Practical Transmission Tuning: ECU & WOT Tuning

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ECU & WOT Tuning

32.00

00:00	Alright, it's time for step four, our wide open throttle tuning.
00:03	Now, because I tuned this engine beforehand just enough to get it running for this demonstration, it's already ready to go.
00:12	Okay, but as mentioned, if you haven't performed your full throttle shifting yet because you needed to adjust TCM values first to allow you to achieve full torque without either damaging the transmission or drivetrain or perhaps running into torque limits in the TCM, then now is the time for you to complete that process.
00:32	Bump those limits up until they're just out of your way, not to the moon unless that's what you've decided to do, and then you're ready for some watt testing.
00:44	So, as I mentioned at the end of the last step, I've reverted our changes to shift timing and pressures just so we get to see a before and after how the vehicle shifted before we made these improvements and after and see what type of performance we can get out of wide open throttle shifting.
01:02	So, let's get the car going.
01:05	I'm going to use sport mode for these tests.
01:08	We're going to be doing wide open throttle and start our log.
01:20	Let's make some noise.
01:50	First gear, we shifted right about 6,000 RPM.
01:58	That looks pretty good.
02:00	Let's see what our torque management and everything was doing.
02:06	So, we've got clutch control, spark torque management trans, everything looks the same as when we were doing partial throttle tuning, and the shift completed right about, you know, started right about 15,000, yeah, right about 6,000.
02:24	Our clutch pre-pressuring started around 5 ,300, but when you're looking at watt shift points, they're basically going to be right up right about where you see the spark reduction occur.
02:37	So, where the actual main shift occurs should line up with your full throttle shift points.
02:42	So, let's go back to where those are here.
02:45	In pattern A, it's going to be this speed and this RPM, and we see at 6,000 RPM, safe to say the speed doesn't line up.
03:08	This is in miles per hour, 27, and this is in miles per hour and says 40.
03:19	Interesting, that may be part of our issue.
03:22	Perhaps there's a unit issue here.
03:31	Yeah, perhaps our monitor, VCM scanner software is displaying the speed monitor incorrectly.
03:43	Hard to say, but anyhow, both these need to be met.
03:50	So, we were over 27 miles an hour, and we hit 6,000 RPM.
03:55	6,000 RPM certainly would be the higher of the two, so when both conditions were met, we got our shift.
04:00	All right, so that part does make sense.
04:03	Okay, how long did the shift apparently take? Time of latest shift, 0.5 seconds.
04:10	Okay, let's see the next one.
04:18	Time of latest shift says 0.1.
04:22	Wow, that one thinks it happened rather quickly.
04:27	Time of latest shift, 0.3, and 0.4 on the last one into sixth gear.
04:38	I did run it all the way through to sixth.
04:40	You certainly don't have to do that.
04:42	I wanted to do it once, so we got a baseline of all the shifts, but from here on out, I'm probably not going to run it all the way to sixth.
04:50	That's quite a lot, and I always like to be as nice to the vehicle as I possibly can while still getting the job done right.
04:57	So, we've got our baseline.
05:00	I'm going to save this, and then we'll be able to refer back to it.
05:04	So, what we've got now is we're going to call this 04, but we're going to call this stock shift.
05:17	Actually, you know what? We're going to call it this, and this is going to be our watt shift baseline, because that's what file it's actually on.
05:29	Okay, I'm going to disconnect the scanner so that we can go in here and load back up our calibration that has our improvements that we made during our low and medium throttle shift timing and shift pressure improvements, and let's get that on the vehicle and get ready to see if we've made some improvements.
05:58	What I'm expecting to see is torque reductions probably occur for a shorter duration of time, and the vehicle will accelerate through the pole a little bit more quickly because of that.
06:09	Less time will be wasted.
06:12	While that's flashing, I'm just going to take another peek here and see if all the shifts completed without engine speed flaring.
06:25	I thought it did once.
06:26	Yes, it sure did.
06:28	Okay, so here, transmission flared up quite a bit.
06:39	You know, our shift did start at 6000, but then it flared up and we got to 6261 RPM, so we probably almost got to a point where a throttle closure would have started to occur.
06:56	Let's see.
07:00	Didn't quite get there, but that's something to watch out for, and we're going to want to try and improve that, which I think we certainly can do.
07:10	On the next shift, didn't happen, and the last shift didn't happen.
07:16	Okay, good.
07:18	Always good to verify that.
07:23	Okay, we finished shifting.
07:26	We finished flashing.
07:33	Let's get this started back up.
07:35	I'm going to check temperatures and everything before I do another run.
07:37	I just want to make sure everything's good.
07:41	Now, that we're doing runs through several gears in a row, it certainly puts a lot of heat in the system.
