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Practical Standalone Tuning: Step 9: Full Power Tuning

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Step 9: Full Power Tuning

36.23

00:00 - So we're finally ready to go ahead and start making some wide open throttle ramp runs.
00:04 We've gone though our steady state tuning it and this means that at least out to 4500 RPM we know that our tune should be relatively close.
00:14 We're always going to need to make some small adjustments to account for the way the engine operates under that wide open throttle acceleration but we can be confident that we're going to be pretty close to the ball park.
00:26 Before we do start doing our first ramp runs though we're going to make a couple of changes to our fuel and ignition tables with the aim of just further safeguarding our tune, making sure that we're going to be starting from a safely rich and retarded starting point.
00:42 So let's do that now, we've got our ignition table here.
00:46 And what I'm going to do is start by highlighting the two wide open throttle areas of operation, zero kPa and minus 20.
00:56 We know that we don't quite sit in the zero kPa row at wide open throttle with this car so there will be some interpolation occurring down to the minus 20 kPa row.
01:06 I'm just going to take two degrees out as a starting point from our ignition timing.
01:12 We'll jump across to our VE table.
01:14 And what I'm going to do is highlight our two wide open throttle areas of operation there.
01:21 And I'm going to add 5% fuel to that.
01:26 So again this is just in order of trying to make sure that we're safely rich and we've got safe ignition timing before our first run.
01:34 We're on our ramp run screen here and what we're going to do is have a look at our set up.
01:41 If we click on the set up button, we have some parameters here that's going to define our ramp run.
01:46 So first of all we have our start speed here.
01:49 Which you can see I've got set at 1880 RPM.
01:53 We've got our end speed and you can see at the moment I've got that set to 5000 RPM.
01:59 Now remember we tuned through to 4500 RPM as steady state so we should be relatively confident with our lamda out to that point.
02:09 What I suggest is when we first start doing ramp runs, we creep up on our full rev limiter engine range, in 500 RPM increments.
02:19 When you're more comfortable with this, we can simply leave the dyno set all the way through to our rev limit or however far we want to run the engine.
02:28 And if something's not happy, if you're not comfortable with the air fuel ratio, perhaps you hear some knock, or something else you're not comfortable with, you can simply back off the throttle, put your foot on the clutch and abort the run.
02:40 You don't need to complete the entire run.
02:43 For our first run though, we're going to leave this set to 5000 RPM.
02:49 With our starting point of our RPM, again we wanna be realistic here.
02:53 Most engines aren't going to be too happy being loaded up at perhaps 1000 or 1250 RPM.
03:00 And generally we don't tend to accelerate from such low RPM so it's all about being realistic with how the engine's actually going to be used.
03:09 So generally I like to start somewhere around about 1500 to 2000 RPM.
03:15 OK we also have our ramp rate which defines how quickly this run is going to take place.
03:20 You can see at the moment we've got this set at 10 kilometers per hour per second.
03:24 Which equates to 418 RPM per second.
03:28 Again we want to be realistic here and try and replicate the sort of rate of change of RPM that we'll see when we're actually driving the car at wide open throttle in fourth gear.
03:39 Somewhere around about 500 perhaps 400 RPM per second covers this range.
03:44 Obviously it will depend at little bit on exactly how powerful your car is.
03:49 If our ramp rate is too fast, dyno won't apply sufficient load to the engine we're not going to get realistic results.
03:57 Likewise if the ramp rate is too slow, we're going to apply extra load unnecessarily and the run's going to be much longer than it needs to be which is going to place more stress and load on the engine which we don't need.
04:11 OK so we've got our runs set up and we can carry on.
04:15 Let's do our first run now and we will check what our results are.
04:20 Now before we do start running the engine though, I'm going to also be logging the results here on our PC logger.
04:29 So this is a really nice feature of the Haltech ECUs and we can data log what's happening while we're running the car.
04:37 This is going to allow us, after the ramp run, to very accurately make changes to our fuel and ignition in order to optimize our tune.
