Practical Transmission Tuning: Road Testing

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Road Testing

29.15

00:00	All right, at this point we've got our vehicle off the dyno and we're ready to go out and do a road test.
00:08	So, I'm letting the vehicle warm up.
00:10	I've got my scanner scanning.
00:12	We are logging.
00:13	We have a few codes on from the vehicle beyond the dyno.
00:16	For example, an ABS fault, a stability control saying that it's off.
00:21	I expect all of those things to cancel themselves out once we drive a little bit on the street.
00:27	So, no big deal.
00:28	And I think it's warm enough.
00:30	We'll start heading out of the shop.
00:38	It's a bit of a rainy day.
00:41	It's been going from light rain to rather hard rain.
00:45	So, we'll see what we get as we head out.
00:51	If we can find a dry spot, I'll test our wide open throttle shifting and see how it feels on the road.
00:58	If we can't quite do that today, we'll focus on all our partial throttle changes and shift field changes in those areas.
01:07	And I will let the customer let me know how wide open throttle shifting feels when they're comfortable testing and have a nice dry stretch of road to do so.
01:24	All right.
01:28	Yeah, it's slippery.
01:29	All right.
01:34	So, for now, I'm in normal drive mode.
01:39	There we go.
02:01	So, normal drive mode, still nice and smooth, nice and casual.
02:05	Again, we haven't changed our shift scheduling or our pressure profile in drive.
02:10	So, it drives just as gently and smoothly as it did before.
02:15	You still get that nice sound from the engine.
02:19	So, it's kind of a nice combination of fun and sporty sound with some comfortable, smooth driving feel.
02:32	So, I'll just drive it a little bit in that mode.
02:36	And then we'll switch it up to sport and feel the difference.
02:40	And then we can also put it in tap-up, tap-down.
02:43	So, tap-up, tap-down is now going to have the shift pressure of our sport mode.
02:52	So, it's going to be nice and snappy and firm when we make those shifts.
02:57	So, I'll be curious to see what that feels like.
03:14	All right.
03:14	So, a little bit of normal mode.
03:16	I'm going to go ahead and put it over in sport shift.
03:21	Now, we're expecting it to hold gears to a much higher vehicle speed and engine RPM.
03:27	Oh yeah, we get a nice firm shift there.
03:30	I like that.
03:33	Confidence inspiring, but not too abrupt at light throttle.
03:39	Oh yeah, engine's a lot more peppy.
03:42	Feels like it really wants to go.
03:51	And it looks like the sun might be peeking out.
03:54	So, it may be our lucky day.
03:57	We'll see if it's dry or out in this direction where the sun is shining.
04:03	But for now, even just cruising this country road, a lot more fun.
04:10	Engine feels like it's ready to go.
04:13	If you had a turbo, I would say it would feel like it's ready to spool up and take off.
04:23	There's that nice feel on that shift there.
04:25	So, now we're in third gear.
04:32	It's doing exactly what we want it to do, keeping us over 2000 RPM.
04:44	Now, I'm curious, if I put the vehicle back into drive, what gear would I be in at this point, at this vehicle speed? Let's see.
04:56	So, we've gone from third to sixth.
04:58	It shifted up three times.
05:00	And now I'm at 1400 RPM.
05:05	And it's really nice, you know, nice and smooth and casual, but it certainly doesn't feel responsive.
05:11	I'm applying a little more throttle and it's not really responding a great deal.
05:16	So, I'm going to put it back in sport.
05:21	We've got some nice downshifts there into fourth and then third.
05:25	Now, the engine feels like it's ready to go.
05:31	So, even though this vehicle really only has the two drive modes, plus the tap up and tap down, we've given ourselves some great options for different, you know, completely different driving feels.
05:43	It's really like a whole other vehicle in this sport mode now.
05:47	I'm really liking it.
05:55	Yeah,.
05:55	And there, as you can see, accelerated, we got an upshift.
05:59	Then as I slowed down, the downshift came right in to hold the engine speed up.
06:15	All right.
06:15	And at this point, all of our warnings in the cluster are gone.
06:19	Usually it'll only take a few seconds over a certain vehicle speed and those will all clear themselves out, at least on the cluster.
06:27	It's possible they will remain as stored codes and they'll remain until they're actually cleared out.
06:35	But as far as the driver's concerned, there are no warnings on the dash.
06:41	Everything's back to normal.
06:50	And at this point, I'm data logging everything just in case something happens that I feel I want to change later.
06:56	But thus far, I'm really happy with it.
07:00	All right.
07:00	We've come up to a queue.
07:01	It looks like they're doing a bit of tree work on the road.
07:05	So, I'm going to put it back in drive.
07:09	And once they let us go, I'll cruise casually through this area.
07:13	Drive mode will be perfect for doing so.
