New to the stand alone world myself. Been reading the user manual and feeling stupid. Any suggestions for stand alone engine managment books or forums dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of wizardry. I understand a good portion of tuning is trial and error, but it helps to have a good idea of the inner voodoo. At least with some good knowledge maybe a few people can avoid things that go boom in the night during the errors faze.

 

What are you trying to do? You have the base maps right?

 

Have patience with me for this post. Rocking a good headache so brain is slow. The back story is I purchased a '99 Miata with a FM II already installed. The FMII is almost 3 years old. Initial looks at the car put it in good condition overall and the usual 12 year old car issues. Going into it I knew somethings would need tweaked. Nothing massivly wrong just not my style. Like the wheels. Long story short the idiot that had the car toasted the turbo. Ran the car without the BOV plumbed to vac/psi and fried the oil seals, like 1/2 quart of oil loss a weekend toast. So... now I've rebuilt the turbo, literally taken everything but the block/head off and cleaned it, RC 550's sent to RC for clean, installed FM's crossflow and new MBC. Got the car running on the idiots old map and a few test runs through the neighborhood. Less than 10 mile the plugs looked like chocolate cake (new plugs 2). Was waiting for a new 9pin to usb connector so parked it for a few days.

The important-got a base MAP from jeremy at FM and uploaded to ecu. Saved the idiots old map as well for cross refferancing. Got he TPS calibrated and went to atmo cal the wideband (WB). WB unplugged from ecu got 14.7, open air cal with WB plugged in, miata jumper cabled to my running jeep battery to maintain 13+volts for steady juice and started plugging numbers into the calibrate form. Forget the title. Example. 14.7 for stoich unplugged 126, WB plugged in and hot had to put 126 in the field lower to get 20.7/8. Safe to assume the WB is toast? Ordering Monday and new wastegate can to ditch the boost creep.

Long story shorter being new to ecu tuning but not new to working on cars it's a bit scary. I know the usual answer to " I need help tuning" is ---- you trial and error ------- live with pistons sticking out of your hood. Not "what part is scary? I'll help cause I myself didn't know ---- at some point and wish someone had pointed me in the right direction peacefully"

 

OK sorry for the rant. Headache, narcotic pain killers for disabilities, heart pills, not drivable but running car, and long day add up to pissy write up. That being said to answer your ? yes have the base map, installed, calibrating, failing, shaking fist at previous owners general direction, ordering more stuff, not telling girl costs of fun. Just think their should be a forum or books that explain in idiots guide speak. Such as "try this in small increments watch gauge A for X and pay attention for Y on gauge B. If bad X or Y results back of if not yay high five you get to keep your rods and move to next level/peramiter. Starting with a good knowledge for a noob of hard parts the electronic side of things seems like sacrificing a chicken on tuesday makes more power and a goat on friday more boost. Thanks for reading the rant again. Going to bed. Input would be welcome. Other than I got screwed on this car. For what I paid for it I figured even if I had to do a basic rebuild I'm saving money in the long run.

 

Narcotics plus boost sounds like a good combination.

How about this:

What you need to do is put the car in third or fourth and log a pull a redline. Pull over and look at the results. Adjust your fuel map in the rows/columns in question until you reach your target. Adjust, then log another pull, repeat. Do simple math to know how much to change your cells. If you are currently at 10.5:1 AFR and want 11.5:1 AFR you need to multiply the pertinent cells by .92 to reduce the fuel by 8%. To do this, select the cells, then hit the M key.

First get your vacuum fuel map looking okish by driving around autotuning outside of boost for half an hour or so. Then, do a pull at 0psi and log it. Figure out the shape of your 0psi row, keep pulling and logging and adjusting until AFRs are ok. Fuel map for vacuum should now be pretty close.

Then you have to do your boost fuel map. Math time. Assuming you have a 14:1 AFR target @ 0psi, to see 14:1 AFR @ 14.7psi, you would need double the fuel @ 14.5psi since there's twice as much air. So. If you want 11.5:1 AFR @ 14.5psi, you need to first copy your 0psi row into your 14.5psi row, then multiply it by two, then multiply it by 1.18 to increase the fuel by 18% to hit 11.5:1 AFR. I would then repeat the math for the 8psi row except I would not double the fuel from the 0psi row; I would increase it by 45% or multiply by 1.45. Then, same deal, increase by 18% for 11.5:1 AFR.

