Practical Standalone Tuning: Step 10: Confirming the Tune on the Road/Track

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Step 10: Confirming the Tune on the Road/Track

20.28

00:00	Right, we're finally at the last step of our process, we've got the car to Highlands Motorsport Park, we're going to head out on track and essentially confirm everything that we saw on the dyno still is correct out in the real world.
00:12	Now, we're going to break this down into two separate tests.
00:15	First of all, we're going to head out on track and we're going to spend some time, maybe a lap or two, just driving around at sort of normal road car speeds and I'm going to be gathering some data, so we can help make sure that all of the fuelling and the cruise, part throttle areas of the map, essentially what we did in steady state, everything there checks out.
00:33	Once we've done that we're going to come back in, we'll have a look at some data, see what changes, if any are required and if we do make some changes we'll head back out and just confirm those changes have had the effect we want.
00:44	Once we've got the cruise, part throttle areas of the map dialled in nicely, we're going to confirm everything under wide open throttle conditions.
00:51	So, we're essentially going to be replicating the ramp runs that we were doing on our dyno at full power.
00:57	For both of these tests we need to be a little bit mindful about the way we drive the car as well as the condition of the car before we get started.
01:05	For the condition of the car, what I'm talking about here is heat soak, so right now, I'm sitting here in the pits and I'm talking with the engine running, so there's no, airflow through the engine bay and this can influence the results, the heat soak can really upset our results.
01:18	So, we want to make sure that before we start gathering data, the engine is under normal operating conditions and we get rid of all that heat soak.
01:24	This just requires a powerful lap or, so at road car speeds, getting that airflow through the engine bay, getting everything down to normal operating temperatures before we start gathering our data.
01:34	Likewise the way we drive the car, particularly for our first test here, we want to be careful about our throttle inputs and be nice and smooth, so that we're not influencing our results with transient enrichment and transient alignment, so otherwise our results can again be skewed.
01:51	Also worth just talking a little bit about how we are going to gather this data.
01:54	So, there's a few ways we can do this, we can obviously take a datalog, but when we're looking for a lot of data across our cruise areas, it's difficult to really take all that information from a large datalog file.
02:07	There are other ways of processing this, but what I'm actually going to do is use one of Haltech's NSP quick tune functions and this is the trace function.
02:15	So, what we can do, once we're out on track and we've got rid of that heat soak, we can just press the T key.
02:20	What that's going to do is essentially every cell that we drive through, it's going to gather two seconds of data, averaging the lambda data over those two seconds and it's going to basically compare our current lambda plus our closed loop trims because we will be running closed loop for this to the target and then basically it will suggest corrections.
02:39	Once we've gathered all of that data and hit as many cells as we can, we can simply highlight the cells that we want to make changes to and press the R key and that will apply those changes.
02:49	Now, this is typically an iterative process, so we might not get this right in one go but we'll see how that goes once we're out on track.
02:56	For our wide open throttle test we can also use the trace function or we can gather a datalog and I'm going to demonstrate the datalog approach, so that you've got basically, both approaches available for you.
03:10	So, now we know what we're doing, let's head out on the track.
03:13	Alright, we're out on track, we've only just left the pit, so obviously that heat soak is still going to be very apparent.
03:19	However, just glancing across at the closed loop trims while I'm driving here, we're sitting around about between zero and maybe 2% trim, so everything's already looking pretty good, quite happy with that for our first attempt straight off the dyno.
03:33	But let's continue, we'll get rid of that heat soak and then we'll start our trace.
03:38	Alright, we've got rid of our heat soak, I'm happy with the temperatures now, so I'm just going to press the T key and that will start our trace and what I want to do is essentially hit as many of the cells in the cruising area as I can, sort of between maybe about 1500 RPM at the lowest and up to around about 4000 RPM at the highest and we'll be going from very light load, right down to those low vacuum areas that I couldn't really access properly on the dyno, we will be able to do them here on the racetrack or out on the street.
04:05	And we're going to be moving up into sort of the first areas of positive boost as well.
04:10	We're just going to sort of probably come up to maybe six or seven psi of boost and that'll give us a good indication of what everything's looking like.
04:17	And we can glance at the laptop screen and that'll give us a sense of what cells we have covered and which ones we still haven't.
04:24	And we want to spend as much time in each of the cells as we can to get really solid data, remembering that the NSP software will average 2 seconds of value.