04:46 So we're going to start that by simply clicking this little record icon.
04:50 Let's get into fourth gear now and we'll get our engine set up and ready to run.
04:57 Now when we are performing our ramp runs, we always want to try and make sure that we begin each run with the same engine coolant temperature and intake air temperature.
05:08 So it's always worth looking at these two parameters on our laptop and just making sure, taking note where they are, so that we can get some kind of consistency.
05:18 Alright let's do our first run now.
05:36 OK so that's our first run complete.
05:38 I'm going to first of all stop our PC logger so we can have a look at that data.
05:44 Let's have a look at what we have on our dyno screen though, we have first of all our power and kilowatts being displayed by the green line at the bottom, and what we're going to do is save this run so we can preview it, review it later on.
06:00 So I'll click save.
06:02 Normally I'll give the runs something, a sensible name that I can refer to later.
06:08 These initial tunes where we just start running the car out to full throttle, out to lower RPM, aren't really that important and whether we choose to save them or not is simply up to you.
06:19 I'm going to save this with the test ID Tune 1 and if you want, you can leave some comments here about any changes you've made.
06:27 So we'll click save here and we can then manipulate the graph so we can see it a little bit easier.
06:34 Above we have our lambda trace, which is the same, this is coming from the Haltech ECU, so we've got the same data being displayed on our dyno as we have on our ECU.
06:48 You can see that for the most part we are a little bit rich.
06:53 Which is again exactly what we'd expect given that we've just added 5% fuel to our engine before we started this run.
07:02 We do have an area here particularly at 4400 RPM where we have a measured lambda of 0.79 so we're quite rich there.
07:13 Now we can make changes based solely on the data that we have in front of us here on our dyno.
07:20 And in which case what I would tend to do, is I go through and look at each point we have a break point in our table.
07:30 So let's say for example at 2500 RPM, we wanna get as close to that as possible.
07:36 2500 RPM we had a measured lambda of 0.85 So then what we can do is go to the corresponding break point in our table here.
07:47 And at 2500 RPM our lambda target was 0.88 so we can use our correction factor to make a change to the VE.
07:59 And generally when I do this, remember we are interpolating slightly between these two sites, so I'll make the change to both.
08:07 And we can simply step our way through the lambda plot, making changes at each point.
08:17 We also have the data that we logged in our PC logger and if we click on the playback icon, we're going to be able to look at that data.
08:28 There's a lot of channels being displayed here.
08:31 We can choose to narrow this down, but it doesn't really matter because what we will be looking at is when we've got the playback open, you'll see that everything on our laptop is frozen.
08:45 And what it's doing is it's showing the data that was recorded at the particular point in the data log.
08:50 So what we want to do is get to the start of our ramp run.
08:55 And by simply holding down the left mouse button and sliding through this data log, we will see, you can see at the moment, the little cursor showing, were abouts the ECU was accessing at that particular point.
09:11 We can see the RPM at that point, manifold pressure and all of the tuning parameters.
09:17 In particular what we're going to be looking at though is our lambda, so that's what we're trying to correct.
09:23 So let's start by looking at the beginning of our ramp run, where we were sitting at around about 1500 RPM.
09:34 And you can see at this particular point 1500 RPM we're around about 4% too rich.
09:45 So what I'll do is I will take 4% out of that particular site.
09:49 So it's a case of just moving through the individual sites and at each point, I'm making an adjustment based on the error that we had at that particular point in our data log.
10:04 So you can see that you can be very accurate with your adjustments based on the data logging, and it is very very powerful way of making your changes.
10:15 So let's just continue through here, we're up to 3000 RPM now and you can see at this point, we are quite rich, we're about 7% rich there.
10:25 So we'll carry on through, at 3500 RPM, we're sitting at around about 5% rich.
10:34 And any time I see a value of about 5%, I mean I know that I added 5%, so that makes sense but of course it's still always safest to be a little bit rich when we first start our tuning, and then lean out the air fuel ratio.
