[s-cars] Chip - best choice, a call to tuners

[Trevor Frank]

So kids what did we learn here.



Off the shelf chips are probably not the best thing if you are trying to
get max hp and or if you have mod's or are running gas that it wasn't
designed for.



So who is going to provide this service, real time tuning on a dyno to
cars in the U.S.?  



-----Original Message-----
From: Mihnea Cotet [mailto:mik at info.fundp.ac.be]
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 9:39 AM
To: FvAMI at aol.com
Cc: s-car-list at audifans.com
Subject: Re: [s-cars] Chip - best choice



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



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