You're aware that Ed road tuned Jeremy's Legacy, then later dyno tuned it and got 17 additional whp out of it because he was able to better monitor the car and he knew that the conditions under which he were tuning were the worst the car would see (IE: limited air flow, hot day, etc).

Interesting.

http://www.i-club.com/forums/showthr...8&page=1&pp=50

The main straight is over 1/4 mile long, and the esses leading onto it are efectively straight and probably give you a full 1/2 mile with an entry speed in mid to high second gear, so a full third gear pull would be easily possible. And the extra load of the incline will help find any knock/ping potentials.

It is not about straight and level...

One of the dyno advantages is you can vary the load, but I don't think most tuners bother. They use the defaults. If I'm going to be racing on most any of the N. CA road courses where there are significant uphill under full throttle sections, I would sure want to tune for them...

Hey sonicsuby, Yah, nKoan brought that to my attention. I think that was more of a case of high ambient temperature vs low ambient tempertature than road Vs dyno. It was relatively cool when Ed tuned Jeremy's car on the road. If it was a scorcher, I think it might have been closer. I could be 100% wrong on that though. 17 whp on Jermey's car is a small percentage and his setup is a whole lot more complex than mine. I don't blame Ed for being careful.

But your point is a valid one...once again though, just isn't that big of a deal in my mind for my situation.

sounds like you will stand stead fast in your decission. :)

I hope you get the conditions and meet the goals of your tune with success!

when is you tune date? or close to date set (CHP could be watching)? :lol:

Ha, well let's just say it's very soon then. But I have this fantasy in which Dean finds me a few other guys who need tunes and rents the RF Raceway for me. ;)

BTW, since my WRX is an '03, it runs great with my UP and TBE. I don't have the openloop/closedloop delay issue that the MY04+ guys have, so I could wait indefinately to get a tune (of course I don't want to wait another minute). I guess my plugs might foul eventually since I may be running rich, but I don't know.

I would but the standard reflash has been good to me and unless I had the money to get a GT35R or somthing I think the hole thing is a waste :lol:

I'm so tempted to try that, but I've been scared into believing that the canned cobb maps can cause detonation without me knowing about it. Again, I'm not willing to go the self-tune route or even datalog for that matter. I have my EGT and Turbo gauges and I promised myself I'd stick with this tune until the stock turbo gives out.

Whoever told you that is really stretching the truth.

The Cobb maps are extremely safe (and as such, are somewhat down on power), and you still have all the factory knock sensors in place which will keep your car from detonating.

Gee I wonder who could have told him that :lol:

Really? As I have been lead to believe, the factory knock sensor is a weak microphone based one that doesn't work at higher RPM's (above 4K IIRC). Knock is common on 04's stock as I mentioned before. The ECU will pull timing at specific RPM's and this could manifest itself as a flat spot in the powerband. It's really a bandaid to the problem and not a solution though.

Yes, it's true that Ed does spread that propoganda throughout the boards. Good point, but I've also never seen anybody refute it. Please let me know if you have.

Its certainly not a weak microphone. It may be a mic, but its certainly sensetive enough to detect even the slightest bit of knock. In fact, the knock sensor will detect knock before you could audibly hear it.

IIRC The knock sensor shuts down at just past 6k RPM (like 6250 or 6500 I think) and won't start back up again till around 5500 on the way back down.

It can cause a flat spot if you car is knocking (I doubt it, as its more a problem for 04+). But you certainly won't hurt your engine.

okay, thanks for correcting me. Regardless, I heard many people on the Cobb forums (no, not from Ed) had reported detonation.

I think the detonation on the Cobb forums is from people using maps that are not approriate to their mods, or have gone crazy with Street Tuner....

If I understand correctly, I think if the ECU can't stop the knock by grabbing timing, it should go into limp home mode, but I can't confirm this, and don't want to try.

In a modern knock sensor ECU car, I'd be surprised if you could ever hear the knock before the ECU takes it away. If you do, your tune is so far bad, the ECU can't compensate.

that's what I've been seeing as well.

The knock sensor is a piezo-electric sensor that is tuned to the exact sound of detonation in your engine. It shuts off as it climbs over 6k rpm not because it loses performance, but because normal engine sounds begin mimicking knock at that rpm. It's a resonance thing. If you ran your car to 10k rpm, your knock sensor would work fine from around 7500-redline.

well if you look at our Dyno thread you can see my TBE + Cobb (shelf map) puts down more power then some custom tunes :P (with the same mods)

if your doing a road tune and your affaid of det........its not going to matter much because you could still have the det costum or not it happens. thats why the sensor is there, they expected it to happen under certin conditions, to try to save the motor

[QUOTE=nKoan]

We're not here to bash Ed (I doubt he's even reading this), its more a chance to impart some of the wisdom a lot of us have picked up after being on these boards for years. If you want to ignore it, thats really no skin off our teeth.

