Remapping now that S-Squared is gone?

[MikeK]

You should start by telling him to work on Saturdays

[sybir]

I'm working on it, boss

[Dean]

Originally Posted by cody

Having those maps wouldn't do you any good in their current form. They're digitally "signed". The question is, can they be "unlocked" or "ported" to another tuner.

I have printed paper maps for my STX boost map, so at minimum, we could have paper. For ProTuner folks, they should be open,or can be saved in Street Tuner format which is open...

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sybir

Ummm, Mike's old car was tuned by us, his new car was tuned by Gruppe-S. After tuning Mike's WRX, Nate found a way to smooth the OL/CL transitions, but Mike was onto his 05 at that point, wanted to go with AP, and Moike took care of him at a time when we couldn't. QED.

Regarding your second request, and your statement of professionalism, you're speculating on a lot that I'm not going to respond to on a public forum, as I'm not going to get into details on why the old shop went away. Nate is no longer tuning, but the work he's done over the years is his intellectual property. Maps cannot be read by another Ecutek license, so there is no reason for or method to provide those maps to past customers. The "computer" is not available for that information, and likely won't be, and while we have the Ecutek software, we prefer the Cobb solution as it offers much easier and quicker tuning, so retunes on Ecutek cars will be handled in a method to be determined once the new shop is up and rolling.

I appologize if I did not have the whole story, I thougt Mike got his WRX cleaned up prior to sale, but either way, my point is made. More time was required to smooth the CL-OL transition. More time tuning is not bad in and of itself.

As far as the maps go, I know they can be printed, and PT maps can definitely be saved and shared in ST format, if not PT format. I'd also be surprised if there isn't a transportabe format for the ECUTek maps as well. or how would ECUTek distribute base maps, etc...

I realize they are intelectual property, but it is Nate's option to share that property with the customers who have supported him in the past. Choosing to do so is up to him. If he has moved on, I see no reason not to share that information, and having that information could be quite valuable to his past customers who are continueing to make mods to their cars. The relationships between at least some of the inputs/outputs will remain unchanged with additional mods depending on the mod. The customer will likely have to pay for more tuning time as that data will not be available, and the car will have to be retuned from scratch effectively. will have to start from scratch, not where the car was already tuned to. Again, it is, or at least was Nate's option.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not dissing Nate, as a past customer, I am voicing a request/issue I wish he had/would address.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

I feel compeled to respond as this digresses into Ed/Street tuning bashing...

I'm pretty sure the "Ed/street tuning bashing" is pretty non-existant in this thread. In fact I specifically stated that I'm *not* bashing Ed.

Originally Posted by Dean

Scott, you have previously claimed or even bragged that your car in it's last incarnation spent an entire day on the dyno at Easy Street. To then turn around and claim that "I'm telling you that 4 hours is too long for a single map on a car with your mods" and is "is a waste of time" is somewhat hypocritical IMHO...

1) My comments about time spent on the dyno at ESX were not bragging about the quality of my tune, they were bragging about how much ESX was willing to spend on my sponsorship.

2) For about the 100th time this month: Hypocrisy is not a logical falacy. Even if I had in the past said that time=quality, it doesn't make my argument today false. I swear to god this is the #1 thing people on the internet seem not to understand about logical arguments, although it usually seems to come up in street racing threads rather than tuning threads.

Originally Posted by Dean

Getting the base maps as accurate as possible is a significant advantage over relying on the ECU to learn how to adjust. You say the conditions will never be the same, but many will. The relatioship between the MAS, O2 sensors, injectors, and other sensors is not likely to significantly change. Yes, the specifc environment might, but much of what you are tuning for is matching all these items for a given set of conditions. RPM, Boost, etc. Relying on knock, and other sensors and ECU learning to tune your car is crap.

You're not understanding my argument. If a tuner gets all the necessary maps where they need to be, then the tuning is done. Now I'm not a tuner, but I have to believe there is a point where "fine-tuning" isn't going to gain you anything. Hell, the consistancy on a dyno is +/- 5hp or so between back to back runs, right? If that's the case, how can you tune for that last 2hp or whatever? Anything you're doing at that granularity is going to result in fighting the ECU's learning ability. I'm not saying a tuner should rely on the ECU to finish tuning the car w/ knock sensors, etc, I'm just pointing out that once the car is "done", there's nothing really left to do that won't be undone by changing conditions. If a tuner can get the car running acceptably (hits target boost, AFRs, hp/tq, etc.) during the tuning session, spending another 2 hours to make it "perfect" is a waste of two hours because it's only "perfect" for that last pull.