04:33	So, we'll continue now, we'll gather as much data as we can and then we'll head back into the pits.
05:24	Alright, we've covered a reasonable amount of the map, the areas that I wanted to deal with, so we'll head back into the pits now and take a look at our data and see what changes are required.
05:34	Alright, looking at our data we can straight away see the cells that I have accessed and pretty much done exactly what we were aiming here.
05:41	Basically, 1500 RPM up to about 4000.
05:45	The cruise areas and transitioning up into boost.
05:48	We can also see that the cells are colour coded, so this gives us an indication of how close we were.
05:54	Anything that's white is right on our target, so we can see that for the majority of this section in here we are white, so that's pretty good, means that we aren't far off our target.
06:04	When we've got a bright blue which we've got right here at idle at the moment, we can see that we are actually pulling almost 14% fuel out there.
06:11	So, a bright blue means that we are too rich, we might have some work to do there in our idle area, but we'll have a look at that shortly.
06:17	And when we have got red cells, this means that we were too lean and the system is adding an additional fuel to get us to our target.
06:27	Fortunately, for us we haven't got any very bright red areas, we've got a few that we can see in here and then also at 4000 RPM.
06:35	Now, just a little bit of a tip with using this, it is as always a case of garbage in, garbage out.
06:41	If we just flash through a cell really quickly, we can get some erroneous data and there will be a case of if we're interpolating as well, we want to try and be in the centre of these cells just like we try to when we're on the dyno.
06:53	Not always possible, but it is a good way of gathering a lot of data quickly which is why I am showing you this.
06:59	What I'm getting at here though is if we have a bit of an outlier in terms of cells, and not that this is a bad one, but it is a bit of an example here, this particular cell at 20 kPa, 3500 RPM, that one's a light pinky colour meaning of course we are a little bit lean, but we can see that directly above and below we are white meaning that we were on our target.
07:19	So, if you've got something that's a complete outlier, I would probably suggest going back and revisiting this site.
07:25	Now, how can we make changes based on this data? Well, we do have a couple of options.
07:29	We can select individual cells, so let's say we want to make a change to this cell here, we press the R key and that will make the change to that cell.
07:39	So, this allows us to be quite specific, avoiding potentially some of those outliers and making sure that we aren't building in some noise into our map.
07:46	In our case everything is looking relatively good, so what I'm going to do is actually just highlight the area that we've just gone through and I'll press the R key, and also while we're doing this we can see out on the graphical side here, graphical map, if it's brought in any weird sort of spikes or troughs, and as we can see here everything is looking reasonably good.
08:06	So, what we can do now is basically repeat that process, head out on the track and see what our trims are looking like.
08:13	Press the T key, that turns our trace back off, we're back to our normal coloured map and we can press the T key once we're back out on track.
08:20	So, I'm going to repeat the process again, won't go through it on camera, but let's go back out on the track, we'll gather the same amount of data again, see whether we've made an improvement and come back and analyse our results.
08:32	Alright, we're back in the pits and let's again have a look at our results.
08:35	So, straight away you can see that we are much closer to the mark, we've got a lot of white cells now in there.
08:40	Still a few outliers though, but I'm quite comfortable with everything, basically, watching the closed loop trims while we were doing that.
08:48	They're never more than plus or minus about 1%, maybe 1.5% at the most and this of course is why we also have closed loop.
08:54	If I'm that close to my target, I'm more than comfortable with this.
08:58	Now, we do have this little outlier down here.
09:01	I'm not going to get too fussy about this because essentially that's at completely closed throttle.
09:07	It's an area that we're probably going to end up with overrun fuel cut enabled anyway.
09:13	So, realistically there's no specific need to make any changes down there, everything in the actual operating area is looking pretty good.
09:20	We are, as you can see, still quite rich here at idle.
09:24	And we can address this, let's just turn our trace mode off now and we can address this just manually here.
09:32	This is something that we do often see and does need a little bit of adjustment once we're off the dyno.
09:37	So, I'm just going to highlight the idle area here and all of the surrounding cells, basically, making sure that the changes I'm making make sense, they're nice and smooth and we'll just use the page down key here and just creep up on our target here, you can see straight away, just with a few percent removed there, we're now sitting at minus 3%.
09:54	I'll leave that as it is for the moment and probably what I'll do actually is just smooth that area as we move through 1000 RPM and come back out of the idle area and start moving.
