by Jeff Schaefer
#1 Proper Break-In.
See that blue highlighted area on the upper left of the matrix, that's
when I am datalogging it is showing me exactly where in the matrix I
am at while driving. At this case, its bouncing back and forth between
columns 1 and 2, at idle, at around 750-800 RPM. Notice that the
proper air/fuel ratio up to 50% throttle is 14.7. This is going to get
you maximum fuel economy. Now you are NOT going to change the
numbers in the matrix to change the air/fuel ratio to get the car to idle
at 14.7. Not yet. First your going to rev the car up and down to like
3k, with slight throttle to see if the numbers are consistent. Say, your
idling at 14.7 then you give it a little throttle and your at 12:1, thats
not normal and going to need attention. If your satisfied the numbers
3500 RPM and try to hit all the columns between 2 and 6. This is your
fuel economy area and attention must be paid to this area. If you are
on a Dynapack, your going to have an easy time at this. Because you
can lock in the computer at say 1750 RPM, and then you can give it
throttle up to column 5 or so and it will stay at that RPM the entire
way. So you just do it slowly, and deliberate, and make changes so
your air/fuel is 14.7 up to column 5. Columns 6 will be 13.5:1 so just
hit that column and stop there....making that last column 13.5:1.
then you do the same for 2000 RPM
then you do the same for 2250 RPM
then you do the same for 2500 RPM
then you do the same for 2700 RPM
then you do the same for 3000 RPM, you get the idea...you look at the
Hondata program, and see what exact RPM, it has numbers you can
change. And you tune to that exact RPM. Every other RPM in between
is extrapolated from the last RPM and the current...so you want to be
as accurate as possible and tune for the exact RPM's the unit you have
displays.
Well pretty soon, your engine is loving it and your sitting pretty at 14.7
all the way up to column 5 at any cruising RPM. Say before 6k. Now
take note of the cars responsiveness under these light throttle
activities. When you give it a little gas, does the car feel responsive?
If it does not you may require slightly more timing in these areas. Try
adding like 2 degrees in areas you feel like it was not responsive, and
see if it makes a difference. If it makes no difference, go back to the
lower timing. If you put the timing up to high, and have a blower, or a
turbo, and say its very hot outside, you might start detonating at light
throttle under harsh conditions. so be conservative.
Notice that the entire procedure so far, is pretty much what I
stated in the break-in article? The previous steps of setting idle,
timing and narrow throttle tuning SHOULD BE DONE before you drive
that car 100 feet! After you do all that, you can drive it around if you
want to before you tune for full throttle. Or you can do like us, and
just go for it that very day with like only 20-40 miles on the motor.
After taking apart alot of motors broken in like this, with the pistons
looking brand new and so good you could almost put them back in the
box and re-sell them, we are sticking to it. Some famous motorsycle
guys do it this way too, as do professional racing teams.
before we move on, its important to look at the matrix your working
with to make sure its pretty linear. Meaning it is consistent and not
jagged, or you have any numbers in column 2, say, higher in value
than column 3! Look at this example, see how each column 1-10 is
right below the others in unison? And that its fairly flat across the
band not all jagged?
If it was all jagged, with the 2nd line from the bottom (which is column
2) touching column 3, or even column 1, this will be an area your ride
is probably not smooth, or it hesitates. hesitation is usually the result
of going from an area too lean/rich to an area of too rich/lean. Your
motor wants a smooth transition.
We now set VTEC. In the Rom Editor, you should be on tab "Ignition
& Fuel Tables" as shown in the picture above. You might be looking at
the matrix view of the graph, because the picture above is looking at
the 2D graph. Anyway, click on the tab to the right of the tab your on,
called "VTEC". Click "FIXED VTEC POINT" and make sure that box is
checked, then go into that area and type in a number you think is
lower than where VTEC might be. Like say, with JUN cams, VTEC
might end up near 6000 RPM, like Toda cams, which are even higher
than that. But we are going to take out the guesswork by using a
shortcut to find VTEC in a hurry. We are going to set VTEC like at
5000 RPM and get ready for the test pass...
Time for a test pass!
*Turbo/NOS/Blower your going to want to gradually lower the timing from
column 7 on to into boost. Hondata tables are already reduced in timing,
but reduce them some more for safety sake, and then when your tuning
bring them back up slowly.