Originally Posted by Dean

I am not claiming to be an expert, but from just my first few months of just collecting data and learning about Street tuner, I know how many values there are to tune, and that most of what you are doing is making the different components inputs/outputs jive with each other. Barometric, and temperature tables are barely involved.

That's how I understand it as well. And since 90% of the cars Subaru tuners see are so similar, they should be able to upload a map that's already 90% "jiving" right off the bat. And the remaining 10% of the work shouldn't be too difficult since it's stuff the tuner's got experience with. i.e. there should be very little guesswork or "tweaking" where you have to try something and see if it works, then try something else... etc.

...of course tuning something with significant mods, or an unusual configuration, or a weird target use (like a stock boost map STX car for example) is a different story.

[JC]

Originally Posted by sperry

2) For about the 100th time this month: Hypocrisy is not a logical falacy. Even if I had in the past said that time=quality, it doesn't make my argument today false. I swear to god this is the #1 thing people on the internet seem not to understand about logical arguments, although it usually seems to come up in street racing threads rather than tuning threads.

In fact, claiming hypocrisy is a logical fallacy. Ad Hominem FTW.

[cody]

As I understand it, tuning is a highly subjective art. The tuner has to make many judgement calls to balance safety with performance. He has to take into consideration the current environmental variables and decide how conservative/aggressive to tune the ECU. And I'm not sure you realize that the accuracy of a dyno (and even hp/tq numbers) don't have much to do with the tuning process at all. Sure, the power output is what you're working toward, but most of the tuners time is spent watching sensor readings like AFR's and knock. Power is mainly somthing you measure after the tune.

Back to using my car as an example, I'm not saying that my tune is better or worse than if I had gone to Nate for an hour, since, like I said, it's impossible for anyone to know with any level of certainty...especially considering he's out of business now. I'm just saying both sides of any argument should try to keep an open mind. There's nothing wrong with a tuner taking his sweet ass time when you're not paying by the hour.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

I'm pretty sure the "Ed/street tuning bashing" is pretty non-existant in this thread. In fact I specifically stated that I'm *not* bashing Ed.

Stating it doesn't make it true. Your entire premise is that the extra time Ed spent on Cody's tune was unnecessary. How else would you frame your comments?

Originally Posted by sperry

1) My comments about time spent on the dyno at ESX were not bragging about the quality of my tune, they were bragging about how much ESX was willing to spend on my sponsorship.

My point is, why weren't you done in an hour or two? You must have been wasting time by your premise.

Originally Posted by sperry

2) For about the 100th time this month: Hypocrisy is not a logical falacy. Even if I had in the past said that time=quality, it doesn't make my argument today false. I swear to god this is the #1 thing people on the internet seem not to understand about logical arguments, although it usually seems to come up in street racing threads rather than tuning threads.

These are directly correlated discussions about tuning IMHO and all I'm saying is that from my logical perspective, you have conflicting points. ESX many hours of tuning/dyno time = value, Cody's hours of tuning/street dyno = no value... The hypocrisy is only a added benefit.

Originally Posted by sperry

You're not understanding my argument. If a tuner gets all the necessary maps where they need to be, then the tuning is done. Now I'm not a tuner, but I have to believe there is a point where "fine-tuning" isn't going to gain you anything. Hell, the consistancy on a dyno is +/- 5hp or so between back to back runs, right? If that's the case, how can you tune for that last 2hp or whatever? Anything you're doing at that granularity is going to result in fighting the ECU's learning ability. I'm not saying a tuner should rely on the ECU to finish tuning the car w/ knock sensors, etc, I'm just pointing out that once the car is "done", there's nothing really left to do that won't be undone by changing conditions. If a tuner can get the car running acceptably (hits target boost, AFRs, hp/tq, etc.) during the tuning session, spending another 2 hours to make it "perfect" is a waste of two hours because it's only "perfect" for that last pull.

There are hundreds of individual numbers in the tables we are talking about. Yes, there are tools to allow you to "smooth" the numbers and manipulate many at a time, but in my limited experienced the scale of what we are talking about could easily take hours optimize. I am not talking about tuning for the last .1 HP. this is about optimizing the base maps so that all the entries in the dynamic maps remain as close to zero as possible, and the car is drivable, and response is smooth and predictable under all conditions.

