28:21 Flash this ROM file into our ECU and start tuning.
28:25 And one more change that I am going to make, and this is a pet hate of mine, with the Toyota 86, is the way the factory rev limiter functions, so I'm going to take this opportunity to improve the rev limiter functionality.
28:40 And let's have a look at that now.
28:42 If we open up the Limiters menu and we have a variety of limiter's available, so, let's open all of our Rev Limit functions here.
28:54 I've already made the changes necessary and you can see that, what I've done is, I've set the Rev Limit at 7600 RPM, so remember that in stock form, the rev limit is 7400.
29:07 So I've raised the rev limit by 200 RPM.
29:10 Now in order to see how this differs from a stock ROM, let's open up our factory, our factory file and we'll have a look at the rev limiter set up in that particular file.
29:24 So open, our two rev limits now, and you can see that in the stock ROM file, we have our rev limit set to 7400 RPM, and our rev limit to 7450 RPM.
29:40 The important point to note here though is the rev limit isn't disabled until the RPM drops below 7200.
29:46 So what this is called is historices, so the RPM needs to drop by a full 200 RPM before the fuel cut will be removed and the engine will run again.
29:57 So this has the tendency to make the engine feel like the key's just simply being shut off when we touch the rev limit.
30:04 This can make the car very difficult to control on a race track because if we hit the rev limit, it's simply like someone shut off the key and it's very hard to maintain engine power.
30:15 So you can see we've done two things here, first of all, we've set the rev limit a little bit higher, we've raised the rev limit by 200 RPM to 7600.
30:24 That's been well proven that this is still nice and safe and quite reliable for these engines.
30:29 Another thing I've done, is I've reduced the historices down to 50 RPM, so it's much less likely for the engine to lose complete power.
30:39 So it's going to make the engine a lot easier to control and drive on that rev limit.
30:44 Okay so we've got all of our changes made, now to, our ROM file and we've got something that's set up that should be safe to run.
30:53 It should result in ignition timing that's safely retarded, so well below MBT and hopefully well below our knock threshold and as you saw when I was setting up the air/fuel ratio targets, I've purposely chosen a rich air/fuel ratio target so we can start rich and start leaning out towards our target air/fuel ratio.
31:16 So the last step here, is to save our ROM file and now we're ready to flash this ROM into the ECU and actually start running it.

We usually reply within 12hrs (often sooner)

Need Help?

Need help choosing a course?

Experiencing website difficulties?

Or need to contact us for any other reason?