Ive got a 2.4L 2002 cav and all I have done is an exhaust (including header) and intake. Theres a guy offering to reprogram my ECU with that HP Tuners software. He said he could tune it so I would have to run premium. Would it make any difference in terms of more power, and making the car faster or is this more for modded engines?
Thanks
There are some things that can be done with HP such as the limiters(sp?) and trans. but IMO not worth the money unless you are boosted
15.2@89mph 2.171 60ft. 9.830 1/8 R.I.P. "LULU"
BIGGSZ24 wrote:There are some things that can be done with HP such as the limiters(sp?) and trans. but IMO not worth the money unless you are boosted
good thing thats just your opinion...
i have a car that is fairly stock. mine is also tuned using HPTuners. by tuning it we made it run on the higher octane gas by adjusting the timing tabls, leaned out the fuel tables in places where it was runing too rich, and modifed the transmission to operate the way i want it.
alot of driveability issues have been solved by tuning the car. personaly i think any car is worth tuning, it just depends what you do to it.
1997 RedR - ZedR
The point was ,that unless he is planning future mods,ie;boost,motor build,etc; then I don't see the point of spending that much for Hp for tuning a COMPLETELY stock vechicle.I doubt you gained a significant amount of power.
15.2@89mph 2.171 60ft. 9.830 1/8 R.I.P. "LULU"
Theres a guy who has the program and is offering to reprogram my car for 300, what should I have him do to get the most out of it? I dont know much about this stuff
Thanks
SFCavy23 wrote:Theres a guy who has the program and is offering to reprogram my car for 300, what should I have him do to get the most out of it? I dont know much about this stuff
Thanks
If he's charging you $300, he better know what to do to your car... That's $100 for the credits, and $200 for his services, for that cost he better know what to change...
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BIGGSZ24 wrote:I doubt you gained a significant amount of power.
well unfortunately calculated torque was not a measurable PID when datalogging my car, how ever we measured the car the best way that was available to us. we did 0-60 runs.
these were done over several days, but every day we went to do one, we started off with an initial base run to compare any changes that were made that day. all runs for the day were made in generally the same spot with the conditions the same as much as possible. runs were made within 10 minutes of each other.
from what i remember (though i dont have the excel logs in front of me) we were able to shave off at least 2 seconds from my 0-60 times. the comparison was made by doing a run with a tune in the car, then reflashing to stock. the difference i believe was over the 2 second mark, but regardless 2 seconds is alot to take off just from a tune.
we were also able to fix some driveability and idling issues. the car used to have a really rough idle because it was running to rich. we leaned out the fuel trims a bit and that seemed to smooth out pretty significantly. we also changed the shift points drastically to reflect the newly added power, the type of driving i do, and the fact that i am not a conservative 80+ year old grandmother behind the wheel.
im sure if there is anything i have forgot to mention or mentioned wrong, Shane will correct me as he is the one who tuned the car.
there are plenty of reasons to tune a car if your not running boost or significant motor work. i love the way my car drives now. that one run that we made when the car was back to stock... i vowed to never let my car see the stock tune ever again!
now, when shopping for a new vehicle, being able to modify the car in such a way is a big consideration of mine.
1997 RedR - ZedR
Haha shaved off 2 seconds. Good one.
O noes!
Actually the exact number was 1.7 seconds......close.
I don't think $300 for a tune is unreasonable IF it's a properly done tune. When I say properly done, I mean make one change at a time, datalog to evaluate if the car behaved the way you commanded it to & whether the change made an improvement or not. Make another change, repeat as necc. As I'm sure Shifted, Whitegoose, & many others on this forum will attest, this can be a very time consuming proposition to do correctly. Autos futher add to the time required to get it "just right". Given that the whole process can take a full day, sometimes more if problems arise, what you're paying per hour for tuning time isn't astronomical ($200 / 8hrs = $25 / hr). You get what you pay for.
Now it this person is going to just make a bunch of wholesale changes to your tune, flash your car & take your money, than walk away.
Tire Industry Association (TIA) Advanced Tire Service Instructor
Graduate of Michelin Advanced Sales Training
Graduate of Rod Hall Off Road Driving School
Graduate of Vehicle Driving Dynamics, Michelin Laurens Proving Grounds.