10:51 Rather than finding out during our first ramp run that we were actually way too lean.
10:57 OK so we're out to 4500 RPM now.
11:00 And we're 7% too rich there.
11:04 Now we start moving out into our uncharted area of our map and you can see that at 5000 RPM, we are 4% too rich.
11:19 Now this time what I'm going to do though, is instead of making a change just at wide open throttle, I'm going to actually follow the adjustment down through the entire table.
11:31 So again I'm just simply expecting that the trend that I'm following, the trend that if it's too rich at wide open throttle, it's going to be too rich at part throttle as well.
11:43 So I'm just gonna follow that adjustment down through the lower load areas as well.
11:49 OK so now we've got our adjustments made, we can close the playback and we can make another run.
11:57 I'm going to click record again, so we've got our PC logger recording and we'll click space on our dyno so we can start another run.
12:12 So again we just want to make sure that our air temperature and our engine coolant temperature are relatively close to the numbers we saw on our last run.
12:23 When we're comfortable with everything, we can press the space bar and start our ramp run.
12:39 OK so we've got our second run done there, let's stop our data logging.
12:45 You can see on our dyno we have our data displayed and you can see our power and our lambda are both overlayed with our last plot.
12:56 And you can see that this time, our lambda is a lot closer to our target, you can see how much it has stepped up, how much leaner it is compared to that first run.
13:06 We still had some discrepancies during that run though so let's have a look at our logging and we will click on playback and we can see what exactly we had during that run.
13:17 So first of all we need to find the start of our ramp run.
13:21 And what we wanna do is just step through.
13:24 You can see at the moment there we're at 2000 RPM and we're within 1% of our target, I'm not going to be too concerned about that.
13:33 As we move through to 2500 RPM, we step around about 2% rich there so I'm gonna make a further change to that particular site.
13:43 And it does become a little bit of an intuitive process.
13:45 Generally we can get this reasonably close, with about one or two changes.
13:51 Sometimes there are the odd location where we do need to make more changes.
13:57 And if we're also struggling to get good control in one particular area, this is a time where we can benefit from adding some additional RPM rows.
14:07 So particularly if we find that for example, our lambda is good at 3000 RPM and it's good at 3500 RPM, but in between we might go through a rich or a lean spot.
14:17 We can simply add another row there at 3250 and fix that problem.
14:23 Alright so we'll move through here.
14:26 We're a little bit lean there.
14:30 And again when I'm doing the runs, I'm always watching that lambda value and I'm just ready to back off the throttle if I see the lambda move to an area I'm not happy with.
14:41 Be that too rich or too lean.
14:43 Obviously it's unlikely we're going to do damage if our lambda is too rich but still we may find if it's excessive it could end up fouling the spark plugs or something similar.
14:55 So OK we've made another change to our VE table there.
15:00 I'm just gonna close down our data logger.
15:04 Now we're going to make another run.
15:06 I'm not going to bother saving that run, 'cause we don't need to.
15:10 First of all I'm going to just click on our set up and now I'm going to increase our end speed out to, in this case we'll go to, we're gonna go all the way through to 6490 RPM.
15:28 Now when we're doing this, this is what you would tend to do if you're a little bit more comfortable with the dyno, you can just choose to back out.
15:39 Or you may find that as you move into these uncharted areas of your VE table, you may simply find that the lambda actually tracks within a region that you're comfortable with and you can continue that run and go all the way through to the rev limiter or whatever RPM you set as your upper limit.
16:00 So we're going to do that.
16:01 Now let's get ready for another run.
16:05 We will click on our PC logger to start that, and we'll get our engine up and running and see what we get as we move through to the higher rev range.
16:21 OK again just a quick check over our coolant temperature and our air temperature.
16:26 They're both consistent so I'm ready to start our run.
16:30 Press the space bar.
16:50 OK so that run is a perfect example of how we can use the dyno and just choose to back out if we're not happy with how the run's progressing.