Now is this bench racing or speaking from experience after actually logging dyno and road tunes yourself????

AS far as the whole "hotrodding and speeding on public roads is dangerous" arguement. I seam to recall an owner of a silver Titan pickup with a dealer tag, which frequents this board. Try to get me to pull against them on the Stead 395S on ramp 5 or 6 months ago. He had to have topped out at 85'ish while merging into traffic from the far right hand lane (crossing a couple of lanes into the far left hand lane). Is'nt the speed limit 65 on 395????

Oh wait, he's got "track time and Auto X's". There for it's safe. Perhaps this club should practice what it preaches.

Not trying to poke anyone in the eye, but I see WRX/STI's rodding around town every single week. Wonder how many of them frequent here?

I don't know you, maybe I've met you??? But I can't say I really care...Either way, WTF is the point of that. Can't say I've ever tried to race a car with my pickup, maybe you were just wishful thinking or something. So what if I merged at speed. It's not even close to the points the other people in this thread were trying to make.

You're an idiot. Piss Off.

Its neither bench racing nor direct experience. Its repeating the direct experience of many tuners I have talked to personally. Including ones that have nothing to financially gain by telling me this.

As for practicing what we preach, there is the fallacy of hypocrisy. I personally have done a lot of things I don't necessiarly recomend to anyone.

Sure, I've gotten my car to 120+ on public roads and raced people well over the speed limit. Doesn't mean I think I'm am perfect, in fact, I very much know it was not the best thing I could have done. If I try to tell you what is 'the right thing' am I wrong because I haven't always followed my own advice? If I want to pass along a little experience to the board, I will, regardless of what Ive done in the past (or even in the future).

That's not cool putting track time and Auto X's in quotes. I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or completely discounting them as having any validity at all. None of us are using driving events as an excuse for speeding. Although I would rather have someone going 95mph next to me that has gone 120+ on a track, but that is beside the point. Really close beside it.

Part of the reason this thread was revived was out of concern for a person going to drive fast on a public road. I know I wasn’t concerned if you got the best tune, because I hardly know which one that would be. If you feel confident to go out and do the road tune then nothing we say is going to change your mind.

I am aware many of the modifications we perform to our cars are illegal. I guess we all break the law everyday. I would rather be cited for a modified ECU than a 95 in a 65 speeding ticket.

Out of curiosity how much does Ed charge for a tune like the one you are getting?

Mojo Troll, speeding on public roads is an individual's decision. I'm pretty sure there isn't a single reader of this message that hasn't done 5,10,15, and even 20 over at one time or another.

That said, that is not street racing, and in many situations, it is meerly moving with the flow of traffic. While this group does not condone speeding, individual members may do so at there own choice.

In general, it is the discussion of street racing, or "kills" that is forbiden on this board because we beleive there are much better venues such as autocross, track days, etc. where "proving" you can drive can be done in a relatively safe environment with minimal risk to yourself, and others.

My problem with what I have heard descibed as Ed's method is that his business model requires that his cutomers repeadedly violate the law to use his services. I still strongly believe in real world tuning, but beleive it should be done in a safe legal manner, especially for a commercial enterprise.

AHHHH

The spawn of critical thinking. Great responses both nKoan and Dean.

Here's the big, grand, philisophical and theoretical difference between "speeding" and "street racing" that makes the former acceptable and the latter not:

If I hop in my car, and go looking for a twisty backroad to cruise down at a relatively quick pace, I personally do it around 8/10ths, varying slightly on occasion based on previous experience with a road. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've truly pushed the limits of my own skill and/or those of my car outside of a racetrack or autocross course, and all of those came when I was much dumber and less experienced than I am now. I would wager that the vast majority of "enthusiasts" like those populating this board would say nearly the same thing, because while we accept a certain level of increased risk by driving in that manner, none of us believes it to be dangerous; for one, driving at 8/10s leaves you some room to maneuver. You would be able to pull up a little shorter than you expected to, or turn in (or out) more than you had planned when something unforeseen occurs in front of you on your "course." At illegal, but not maximum, speeds, there is still room to err and not have catastrophic results. Further, if conditions change, like the weather, road surface condition, visibility, traffic, etc. then I can and would simply slow down, same as the rest of you. No big deal, I didn't "lose" anything.