2002 Ford Ranger Edge Extra Cab, Flareside
3.0L V6, 5 spd auto.
Bamachips Xcal2
160 hp, 196 ft/lbs (crank)
31X10.5R15 Bridgestone Dueler A/T 693
K&N flat panel
Custom side exit exhaust
Monroe Max Air Shocks
Infinity 6" Component Speakers
Credence 10" DVC sub
Dual Amp
Custom built passive x-over & sub enclosure
BIGGSZ24 wrote:There are some things that can be done with HP such as the limiters(sp?) and trans. but IMO not worth the money unless you are boosted
I agree and disagree with what you're saying.
your point is that tuning a relatively unmodified engine will yield very little, and I agree 150%
the OPs car is not significantly modified enough in order to benefit from a tune. Tuning merely maximizes the available mechanical modifications and unless there's a huge bottleneck of power, the benefit won't be very significant.
You have to remember our ECUs are horribly limited as well, so HPT can only tune our cars within certain limits.
Its because of our ECU setup that I disagree with the "unless your boosted" comment. I agree, more mods are necessary in order to benefit from a tune (head and valvetrain work, cams, full exhaust, injectors) but boost with our Alpha-n ECU just doesn't go hand in hand, HPT or not. (unless you have an older style Z24 ECU)
I wouldn't waste the money on a tune for a car with an intake and exhaust. Wait until you do a bit more to it. I was running premium on my old engine which had a lot more modifications than this one. But once I managed to finally hurt that one to where it needed a rebuild, I pulled it and put a stock engine in the skwirl.. and whereas I still have an intake and full exhaust, I put almost everything else in my ECU back to stock and started running regular gasoline again.
see i agree and disagree with you skwirl.
having the car drive the way i want it to is the biggest improvement for me. yes i like the added power that tuning for higher octane gave me. for the most part getting the transmission to shift where i wanted it to and smooth out running and idling issues has been the biggest improvement.
worth the money or not, i would not go back to stock...
1997 RedR - ZedR
I garauntee your biggest improvement was with the transmission. the OP has a stick, no need to tune one of those.. shift when you want, how you want
did you tune your fuel maps and such with a wideband? never heard of a factory J running too rich.. although the 97 pcms are a lot differ than the 00+ stuff
I don't see the point in having to run high octane on a 9.5:1 engine staying below 8000rpm making less than 150whp, especially with the price of gas, why pay the extra cash for the higher octane gas when you're probably not at the risk of detonating anyway.
unless you've really advanced your timing or tuned your car to run kind of lean like 13.7 or so (both of which should be done on a dyno for comparisons) idk I just don't see the reason
a tuned car will always perform better than one that isn't tuned thats a given, but imo the money saved by not buying HPT and paying for premium gas all the time is better spent elsewhere.
i could def see you getting the car faster with the transmission stuff tweaked tho, but again thats irrelevant to the OP
PJ: I should have said BUILT or boosted ,but I agree with you for the most part PJ.I can kind of see some benefit to tweaking certain paramaters on the auto trans. but I feel using the B&M for my car is good enough for now.I keep thinking of Brad(Zyaaaa)and what happened with his ecu after Shifted tuned it(nothing against Ron).But Brad had nothing but issues with the trans. until he installed the Auto Trans Interceptor and ran it at 100%.If I am not mistaken after running higher octane fuel on a stock tune doesn't the car start to run towards the higher octane fuel tables anyways?
whitegoose:I'm not trying to knock you or anything,just curious.I only have a small amount of tuning knowledge,mostly from talking to Tom(Wrench Monkey) and Curtis(Skunk).
