Practical Standalone Tuning: Step 7 : Steady State Ignition Tuning ( Touchscreen )

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Step 7 : Steady State Ignition Tuning ( Touchscreen )

15.54

00:00	Next up, we're going to have a look at our steady state tuning process using the touchscreen instead of our laptop software.
00:06	And while we are going to present this on the dyno, the reality is I'd expect that 95 % of people using that touchscreen are going to be doing this task on the road.
00:16	That's OK though, everything we're going to demonstrate still is going to be relevant if you are road tuning and you can use the road tuning additions in the course modules themselves to help learn how to do this process and get the most out of it.
00:28	It's going to involve a little bit of left foot braking in order to be able to manipulate both RPM and load.
00:34	Regardless of whether you're using a dyno or the road for your tuning though, the way we drive the vehicle is going to be important here with the self tuning to get the best possible results.
00:44	What we want to do here is be nice and smooth with the throttle, we want to avoid sharp inputs of throttle that are likely to end up in acceleration enrichment.
00:54	Also we want to try and drive the car basically covering as much of the area of the RPM and load table as we can where we're actually going to generally be driving the car.
01:07	That's the area obviously we want the tune as closely dialled in as possible.
01:11	So, in other words we don't really care too much about what the tune's going to be like at 6000 RPM in overrun or very light throttle because it's just not an area this particular vehicle and engine are going to be used in.
01:25	So, a bit of common sense comes in here.
01:27	So, the process we're going to go through here on the dyno really mirrors what we did with the laptop tuning software, we're going to start with as low a load in RPM as we can, we're going to use the dyno to manipulate the RPM and then we're just going to gradually increase our throttle and at each point what we're doing is we're waiting for our closed loop learning to basically transfer all of the short term trims across into our learn table.
01:50	Let's have a quick look at a setup that we're going to use for monitoring this.
01:55	We're on our home screen at the moment and what we want to do is click on monitor, then multi gauge and then air fuel ratio.
02:02	Now, this is really giving us everything that we're going to need for this task.
02:06	In the top left corner we've got our current measured air fuel ratio, we've got our target, we've got our coolant enrichment here and this is really only relevant during our warm up, basically we just want to make sure that we are out of coolant enrichment or warm up enrichment, in which case it should be saying 100% which it is.
02:24	We've also got our closed loop compensation here so we can see that that's basically sitting on zero and we've got our current learn percentage.
02:32	So, at the moment, essentially at idle, we've got 5% being pulled out, this would have started in our closed loop trim and then over time it gets transferred through to our current learning so essentially what we're looking for is a point where our closed loop is basically back at or very close to zero and all of what the closed loop was doing has been transferred across to the learn table.
02:54	We've also got our closed loop status so we can see that it is in closed loop, it's green, and our learn status, we can see that it is learning.
03:01	We've also got our RPM down here, not really relevant at the moment, we've got our injector pulse width and our fuel flow as well.
03:08	So, that's the monitors that we're going to be using here in the process, again just to wait in each zone that we drive the car in until our closed loop compensation has been transferred across to our learn table.
03:20	So, now that we know what we're trying to do here, let's get ourselves up and running on the dyno.
03:25	We're going to narrate the first little section of this and after that we'll just speed up the process and go through up to about that 3500 RPM mark just like we did with the laptop tuning software.
03:36	It is obviously iterative and a bit of a rinse and repeat so there's no need to sort of narrate the entire process so let's get up and running.
03:44	OK so just like we saw with the laptop tuning software, due to the automatic transmission and the torque converter slip, we're not going to be able to hold let's say 1000 or 1200 RPM right the way through to full throttle.
03:55	But we're just waiting here for our values to be transferred through to our learn table.
04:01	We can see at the moment we're sitting at minus 7% trim and we've got minus 11 in our current learn table so we'll just wait and see how that transpires.
04:12	We can see that our current learn percentage is increasing and while that, or decreasing I should say, and while that decreases we see our closed loop compensation is moving closer to zero.
04:21	So, obviously when we've got quite a large error that's going to take some time for that transfer to occur.
04:27	Let's just wait for that to get to zero.