16:59 In that case I saw the lambda start falling quite rich at higher RPM.
17:04 Now again as I just mentioned, that's not a dangerous situation, but still we weren't where we wanted to be so it's as easy just to back out and make some changes and try again.
17:15 Let's have a look now at our dyno screen, and we have our lambda plot.
17:20 You can see that for the most part, we're pretty close to our target.
17:24 Got a couple of little spots which we can address here, particularly at 4200 RPM we're seeing 0.85 lambda.
17:33 The problem really, it started to get worse as we went up higher in the revs and particularly here at 6000 RPM we're measuring 0.78 So let's have a look at our data logging and we'll make some changes to those areas.
17:52 So just cycling through here again, just holding down the left mouse button and looking at our lambda versus our target.
18:03 And we can make some changes where we deem necessary.
18:09 You can see here at 4500 RPM we're around about 1% too rich.
18:14 And I'm really focusing my attention at the moment on that higher rev range where we really did see more of a problem.
18:21 At 5000 RPM we're absolutely perfect.
18:25 As we move through to 5500 RPM, this is where we start seeing the lambda start tracking a little bit rich.
18:32 So remember again in these untuned areas, I am making changes to the entire RPM row, not just that wide open throttle area.
18:41 So let's take 3% out at 5500 RPM.
18:46 And we get much worse as we get to 6000 RPM.
18:51 So in this case we're around about 9%, 10% too rich.
18:59 So what I'm going to do, I'm actually going to extrapolate the adjustment I'm about to make and I'm going to copy that out into the 6500 and 7000 RPM area as well.
19:11 So I'm going to start by taking 9% fuel out of those areas.
19:17 OK we're ready to make another change so let's get the engine running again.
19:21 We'll close down our data logger and we can again click record to start recording some data.
19:30 Let's see how our next run goes.
19:32 Again I'm not going to bother with saving that particular run, it's just not necessary, there's no data there I'm that interest in at this stage.
19:41 We'll go through to full throttle, again our air temp and coolant temp are close to what they were so we can start our run.
20:10 OK so straight away on our dyno screen, you can see how easily that corrected, that one change that I just did there has corrected that exceptionally rich area that we saw.
20:20 Remember we were at 0.78 above 6000 RPM.
20:24 We're still at little bit rich but we're much closer now at 0.85 and we've also got a relatively flat line to our lambda plot.
20:33 Let's have a look at our playback again and we'll see what further adjustments we need to make.
20:39 So again first of all I'm just going to be looking at our wide open throttle area.
20:45 And from about 6000 RPM and above, 6000 RPM we need to remove 2%.
20:56 So we'll take 2% out there.
20:59 Now as we move further up in the rev range, at 6500 RPM you can see we move quite rich again.
21:10 We're registering 0.82 so we're around about 5% rich still at 6500 RPM.
21:16 Well in fact we're only at about 6400 RPM but close enough for the purposes of this demonstration to explain what we're going to do.
21:27 So I'm going to highlight the 6500 RPM row and we're going to take 5% out of that row.
21:37 Now you'll see that we've got this general shape to our VE curve, it comes up, it peaks and then it drops off.
21:47 Now what I want to do, even though we're not going to be running the engine out to 7000 RPM, if we do end up above 6500, the ECU will be interpolating to the 7000 RPM row.
21:59 So we want to follow this general trend that we've seen here so what I'm going to do is I'll copy our 6500 RPM row, I'll paste that into our 7000 RPM row.
22:13 Then I'm going to take a further 5% out.
22:16 And you can see there what I've done is I've just followed that general trend and again I'm just copying the general shape of our curve and extrapolating it out into those untuned areas.
22:28 Alright so we're ready to make one further run and we'll see what the effect of that last change has been.
22:37 Again we're just going to click record on our data logger, get ourselves running and we'll see if our lambda is now where we want it to be at high RPM.
22:55 Alright we're ready to make our last run, let's see what we get.