07:46	This dyno has a really serious fan.
07:48	The mainline supplied fan is phenomenal, and we are running it at full blast, so probably cooling things down quite well.
07:56	Yep, coolant temp looks good, oil temp, transfer temp.
08:00	Okay, happy with those numbers.
08:04	Now, I've got the dyno set up so that a baseline is going to be our reference run that's always going to show up, just so we can compare back to it, and it'll save our last run as well, just so we can make an iterative attempt and then see what we get, compare the two, and then plan our attack from there.
08:24	Okay, temperatures are good.
08:27	We're logging.
08:28	Dyno is ready.
08:29	Let's get right into it.
08:33	Pattern A, everything consistent.
09:14	All right, first, let's see if any of the shifts flared in the engine speed.
09:21	A little bit on that shift, same as before.
09:28	Nothing there.
09:34	Okay, all right, so let's go back in here and verify whether the torque converter clutch locked up at any point at full throttle or not.
09:46	All right.
09:52	Okay, so line pressure zero, TCC desired slip zero.
09:58	All right, so in first gear we're not getting lock up.
10:00	Looks like in second gear we're getting a little bit of pressure.
10:04	Let's see if that ramps up.
10:06	Yep.
10:06	Okay, so second gear we're actually getting some lock up, and looks like there's quite a lot more slip than desired initially, but then as the pressure starts to ramp up, it starts to control that better, and then you can see the torque converter is doing quite well here.
10:28	Where does it unlock? Let's see.
10:31	Yeah, so torque converter unlocks here, which is probably part of how this RPM flare occurs.
10:41	Could be a factor.
10:44	Let's see what other gears are using lock up.
10:49	Third gear.
10:51	Yeah, same thing.
10:52	So, line pressure starting quite low on the torque converter.
10:56	Actually, it's this white line down here, and then ramping up.
11:00	Let's see if we can give you a better scaling there to see that a little more easily.
11:05	Ah, there we go.
11:10	A little easier to spot now.
11:12	Okay, so this white line here in this fourth strip chart is going to show you that.
11:21	So, yeah, as it's ramping up, slip is starting to come down.
11:25	The slip is this yellow graph there.
11:29	Okay, next gear.
11:35	Looks like a little bit of slip there, but line pressure has started much higher in fourth gear.
11:45	Okay, so second and third, we've got some torque converter clutch lock up.
11:49	It starts at about 18 PSI, then gradually ramps up because the slip is beyond the desired level.
11:55	But when we get to fourth gear, which at part throttle, we're seeing torque converter clutch behavior in, it provides a whole bunch of line pressure right away, about 69 PSI, ramping up to 94 PSI, and it's got slip under control very quickly.
12:14	That's looking good.
12:16	Okay, now one thing that I'm going to demo.
12:22	So, let's go to apply ramp, and one thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to reduce these values and see if that gets the apply pressure to come in a bit sooner when there's a significant amount of torque converter clutch slip error.
12:40	So, I'm going to take about 80% out of these, and we'll make that change.
12:47	So, we'll do that.
12:48	We'll flash it.
12:49	We'll get it going.
12:50	I'm going to drive it a little, do a little adaptation, potentially let the transmission sort some things out.
12:58	Here under transmission, transadapt.
13:02	I'm not going to reset these because it's probably already done some learning, and we're just going to let that go.
13:08	But if you ever needed to start from scratch, you could do a reset.
13:13	The fast learn procedure isn't something that I really suggest.
13:17	I would let the transmission do its thing in its own time.
13:20	It really doesn't take that long.
13:23	So, that is up to you, but just my suggestion to play it safe on that.
13:30	All right, so I'm just going to drive it a little bit, see how it's feeling.
13:47	Seems pretty good.
13:49	Slow down, let it go again.
14:13	One thing we've noticed is that the TCC PWM percent has never moved.
14:19	Looks like that value is just not going to work on this particular model, but we can see the line pressure, and that's really helping us get the job done.
14:28	See when that's locked up or not, how much pressure is being applied, how much force is being applied, and that's really the key.
14:39	On this particular transmission, it's going to adapt anyway and make sure that it gets the pressure it needs to hit the slip target that we're desiring when we set in the desired slip tables.
14:50	So, we're not going to be setting up the manual PWM duty cycle of that solenoid anyway.
14:58	Okay, I think we're warmed up.
15:01	We're good to go.
15:03	Let's get this thing up and do a run.
15:29	Okay, so we've had a massive improvement on one of the shifts.
15:38	Essentially, there was an enormous area where there was a massive torque reduction that is just gone now.
15:45	So, let's see, we had... I was able to get the car going in first gear, so that first shift is the one-two.