**REMEMBER THE AIR INTAKE TEMPERATURE MUST BE EXACTLY THE SAME
EVERY SINGLE PASS. Keep the water temperature consistent also. That
You had put your VTEC at 5000 RPM, and when you hit VTEC it was too
soon, as noted from that dip from 5k-5800 you see there. So then
that should turn a light bulb on your your head to think "well, it would
be nice if I couldn't even feel the VTEC transition, and it was just a
straight line" Well exactly. So now, you look at the point where your
curve below 5k would hit the line in VTEC above, if it carried on its
current trajectory upward, and forward. Take into account its going to
not be straight, it will probably round down slightly. Take a good
guestimate in your head and then place VTEC where you might think
its going to be a good transition. In this case, VTEC will probably
come in at 5700-5800 RPM and the graph will clean up nicely. This is
a shortcut method, so you don't spend 7 passes trying to find the
proper VTEC point. We also don't want to focus on tuning that much
above VTEC until our permanent VTEC point is discovered because
changes in your VTEc point will have an effect on fueling after VTEC.
Now your graph should look like this:
Also, note in the above picture I might be able to bring the VTEC down
like 100 RPM to make it more of a perfect straight line? You could do
this, but if you do, you won't feel when VTEC comes in and it will be
just a noise. I have a philosophy on this subject and I believe the
Honda experience should be fun to drive. So what I do is set the VTEC
100, or even 200 higher than its "straight line" position, so that when
the customer hits VTEC, the torque jumps up like 10 LBS and the HP
climbs steeply up and he gets thrown back in his seat a little bit. It
makes the car feel "quick" in that area, and makes it more fun to
See the area I circled? I could have easily set the VTEC 200 RPM
lower so that the graph went up less steeply after VTEC, but I wanted
the customer to feel the VTEC power when it kicked in. See the torque
immediately jump up 10-15 lbs in an instant? The guy gets a little
chirp out of it, and gets him excited about driving his car. The job of
the tuner is not only to make the air/fuel ratio great and the car safe
to race, but to make the car FUN TO DRIVE. BTW, you can mess with
VTEC points like this all day long and it does not make the car any
slower in a race, because only a beginner would be at that low of an
RPM on a VTEC motor racing anywhere.
HIGHER RPM's Your motor will want fuel up to a certain RPM, and
then it will want a little bit taken away, or the fuel curve will flatten
out. Look at the graph here, below. See how from like 6500 RPM to
like 9000 RPM the fuel is pretty similar? That is how most engines
are. And if you went past 9000 RPM, the fuel might be a little less,
you can see at a certain point it peaks, then the fuel backs off slightly.
Remember this when your tuning, so make sure the graph is smooth,
and not all bumpy.
Ok, we have come a long way already, and we need to finish up. Well
what about columns 6-8? We never really talked about that much.
You could have taken care of those in 2 ways. You could have done
them after you did 1-6 in the narrow throttle and tuned them before
you started the full throttle, or you can do what I do which is effective
also.
Columns 6-9 are all 13.5:1 Air fuel ratio on most vehicles, except
boosted ones, where on them column 9 would be like 12.5:1 perhaps
or 12:1. Also of note, its pretty difficult and hard on your engine to sit
there on a dyno at 8,000 RPM and tune for columns 6-8. Its hard to
do it even at 3,000 RPM sometimes. Because what happens is your
letting on and off the throttle and thats junk, because your injectors
are going nutz on and off. So do this. Take your mouse and highlight
from column 6 to column 9, and then go to the menu under edit, and
do: "Interpolate Selection" or ALT-E, this will average between column
9 and 6 everywhere in between and give you a nice smooth transition
there and then go back and lower it after 7k, slowly. You don't want to
go from say 34, to say 30 right away, you want a smooth transition
like 33, 32, 31, etc. The higher RPM you go, the lower timing it will
probably like in most cases. So you might have a peak timing of say
33 on the matrix at 8000 RPM, and then at 9k your timing is 31, then
at 9500 your at 29. At this point your tuning for maximum upper
range horsepower, since your lower range is probably lines over lines
at this point. So you do 1/2 a degree at a time in the upper areas
until you get the power to carry on as long as possible. Now that you
have the timing perfect, or as good as you can get it all up there, you
take a step back to fuel...
Back to Fuel... This is a short step and may only take 2 passes.
Changing the timing/cam gears could slightly alter the air/fuel ratio,
but if your only adjusting a couple degrees, probably not noticeably.
But anyway, for maximum power, now we are going to blanket change
the power band to see how the motor likes it. We highlight from say
7k-9500 and add 1% fuel across that area, and do a pass. Did it like
it? Did it run .2 richer? If it liked it, do another 1/2 a percent until it
reaches maximum. Do the same for leaning it out 1% if the first pass
of Richer was not good.