07:15	We don't want to have the engine revved up while we're going by the workers and have them think we're driving like a jerk near them.
07:22	So, again, just nice to have the option.
07:26	You know, we can have a nice, cool, comfortable, casual driver or we can have pretty much a beast if we put the thing in sport mode.
07:35	It feels really sporty, which I love.
07:38	So, great to have those options.
07:43	I mean, ultimately, from the factory, we had the two modes, but they were so similar to each other that you could tell the difference, you know, in some areas and in other areas, it was kind of like, was that different? I don't know.
08:00	Now, it's very obvious.
08:02	And I think we've really added some value there just with that shift scheduling alone.
08:09	And then I think the shift feel ultimately just makes the vehicle feel so much more sporty.
08:15	You know, I mean, in normal mode, smooth shifts are great, nice and smooth, nice and slow.
08:22	But when you're driving a performance vehicle, you want every aspect of it to feel sporty.
08:28	And if the shifts are sloppy and sluggish, just doesn't feel very sporty.
08:33	So, I think we've fixed that now.
08:35	All right, we're through that zone.
08:38	And we are back out on this country B road.
08:45	Got a little bit of traffic, but I'm going to keep cruising along and see if we find a spot where it looks safe and dry enough to open it up a little bit.
08:56	This engine does make quite a bit of torque.
08:59	We're two wheel drive.
09:00	I suspect there isn't much weight in the back of this ute.
09:03	So, it's probably going to break traction pretty easily.
09:07	And we just want to make sure we play it safe with this customer's vehicle.
09:10	So, I won't get too wild out here.
09:15	I do have traction control on just to be safe for now.
09:20	Normally speaking, if you really wanted to test wide open throttle shifting, go to the track, go to a nice empty area where it's dry and completely safe.
09:31	You have lots of runoff and you can turn traction control off at that point and really give it a go and not have to worry about putting the thing in a ditch.
09:41	But for today, with the roads we have available, I'm going to test everything I can.
09:47	And then I'm going to do what I generally do, which is leave it up to the customer to do anything that's really aggressive or puts the vehicle in a situation where something could happen.
09:58	I'm going to leave that up to the customer or we're going to do it at the track somewhere in a safe environment.
10:08	All right, so while we're cruising to hopefully get to an area with a little less traffic, I'm going to shift back to sport mode and then I'm going to go to tap up, tap down, and I'm going to see what those shifts feel like, both at relatively low engine speeds, perhaps closer to where our normal shift scheduling would shift, and the more moderate ones where our sport shift pattern would have us holding the engine.
10:33	But both with the new shift firmness that we've gotten in our shift pattern Y pressure system.
10:47	All right, so we're in sport.
10:50	It's got the engine revved up.
10:51	I'm going to tap to upshift.
10:58	Yeah, I mean, firm but not aggressive, at least at this engine torque output.
11:05	And of course, it's going to ramp up as we apply more torque, right? Because we have that time matter that's torque based.
11:12	And that's always going to shorten up the shift, increase the pressure, which allows the shorter shift to occur as we apply more torque.
11:22	So, still driving moderately.
11:24	I've got a little section here where I can give it a bit more throttle and let's see what that feels like.
11:34	Go for an upshift.
11:39	Nice.
11:47	So,me downshifts.
11:53	I'd say the downshift felt pretty good.
11:55	If you wanted a really sporty feel and tap up tap down mode, which included perhaps windy road driving like this, now might be a point where you say, you know what, I think I would like those downshifts to be just a bit quicker.
12:10	So, that would be an area where we could possibly make an additional change at this point, just based on my driving feedback from this test drive so far.
12:22	Rain's really picking up now.
12:23	So, yeah.
12:29	So, even in the rain at this engine torque with the additional shift pressure and firmness, it's not upsetting the balance of the vehicle, at least as I'm driving it right now.
12:45	So, I think we've, we've made the right amount of performance and feel increase there without going too far.
12:56	All right.
12:57	Let's see if we can give it a little squirt here.
13:09	Yeah.
13:10	So, you could probably see that, um, gave it a good amount of torque there.
13:15	Did a one, two, and then a two, three shift feels really good when you start really getting going.
13:24	We've got a great looking rainbow and some sunshine in front of us.
13:28	Uh, so hopefully find some dry road and really go for it.
13:33	But if not, I think we've seen most of what I need to see.
13:37	It feels really good now.
13:59	Yeah, that was some nice textured road.
14:01	So, it had a good amount more grip.
14:03	Now, we're back on some black top, which looks like it might be a little slippery.
14:09	I'm going to put it back in normal mode, make everything nice and smooth.
14:16	All right.
14:17	We're back to the textured stuff.
14:19	We'll go to sport mode.
14:22	It's fun to play around with.
14:24	Just try all the different modes.
