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Custom Tuning with JZW

4K views 43 replies 19 participants last post by  pfb 
#1 ·
Drove up to see John on Sunday, he needed to borrow my welder for a roll cage and offered me some custom road tuning in exchange. It was really nice hooking the laptop to my ECU and watching the ECU parameters as I drove my Saab. My wideband was showing that my Saab had been running rich under full boost and John was going to fix it. Turned out the largest problems were hardware. My DI was going out and was stuttering at high boost. One of John’s spare DIs fixed that. Then a hose blew off several times and also leaked a bit. Once the hardware was fixed John monitored the ECU on his laptop while I did several pulls. He was able to adjust boost, fuel and timing to dial in my Saab. It feels fantastic now. Just enough boost to chirp the tires in second and a little safer timing under full boost to keep the knock down. My Saab’s never felt this good before.

John also let my drive his monster convertible. It is definitely the fastest car I have ever driven, and a bit terrifying. It was surprisingly drivable at low rpms, but once it hit 4000 it just took off. The time between driving the speed limit and being thrown in jail was very short. It was easier to handle than I expected with that much torque. I did not have any trouble keeping it straight or keeping traction in 3rd and above. In all it was a pretty fun day.
 
#3 ·
Thanks Eric, that was a lot of fun switching up cars and I had a great time watching my vert close in on me in the ng900/viggen:cool: With the tdo4, I would take off from a stop and get out a 100 yards or so and then I would see the vert closing fast and it was kind of a trade off with the instant power of the tdo4 and the bigger wait of the gt3076. I am sure the driving style has something to do with it and its hard to just jump in a car that has a power band from 4500-7200rpm and get used to it...

I was tuning Eric's cars via-can bus:cool: Its awesome, you can see all the engine parameters and when in the fuel and timing maps, the table that the ecu is using is highlighted, its an awesome tool. We drove around and did pulls and I watched the knock levels and coolant temp and iat and all that and adjusted the timing and fuel until the car was pulling nice and hard at 18-21psi and felt nice and smooth with little to no knock detection.

It was a fun time. I need someone to drive my vert while I dial it in now8)

John
 
#16 ·
So why are people buying bdm's if you can just tune through canbus without soldering etc...?
From my limited knowledge of it, Canbus lets you save your preferred "live parameters" to your laptop's ram and then you take your laptop to your BDM workstation to flash that info onto your ECU. I don't think Canbus has the capability of flashing your ECU.

Am I right JZW, Lastaero?
 
#19 ·
Can you load saved settings as a way of 'live tuning'? IE Create a tune, save it, instead of flashing it just load the saved tune via CANBUS and have it on the fly?

The reason I ask is I have been working on setting up a Car-PC for awhile, and have also always wanted the option to run different tunes like the Cobb setups for Subies. This would make it so that if I have the Car-PC hooked to the ECU via a CANBUS I could select the tune I want to run when I start the car by using the touch screen on the dash... that would be super pimp.
 
#26 ·
John, I'm with turbojohnny. get out here and tune our cars! Im within 2 weeks of the intercooler BTW and possibly sending you my Nordic ECU. Too busy driving the Trans Am to care about FWD LOL.
 
#27 ·
I would love to do something like that, but it would take a few to make it worth my while. Too bad some of you guys cannot come out and make the 2009 soc event in Colorado... Of course then it would be good for our elevation and not sea-level:cool:

John
 
#29 ·
once i get my b234 in, in the next month or so i would be down for a JZW tune. lol
 
#36 ·
john, i would suspect the altitude has a very large part with the amount of fuel used. The thinner air has less o2, and thus less fuel is need for the AFR's (i'm assuming you were tuning using AFR's)

Now i need to make a trip up there and get the mystical SQR stage 4 fixed/replaced...
 
#39 ·
Yes, that and the fact he had that walbro 255 that I measured fuel pressure at 55psi instead of the normal 43psi, that is just like running a 3.8 fpr.

that is where the difference is coming from.

John
 
#40 ·
The ecu can adapt some, but yes it can have an effect and tune that is optimal at sea-level is not at elevation and visa versa.

I have seen quite a few tunes at sea-level not run right up here in Denver.

John
 
#44 ·
not likely, the land of computer engineering is VERY unfamiliar territory to me... so I'm going to stick to maps that I can actually see :) I'm definitely a visual learner like that. For public record I WAS just kidding around about offering up tunes, this is just a fun hobby for me to play around with and see what I can do :cool: But as time goes on...who knows??
 
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