The slight differences between intake 1, and intake 2, even the same model from the same manufacturer might have enough difference that in an ideal base maps, 10% of the numbers might be off by single digit numbers. Making these minor adjustments is not fighting the ECU, it is allowing it the most accurate starting point to learn from, and give it the maximum ability to adjust as needed. If your base map is off by 3%, and the maximum dynamic adjustment is 5%, you may end up in conditions in which the remaining 2% does not permit the ECU to dynamically correct enough. And again, a significant number of these numbers do not necessarily change from pull to pull, so dyno consistency in meaningless. I would bet that to really do a good job, you need to change how the dyno is loading the car between runs so you actually exercise a significant portion of the maps, and not just a WOT line across them.

It's entirely possibly I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, or I might be blowing this out of proportion, but I believe more time tweaking has at least some merit.

[Nick Koan]

Originally Posted by Dean

It's entirely possibly I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, or I might be blowing this out of proportion, but I believe more time tweaking has at least some merit.

Of course, I don't think anyone is arguing different. Its just a case of diminishing returns. A 2 hour tune is not 2 times better then a 1 hour tune. A 4 hour tune is not 4 times better then a 1 hour tune.

And the point about the logical fallacy of hyprocracy is that, lets say I tell you its bad to do coke off a strippers ass, then I turn around do just that. Does that make doing coke off a strippers ass okay? No, it makes me a hypocrite, but the point is still valid.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

Stating it doesn't make it true. Your entire premise is that the extra time Ed spent on Cody's tune was unnecessary. How else would you frame your comments?
My point is, why weren't you done in an hour or two? You must have been wasting time by your premise.

These are directly correlated discussions about tuning IMHO and all I'm saying is that from my logical perspective, you have conflicting points. ESX many hours of tuning/dyno time = value, Cody's hours of tuning/street dyno = no value... The hypocrisy is only a added benefit.

Dean, are you intentionally misreading my statments just to start an argument? How about instead of making up what I mean, you actually respond to what I typed.

Go ahead and quote every word in this post where I got back into the dead horse beating that is road tuning.

Then explain to me how my claim that the time at ESX had greater monetary value has anything to do with the discussion regarding the time vs. quality discussion we were having. And for the record, my tune took a long time because it was the 1st time the tuner there had ever attempted to make a fuel/timing map that would work with the stock boost and a high boost map. Imagine that, inexperience caused a tuner to take a longer time!

Originally Posted by Dean

There are hundreds of individual numbers in the tables we are talking about. Yes, there are tools to allow you to "smooth" the numbers and manipulate many at a time, but in my limited experienced the scale of what we are talking about could easily take hours optimize. I am not talking about tuning for the last .1 HP. this is about optimizing the base maps so that all the entries in the dynamic maps remain as close to zero as possible, and the car is drivable, and response is smooth and predictable under all conditions.

The slight differences between intake 1, and intake 2, even the same model from the same manufacturer might have enough difference that in an ideal base maps, 10% of the numbers might be off by single digit numbers. Making these minor adjustments is not fighting the ECU, it is allowing it the most accurate starting point to learn from, and give it the maximum ability to adjust as needed. If your base map is off by 3%, and the maximum dynamic adjustment is 5%, you may end up in conditions in which the remaining 2% does not permit the ECU to dynamically correct enough. And again, a significant number of these numbers do not necessarily change from pull to pull, so dyno consistency in meaningless. I would bet that to really do a good job, you need to change how the dyno is loading the car between runs so you actually exercise a significant portion of the maps, and not just a WOT line across them.

It's entirely possibly I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, or I might be blowing this out of proportion, but I believe more time tweaking has at least some merit.

As far as the rest of this... I'm not gonna bother attempting to discuss it in the manner presented. Neither of us know enough about the specifics of tuning to continue this argument with those numbers since you're attempting to attribute percentages that you've just pulled out of your ass as evidence for your point. What really is the percentage of adjustment the ECU can achieve? Can it even be logically quantified as a percentage... what's it a percentage of? How many numbers don't change from pull to pull on the dyno, how does that have any corelation to dyno consistancy? If you'd like to get into the details of tuning with me, we're both going to need a shitload more education on the topic, since what you're suggesting is nothing more than a projection of how you think tuning works without any real evidence to back it up.

Besides, my point wasn't intended to be so specific. I'm simply arguing that spending a really long time on the fine details doesn't seem to be a productive use of time. Hell, if it's free tuning time, then by all means, but if I'm paying for that time, I'd rather save my $200 for a track day and improve the driver. Emperical evidence says that the going time needed for a good tune on a bolt-on car is about an hour. I haven't heard about cars that make an extra 30hp because the tuner took twice as long.