14:25	See when you like each one.
14:35	Perfect.
14:37	All right.
14:37	So, we'll pull over here.
14:39	Got a nice safe spot.
14:41	I'm going to save our data log.
14:45	So, this is going to be road test one, road test one part one.
15:14	Okay.
15:16	All right.
15:17	So, I'm going to breeze through quickly and I'm going to check first, see if we had any significant engine knock that I might want to look at.
15:33	Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
15:42	All right.
15:43	Now, here I gave it a bit of throttle.
15:46	Looks like we had a really brief one count of knock, nothing to be concerned about there.
15:54	It was at a still pretty light throttle.
15:58	All right.
15:58	Now, here's where I gave it that relatively aggressive bit of throttle.
16:05	Let's see.
16:07	I'm going to zoom in a little bit, get a closer look here.
16:12	Okay.
16:13	So, here it looks like I ended up right around 250 foot pounds of torque.
16:18	So, that's looking good.
16:19	Now, back to our transmission.
16:22	I loved everything that it did, except in tap up, tap down.
16:26	I think I probably would have liked the downshifts to be a little quicker.
16:31	I personally like driving a dual clutch a lot.
16:34	I like driving manual.
16:35	I like enjoying an auto as well, but it's only if the auto can be quick and responsive when I want it to be.
16:42	And that's what makes me really happy.
16:43	So, I'm hoping this customer will enjoy that too.
16:47	So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into shift timing into the downshift section.
16:53	And here we have a number of settings, but the main thing that I'm going to look at are our shift times.
17:08	And yeah, here I see our closed throttle special downshifts.
17:14	So, I'm thinking those will perhaps be active when we're in a special mode, which would be like we've set up our sport and tap up, tap down.
17:25	Closed throttle to me means probably, you know, not fully closed because this is drive by wire and it's used for idle, but when you're off the accelerator pedal and that'll often be when you're braking and might want some aggressive downshifts.
17:40	So, I'm going to leave the two to one downshift alone.
17:46	Then I'm going to take three to two and the four to three and the five to four and quicken those up a little bit.
18:04	Interesting that some of the normal mode closed throttle shifts are actually quicker.
18:11	And now that I've seen that, I'm going to go a little bit further with our adjustments.
18:19	And again, this is something that you could spend as much or as little time on as you'd like.
18:28	Usually I like to go in small steps and spend a lot of time really inching up on things, but yeah, in this case I'm just going to match our normal there, so I will shorten up the two to one a little bit.
18:39	All right, minimum power.
18:41	So, what can we see from the in-application here? Base desired shift minimum time for a power downshift two to one shift.
18:51	Okay, on power that seems pretty quick.
18:56	I'm going to leave that alone.
18:59	Power downshifts, I'm actually going to leave those alone as well.
19:03	I think I'm mainly concerned with when I get on the brakes and I'm tapping up, tapping down, and I really want it to feel a bit more like a DCT or a manual, and I just want that extra performance there.
19:15	So, yeah, I think I'm mainly just going to go for that.
19:20	And yeah, I'm going to go just a little bit quicker here.
19:30	I'm going to make a bit bigger change than I probably normally would just to speed up our process a little bit today.
19:38	So, I'm going to go ahead and save that.
19:41	And this is going to be road test two downshifts special one.
19:55	All right.
19:58	Yeah, let's flash the TCM.
19:59	I'm excited to see how this goes.
20:03	All right, we're flashed, and let's take a little drive up the mountain.
20:24	I'll leave it in second here.
20:27	Give me a little more control, see how slippery this is.
20:31	Now, we're back to textured pavement with more grip.
20:36	All right, we'll go for third.
20:40	Love that feel.
20:44	All right, coming into a corner, let's grab second, see how it feels.
20:48	Oh yeah, much better.
21:03	Up to third, coming into a corner, back down to second.
21:10	Yeah, there we go.
21:31	All right, so we've done second and third, which is working beautifully.
21:43	All right, now we've caught someone in front of us, so I'm going to slow down.
21:48	Let's see what going into first feels like.
21:51	Nice.
21:52	Yeah, I want going into first to be a bit more casual.
21:56	Because it's such a short gear, I don't like when it really jams into first.
22:02	That can definitely make the front end dip and upset the back of the vehicle.
22:07	All right, so we'll go from first to second, up to third, now back to second.
22:24	Yeah.
22:26	Yep, I think that hits the spot.
22:29	Now, at this point, you could certainly keep tweaking further.
22:33	You could try to drop those downshift times down further, and I suspect you could make that work.
22:38	But it really depends what you're after.
22:41	I think for this particular vehicle and application, I think this is spot on.
22:46	If someone was really going to want to run up roads like this and race it, or perhaps take it out on the track, then I'd probably want to go a bit further.
