Tuning your car's ECU- Pros & Cons?
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This could make it easier to find in a parking lot.I was just curious about what might be out there for making the Note we are purchasing have a few more horses under the hood.
Are there places it's better to look into for doing that?A quick google search showed this site saying it would give a 10 hp increase which would be 10%: mychiptuningfiles
That seems pretty good, but this would be an entirely new field of exploration for me though.
Other sites just promised to roll on the acceleration faster:
Tuningbox
RacechipSo I'm wondering how difficult it is to do that. Is it a matter of replacing a chip or is it using the ODBII port? Am I better off just looking for ways to improve the air flow first?
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@adversemartyr I'd steer clear of any tuning boxes, chip tuning is very rarely required nowadays as tuning is typically done via OBII
either don't touch it or get it mapped on a rolling road as it can be tuned to your exact car rather than an off the shelf map which may not be quite right for yours
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@adversemartyr Everything I've heard about Racechip and similar piggybacks is that they're pretty much junk. They improve WOT performance but aren't designed well for normal driving with part throttle. See if any tuners with a dyno in your area support that ECU. On the cheaper side, see if there's a company who will remote flash your ECU. A friend who drives a Sonic has a few bolt ons and an ECU flash- it's way better than I'd expected.
My personal experience is that if it's a daily, don't do it. When I was dailying my Golf, I had a chip in the ECU (an actual chip, because it's from the 90s) matched to the cam I had, and while drivability and power were both greatly improved, it kind of sucked having to pay more for premium fuel while getting worse fuel economy. It was probably a 50% increase in fuel cost. The car I'm driving now is stock and will remain stock, because it is a daily.
Also, be wary of any flash that requires no supporting mods. That is a moon tune and will almost certainly break stuff.
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@adversemartyr Probably depends on what you are trying to tune, and what you are trying to achieve? What car is it?
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@adversemartyr I tuned my WRX after a turbo swap years ago. I would recommend against against using some sort of generic tune, as you can really screw up an engine if the tune isn’t right, and it takes a bit of work to get it right. There’s a lot of nuances to tuning a car. For example, Cobb and others realized that gasoline in Arizona, California and Nevada were not as knock resistant, and thus have different “ACN fuel” maps. You can also brick a car’s ECU if the code for your maps is screwy.
When I tuned my Rex I used a Tactrix cable and RomRaider. It’s open source software which allows you to see everything in your ECU. I bought a pre made tune for my setup, then tweaked it. I had a nice stretch of desolate road to work on. I’d datalog 3rd gear pulls, look for where knock was occurring, then adjust my timing/fueling/boost tables to get the most performance with the least knock. Professional tuners change a lot more, like the valve timing, electronic throttle maps... There’s a lot going on in the code of modern engines.
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@adversemartyr My personal opinion is that changing the tuning isn't the best option for many people who want better performance. I've seen too many people who shift too soon and don't get the performance they already have. Are you willing to go to the redline in every gear? I know people who shift based on the engine sound instead of looking at the tachometer. By the time they hit 5000 rpm, the noise makes them think they need to shift. If you can keep it floored to 7000 rpm, you will get more power. Doing this also won't ruin a car for daily driving, and you won't risk voiding the warrant.
Personally, I find driving more enjoyable when I can take a turn quickly as opposed to straight line acceleration. If you haven't put good tires on the car yet, spend money on that before you even consider a tune. Tires can have a much bigger effect on performance.
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Very good points have been made. Why do you want it? Not sure if you're going to notice 10% more power in a daily driver.
My Audi S4 is (was) primarily a track car and is tuned and modded for a good 40% increase over stock. That is absolutely noticeable and usable on track where most of time is WOT. But experiencing that power isn't socially acceptable on the street.
@Roadkilled 's point is good. For my daily driver '98 Subaru Forester, I lowered it with mildly stiffer Primitive Racing springs and struts and never touched the engine. It was fun to drive.
OTOH, I'm old. I assume you're young. If your finances can handle it as well possible engine repairs they may not warranty, go for it. You'll learn something.
When I was young, I did the horsepower mods before the suspension. You'd find doing the suspension first makes driving more fun.
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The factory tune will give the most HP consistent with not blowing up within the warranty period. Maybe an aftermarket "tune" will raise the rpm limit or something, but that's not the same thing as a tune. There's no reason to change the tune unless you change the cam(s), intake, exhaust first.
Remember, an engine is just an air pump. Unless you change how much air comes in/out, you're not doing anything for power.
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My experience in working for an OEM in aftersales failure analysis:
Those boxes that you install in the engine bay do one of two things:
-One they sort of fudge remapping the accelerator. They intercept your input and map their own curve and send that to the ECU instead. Not many downsides unless it goes faulty.
-The others sit in between timing, temperature, boost and other signals and convince the ECM that the engine is cold, behind on timing, low boost etc. These really really mess with modern Direct Injection setups, they walk a fine line of making the engine compensate for this while also staying inside DTC margins. They can cause anything from erroneous warning messages to outright engine failure. I truly dislike them.A proper tune though, if done correctly is much safer than that box. Those can be bad too, but they can also be great.
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@vincentmalamute said in Tuning your car's ECU- Pros & Cons?:
When I was young, I did the horsepower mods before the suspension. You'd find doing the suspension first makes driving more fun.
Especially if you screw up the suspension tuning like I did and make a normally neutrally handling car rear biased. Getting tail out on an AWD car can be quite exciting!
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I would think the primary differences of an aftermarket tune are
- More boost.
- More timing advance
- Different cam advance/VTEC changeover
- Richer mixture to compensate for better breathing due to headers and intake mods.
