looking to tune my car (clueless on this computer stuff)

olyfiveoh said:

I've read through a few forums and I may be missing it, but it seems nobody has explored hte option of using megasquirt. If you dont know, MS is a fully tunable ECU that is extremely cheap. You can buy a completed board cusomized for your car, for around $400, or you can get the board in pieces and solder it together your self for only $200. I recently set one of these up for a CBR 600 engine that was on our schools formula SAE race car. It was my first endevor in this type of thing and it was a moderatly easy project, even for a beginer like myself. After you get the board, you just need a laptop and then install the free tuning software. Then start setting up maps. It may seem confusing at first but there are tons of help forums for MS. Anyway, just a thought.

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Another FSAE participant

Sounds like you were more involved in your team than I was though
I was allowed to drive one of the old cars which had been hacked up and pieced together after falling off a truck. It had an unrestricted 900cc.
Words can't describe the feeling of that much power, combined with that much traction.


There are a few MS Mustangs around. It seems that the stand alone options aren't used as heavily as the piggy back tuners though.
Maybe it is just an intimidation thing?

Personally, I like that by using the tweecer I am becoming familiar with how Ford tuned the original ecu's.

I would think that the MS supports data logging. Is this correct?

jason

Yes you can data log but you have to have a laptop in the car to do it. the board itself has no memory.
You must have went to WWU then right? And you must have driven V26. It was recently put back together the right way and looks pretty sweet. It still has the 900 and it still screams. We are going to detroit this may for comp, and it should be pretty cool. What year did you graduate? where do you work now?

olyfiveoh said:

Yes you can data log but you have to have a laptop in the car to do it. the board itself has no memory.
You must have went to WWU then right? And you must have driven V26. It was recently put back together the right way and looks pretty sweet. It still has the 900 and it still screams. We are going to detroit this may for comp, and it should be pretty cool. What year did you graduate? where do you work now?

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Tweecer requires a laptop to datalog as well.

Yep, WWU.
I can't remember all the numbers now...
24 had the unrestricted 900? I'm pretty sure that was the last of the steel spaceframes.
26 on up was CF twin tubes?

Been at Boeing the last 2 years now, in the Materials Test Lab.

Where did you go to school?
You recognized VRI? Must be Seattle area?

PM me, lets get this off the tech board...
jason

OrLackThereof said:

5.0's are best tuned manually, computer tuning is not usually necessary....the EEC-IV is pretty loose and imprecise, tuning is far more important on the EEC-V system that the newer cars came with.

Honestly Ive had good luck tuning with just tweaking on the fuel ratio, reading the plugs, tweaking plug gaps, changing timing, and TPS voltage. Those are your best weapons in tuning a 5.0, and I've tuned a few headed/cammed 5.0's this way and gotten them to drive very well. Hell I tuned mine, over the long term, using this method doing it completely by ear smell and intuition, and when I finally got it dyno-tuned for a chip, they threw it on the dyno, added 2 degrees of total advance, not base, and said "well other than that, there isnt anything we can do, you had it perfect as it is". So I blew $450 for 3 things: EGR disabled, rev limiter disabled, and 2 degrees total timing added. Thats it!

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I don't mean to insult you, but you may have had some sunshine blown straight up your @$$.
There are good tuners and not-so-good tuners.
Either your cam was fairly mild (emissions legal, or close to it), or the tuner just took the quick cash and ran.

If you were lucky to get a good MAF 'calibration' for your EEC/injector combo, then maybe the car was ok.
Not RIGHT, just ok.
The minimum he should have done was
MAF Transfer
Injector High & Low slopes
vBat Offsets (which change with injectors)
and then the emissions stuff (which he did do).

I'm not saying that the car CAN'T run well with out these changes.
I am saying that for what you paid, your tuner ripped you off. He didn't perform a full tune.
You are not realizing all of the benefits of a custom tune.
You could have ordered a Superchips from Summit and seen exactly the same thing.


My intent is not to insult you (although I will take a shot at your tuner for taking short cuts , on his customers dime ).

Just like anything in life there is a 'quick' way and a 'right' way.
Comparing a 'quick' custom tune to a 'right' custom tune is the same as comparing apples to sheep

I am just getting started as a tuner (hobbyist), but I have learned where the 'short cuts' are. If for no other reason, so I can avoid them.

Just my opinion on the matter,
I am sure others will disagree...


jason