However, when you bring competition into that mix, you lose that margin of safety. It's pretty hard to win at an autocross or out in a legitimate race setting driving less than 10/10s, and that applies to street racing. You aren't leaving any braking power or cornering grip if you come around a bend and find a cow in the road. Or someone stepping off a sidewalk into a crosswalk. Or pulling out of a dirt driveway. Or any of a thousand unpredictable things that could happen. Plus, because a victory is at stake, you're much less willing to simply back off when you know what you are doing is dangerous. People weave through traffic, or pass in oncoming turn lanes, or dozens of other stupid maneuvers.

This thinking frequently pervades even "group drives" which aren't actually competitive at all... but some people think there's something to prove by pushing their limits. Look at the bay area i-club drives last year- what was it, 4 in a row where a car was totalled, and a couple of kids even died in one? That's why I don't do group drives anymore, at least not ones without a very select, controlled group of participants. Not people who have great skill, but people who are familiar with each other and not bothered by not being the fastest, or by knowingly slowing their pace despite another group member's being faster.

To tie this into the subject at hand, the exact same philisophical difference applies to driving a tuned car fast, and tuning a tuned car fast. If you're limiting yourself to road tuning, then you are guaranteeing that you must successfully accelerate from ~35 mph to ~90 mph 8-10 times, on the exact same piece of road. And fromt he tuner's persepctive, he has to do that several times a week, every week. Some people here know that, in spite of the presence of my V1, I do not speed on I-80 during the course of running my route for work, a span of 240 miles. This is because I know that, as I drive 1200 miles every week on that stretch of road, which I know to be actively patrolled by CHP, I would drive the probability of getting caught well beyond 50%. However, if I am driving down the hill for other reasons, visiting family or the Sac crew, whatever, I usually do speed and depend on the V1 and my own awareness to avoid getting caught. The difference is that the probability of getting caught is much lower given my own attentiveness and the infrequency of those trips. The reward of reducing my travel time over the number of trips I make justifies the slight risk of a fine and a point on my driving record.

So, to spell out the point in no uncertain terms: Ed's accident was a CERTAINTY to occur at some point. It was not a freak occurence. What was lucky is that it was his own vehicle and not a customer's, and nobody was badly injured. But the accident was not "bad luck" for Ed like mine was 2 weeks ago.

In fact, the law itself sees this discussion the same way I do. This philisophical point of view is why murder is a capital crime, but kidnapping and rape aren't. It's why you get a fine for being caught speeding, but have your car impounded and/or confiscated and sold, and large fines and/or jail time and/or multiple points against your driving record. "Illegal" and "dangerous" are not synonymous in the eyes of the law.

The dirty deed is done.
 

Ed tuned my car yesterday and everything went 100% awesome. I'll just give a quick account of it here. We started tuning around 3:30pm and the temps were in the low 90's for most of the tune. We did a baseline and since my advanced multiplier was only at 7, the car was weak. (I don't remember the HP, but Ed said, it rivaled stock). I didn't think my car seemed much faster after the UP, DP, and CBE installs. Perhaps my car didn't like the free flowing exhaust. Ed quickly fixed all that. :D

After he loaded a baseline he had created, the car felt like a whole new beast. After 3.5 hours of tweaking and perfecting, I was at 206 WHP and 208 Ft/Lbs IIRC. I think it was a 40 whp improvement from baseline IIRC. The real cool thing is that Ed kept saying he couldn't believe how great my boost response was. After a shift, the boost needle would swing violently and stop on a dime at 17psi. I guess most WRX solenoids are weak and people have been replacing them with an inexpensive GM solenoid. He mentioned that he really prefers divorced wastegate DP's (like mine) as it makes it so much easier to tune the boost maps. He had never tuned a car with Crucial pipes and we were both impressed at how much they helped spool up. I was so stoked at how my car's responsiveness and power were improved upon, and the attention to detail Ed exercised.

As far as danger goes, we only did around 10 3rd gear pulls to redline and checked for boost spiking in 4th. I don't think I was ever asked to exceed 95, but I did anyway because I had never felt 4th and 5th pull so hard and I was stoked. He warned me not to "load up" 5th at low RPM's, and it was better to downshift. I agreed, but man, I could have cruised all the way up 80 in 5th if I had wanted and accelerated too. This is nothing like my old car. :P

We also went from a stop to the top of 3rd a couple times. At no time did I feel that anybody was in significant danger. Traffic was scarce and if there was a car or a bicylce (once) we wouldn't speed past them. There were no cross steets or driveways or crosswalks or blindspots or anything on the "dyno" portions of the road. I am no longer as sceptical of the danger factor. I actually got passed while driving around 55 between pulls a few times. Most cars just jam down these roads.