10:07	So, this is an iterative process, we've seen two or one round of adjustments there and checking again, but of course you can do this as many times as you need until you've got your map basically dialled in, again plus or minus about 1, 1.5%, I'm going to be pretty comfortable with that if we're running closed loop control.
10:24	We're going to head out now and perform our wide open throttle acceleration test.
10:29	And this time I am going to use the logging function, as I mentioned we can use that trace view or trace mode as well and then automatically correct, but I'm going to use the logger and then you've got both options and you can choose your own preference.
10:43	So, the process here again is the same, we'll head out, we've got one section of the track that is nice and straight, long run up to the bridge, I'm going to use that in third gear to go between about 2000 RPM and 7500 RPM our rev limiter.
10:58	We're going to log that, then we're going to come back to the pits and have a look at our data, so let's go ahead and get that done now.
11:03	Alright, so we're coming up to our section of straight, again back into third gear, obviously, during the lap got rid of all of the heat soak.
11:10	So, as we come up to the straight here, I'm just going to make sure that we've got the RPM down, so I can sort of essentially start accelerating from 2000 RPM and we'll just press F6 there to start our logging, get around the corner here and we'll do another pull through to 7500 RPM.
11:41	Alright, we're back in the pits, let's have a look through our data from that first acceleration test and I'm using the playback mode, so I can click through the log file and straight away see where abouts we were accessing in the maps at that point, allowing me to be really pinpoint accurate with my changes.
11:56	The log file itself, we've got our manifold absolute pressure in yellow and the first thing I want to do is just make sure that the maximum manifold pressure we saw, boost pressure we saw is kind of comparable to what we had on the data, quite often that is an area where we will see a difference and in this case, 123, 124 kPa, so we're there or thereabouts, so that means that our data should be comparable for our air fuel ratio as well.
12:20	Now, looking through here, if we sort of go to the point where I first went through to wide open throttle, we can see that we've got this big rich spike.
12:28	This is a transient or acceleration enrichment event and this does need a little bit of work.
12:33	However, we're not going to focus on that within this worked example.
12:38	As I've mentioned already, we do have webinars on aspects such as enrichment if you do want to learn more about that.
12:44	So, from the point everything stabilises here, let's have a look at our measured air fuel ratio, our target air fuel ratio and of course our short term fuel trims.
12:53	So, I'll just click through here, 0.92 on a 0.94 target, not too bad, but probably still some aspect of that acceleration enrichment still active there as well.
13:01	So, looking at this point here, 0.95 on our 0.93 target, I'm not too worried about this because we are, as you can see, only at 20 kPa of positive boost.
13:10	So, very light, low boost, but we can start cleaning some of these things up.
13:14	So, what I'll try and do here is essentially have us in the centre of a cell, so that we're not interpolating with the changes that we're making.
13:22	So, this particular point here we are a little bit rich, so what I'm going to do is highlight the entire column here above at 1500 RPM and we're 0.93 on a 0.94 target, so pretty close, but we are removing 4%.
13:36	So, what I'll do is I'll just creep up on this, I don't need to necessarily make the entire change in one go, so we'll take minus three out of this particular section there.
13:46	OK, let's just click through again and what I'm trying to do here is come through in 500 RPM increments, so it sort of matches our break points here.
13:53	0.95 on a 0.92 target, so we are a little lean however what we can see is we still have some of this short term fuel trim active from our previous site there.
14:03	So, we're actually probably not too bad at this particular point.
14:07	If we add 2% back in here we'd be at about 0.93, so what I'll do here is we'll just add 1% here, I'll only make it at that 20 kPa cell for this particular zone and now we'll come up to our next site at 2500 RPM.
14:24	So, at this point we can see we are a little lean, 0.92 on a 0.87 target.
14:28	We are just transitioning through this and again I'm not too concerned because our boost level is quite low here.
14:34	But let's just add in, maybe let's try 4% for a start here and see how we get on.
14:40	And I'll make that change to these two cells, 40 and 60 kPa because we are transitioning through them, we've got a bit of interpolation going on here.
14:49	And just looking at this as well, no that's looking pretty good actually.
14:53	Just try and make sure that I'm not introducing any kind of big valleys or dips, sorry dips or peaks when I'm doing this, so if I'm creating that I will tend to extrapolate that change out above or below as required.