More boost, ignition timing advance, and to a lesser degree valve timing changes mean you better be burning premium all the time. Is that ok? Richer mixture generally won't help things unless you do the indicated mods. That's my opinion......
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At this point, if it's a stock engine that's not forced induction or is NA and doesn't revs past 7500rpm; I wouldn't bother. Some 15-20 years ago yeah you could get away with chipping or piggybacking an ECU with some success but we're well past that point in engine and overall power-train management now as a result of the various world wide emission standards.
You'd want a standalone ECU and tuned actual mapping with multiple sessions to have an effect on what you want. If you're doing that then you're well into supporting mods, particularly for any NA engine.
There's simply so many loops and data that a modern ECU takes into account that trying to trick it just annoys it. It's more than capable of compensating its outputs by looking at the multitudes of other sensor inputs and throws a CEL for the one you tried to trick.
I could drown you with paragraphs on tuning but the TLDR of my years of dealing with machinery is; If you don't actually know what it does then 'fiddling' with it isn't worth it. Many people learned the hard way by doing something that resulted in throwing a wack of money in the scrap metal bin.
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@dipodomysdeserti said in Tuning your car's ECU- Pros & Cons?:
Especially if you screw up the suspension tuning like I did and make a normally neutrally handling car rear biased. Getting tail out on an AWD car can be quite exciting!
ha! I did the exact thing! The S4 is normally understeering. I had no idea what the larger adjustable rear sway bar mod was about. That was overly exciting the first time I applied power entering an on ramp!
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@adversemartyr Each application is different. My truck is tuned with a programmer connected to the OBD port. The process was relatively painless, plug it in, follow the prompts, and wait a few minutes while it updates. Zero added hardware.
Will your new car have a warranty? If so, the manufacturers can see if a tune was put on the vehicle and will void the warranty for issues it caused.
Also, what will you be using the car for? Personally I keep things stock while under warranty and if I need it for getting to work. If it's a 2nd or 3rd "fun" car then go to town on it.
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@adversemartyr said in Tuning your car's ECU- Pros & Cons?:
A quick google search showed this site saying it would give a 10 hp increase which would be 10%:
Just my opinion, the difference between 100 hp and 110 hp isn't going to be readily apparent. You could probably achieve similar results with simple bolt-ons that won't put you at as much risk as tinkering with the car's engine management functions.
But like some others have mentioned, it matters more about what you're using the car for. If you just want to make it a little quicker, consider investing money in better suspension components and tires. In my personal experience, you would put down quicker lap times at something like an autocross with a better set of springs, shocks, sway bars, and tires than you would from an ECU tune.
The whole concept of how it's fun to drive a "slow car quickly" stems largely from being able to maintain speed through curves. And the best way to do that is to help it stay planted to the road.
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@smugaardvark my actual concern is trying to get going on the road just a bit faster to have it take just a little bit less time getting up to 60kph, getting across intersections just a bit quicker, etc...
I'd think the difference would be most apparent with such small amounts though. interesting. -
@nermal It's used, but the selling company is throwing in a 2 year warranty.
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@exage03040 It's going to come with it's little factory turbocharger or supercharger. It seems most likely to have a supercharger from what I have found, but the agent insists its a turbocharger. It's a 2nd gen Nissan Note X-DIG-S with the 1.2L engine.
I probably won't bother because money, but I'm a curious person with time on my hands for meaningless internet searching. -
@sovande It's a 2nd gen Nissan Note. Nothing really. I'm just wondering if getting 108 hp is more useable than 98hp.
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@adversemartyr said in Tuning your car's ECU- Pros & Cons?:
I'm just wondering if getting 108 hp is more useable than 98hp.
It won't be appreciable in daily driving. That 10 hp increase will likely be peak HP at 7000 rpm or whatever. The gain will be lower in the part of the powerband you use getting across intersections. And the real world gain will also be lower after you take their advertising into account.
It's a supercharged engine - you want to change the pulley ratios for appreciable HP gains. In my turbo S4, just the chip raised power by 25% which you can definitely feel.
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@adversemartyr One thing I think everyone on here is missing is that this is a Miller cycle engine, in other words its an economy engine. In a Miller cycle, the intake valve is held open late into what would ordinarily be the compression stroke, and the piston works against the supercharger pressure. This gives a thermodynamic benefit of a relatively long expansion stroke compared to intake stroke.
A by-product of this is that the engine runs really high static compression, 13.0:1 in this case, which is really high even for a gasoline direct inject engine (which this is). Everyone here is right in that the 10 HP quotes is likely to be A) not really noticeable and B) mostly at the upper RPM range where it's not useful to you since your stated goal was more power for merging at low to mid speeds.
But the problem is that jamming more air into an already high 13:1 compression engine is a recipe for detonation and engine damage. Additionally, as has already been mentioned, getting increased airflow in a supercharged engine requires changing blower speed, which means physically swapping blower drive pulleys. Then a tune would be needed to account for the extra air flow.
What I'm getting at is extracting noticeably more power from this engine is very hard. Not impossible, but hard. It's likely why there's so little aftermarket support. Due to its really high static compression ratio, it's going to be very hard to safely stuff more fuel and air into it and any aftermarket tuner would be walking a very fine line.
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@snuze That is very good information to have. Since I am interested in help getting rolling would the Racechip that is supposed to improve acceleration be helpful?
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@vincentmalamute So what the Racechip promises to do would be more helfpul?
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@adversemartyr The Racechip link is literally a Rick Roll.
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@snuze yes, yes it is. That was actually the punchline. I was trying to do some testing for myself on whether people would click the links, and no one did. Everyone is giving sincere advice without even following a link. It's endearing on the one hand and disappointing on the other hand.
I'm curious if you clicked or hovered?