04:29	And we can see we're right on the money now, we've got a current learn value of minus 20 and our closed loop trim's sitting pretty close to zero.
04:36	And it's worth also mentioning here that plus or minus 1% on our closed loop trim, I'm not going to be worried about that at all, we're never going to have exactly zero.
04:45	Alright, so at this point the current cell that we're sitting in has been tuned and learned, we're just going to increase our throttle opening a little bit here.
04:53	And wait basically until we start seeing that closed loop compensation show more error which we've got now.
05:00	And we'll just wait again for that closed loop compensation to come down to zero, maybe plus or minus 1%.
05:12	So, we can see that this is a slower process than if we're using the laptop tuning software, we don't have as much control and by necessity the process of that learning does have to take a little bit of time.
05:25	If it was working much faster than what we're seeing here, we run the risk of it kind of chasing itself and oscillating in a bit of a PID loop there.
05:34	So, that's why it is a bit slower.
05:36	We're back at zero now on our closed loop comp so we'll just give a little bit more throttle, again gently opening our throttle just until we basically see our closed loop compensation move away from zero.
05:46	And it has now, we'll just sit there again until it comes back into line.
05:54	Alright, minus 1% there, pretty happy with that.
05:57	We'll give it a little bit more throttle.
05:59	And remembering as well that this is going to continue to self tune over time.
06:06	So, this process is going to be iterative, it is going to take some time but if you're driving the car on the road, it's just going to continue to get better and better.
06:14	But at least with this initial drive, the better job we can do of getting our learn table dialed in and our closed loop compensation close to zero, the better the car is going to drive and the faster the learning process is going to end up being.
06:29	Alright, we'll just increase our throttle opening again.
06:31	Let's try and bring our RPM down a little bit but we are right on the limit of what the dyno can really do here.
06:40	OK so you can see we've got quite an error there, minus 30% essentially or 29%, just shows how far out that base calibration that the wizard created was.
06:50	Of course, we already know this from what we've seen with the laptop software as well.
06:54	Alright, we'll add a little bit more throttle now.
07:08	And a little bit more throttle again.
07:11	Basically, any time I move the throttle to a point where I'm starting to see that closed loop compensation dramatically move away from plus or minus 1%, that's where I'm going to just stay until it gets back to zero.
07:23	Alright, a little bit more throttle again.
07:27	Alright, we're all the way through to wide open throttle now.
07:30	And minus 33% trim, still got a little bit more work to do.
07:35	And we'll leave it there and come back down to idle.
07:38	Now, I've already talked about, with the laptop tuning software, the importance of monitoring our coolant temperature as well.
07:44	And with this particular process, we're going to spend longer under load, particularly as we get up in the RPM.
07:52	So, of course we do need to be even more mindful of watching that coolant temperature and making sure that we're not overheating the engine.
07:59	From here we're going to just repeat this process and speed it up a little bit as I explained and get ourselves through to about that 3500 RPM mark.
08:07	Just touching as many of these cells as we can so let's get that done now.
09:35	Alright, so we've now gone through and tuned up to about 3500 RPM there.
09:40	It's not perfect with the automatic transmission but essentially what I was doing there is using the dyno control to try and basically maintain as close to 500 RPM increments as I went through that.
09:52	And that just allows us to essentially move vertically through those RPM columns at least as accurately as we can with this system, not being able to see the individual cells.
10:03	So, we can see that quite quickly we managed to get, well the sniper managed to dial in that learning table and transfer those closed loop trims so we were within plus or minus about 1% in most of those instances.
10:14	Now, a couple of things that I just want to point out that I didn't explain before I got started.
10:18	First of all, you'll notice that I stopped several times and let the engine come back down to idle just to control and maintain that coolant temperature so we didn't overheat anything.
10:28	The other aspect, if we look at our touchscreen here, we can see we've got our closed loop status and our learning status.
10:33	Now, you would have noticed that those went blue occasionally and this is essentially when I was using a little bit too much throttle and using some accel enrichment and the sniper basically disables the closed loop and the learning when any acceleration enrichment is present for all of the reasons that should be pretty obvious, basically we'd be trying to closed loop control a potential induced error in the fuelling by our acceleration enrichment.