15:07	Let's carry on though, we'll get through to our next break point which is 3000 RPM of course, and at this point, now we're looking pretty good, I mean 1% there.
15:16	So, let's just make that change, I'm making that change at higher boost settings as well so, we'll add 1% there.
15:24	Moving along to 3500, maybe about 2%, 2% at this particular point, so let's just again make that change, oops we don't probably need to actually go down to 100 kPa for this change, we're pretty squarely in that cell, so we'll add 2% there.
15:43	And let's move through to 4000 RPM, this point, again we're 1% lean, so let's just add in 1% we might as well be fussy, we've got the ability to.
15:54	Just remembering that I am also going to be running closed loop control on this full time, so if I've got a 1% error, I'm not too concerned about that, but for the sake of completeness, let's carry on, so made that change at 4500 RPM, come through to 5000, at this point we're 1% rich, but it is just a little momentary dip if we see what's going on on the log file here, so I'm not actually going to change that, sometimes I like to have another test and see if that was real or repeatable.
16:24	So, let's just leave 5000, we'll come through to 5500, I'm just going to look through here because it seems like we're pretty much consistent, oh no just 5500 RPM.
16:32	So, we'll come back here, again 1%, and I really, at this point, we are splitting here's 6000 RPM, let's carry on and just see.
16:45	Yeah it's pretty much 6000 RPM, I'll add 1% and I'm going to be pretty happy with this.
16:53	For our first test it's really basically matched what we saw on the dyno quite nicely.
16:58	So, we'll close down our log file there, go back to our live view and we'll head back out onto the track now, do one more test and see if that's cleaned up those little errors there.
17:10	Really most of that error though was through the low RPM ramping up onto boost from 1500 RPM, once we're on boost, it's actually pretty good straight out of the box.
17:19	Alright, let's get back out on the track and we'll have another look at our results.
17:24	Alright, coming up to our section of straight here, got into third gear again, got our RPM where I want it to be, we'll press F6 to get our logging started, and we'll do another acceleration test through to 7500 RPM.
17:50	Alright, our acceleration test complete, let's head back to the pits and have a look at our data.
17:54	Alright, let's have a look at our results here and if we start basically from the point that we rolled into full throttle and everything sort of stabilised, 2000 RPM here, we can see that we do still have a bit of work to do here.
18:06	We are 0.98 on a 0.92 target.
18:10	However, you can see we are also pulling 4.4% out here.
18:15	So, realistically we are actually about 0.94, so not as bad as it looks.
18:19	However, this will probably still be as a result of this rich dip here from our transient, so I'm not going to focus too much on this, let's just click a little bit further through and see how things work out once our closed loop kind of works itself out.
18:33	So, at 2500 RPM now you can see we're much closer to the mark, still 2% lean, but again we're transitioning through this area, so rapidly and it's not that critical at 2500 RPM and such low load.
18:46	Let's keep going through and see how we start looking once we get higher in the boost.
18:51	And, so at this point here, 3000 RPM, let's have a look, 0.79 on a 0.78 target.
18:57	We've only just, we haven't actually quite hit full boost.
19:00	3500 RPM, 0.78, bang on our target.
19:04	4000, let's have a look and see what we're looking like there, 0.77 on a 0.78 target.
19:11	4500 RPM, bang on our target again.
19:14	So, you can see how quick and easy it is to use our log file like this to clean up any errors we've got in our air fuel ratio.
19:22	Let's continue to click through here.
19:24	Basically, from what you can see here clearly we are always essentially within about 1% of our target.
19:30	And you will find that there will always be a little bit of variation run to run.
19:35	And when I'm this close to my target here, I'm going to be pretty comfortable with everything, I'm quite happy with that once we're on full boost.
19:42	This area down here as we're ramping up onto boost does definitely need a little bit more refinement, but this is just an iterative process of exactly what you've seen there.
19:53	There's definitely nothing dangerous about it, I'm not concerned, so for the purposes of our worked example, I won't go and continue to do more runs in order to clean that up, but the process is just a repeat of what you've already seen.
20:05	So, at this point we've completed our tune, we've tested everything we saw on the dyno out on the racetrack here and as you've seen, there was the requirement for a few refinements which is pretty typical of what I normally expect to see.
20:19	If you've got any further questions on this worked example, please ask them in the forum and I'll be happy to answer them there.