15:57	Then second shift is the two-three, and that is the one that has been problematic.
16:02	Now, what stands out to me immediately here, aside from the dyno showing there wasn't an enormous loss of torque, is we didn't get that flare, that RPM flare up to 6200 RPM.
16:15	And when that happens, it's possible we run into a situation where we start getting into engine speed limiting related to the shift not going to plan, and that could be either from the TCM side or the ECU side.
16:30	So, while I didn't see any of these values like the ETC torque management type pop up on that other file, the logging rate isn't super high, so it's possible that it blipped on and we just couldn't see it.
16:46	Because as soon as those systems take over, they do not give you the torque back quickly, and I think that's why we were seeing that enormous dip in torque on that two -three shift.
16:57	But that has resulted in a massive improvement in performance already, and I definitely want to make sure that we retain that.
17:06	So, I'm going to save this run.
17:10	Make sure I get the name right, matching the file.
17:14	And then I'm going to go back and let's look at all of our engine speed limiters.
17:19	All right, so let's look and see if we have any engine speed limiting factors here that could be coming into play.
17:33	Let's go back to the engine side.
17:45	Nothing there.
17:46	All right, so this is where all our main rev limiter stuff's going to be.
17:50	So, the control method, if the engine speed goes over rev, is going to be spark, potentially with throttle, and the switchover delay is going to be what determines if we switch from spark reduction to throttle closure.
18:12	If we get into throttle closure, then we get into a long delay before it opens back up, and I have a hunch that might be have been what happened, even though the logging might not have been quick enough to spot it.
18:23	So, what I'm going to do here is, just in case we had a situation where we have a slight flare, we're going to give it just a little longer before we shut the throttle down and hopefully allow the spark method to control it.
18:40	But realistically, because we have bumped up our base pressure requests, based on these values being shorter and then these values being higher, we're requesting higher base pressure to start, and then the adaptives will add on beyond that as needed to try and achieve the shift times that we are requesting here.
19:22	So, I don't think we're going to see that flare again just based on the setting changes we've made, but just in case we do, I don't want to get into that massive throttle closure for being just a hair over RPM.
19:35	The other thing you could do is slightly bump up your rev limits.
19:38	In this case, I don't want to bump up the rev limit.
19:41	I want to let the engine get up to it and sit there, but I don't want that massive loss of performance unless it's absolutely needed, and if it's absolutely needed, it just takes a little more delay time before the throttle closure kicks in now.
19:56	All right, so this is looking really good.
20:01	I'm going to take a look and see if we want to push it even further, or if I'm happy with what we've got.
20:08	But yeah, we're already operating at full throttle in an area where our torque is always over the values, which will cause a zero adder.
20:20	I'll just show you how you would verify that.
20:28	Sorry, here we go.
20:29	All right, so torque.
20:32	So, yeah, once we get into the gear, 370.
20:35	As it revs out, it does drop down to about 300, and that's right about at our max RPM.
20:45	Yeah, so right about max RPM after the torque has dropped off a bit.
20:49	We're still over 300, and if we go back to this table, anything over 236, we've got zero adder, so we're certainly well over that, and we're going to get the shift that is as quick as we have deemed possible right around 0.2 seconds until we get to these higher gears.
21:09	And just in case the adaptives are going to help us a bit more, what I'd like to do is just run another shift, run another watt pass, and see if our results are the same or get slightly better.
21:24	Sometimes they do get better.
21:26	All right, let's run another log just with the adaptives potentially updated a little more, and also we just want to see if the vehicle is repeatable now.
21:37	Obviously, we had a big improvement on that last run, but can we get it every time? That's what we want to know.
22:08	All right, so the massive dip on the 2-3 shift that we had before the changes we made, still gone.
22:14	Things are looking really good.
22:16	It is looking consistent.
22:17	The way I'm getting into the pull in first gear slightly varies just a bit because of this dyno and the loading process, but this is looking really good.
22:28	I just want to see if we've got that RPM flare at all.
22:32	No, we're shifting right on our 6,000 RPM points there.
22:38	Yeah, this is looking awesome.
22:44	Okay, so now that we don't have that RPM flare as we attempt to shift, and everything's looking really good, the next step I want to take after I save this log is I'm going to, I'm just going to call this run two.
23:00	I'm going to go back and let's bump our full throttle shift points up just a little bit.
23:05	I don't want to run them super high because this is a stock engine, but I'm going to bump them up just enough to show you what that looks like.
23:14	So, we're just going to do pattern A, and we're going to go up 150 RPM, and I'm just going to change these values slightly, give us a little bit of a buffer there, and save, and we'll test like that.
