Soul TKR

iTrader: (4)

So, anybody get one of these yet?

Stumbled across this and it peaked my interest...

http://www.lsxtv.com/forum/abracadab...out-1883.html#

HWI

iTrader: (2)

Interested to see if these actually work good.

CoastieWS6

iTrader: (1)

Same here!

KurtRardin

iTrader: (11)

As nasty as the advertisements make them sound I am really surprised that there hasn't been much of a fuss about them here. There's got to be a reason... We need to get soundengineer, or better yet Greg Banish, to give us the scoop on them.

Soul TKR

iTrader: (4)

I'm surprised no tuners or sponsors on here have dealt with them...

BTL FED

iTrader: (9)

I would love to hear about these also

Frost

iTrader: (45)

I don't see any reason to use them over any other MAF for our cars... The MAF limit is in the PCM (512g/s), not the MAF.

BTL FED

iTrader: (9)

My only thought would be a digital maf might have better resolution than the stock maf, I may be wrong thats all I was thinking

Frost

iTrader: (45)

A H/C car is already using up almost all of the MAF lookup table, and that is fixed-size in the PCM.

Robin L

I have used them on several different combinations. From LS1's to GTO LS2's , ZO6 and several crate engines on the dyno.
I have one currently on my 2010 Camaro with an GMPP LSA Crate engine.

There are several benifits, the respsonse rate is better than the OEM style. They have the ability to dampen the signal or kill some "noise" inherent to many intake systems.

In a case where the ECU has a ceiling you need to scale the tables for the larger injector.

The meter measures air at 4 different points. It also can measure reversion back through the meter.

It works very well in solving problems with blow through turbos or superchargers.

Speed Density tuning is a old school barbaric way of fixing a sympton and not the problem.
In a race car it's fine but if a car has mass air then I would stick with that.

I am working on a story for the Abaco for GM High Tech. Not enough time in
the days lately.

Smooth is good, engines like a nice smooth signal



Robin

KurtRardin

iTrader: (11)

Good deal, keep us posted.

Soul TKR

iTrader: (4)

hmmm... definitely keep us updated. I'd like to see more of these "personal experience" posts...

caddy03pimpin

iTrader: (18)

Yep very true.. And this after market MAF still maxes out at 12K hertz so there is not anything to gain.... After all its main purpose is just to meter air.

BTL FED

iTrader: (9)

To me sounds like there might be something to gain

Frost

iTrader: (45)

I'm not talking about an injector ceiling, I am talking about an airflow ceiling. There is a hard limit of 512 g/s in the GenIII PCMs.

Scaling the IFR is a more of a hack than using a custom SD operating system... NONE of the editors give you access to all of the fueling and airflow tables that are present in the PCMs. Every fuel calc comes directly from the IFR so by nature, as soon as you 'scale' this you have ruined every airflow table inside of the PCM, including those that you cannot get to to 'fix' (scale) after your IFR scaling. This IFR scaling is a holdover from Ford MAF tuning.

The newer PCMs with higher rates of sampling may hold more use for this unit, but I guarantee that NO ONE with a GenIII F-body will be able to tell the difference in a car with one of these Vs. a properly installed and tuned 85mm unit. I'm not saying these MAFs won't work on a GenIII F-body, just that there is no magical gain over the setup mentioned above. What is the return per dollar in HP on a genIII F-body? Their response rate may include faster updating, but you can't make the GenIII PCMs sample the input any faster.

Speed density is a subset of our own PCM function to aid airflow estimation at low volumes where the MAF does not work as well. All of the new Chrysler/Hemi setups are speed density from the factory and they work just fine for a "barbaric" arrangement. GM decided since the mid-late 90s, and still today that SD is not barbaric (and certainly you cannot say that about parametric VE), and is still used in blend with the MAF through the middle of the RPM band, even on your 2010 Camaro when it left the factory.

Robin L

Very good response, I agree with abot 99% of what you say. ( if that matters LOL)

Your dead on when it comes to a gen 3 f body. If it has a properly tuned 85 you will see little to no benifit. Although with big cams and the placement of the meter close to the Throttle Body it helps control the idle quality.

One of the cool things about the Abaco is that it is so flexable. You can tweak the mater with software at one or all the frequency ranges. This allows the tuner/user to make changes without the use of tuning software. You would need a wideband. And knowing the actual frequency wmakes it a lot faster. While that isn't my prefered method it lets me tune the meter while not messing with the transer function in the ECU.

Because the Abaco is programable the same unit will work on most any application. I like mine because on the dyno I have one prgrammed with 6 of the 10 available tables. I can and have used it with 3 different ECU's and various engine combinations from NA to Supercharged.