11:01	So, at this point the steady state tune out to 3500 RPM is complete and again for your own application you may want to go further than this.
11:10	You could also have a look at some of the cells further up at higher RPM.
11:14	As I've explained, there's really no advantage to doing that in our instance with this example but of course the process is exactly the same as what you've seen anyway.
11:24	Now, while most people doing this particular process using the touchscreen will be doing that because they don't have or want the laptop tuning software, just so we can get a bit of an understanding of what's going on with what we've just done, I'm just going to connect the laptop and we'll have a look at what that learn table now looks like.
11:43	Alright, we've got our laptop now connected and what we want to do is come through to our learn table which we can see here, we'll just click on that.
11:51	And straight away we can get a really good idea of what areas we've actually managed to be able to access.
11:58	So, clearly we haven't been able to get into this region at all, we only passed through that when we cranked and started the engine and then we've been sitting sort of down in this region here at idle.
12:08	And you can see particularly up in this region here where we're starting to pull quite a lot of fuel with errors around about sort of 30% to 35%.
12:16	The important thing when we look at this data is we're looking to see if we've got a reasonably consistent trend in these numbers.
12:23	That's ideally what we should be having.
12:26	If we've got any big outliers where maybe in one cell we've got a value of 11, 10, and then right beside it we've got 35, that's a bit of a red flag that one of those areas is not the same or not correct and we would want to go back and review that.
12:40	So, again this may be a bit of a moot point because as I mentioned, most people who are using the self tuning through the touchscreen probably aren't going to have laptop software but it just gives a more complete fuller picture of what's actually happening.
12:55	So, of course we've got all of these areas out above sort of 3500 RPM that we simply haven't accessed yet and you can see that while I was trying quite hard to be careful and stay around 3500 RPM, it's not exactly rock solid.
13:09	Our next cell out there, 3750 out to the right, we can see that that's actually filled as well and it may well be, I'm expecting or suspecting here that the Sniper actually uses a bit of a, sort of extrapolating the cells it's tuned out above or to the higher RPM regions and possibly to the higher load regions as well just to sort of tune ahead, much like we could do manually.
13:34	So, obviously we can see as well that up at 105 kPa, we've got a big step.
13:39	So, this is exactly what I'm talking about.
13:42	So, if for example we look at this particular couple of cells here, we've got 33.2, minus 33.2 at 101 kPa and then minus 17.4.
13:52	So, obviously problematic what it's done there.
13:56	So, this really doubles down on my suspicion that it is basically extrapolating the closed loop learned data out into untuned areas or areas that it hasn't accessed because at the moment our atmospheric pressure here's about 97, 98 kPa.
14:12	So, there's no way in the world we've got up to 105 kPa with this engine obviously also naturally aspirated.
14:18	So, at this stage essentially we've done what we can with the steady state tuning using the self tuning functionality through the touchscreen.
14:25	Now, if, I'm just going to add this in, if on the odd circumstance that we do have the touchscreen, we are using the self learning functionality for our tuning but we also have the laptop software, we can speed up the tuning process that we're going to run into when we get to our steady state tuning by manually adjusting these numbers out here in the untuned area above sort of 3500 RPM.
14:51	So, if we look at the trends here we can see that it's obviously pulling sort of 30 odd percent fuel and there's probably a better than average chance that it's going to want to do the same out in these higher RPM regions here.
15:04	So, what we could do is just manually adjust these values so I could enter, probably be a little bit more conservative, maybe even if we enter minus 25%.
15:15	And that's going to basically manually adjust that learned table.
15:20	It's still going to be able to adjust these values going forward but it's just going to mean that once we get into these higher RPM regions, and you'll see this once we start doing ramp runs, particularly because we pass through the high RPM areas in a ramp run quite quickly, the self tuning doesn't have a lot of time to make these adjustments and that means that while it will work, it's going to take a lot of ramp runs to get our tuning dialled in.
15:45	So, at this stage we've completed our steady state tuning of fuel, let's move on to the next step of our process.