Specifically, my 2010 Camaro SS. It is a 6.2L LS3 with a manual 6 speed transmission. If you dont want to read techincal details, specs, etc, back out now.
To hit the highlights, the car has a cold air intake (wow!), headers (double wow!) a cam (even better wow!) and 4.10 rear differential gears, up from the 3.45 stock arrangement ( I just jizzed level of wow!). It has a GPI LS3 SS2 camshaft with related valvetrain mods. Springs, hardened pushrods, solid trunnion bushings, etc.
The base tune that I was working with was provided by GPI, who sold me the camshaft and a bunch of other shit, including the HP tuners hardware. I bought all this several years ago. I have the MPVI2 version of HP tuners. The remote tune that I bought was supplied in .hpt format, for whatever that is worth. But just purchasing the HP Tuners hardware isn't the end of the expense. I also found out that I needed to purchase 2 $50 credits in order to modify the tune on my Camaro. That stuck in my craw, but whatever.
I should probably mention here that when I was building this car 3 years ago, I installed an AEM wideband gauge/controller and set it up for a serial to USB connector arrangement to connect to the laptop. Apparently, you need a driver to run serial to USB, which was one of the many hurdles my tech-challenged ass had in this endeavor.
Anyway, I had all the hardware and related components on the car for a couple years at least, always intending to learn to tune someday. Well, I finally decided to give it a go a couple of weeks ago. I started by watching a bunch of "Goat Rope Garage" videos on YouTube. He has a lot of information about tuning GM vehicles, but he moves really fast and I had a hard time following him at first, especially when he was building histographs and getting the tune ready for datalogging. I had to watch them over and over whiile having my laptop open following along in the HP tuners software (free to download here: HP Tuners Software Downloads – HP Tuners) .
After about a week of watching Goat Rope Garage, I figured out how to get my wideband talking to HP Tuners (driver issue) and started to datalog. Then I built a tune that would make my car run on just the MAF sensor for air calculations, loaded it into the ECU, and started to log data. It turned out that the remote tune I bought is a MAF only tune. The volumetric efficiency tables weren't being used.
The first thing I learned, which coincidentally also happend to be the easiest thing to learn, and the first thing that needed to be done in the process, was tuning the MAF scale. The remote tune that I was running (which ran pretty good for the 18 months I ran it) was about 8% off on the MAF frequency scale. After logging and tuning 3 times, I had the MAF reading within 1% of the commanded AFR vs. wideband AFR (in lambda).
I mentioned before that the remote tune I bought was specifically MAF based, but I also wanted to tune the volumetric efficiency tables (actually virtual volumetric efficiency tables on the Gen 4 GM platform, but that's a conversation for another time). Because the tune was set up to run off the MAF, the VE tables were not even close. The car would run, but it would barely idle. It was super rich in the lower RPM ranges and lean up top ( I'm glad I took 4* of timing out before I started to datalog running strictly off the VE tables). I basically had to start from scratch. I'm only datalogging on the street and don't have a dyno at my disposal, so this process has been very time consuming. I feel like I'm about 1/2 way there after tuning for about 12 hours over the last two days.
When I get finished with the air, I will move on to the spark advance tables.
If anone here gives a fuck, I'll continue to post my progress. Questions, concerns, heartaches?
To hit the highlights, the car has a cold air intake (wow!), headers (double wow!) a cam (even better wow!) and 4.10 rear differential gears, up from the 3.45 stock arrangement ( I just jizzed level of wow!). It has a GPI LS3 SS2 camshaft with related valvetrain mods. Springs, hardened pushrods, solid trunnion bushings, etc.
The base tune that I was working with was provided by GPI, who sold me the camshaft and a bunch of other shit, including the HP tuners hardware. I bought all this several years ago. I have the MPVI2 version of HP tuners. The remote tune that I bought was supplied in .hpt format, for whatever that is worth. But just purchasing the HP Tuners hardware isn't the end of the expense. I also found out that I needed to purchase 2 $50 credits in order to modify the tune on my Camaro. That stuck in my craw, but whatever.
I should probably mention here that when I was building this car 3 years ago, I installed an AEM wideband gauge/controller and set it up for a serial to USB connector arrangement to connect to the laptop. Apparently, you need a driver to run serial to USB, which was one of the many hurdles my tech-challenged ass had in this endeavor.
Anyway, I had all the hardware and related components on the car for a couple years at least, always intending to learn to tune someday. Well, I finally decided to give it a go a couple of weeks ago. I started by watching a bunch of "Goat Rope Garage" videos on YouTube. He has a lot of information about tuning GM vehicles, but he moves really fast and I had a hard time following him at first, especially when he was building histographs and getting the tune ready for datalogging. I had to watch them over and over whiile having my laptop open following along in the HP tuners software (free to download here: HP Tuners Software Downloads – HP Tuners) .
After about a week of watching Goat Rope Garage, I figured out how to get my wideband talking to HP Tuners (driver issue) and started to datalog. Then I built a tune that would make my car run on just the MAF sensor for air calculations, loaded it into the ECU, and started to log data. It turned out that the remote tune I bought is a MAF only tune. The volumetric efficiency tables weren't being used.
The first thing I learned, which coincidentally also happend to be the easiest thing to learn, and the first thing that needed to be done in the process, was tuning the MAF scale. The remote tune that I was running (which ran pretty good for the 18 months I ran it) was about 8% off on the MAF frequency scale. After logging and tuning 3 times, I had the MAF reading within 1% of the commanded AFR vs. wideband AFR (in lambda).
I mentioned before that the remote tune I bought was specifically MAF based, but I also wanted to tune the volumetric efficiency tables (actually virtual volumetric efficiency tables on the Gen 4 GM platform, but that's a conversation for another time). Because the tune was set up to run off the MAF, the VE tables were not even close. The car would run, but it would barely idle. It was super rich in the lower RPM ranges and lean up top ( I'm glad I took 4* of timing out before I started to datalog running strictly off the VE tables). I basically had to start from scratch. I'm only datalogging on the street and don't have a dyno at my disposal, so this process has been very time consuming. I feel like I'm about 1/2 way there after tuning for about 12 hours over the last two days.
When I get finished with the air, I will move on to the spark advance tables.
If anone here gives a fuck, I'll continue to post my progress. Questions, concerns, heartaches?
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