22:55	But this feels awesome.
22:57	All right, so turning around to head back down.
23:11	So, now I'm using the vehicle to hold second gear.
23:16	That way I don't have to ride the brakes all the way down.
23:26	Seems like we managed to find a section of road that they've freshly laid some oil and gravel on.
23:34	So, hopefully you can hear me all right.
23:37	It's not serious, but it's probably making a bit of noise.
23:41	I'm just going to go real slow through here until we get back down out of this section.
23:53	We'll make sure we give this thing a car wash.
24:11	All right, out of that section.
24:14	So, second, third, I want to see fourth.
24:18	Now, let's see what fourth to third feels like.
24:22	And second.
24:24	Yep.
24:31	All right, from fourth to third to second.
24:36	Oh yeah.
24:39	We're feeling racy now.
24:42	That's great.
24:44	Okay, I'm just going to cruise it back down the hill.
24:47	We've tested what we need to test.
24:50	No sense pushing it any more than we need to just to do the test.
24:56	Anytime I'm on a road test, I feel like five or six tenths driving is really about as far as I want to go.
25:03	Unless we're dealing with a race car and then take it on a track and probably give it seven or eight tenths.
25:10	Let the customer find where nine and ten are.
25:21	And of course, if you're tuning for yourself, drive responsibly on the road, whatever you feel that means.
25:31	And if you need to push something hard because it's going to be run down the track, might as well do it at the track.
25:37	Keep yourself out of trouble.
25:39	At this point, now I'm just going to cruise back to the shop.
25:42	Really happy with how everything's come out.
25:44	Thank you for taking this journey with me.
25:46	I know that we found a few hiccups, some perhaps inconsistencies and log data versus what we were seeing in certain tables.
25:55	But ultimately, it didn't stop us from coming up with a good product, something the vehicle owner is going to be super happy with.
26:02	And ultimately, we have the tools to get the job done.
26:05	Now, in your situation with a different ROM and the HP Tuner software, there's a very high chance that you're going to end up to see log data that perfectly correlates with table data in every single instance.
26:20	I've certainly had that experience many times with HP Tuners product.
26:24	And I think I just happened to have chosen a vehicle this time that perhaps isn't used as widely.
26:30	I think that's safe to say.
26:32	And perhaps isn't necessarily tuned to that super precise level that I sometimes look for.
26:39	But ultimately, really good gains, both in engine performance and transmission performance.
26:47	It's all working really well together as a unit, which is key.
26:52	We're telling the TCM the correct amount of torque we're producing.
26:56	With that data, it's giving us really good shift feel and torque converter clutch behavior that ramps up and down as engine torque increases or decreases.
27:06	And it all comes together as a really good package.
27:09	So, with that, I'm going to wrap things up.
27:11	I will take one last look at everything when we get back to the shop though.
27:15	All right, I completed my test drive.
27:18	Nothing funky happened on the way back.
27:19	Really happy with the vehicle and the way it's come out.
27:22	I did just give the data log a quick look over.
27:26	Didn't find anything unusual.
27:28	The downshifts look like they're working really well.
27:30	I can see a slight improvement from the adaptation as we drove, but it was actually pretty close right off the bat.
27:37	Your mileage may vary depending on the vehicle.
27:39	You may have to make some other specific changes.
27:42	But generally speaking, if you get things in the ballpark, request a reasonable downshift time.
27:47	The transmission will mostly take care of it.
27:50	And that's the beauty of these modern systems.
27:51	A lot of them will allow you to get a great deal of benefit without getting down into the absolute nitty gritty detail.
27:58	Obviously on the dyno, on that Watt 2.3 shift, I did have to go a bit further on that particular one just to get it to really work exactly as I wanted.
28:08	But for the most part, if you want only a portion of that gain, you won't have to go to those great lengths.
28:15	And in many situations, you can get all of the performance without that being required at all.
28:20	In fact, some of our 2.3 shifts were perfectly fine before we got that deep into it.
28:24	So, again, perform some back-to-back testing, give things a few runs, make sure there's no surprises before you deliver the vehicle.
28:33	But if you take it out on the road and find something's a little different, you can always make improvements.
28:38	So, as I've shown, we went out on the road.
28:41	I thought maybe downshifts are fine the way they are.
28:44	Thought better of it after driving it.
28:46	Yeah, they could be a little bit quicker and a little bit more fun, especially I think in the tap-up, tap-down mode, which really gives it more of a direct feel when we quicken those downshifts up.
28:56	So, we've done all that.
28:57	We've wrapped up our tuning process.
28:59	Thank you for taking the time with me.
29:01	I hope you've enjoyed it.
29:03	I hope you've learned quite a bit about automatic transmission tuning today and can put it into practice and have a lot of fun with a vehicle of your own.
29:11	Thank you.