For reference, here's my mod list:

03 WRX:

Borla Hush CBE, Crucial UP & DP, K&N Drop-In, Heat Wrapped Stock Headers, Intake Silencer Delete, Omori Boost & EGT Gauges mounted in an Autometer 52mm Bezel Pod, Gun Metal Rota Torque 17's, Yoko AVS ES100's, Eibach Pro Kit Springs, KYB AGX Struts, Fumoto Oil Drain Valve, Rock Blocker Clear Bra, Mr. Josh's Solid Endlinks, and an '02 Sedan Rear Anti-Sway Bar. Protuned by Equilibrium Tuning.

I wonder how much longer he'll be able to run a business/service that depends on breaking the law. It's one thing when you're out by yourself doing it for shits & giggles, but running a business that way opens yourself up to a shitstorm of legal liability.

I'm sure he'll keep doing it until he gets busted. And even then, he may just move operations elsewhere. As long as there are customers, right.

That is unless he gets himself killed/injured by a n00b driver, or sued into oblivion by a customer whos car blows up or something.

Cody, what sort of warrenty or guarentee did you get with your tune? Did you have to sign any waivers? I'm curious as to what sort of protection Ed's left himself if he blows up someone's car.

I didn't sign anything nor did he. I just assumed it was a risk and I would be responsible for any problems, although I did joke with him, that if he blew up my motor, he'd be buying me an STI motor. :lol:

Ouch. Road tuning aside... that's reason enough for me to stay away from Ed's operation. At S-Squared, since I know they're a licensed shop, if they break anything they're responsible for their work. If I go to pick up my car and the motor's blown, it's on them to make it right. That's worth the extra cost of the dyno tune right there.

...'course if I pick up the car and blow it up in Lovelock for example... well shame on me. But at least I know I'm covered from the shop's errors.

What do you think happens if Ed blows up a car while road tuning? Does he just blame it on the owner's driving? Does Ed have insurance? Has he protected himself personally from his business?

Not to keep harping on this... I'm just amazed at the risks (both financial and personal) Ed's willing to take to run his tuning business!

Actually, if he gets stopped the police will likely share the same argument as Eds supporters:

"No, Ed, don't worry, man, other people break the law too, so it's cool that you're doing this. We were just hoping you could protune our Crown Vics!"

Glad to hear things went smothly and you didn't find the experence bad.

I bet you enjoy that new found power!!!

what did he use to tune with? I may have missed it, but you had an AP right? did you use Street Tuner or something else?

he uses protuner

Congratulations on the power gains.

Man Scott, I think reading all these posts here and on I-club just ate an hour of time. Great posts though.

Well gotta run and break some laws!

Thanks Mike, I appreciate your enthusiasm. I got Protuned so my AP has a few maps I can choose from, all made by Ed. He even improved the anti-theft map to kill the injectors as well as limit the redline to 0 RPM. The cool thing is, I told Ed my boost was maxing out at 14 psi when aproaching Reno on my drive home last night and he said if that continues to load a new map he just emailed me. I'm so glad I went with Protune instead of ECUTek for this and other similar reasons. He's also going to be up this way in about a month and he's going to check on my car to see how the tune looks up here. Very cool.

Oh and after adjusting for my tire size, it turns out I actually peaked at 208 WHP :P
http://eqtuning.com/dynos/cody/overlay.png

Also, if anyone wants to benefit from Ed's tuning ability and enthusiasm, off the road, he always can schedule dyno time. He actually offered that to me when I asked him some questions about safety.

Also, I asked him about liability issues for you guys and this was his response:

Huh? 105 - 85 = 20.

Sorry, I just reworded that and added more stuff to avoid a triple post.

182-103=79 (aka, just under 80)

Ok, nevermind, I'm dumb.

You're now making 105hp at 3000 rpm. You were making 85 hp. That's +20, which is still pretty good, but not 80 hp. :lol:

What's more impressive is the 30+ additional ftlbs of torque at 3k rpm, and even better, the 210 ftlbs at 4000 rpm.

I think sperry is correct unless we are reading the chart incorrectly?

You may be looking at the new torque number of 183 to the new hp?

Yah, oops. :oops:

I removed that part. Gawd! Idiot! /Napolean

Impound and jail time are possibilities, but not necessarily. I've been stopped twice in my life for 100+ (both times on deserted roads FWIW). SCHP gave me a $200 ticket 10 years ago or so for 108 in a 55 and I went on my way. Last summer NHP stopped me east of Tonopah and gave me only a verbal warning and he was only concerned that he might have to spend all night cleaning me up if I hit a free-range cow. Not proud, not advocating, just telling how it is.