[MikeK]

Cripple fight!!

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

I'm simply arguing that spending a really long time on the fine details doesn't seem to be a productive use of time.

And I disagree with your assertion, and am attempting to provide at least a logical explanation to exemplify my point. It is not my intent to argue, only discuss. While my percentages may not be accurate, the principal is, and I did not exaggerate the number of individual entries in just the maps ST has access to, it is hundreds.

The devil is in the details. Yes, you can create even have on hand good ballpark maps for a given set of mods, the AP is a perfect example of that, but that doesn't make it a custom tune for your specific car/mods/driving style, etc.

How long did Mike K. and Eric's Gruppe S. tunes take? Unless I am mistaken, over an hour each, with a on-site visit on at least Eric's required. Mike K's WRX had some real issues on a 1 hour tune. Nate apparently figured those out later perhaps if he had spent more time on Mike's tune he could have figured them out then.

There is my data/evidence. Can you provide data do back your assertions? Or perhaps as first hand empirical evidence, you should volunteer your car, and only have a maximum of 1 hour worth of tuning done on it. Or is it already well past that number?

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

And I disagree with your assertion, and am attempting to provide at least a logical explanation to exemplify my point. It is not my intent to argue, only discuss. While my percentages may not be accurate, the principal is, and I did not exaggerate the number of individual entries in just the maps ST has access to, it is hundreds.

The devil is in the details. Yes, you can create even have on hand good ballpark maps for a given set of mods, the AP is a perfect example of that, but that doesn't make it a custom tune for your specific car/mods/driving style, etc.

How long did Mike K. and Eric's Gruppe S. tunes take? Unless I am mistaken, over an hour each, with a on-site visit on at least Eric's required. Mike K's WRX had some real issues on a 1 hour tune. Nate apparently figured those out later perhaps if he had spent more time on Mike's tune he could have figured them out then.

There is my data/evidence. Can you provide data do back your assertions? Or perhaps as first hand empirical evidence, you should volunteer your car, and only have a maximum of 1 hour worth of tuning done on it. Or is it already well past that number?

I don't know the details of MikeK's situation, so I've got no comment.

Eric's car had a factory defect, the restrictor pill wasn't completely drilled through, causing all the issues he had. Once that was fixed, his car came around immediately.

My car has never been one where a common bolt-on tune would be useful.

My first tune from ESX involved building a map that would work with both the stock boost curve and a high-boost curve, something the tuner had never done before.

My second tune involved protyping the GT30-10 for the 2.0L block, which S-Squared had never done before.

My 3rd tune on the 2.5 block that failed was plagued by a variety of problems due to the combo of ported/polished heads, BigMAF, TGV deletes, 800cc injectors, an oil breather issue, and incorrect spark plugs. That motor didn't even survive the tuning, let alone get near acceptable.

The 4th tune on my second 2.5L block couldn't be completed at S-Squared either because not all of the issues had been resolved since the previous block. However, once Mike at Gruppe-S got those cleared up, the tuning (of a break-in map) was completed in less than a day, though I don't know the actual time, as I haven't got the invoice for it yet.

Volenteering my car for a 1 hour tune is a rediculous idea as it would prove nothing. My car is well beyond the type of setup we're discussing, which is a car with common bolt-ons such as an intake and TBE. My heads alone would require going outside the normal tuning approach since they were ported and would certainly flow in an unusual way compared to any normal heads... nevermind the injector scaling, MAF scaling, and larger block.

Dean, what type of work do you do on a regular basis? Aren't there things you do everyday that are near second nature that perhaps took some work when you first started doing them? Is it too hard to grasp the idea that after seeing 500 WRX's with up-pipes, TBE, and intakes, a tuner would be able to nail a good, strong, safe map in about an hour? And that when he 1st started out tuning that combo of parts it took a lot longer before the tuner was satisfied?

[doubleurx]

So is doing coke off a stripper's a$$ bad or not?

[LetItRev]

Originally Posted by doubleurx

So is doing coke off a stripper's a$$ bad or not?

OMG! I am LMAO!!

[cody]

Originally Posted by doubleurx

So is doing coke off a stripper's a$$ bad or not?

Well, "the devil's in the details" and "it becomes a case of diminishing returns," but if she's not charging by the hour, go for it.