23:19 Alright we'll close our PC logger and have a look at our playback.
23:22 Watching the lambda during that run, we were very very close to our target so let's actually look at everything now from 1500 RPM at the start of the run.
23:32 And as the run begins, you can see as I move through the run, our lambda now is always within 1% of our target.
23:42 Now there are a couple of areas where we could benefit as I mentioned from adding an additional RPM row in.
23:52 But within reason, we're always within 1% and as I said when we're talking about a lambda target, generally what we're talking about is a range that we're comfortable with.
24:03 So our target would be plus or minus .01 generally.
24:07 And we're within that range so I'm happy with our lambda and we can move on to looking at our ignition timing.
24:16 Now remember we started out by removing two degrees from our ignition table.
24:22 And what we're going to do is simply start by adding those two degrees straight back in and we're going to see what effect that's had on the power that the engine makes.
24:34 So I'm going to save this run, and I'm going to call it ignition base.
24:40 Now what this means is we can now overlay with this particular run with our more advanced ignition timing and see if that additional two degrees has given us any gain, so let's do that now.
24:53 And we'll see what the result is.
24:59 Just get back into fourth gear.
25:03 Ready to run.
25:07 Let's go.
25:29 OK so that's our first ignition timing tune done.
25:34 Now what you could see there is adding that additional two degrees in has made very little difference.
25:42 We need to start getting quite fussy to notice the areas that we did see a difference.
25:47 Now remember when we're tuning the ignition timing, what we're looking for is anything that results in more torque.
25:53 More torque also results in more power.
25:55 So any areas where we've seen a gain in power, that means that that additional timing was positive.
26:02 If on the other hand, we haven't seen an improvement in our power then that means the engine doesn't want that additional timing, there's no advantage in having it there so we'd simply remove it.
26:14 Now for most of this run here, we haven't seen any improvement in the power.
26:19 Except from about 45, 4600 RPM and above.
26:24 From about 5800 RPM all the way through to 63, the end of our run, we've seen a reasonably large increase in power as a result of that timing.
26:37 So what I'd do there, because we simply haven't seen any improvement in this lower RPM range, I'd pull that timing back out.
26:46 So let's go and look at our ignition map.
26:50 And what I'll do is remove the timing out to 4000 RPM.
26:59 And we'll use the page down key again just to simply remove two degrees.
27:05 Now the timing was an advantage from 4500 and above.
27:10 But we didn't really see much change at 4500 but particularly remember from about 5500 RPM and above we did see an improvement.
27:20 So let's add an additional two degrees to our table above 5500 RPM.
27:28 We're ready to do another run.
27:30 First of all we'll save that and we will call this ignition tune one.
27:38 Again if we wish, we could add some notes about the changes that we have made.
27:43 Right we're ready to see what the results of this run will give us.
28:22 OK so we've made another improvement there, we've picked up some more power.
28:26 Now interestingly on that run although the difference was very small, removing that two degrees in the lower rev range below 4500, you can see particularly in a couple of areas here, our last run which was with the advanced timing is actually ahead.
28:45 Based on the fact that we've got no knock occurring, and the fact that there is a small but noticeable improvement, I would judge that that timing was necessary.
28:54 Which was what we found when we were doing our MBT tuning.
28:58 And we'll simply put that timing back in.
29:01 So sometimes there will be a little bit of toing and froing based on the sensitivity of the dyno and just seeing exactly how the engine responds to timing.
29:13 Of course when we're looking at small changes like this, we do need to be very careful that our base parameters, our intake air temperature, our engine coolant temperature, our tire pressures all remain consistent.
29:24 Any of those parameters can have an effect on the measured power so we do need to make sure that we are comparing very similar runs.
29:32 OK so we did see a small but worthwhile improvement from 5500 RPM and above.
29:39 What I'm going to do is make another change.
29:42 I'm going to add another two degrees here at 6000 RPM.
