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BRP yesterday. Rained hard, lotsa mud, not quite enough talent. Beached the ND at the exit of sweeper. Had to get yanked out of the peanut butter. Then drove it 150 miles home over the grapevine in the snow and rain. I think I finally bonded with it.
Regarding tuning, what current scene would be kind of similar in complexity and experience needed to do anything useful?
EVO, Suburup, ...
Just trying to judge if there would be room for even one tuner on a market selling max 100 ND per year.
I don't have any experience doing OEM ECU reflashes on any modern cars other than the ND so I don't really know.
I have already seen ND tuners that barely know how an engine works but know the software really well. I'm on the other end as I have a good laymans grasp of the engine and what's it doing from in terms of cylinder head flow, combustion process, torque control, EGT control, det control etc. I'm still learning the ECU though.
edit: On the dyno plot I posted, the low end torque gains are modest. I didn't add any timing down low as I kept seeing tip in and a little steady state knock at low rpm. Problem is the ECU takes it times learning to add timing back in and I'm trying to reach MBT everywhere. The cam timing changes I made added cylinder pressure down low so even with stock ign timing, we saw some threshold det. It's gonna take many hours on the dyno to find all the power and have a nice smooth powerband. The one I posted is pretty lumpy in it's nascent state.
self tuning is a thing of the past with modern OEM ecu's for the common n00b.
the only people that are not professionals that do it themselves are people that have been learning/adapting/tinkering most of their life and pretty much know modern ecu's or know how to figure them out.
it's good and bad. good because there's less dumb people that can screw things up. bad cause you're at "your tuners" mercy and basically helpless to adjust or update or change anything ever
Perhaps. People have been lamenting new technology bringing the end of the DIY engine tuner ever since EFI first appeared in mass market cars in the 80s, and we've gone through several different generations of control systems since then. Right now this ND engine model is new so it's not widely understood yet, but I expect in 5-10 years it'll be old hat and there'll be something new, complex, and scary in the 2024 NE.
Back in 2001 nobody understood the VVT system and the conventional wisdom was that you should swap an NB1 head onto an NB2 car if you wanted to tune it...
People have been lamenting new technology bringing the end of the DIY engine tuner ever since EFI first appeared in mass market cars in the 80s, and we've gone through several different generations of control systems since then.
I posit the following while self-consciously attempting not to be a Luddite:
There appears to have been something of a paradigm shift of late.
Once a certain level of sophistication is achieved in OEM designs, the tendency seems to be towards re-mapping of the stock ECU, rather than installing an aftermarket unit. This is reflective both upon the complexity of dealing with concepts such as direct injection, as well as an unwillingness to assume the liability associated with controlling electronic throttles and power steering, and is exacerbated as systems such as ABS / traction control / stability control are increasingly integrated into the main ECU rather than discrete and mostly independent sub-modules. At the same time, the increasing use of plug-in OBDII emissions testing applies a practical constraint to wholesale replacement of ECUs for street cars.
I have no problem with this in principle. Some vehicles, such as the Subaru, have rich and inexpensive (if not free) software packages available which enable the end-user to access important maps within the stock control system.
This has not historically been the case within the Mazda community.
Regardless of generation, we seem to be stuck with tune-by-mail companies unwilling to provide the end user with the hardware and software tools necessary to interactively tune the engine while on the dyno. And while I'll admit that the "we'll sell you our proprietary and non-remappable tune for a large sum of money" business model has apparently proven to be a lucrative one, I would think that being the only company selling the tools needed to enable the end-user to tune their own ECU would be an even more lucrative one. And yet here we we are, ten years since the release of the NC, and still nothing.
Certainly there are challenges to overcome, but consider that in the early 90s the EFI ECU was considered to be an impenetrable black box, and rising rate fuel pressure regulators were state of the art fueling controls for an aftermarket turbo.
I agree that the lack of a good DIY tuning system for the NC is disappointing, but I think that's at least partially a problem with the market segment that bought the car. A number of vendors have noted that NC buyer demographic is quite different to the NB one from when the NB was the same age. Thinking back to the 2002-2003 timeframe, I personally knew multiple local people with turbos on their (purchased new or nearly new) NBs. I don't know anyone locally who's even purchased an NC, let alone modified it to that level.
The jury isn't in yet, but I'm hearing that the ND demographics line up more closely with NA and NB, so I'm hopeful that will encourage more DIY sorts of things.
The jury isn't in yet, but I'm hearing that the ND demographics line up more closely with NA and NB, so I'm hopeful that will encourage more DIY sorts of things.
--Ian
That's what we were hoping for and so far, seems to be the case. Today, one can purchase the kit from EcuTek and start tuning.
As mentioned, terrible idea for the noob or even intermediate tuner.
I know I always bring this up as a comparo, but some of the tuners are still revising tunes for the BRZ and it's been out for 3 years.
Oh yeah, it's not for the neophyte. Unfortunately, much of the "tuning" industry is populated by folks with passion, self belief and a set of killer tools but insufficient knowledge to do things properly. Then you have consumers tuning their first ECU. Yah, lots of boom.
The same argument could be made against companies like DIYAutoTune selling plug-n-play Megasquirts, or any other vendor selling any other universal ECU with a plug-n-play wiring harness, of which there are many.
Thus far, the streets aren't flowing with blood as a result of this. So why have aftermarket offerings for newer cars failed to materialize in a similar timeline to those for older vehicles? You've been able to buy a plug-n-play aftermarket ECU for the NA since before the NB was introduced.
MS is not about the hardware or even the constantly updated software, it's about the sharing of knowledge making it possible to get reasonably far towards decent tune with just one year of reading, reading, testing,, reading, asking, testing, reading , ...
If the Ecutec package actually works nicely (in the hands of morons), the only thing missing are some philanthropists sharing their high valued experiences.
MS is not about the hardware or even the constantly updated software, it's about the sharing of knowledge making it possible to get reasonably far towards decent tune with just one year of reading, reading, testing,, reading, asking, testing, reading , ...
If the Ecutec package actually works nicely (in the hands of morons), the only thing missing are some philanthropists sharing their high valued experiences.
The sharing of knowledge is a big thing. I follow the ND section m.net and a lot of the tuners there refuse to share anything. Someone asked whats the max the ND fuel pump could handle and a tuner replied saying he would not share.
It is. Doubly so when dealing with, shall we say, highly-configurable ECUs like the MS.
'Course, back in the original Link era there was no forum. We had the Power List, but it wasn't really the same thing. Good vendor support kept most of the cars from blowing up, and a lot of folks were street tuning even then.
Originally Posted by shuiend
I follow the ND section m.net and a lot of the tuners there refuse to share anything. Someone asked whats the max the ND fuel pump could handle and a tuner replied saying he would not share.
That's the kind of shitty proprietary attitude that bugs me.
ECUTek seems to have a little bit of that going on, judging by their organizational structure and business model. If they were cool, they'd sell their product direct to the customer like Innovate and AEM, rather than limiting themselves to a distribution network. That's fine if you're IBM in the 1970s.
02-01-2016, 12:55 PM
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