[s-cars] Chip - best choice

[Mihnea Cotet]

Hi again Feico and the others,

Some more thoughts on this:

At 11:14 21/01/2004 -0500, FvAMI at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 1/21/04 1:36:48 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
>mik at info.fundp.ac.be writes:
>
>
>>Hmmm, Feico, do you think a stroker motor won't require custom tuning?
>
>
>Mihnea,
>
>It has already been done - straight out of the box in a completely 
>different car with a new stroker ... it ripped the quater in under 12.5 
>seconds.  ... So of course - it isn't any generic code. But ... only the 
>first set of code was fine tuned on a dyno ... and it does not need to be 
>redynoed for every new stroker that comes along. Can it go faster - sure - 
>but unless you want to replace your transmission every 10K miles the 
>torque levels are probably enough.

Generic for me means "off the shelf".... if you build new strokers and your 
code was done on a nearly new engine, it could work ok on 95% of all 
engines IMO/IME....


>Sure every car is slightly different - but a car with 100K miles on it is 
>also going to behave differently than the same car with 20K miles later 
>even in exactly the same atmospheric conditions. So if I set it up 100K to 
>"custom tuned" ... how can I guarantee it is still as good at 120K miles? 
>What if the MAF fails ... I buy a new one and go through the whole custom 
>tuning process again. If it is only $100.00 great - but I think it is 
>quite a bit more than that ... yes? ... no?

Hmmm, quite frankly, some cars I've tuned have been driven for more than 
50.000kms and no code change has been necessary so far, meaning that the 
engine wear hasn't implied so big changes in the way the engines worked. 
However, still after that, the chip from one of the cars still won't work 
properly in another. Also, with real-time tuning, and MTM do the same, one 
implies that the car is technically sound and that the remapping isn't 
being done with a flaky MAF for instance, or huge boost leaks, otherwise 
it's pointless to tune it....

>Mihnea - you are very ambitious and I would definitely like to meet up if 
>you came to the US. I actually may be in Amsterdam in the near future for 
>a few weeks so maybe we could link up then. I have not seen or tried any 
>of your stuff. So it is impossible for me to make an assessment on 
>essentially an unknown.

No problem for me meeting you Feico, if you want to come over with an S-Car 
and have me show you my skills/hardware, we can do it.


>I do know what Lehman, MTM and others have done over the past 5 - 25 
>years. Didn't Lehman work on the Pikes Peak Quattro? Others use their 
>chips or minor deviates - I don't think any one of them would claim they 
>could do it as good from scratch.

Lehmann and MTM also do mostly only real time tuning. Why do you think the 
Stage 1+ chips ping in CA on hot summer days? IMO it's only beause those 2 
chips have been developed on a particular car/ECU (I strongly suspect it 
must have been an ABY S2 for some reasons I've already mentioned here) and 
afterwards they've been emailed to Hoppen and used as "generic" chips for 
off the shelf sales. Which explains they work ok in some cases but don't 
work ok in some other cases....


>I started playing with the code many years ago ... there is a lot I know 
>about it and still a lot I don't. I believe you did the same and of course 
>I am sure you just like I still have questions about certain parameters.

I hate bragging about me and what I know, but I'd just say that it's 
already been a pretty long time since I have stopped having questions about 
M2.3.2 (AAN, ABY, ADU, and also 3B which is M2.3 I think) parameters, at 
least about the ones important for tuning for performance and driveability 
or emissions. It's now been 1 year since I've moved on working on ME7 and 
EDC (TDI) systems, which are far more complicated (512kB or 1MB files), but 
they are also very interesting from a tuner's standpoint. M2.3.2 is easy 
compared to ME7, apart from the fact that it has nothing to do in terms of 
internal logic....

Just a few more thoughts,

Mihnea