29:47 Now the reason I've done that is where we had our last change at 5500 RPM, we actually haven't seen much of a change over our last run.
30:03 The biggest change we saw was at around about 6000 RPM.
30:07 And the magnitude of that change has also been very small.
30:11 So when we see that sort of a change, it's worth adding a little bit of timing and seeing if it does show an improvement.
30:17 Often when we only see a small change for a couple of degrees difference in our timing, that would indicate we're very close to MBT and hence there's no point in continuing further.
30:29 For the purposes of being complete, let's have a look and see if the engine does want extra timing there though.
30:35 Now I'm going to save this run and we'll call it ignition tune two.
30:40 We're ready to go so let's do another run.
31:20 OK so again we've actually seen a small but worthwhile improvement.
31:23 Two things to note there, first of all the two degrees that I did put back in through the mid range up to 4500 RPM has shown that small but worthwhile improvement.
31:33 So we've got repeatability there.
31:36 The real change we've seen here has come above 6000 RPM.
31:42 So that does demonstrate that the engine does want some additional timing there.
31:49 And what we can do is go a little bit further.
31:53 What I'm going to do is make this next change at 6500 RPM and above.
31:59 Now what I'm gonna do is add another two degrees.
32:01 And it's important to try and keep a smooth shape to our ignition table.
32:07 Particularly between adjacent zones, we want to keep as small a step as possible.
32:13 If we're seeing really large steps of perhaps five or six degrees between adjacent sites in our ignition table here, it's going to make the engine hesitant and won't respond smoothly.
32:24 So I'm trying to make sure I keep that shape smooth as I make these changes.
32:30 Alright so let's now continue and we'll do one more run.
32:35 I'll save this again and we'll call it ignition tuning three and we're ready to go.
33:14 OK so on that particular run there we saw a decrease in performance with that additional two degrees, so again as we've already talked about, if we don't see an improvement from our timing, we would simply remove the additional timing that we've put in.
33:31 So you can see we've developed this shape to our wide open throttle areas of our ignition table.
33:37 Now one thing we haven't done which we can do now, is we can extrapolate those changes that we've made.
33:44 And remember we've added some timing above about 5500 RPM or 5500 RPM and above.
33:52 We've only made those changes at this point to our wide open throttle running areas at zero kPa and minus 20.
34:01 I'm going to copy those down now, and we'll add a similar amount of timing to our lower load areas.
34:10 And again this is because we can expect to have a relatively similar shape to the ignition timing as we move down in the load.
34:20 So if the engine in other words wanted more timing at wide open throttle with zero kPa, there's every chance it's also going to want more timing in the lower load areas.
34:30 So now we've got a relatively complete ignition table.
34:34 And this shows the sort of general trends we would expect an ignition table to have.
34:40 We've got this general trend where the ignition timing is advancing as RPM increases.
34:45 And then again around the middle of the table here, we can see there is a plateau where the engine doesn't actually want any more ignition advance.
34:56 So we've got our ignition table and our volumetric efficiency table tuned using the dyno to perform some ramp runs.
35:06 Once we've completed this, we would actually do one more step and that is to go back to our VE table and now that we've completed our wide open throttle ramp runs, we would now address this area that we didn't do in steady state.
35:24 We would look at our high RPM, light load area of our operation.
35:29 Now we don't need to do every zone in this area of the table.
35:33 All I'd be looking at is accessing that area of the table in steady state, having a look at our air fuel ratio, and making an across the board adjustment on those cells based on whether we're too rich or too lean.
35:45 Remember in that area, we don't need to be overly fussy.
35:49 As long as we're safely rich, I'm not going to be too worried if we're a little rich or a little lean, it's as long as we're in the ballpark there because the engine isn't going to be operated there, it's only going to be transitioning through.
36:03 So that takes us to the end of our dyno tuning session.
36:08 We've tuned the engine in steady state and we've also tuned it under wide open throttle doing ramp runs.
36:14 The last step would be to address the tune now out on the road or the track.

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