**REMEMBER THE AIR INTAKE TEMPERATURE MUST BE EXACTLY THE SAME
EVERY SINGLE PASS. You also want the water temp to be consistent too,
because that affects fuel too at a certain point. And you must start at the
same exact RPM each time, when you floor it. Consistency is key in tuning.
So now we have hit the cam gears, the timing curve, we have hit the
fuel curve 2x, and we are pretty much done. Now is the time to
experiment with other mufflers, or whatever, intakes, to see how it
affects your ride. You should have tuned your car exactly the same as
your going to race it. Don't show up at the dyno with a cat on your
car, if you race with no cat. That won't work at all.
Here are the mistakes people make when they go and tune:
-They changed the exhaust/header. Get your exhaust BEFORE you
tune. or Go fine tune again.
-They put on a High-Flow cat. Time to re-tune, now your running lean.
-They changed the cams...DO NOT DO THAT!
-They took off the cat to go race, now your probably melting pistons,
your way too lean.
-They put in a different thermostat, and the car runs at a different
water temperature than when tuned. This will change the air/fuel
ratio, don't do that.
-They thought they were smart and tried to mess with the timing, or
fuel pressure. When your done tuning, notice what your timing and
fuel pressure were, and MARK THEM. Do not change them. Even if
you go up or down in elevation, it is only going to run slightly leaner or
richer, not crazy off.
-With a turbo, never change any aspect of your setup, if you do, go
back to tune. Wastegate, manifold, turbo, piping, intercooler,
anything, or your asking for trouble.
What is ok to change after I go tune?
-Most intakes are ok, unless your talking about going from stock, to
cold air, thats no good.
-Spark Plugs are ok.
-valve adjustment is ok.
-Oil change. LOL
-Air Filter is ok
As a general rule of thumb, something that affects airflow a great deal
should not be changed after the tuning. Unless you want to put it
back up for a few runs to adjust.
So in review we have a few basic steps here.
-Go to a dyno
-Get a buddy to assist you.
-You have to have a Wideband 02 sensor
-Set Idle at 14.7
-Set distributor/Timing at stock 16 degrees
-Make sure Hondata/Unit is set to 16 degrees
-Make sure your air intake temp is the same before each pass, and
your water temp is full warm and the same before each pass.
-Tune for 14.7 from column 1-5, and 6 for 13.6 up to VTEC or 6k or so.
-Do VTEC shortcut to find VTEC, remember, make the car fun to drive.
-Tune fuel for upper RPM's in VTEC
-Play with Cam gears
-Fine tune the timing, using blanket adjustments
-Go back to fuel, again, and use Blanket adjustments for fine tuning.
-Do not change anything on your motor after tuning that can affect air
flow greatly, unless you re-tune.
Now I would say your machine is pretty fine tuned. Pretty dang good.
The approach is systematic, its deliberate, and your not on there long
at all. You memorize the above, you know what your doing, and you
will be consistent in your tuning. The approach also makes it very
hard to hurt a motor because you have your observer there, and your
going up the RPM's tuning it slowly, 1 pass to a new RPM each time
until your perfect all the way up.
If you follow this approach, you will be successful at tuning cars. One
thing I did beyond what the above states is that I had my wideband
directly wired into my laptop, so that the air/fuel numbers showed
right on my screen, like this:
Those numbers are the air/fuel ratio the motor is in at that particular
RPM, and throttle %. So you can see, when I have these numbers, it
makes it really systematic. Most tuners do not have this like the
above and simply look at the air/fuel ratio on the dyno machine and
make the changes manually. This is an OK method, but that takes
more time for sure and is less accurate.
So guys, if you have the Hondata dealer package, and you don't have
your lambda wired directly into your laptop, make it happen!! Its
wonderful. I would only say its not really necessary on a dynapack,
because of the accuracy of the loading at each RPM. But it would be
better nonetheless to have it like the above.
There are other options on the Hondata worth discussing, but they
really don't affect how to tune a car. Like for example, you can
remove the knock sensor on Hondata, any ECU, and for example, you
can disable the 02 heater so you can run your car just fine with no 02
sensors even plugged in. You can even mess with the idle speed if
your idle has a slight lope, you can fix that. You can have your
Hondata switch off your A/C after a certain throttle position. You can
set the boost cut at any amount you want, lmited by the map sensor
you have plugged in, and you can also set the rev limit anywhere you
want. It also has a NOS controller on board to change your timing
curves and fuel curves for when your on the unit.
Pretty smart little box this Hondata is. I recommend supporting
Hondata by buying from them, or their dealers. One of the better
business's in our realm