I have used Speed Density for years in stand alone as well as modified OEM style systems. If you are exceeding the limits of the air flow with the ECU (on a street car) I would look to upgrade the ECU and harness to one that allows you to measure the airfloww for your combination. Cheap, no it's not cheap to change the ECU and harness in a GEN 3. There is power to be found in most Speed Density tunes once the conditions change. I can give you a SD tune that will drive great and make good power.
The meter will always beat the calculation. Your window isn't as narrow when the conditions change.

My question is this, have you tried one? Have you tuned and logged one either on the dyno or the street?

Another person posted that it only measures air so it can help that much. There is a lot more than to it than that.

And yes the factory uses a speed density calculation to make sure that the mass air meter is functioning properly. And yes many systems use mass air only after a certain RPM.

And from the factory my Camaro used a SD calculation. But with a decent meter I use the actual measurement now.

Again have you tried one?

I will be converting my Nova in my sig to a Holley EFI stand alone system that will use speed density tuning. For an all out race car it will work very well.

I am not a fan of the hack required to convert a gen 3 to speed density.




Robin

Frost

iTrader: (45)

I had one on a 383 GenIII F-body back early summer. I didn't really do much of any tinkering with it though, just calibration as normal for the car after a basic setup. Additionally, I had setup the software on a laptop at the time that had an uhhhhh critical failure (fell off of a car and was run over). All of my logs and tunes are part of an autobackup but the installer for the MAF software was not.

I can understand how they could be very useful in a myriad of applications, but these guys are all reading with interest in what benefit they provide to their GenIII ride.

In reference to the portion referring to SD and condition change... I have have closely monitored GenIII cars that I have used the custom SD OS's on and have seen WOT to hold within just 0.2-0.4 AFR at WOT (and often closer) between seasons. Given +/-0.1 accuracy on the wideband, that seems to be pretty ideal. I like the custom OS's quite a bit mostly for the real time tuning. I don't consider the ability to tune a stock PCM in real-time a hack, especially not when that level of repeatability can be attained. There may be some areas of part throttle that wander off a bit (I'm saying this because I did not focus on this area except to note that it was within an acceptable range) with large outside temp changes, but they easily fall within the correction of closed loop control. The other GenIII-positive about SD, and what many owners like the most, is that it IS more snappy and responsive to throttle. You get the same snap that you, I am sure, are more than familiar with that comes with a well tuned carb setup. Don't mistake my defense of SD as me being an anti-MAF guy; I'm not. I'm just playing a little devil's advocate here.

To take it a little further... beside conditional change, the MAFs used in the GenIII cars do not seem to age well at all. I can tune a car (and have seen this many times), both VE and MAF (though we both know the MAF is really in control) and revisit the same car a year or more later, and though the AFR represents the same line or curve that was previously commanded, it had then wandered lean. Since I had tuned the VE's, upon failing the MAF and testing WOT, I found the AFR to be in same place that it had been a year prior. The first time I saw this, I had fully tuned a H/C M6 99 Z28. AFR at WOT was a straight line at 12.6:1 when tuned. Two years later, this car came back, unchanged, with the exception of a 5177 dry nitrous kit in the lid for which he needed tuning. To my surprise, the first base pull when I got it the second time around yielded 13.6:1 and KNOCK. Upon failing the MAF to get it back on the VE, the AFR was 12.5-12.7 through the pull, which is where I had left that 2 years prior. Comparing logs from the original tuning to this time having it back, it showed the MAF was reporting lower than it did 2 years prior. There was no answer for it such as oil on the element from an overzealous K&N treatment, or any change at all to the MAF/intake arrangement.

The most regular form of MAF failure on these cars never sets any codes; it's low reporting. As a tuner I am sure that you have seen cars, particularly in the last few years that are nearly stock and have very large positive trim corrections. Having to add over 25% to some parts of the curve below 7kHz to bring things back in line on a car that has headers and a lid is crazy. Unless an average owner has one of a few of the picky 99-00 OS's which will set a too lean code, they would never know that their MAF had gone south. Again; devil's advocate

The MAF wandering phenomenon can make mail order tuning difficult for some GenIII setups. Contrary to popular internet belief, for most H/C setups, to be honest, the SD tunes can work and drive better because of the MAF aging issue. This could be a strong selling point for the Abaco unit if they prove to remain consistent with age.

I don't mean to come off anti-MAF or anti-Abaco in any way, I just want the GenIII users here to see that for the most of them, the money will work better in other areas.

KurtRardin

iTrader: (11)

I think thats all the info I need on the subject to put the $ toward a good wideband and catch can setup instead.

ctmcamaro396

guys ive used the abaco meter for 4 months and it has failed twice it did fine on the dyno but it was bad new out of the box then two days ago it would not idle and it was running pig rich and i called them up they said they were having a hard ware issue

NemeSS

iTrader: (127)

i was under the impression that the abaco would work well with forced induction.
but after reading this thread im not so sure any more.
according to there advertising, it is supposed to work well even with gm ls cars pcm up to 1000hp