This is incorrect I think. My '04 STI (when it was bone stock) would audibly ping/knock with the factory ECU with bad gas and/or hot weather. My '03 WRX did this too with Cobb Stage 1 (only ECU reflash) and bad gas and/or heat.

I've heard the ol' STi popcorn machine coming from MattR's hood too on a bad tank of gas as well. However, I think that's an extreme case caused by a large change in parameters as seen by the ECU: i.e. the ECU can't instantly adapt to the sudden appearance of low octane fuel.

Under normal conditions, a car running up near knock will properly adapt and avoid audible pinging as the temperature increases, or as the humidity changes, etc, even on a highly tuned car. In fact, if you were to gradually lower your octane by adding 87 to the car a gallon every 50 miles or so, you'd probably be able to under-tune the car to run on that swill... assuming you don't mind a motor that makes no power. :lol:

As was mentioned, and as I found out the hard way, the ECU unfortunately can't react to anything above 6k rpm. Which is probably a contributing factor to why I spun a bearing when my car knocked at 7000 rpm at the last Lovelock Club Trials. But below that threshold, the ECU does a very good job at protecting the car under dynamic circumstances.

Did you get tuned at a lower elevation? With AccessPorts your boost will drop as you go higher. I can't explain exactly why, but I saw it all the time when driving between Reno and Sac. or Vegas. Go up Tioga Pass and it will drop even more. You may want multiple maps - one for Reno and one for sea level, if anything to prevent overboost when going back to sea level.

I haven't noticed this with my UTEC, but I really haven't taken the car down low too much.

OK, I rephrase my statement that under normal conditions, you should never hear the knock.

Now if your tune has the timing map so far advanced or the fuel so lean such that the ECU isn't permitted to pull enough timing to compensate, then don't blame it on the knock sensor.

I would think load would drop off significantly above 6K, so knock should not be an issue as timing should have been pulled as you went through the higher load RPMs unless you do a big downshift right before increasing load. I guess if you are leaning out at high RPMs due to fuel starvation, that might contribute to it. But again, that would be a map problem, not a knock sensor problem.

Oh, and before you jump all over me, I don't think lean fuel mix directly generates detonation, but the increased combustion chamber temperatures as the mix leans out certianly do.

Ed tweaked the final map a bit to give slightly higher wastegate duty cycles only at higher elevations. He emailed it to me and I reflashed the ECU this morning with it. Seems pretty good so far, but I'm still seeing a tiny dip from 17 to 16 or 15 on some pulls and I'm not hitting target boost in 1st. I only get about 13-14 most 1st gear pulls. Ed thinks the map may require a little tweaking when he comes up next month, but he wants me to describe what's happening with the boost in better detail. He hasn't given up on tweaking the map a little bit at a time and emailing it to me.

Anybody with a video camera feel like going for a ride tonight? ;)

Not hitting target boost in first (or even second) gear is quite common, and often there is nothing to do about it. What happens is the engine revs through first gear quicker than the turbo can spool up, and by the time it spools the engine's flow is past the turbo's peak flow capacity, thus limiting boost. Also first gear doesn't generate as much exhaust heat which limits spool and boost.

This is why I... err, I mean some tuners do road-tuning log runs in fourth gear where they know boost is fully formed and stable.

In Davis, Ed kept commenting that my car had incredible boost response. He said it acted like I had a MBC or a GM solenoid. After a shift, I would immediately see peak boost and it would hold solid. I was hitting target boost very early, even in 1st. It must be the Crucial pipes. They're ceramic coated and really well made. The divorced WG design is preferale as well.

Anyway, it's running good and strong up here, but boost should look better we think. Anybody in town have Delta Dash or any logging tools? Or like I said before, a digital camera with video ability will work too. Mine has it, but it's pretty crappy...doesn't have to be tonight.

Thanks for your input knucklesplitter.

I don't think this is a wastegate duty cycle issue. Upping the duty cycle will cause a boost overshoot (not quite a spike) which is what you are seeing when it maybe hits 17psi and then settles lower. BTW I also don't think the duty cycle can be programmed relative to elevation, so watch for overboost when you descend to lower elevations. You really need a different target boost number at higher elevations to maintain constant target boost... I think. My experience is with UTEC, but I think the concept is the same, as UTEC has duty cycle and a target boost map.

I'm not a tuning expert, but I play one on message boards. ;)

Well I just learned there is a barometric pressure sensor that the car uses. When I asked if it would be good to switch back to the Davis map if I was visiting CA, Ed said the tweaks he made "should" only affect the car at higher elevations so don't bother.