24:11	All right, so while not ideal, we had that big dip on the 2-3 shift, and we get to review it, diagnose it, and fix it.
24:24	So, all the other stuff looked pretty good.
24:29	Let's see where that 1-2 shift occurred.
24:34	A little bit higher, and here what happened on the 2-3 shift is we got up to our limit, so our RPM limit that we set.
24:46	Now, let's see if this time, if it correctly, yes, okay.
24:50	So, this time, and it does happen briefly, and that's probably why, you know, it doesn't always catch it in a log because the logging rate can only be so fast on a factory ECU.
25:03	We did end up with RPM limit becoming active, and ETC torque management type went to RPM limit, so at that point we know that throttle was impacted, and we can see throttle dipping down here, and that's where we get that massive loss of performance and torque there through that period.
25:24	It is required because we do need to protect the engine, and it did its job.
25:29	It kept it under 6400 RPM, which is where I'm comfortable with, and we proceed from there, but we don't want that to happen.
25:38	So, one of the things that I would suggest doing is initiating that wide open throttle shift, the 2-3 shift, a little sooner.
25:50	Give it a little more lead time.
25:52	Make sure we don't get up to that engine speed, and the other thing is, let's see how we were doing.
26:03	Yeah, I mean, we had a pretty good amount of pressure going to that oncoming clutch pretty early, but when the crossover happened, it looks like that handoff needs to happen just a little more quickly.
26:23	So, how long does it think that shift took? Yeah, it thinks it took 0.1 seconds, but with the flare, it didn't quite go as ideally as it can.
26:36	All right, I'm going to look over some tables and see what we can do about that.
26:40	So, the first thing we can do is, in our shift scheduling, go to the 2-3 shift and drop this one down to 60-50.
26:54	So, that's the first thing.
26:55	Then on our 2-3 shift, I'm going to apply the same torque factor to these, and let's see what else.
27:17	Upshift, 2-3.
27:21	I'm going to go with this value up here.
27:24	Actually, yeah, we're going to use these values and see if we can get a little more out of that clutch on that shift.
27:35	Let's see where we are here compared to these.
27:39	Oh yeah, that'll bring it in line with these.
27:41	And actually, let's take a look at the 1 -2.
27:45	Yeah, I mean, if that's helping us out and avoiding that behavior in others, let's do it for these gears as well.
27:54	Okay.
28:00	Oops.
28:01	Well, now I've applied that here, but okay, we'll do that, and then I'm going to, well, we'll do the best we can with that.
28:20	That's right.
28:21	Sorry, that exact file will not be saved quite as it was before I edited it and saved it, but that's all right.
28:28	All right, so ready to flash.
28:41	This time I only made TCM changes, so we'll do that.
28:48	All right, temps still good.
28:53	This car's a champ.
28:55	Dynofan working awesome, allowing us to just keep it moving, which is lovely.
29:03	Let's get going.
29:04	All right.
29:30	Well, that worked fantastic.
29:32	Love it when a plan comes together.
29:37	We got our higher RPM shifts, but under control, on time.
29:46	We had the best 2-3 shift we've had, it looks like.
29:51	Looks really good.
29:52	The 1-2 shift was pretty similar to before, but still looking really good.
29:59	And I'm going to let the vehicle cool down a little bit, and then we'll probably give it one more shot, but that looks pretty fantastic.
30:08	I'm happy with it.
30:11	Now, at this point, if this was a full -blown race car, you could certainly try and hunt for a bit more, but for a performance vehicle that doesn't see the track, I think we've given quite a serious improvement, not only in performance, but in feel.
30:27	It feels really firm and solid when it shifts now, but not unduly jolty or anything like that.
30:35	It just feels really good, not sloppy, so I'm happy with that.
30:42	And here you can see we're getting these shifts done quickly, without flare, and without the throttle intervention having to happen.
30:49	So, we're at full throttle through the whole run, which is what we want.
30:55	Throttle intervention is great when you absolutely need it for safety, but on a vehicle like this, it's not something that you want to see.
31:01	If you're seeing it, you've probably got something to adjust so that you can avoid it.
31:06	And again, part of it is, it's not that the throttle motion is the end of the world, but as soon as that system kicks in, it does not exit that system quickly, and you end up with a long duration, massive torque reduction, which you can actually avoid through correct calibration.
31:25	All right, how's our torque converter clutch doing? Let's see how that's working out.
31:33	Yeah, so we're getting a bunch of line pressure quickly here.
31:38	We've got a little bit of slip, like 40 RPM, but then the pressure ramps up, drops that down to near zero, so that's looking really good.
31:48	Yeah, I like what I'm seeing there.
31:52	I'll wrap this up, and we can get the vehicle off the dyno and ready for a road test.