I am curious though as to when this tune was done.Your profile says you ran a 1/4 time of 16.3 in Oct. of '07.With the mods you have listed,was the tune done before you ran that time.If so I am not at all impressed,mainly because my car is FAR heavier and all I had done was a wai and still ran only 4 tenths slower than your time.Again,just curious.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Wednesday, January 16, 2008 4:58 PM
15.2@89mph 2.171 60ft. 9.830 1/8 R.I.P. "LULU"
The fuel that was leaned out was determined by monitoring the fuel trims for quite some time. we saw that the ECU was constantly having a -5 to -8 on the fuel trims at idle. removing some of that excess fuel helped the idling of the engine. seems to be the car was commanding alot more fuel than it needed at idle, more than likely because GM wanted to play on the safe side. or it could have been that the car was used to adding alot more fuel because of the failing fuel pump and O2 i replaced a little bit before we tuned.
the tune was done before the track, however the exhaust was not. at that point i only had the tune and the WAI. it was also my first day ever at any track. not to make up excuses or anything, but i had probably 100-200 lbs of extra weight in the trunk due to sub/amp/tools/jack/spare/etc. i didnt have time to remove it because by the time we got to the track i only had about 2 hours to actually make any runs in and the track was busy because there was a huge event going on (CSCS).
all in all im pretty happy with my times considering the milege of the car. more tuning will be done before i head out to the track this year though...
1997 RedR - ZedR
All of the changes that were made to Whitegoose's VE tables were made in the lower rpm, lower TPS portions of the table. The higher the rpm & tps were on his car, the closer the fuel trims were to 0. I did experiment commanding 13.1:1 as well as 12.9:1 in PE, but our best 0-60 times were produced at the OE setting of 13.0:1 which would lead me to speculate that the high rpm portion of his VE tables are pretty close to being spot on (the wideband will be here soon to confirm that).
Extra timing is where Whitegoose's car picked up the bulk of its additional power. 91 oct. allowed us to run an additional 7 deg. knock free. Every degree we would add to it, the 0-60 times would come down, however the onset of knock necessitated that we stop where we did.
Setting up the trans. made a very noticeable improvement to this car also. It gets off the line & through the first couple of gears much better now. It was a real terd stock.
As far as Rob's track times go, there are a few things to make note of. He does have a pile of stuff in the trunk, easily 200 lbs I'm sure. It was his first time to the track. The other big factor is that this car has 220,000 kms on the clock now also.....its getting a little tired. I'm sure that if he emptied the trunk, & stepped it up at the lights, the car would produce high 15 sec times, especially now that he has his cat-back on. I'm sure that will get confirmed this summer also.
Tire Industry Association (TIA) Advanced Tire Service Instructor
Graduate of Michelin Advanced Sales Training
Graduate of Rod Hall Off Road Driving School
Graduate of Vehicle Driving Dynamics, Michelin Laurens Proving Grounds.
2002 Ford Ranger Edge Extra Cab, Flareside
3.0L V6, 5 spd auto.
Bamachips Xcal2
160 hp, 196 ft/lbs (crank)
31X10.5R15 Bridgestone Dueler A/T 693
K&N flat panel
Custom side exit exhaust
Monroe Max Air Shocks
Infinity 6" Component Speakers
Credence 10" DVC sub
Dual Amp
Custom built passive x-over & sub enclosure
not to mention an almost full tank of gas... thats the last time i fill up before going to the track!
1997 RedR - ZedR
Well,good luck to you guys,keep practicing at the track
15.2@89mph 2.171 60ft. 9.830 1/8 R.I.P. "LULU"
I don't suppose there is a way to do this with another software suite other than HPtuners... $650 is a lot steep for me to just tweak the tranny and stuff like you were talking about, which seems like it would be nice to do.
Nobody around me has HPtuners so I'm kinda SOL.
Though I won't know what I want to do until I actually drive my car lol, but if automatic transmissions in any other vehicle have taught me anything it's that they aren't set up to my liking. Plus tuning is something I wouldn't mind dipping into, but not at $650 to find out that I'd rather not bother. I've looked around at EFI Live, but apparently it doesn't support J bodies or something like that?
Well if I'm not mistaken $650 is the price for the Pro version of HP,the standard I think is more
around $450,also check the clasifieds for people selling their HP Tuner software
15.2@89mph 2.171 60ft. 9.830 1/8 R.I.P. "LULU"
EFI Live
thats software that is available for your j-s too, but its more expensive from what i can see...
1997 RedR - ZedR
Sorry to bring this back from the dead, but how could I tell if any improvement was made b/c we dont have a dyno?
Thanks