Last step is interpolation. Interpolate 8psi down to the 0psi row. That way you will gradually richen up as boost builds. Then, interpolate from 8psi to 14.5psi. AFR should stay constant at 11.5 between 8 and 14.5psi. To interpolate you select your cells, and then hit X or Y. It will interpolate either between the edgemost selected cells on the top or the side, depending on X or Y.

Now do a boost pull to 15psi or so and see how your AFRs look. Note that psi =/= airflow and your turbo airflow may not be linear with RPM or psi. Your base map will probably be off so start logging and adjusting and getting it to look correct. Remember, pull, log, adjust, repeat.

Base fuel map done. Don't worry about timing for now.

 

Ok found out I'm an idiot and my WB is ok. What started the paranoia was this. WB unplugged and open air put 126 in "wego zero cal" box to get 14.7 then in the "wego grad cal box had to put in 125 to get the WB to go to 20.7/8. This started off a sense of WTF and my inexperiance made me think the 2 are related and should be around 126 and something considerably higher. Call to FM to order the WB and after a short conversation found out the 2 aren't as correlated as I thought. So 1 point for the FM. Got the WB open air calibrated.

I'm writing this in hopes it will make someone else less freaked when the numbers don't add up in your head. Stop thinking so hard. Now onto thinking to hard

 

First off, thank you faeflora for your patience in helping a noob. Also I hope this helps other fellows noobs to understand what they are getting into and lessen the tears after going to MT.net. MT is a great resource but a bit abrasive. It seems when someone, who is very familiar with the setup of a system, when they write a manual and everything seems easy to them. By default things get under simplified or skipped because unintentionally they leave things out. No ill intent is made just think of trying to explain XBOX to your grandmother or remember the old VCR time setting nightmares of days gone by.

Now I didn't get the 3/4 gear redline pull w/ logs. Just did the less than 0 boost driving after getting base timing set, I hope its set. Set the WB to autotune about 1500rpm and up and went for a drive. First off idle afr is about 11 so need to get into that and looking for an easy way to do that. Noticed a big afr jump on runs such as a good accel to 4k or so and let off. afr seems ok till let off then spikes to 18/20 asume since on full let off at high rpm ecu reads high vac and just cuts fuel down ie lean as hell. If this is safe cool seams normal.

Now after a ginger drive staying in vac as much as possible the nice little ramp to my base map has gone to a slight cottage cheese ramp in the lower levels. My understanding is the smoother the better so why bumpy map? cause race car now? After every run 10-15min at a time I saved and uploaded to ecu before turning the car off. car did seam more responsive and cruise better but could be just me being optimistic. For the record the previous owners map was all over the place on the ramp. So bad that my girl brought me a drink in the garage and saw the screen with it up and thought it looked jacked.

Now with the boost map base from FM I should be ok with leaving it in auto tune and just going driving in and out of boost. Let it autotune, save and upload, turn off car, rinse and repeat?

On to question that may or may not make sense out loud. In my head they do.
Now "If you are currently at 10.5:1 AFR and want 11.5:1 AFR you need to multiply the pertinent cells by .92 to reduce the fuel by 8%. To do this, select the cells, then hit the M key." Is it safe to assume this is linear? multiply .92 is 8% across the board? 5k or 7k or 2k? So if for idle tuning since mine wants to sit at ruffly 10.5ish I take the 1000rpb 8kpal zone and multi by .92 (.695x.92=.639) now I take my new 8% leaner number of .639 and plug it in to approx 11.5 in that zone. Now I know this may not be exact but gets me in the 99% close most of the time. That being said lets try going crazy. I want a 16% raise in afr. Take .695x.84 (for 16% change 100-the percent change desired) to =.5838 now plug in to get 12.5 afr ish? I assume if we want a raise take it the other way for 8% or 1 full point richer use 1.08 like .695x1.08=.750 plug in and yay richer afr's. Also M key does nothing for me need to highlight the cell manually with arrow keys then F7 enter number and hit enter key. Normal? Running software revision 15 for hydra 2.5 if it matters. May not be using same gen of software is all.

With log I hit TOOL>LOG DATA I get a odd looking screen that gives a start/stop button on top left. Hit start-go drive, hit stop-stop driving....on the right page? Then how do I get the data log to be a readable graph or translate in something understandable? Or just stare till it makes sence? Once again, noob.