Detailed info on dyno tune I had done Saturday 11/17
11-19-2007, 08:21 PM
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Detailed info on dyno tune I had done Saturday 11/17 Hello, everyone....
I spent more than 8 hours yesterday with Rich Waitas, the Engineering Director at Magnaflow Exhaust doing some extensive dyno tuning on my SS at their R&D facility in south Orange County. For those that don't know, Rich is one of the premier LSX tuner gurus and is well known in the GTO community (he dynotuned both my LS1 GTO and my son's godfather's heads/cam/headers '04 Goat which is getting a UPS twin turbo setup). He has done countless custom tunes for N/A and forced induction applications. He also works on the TV show Overhaulin'; you might recognize him as he was interviewed on the show not too long ago. Rich is one of those rare ultra-gearheads that is a perfectionist in what he does, is very cool to be around and he enjoys teaching you things as you go along. In 8 hours I got lessons in chemistry, metallurgy, a tour of the CAD area, and during the cooldown after one of my pulls he offered to take me on a tour of their 180,000 square foot production facility located 10 minutes away, but seeing as it was dark he did it via video instead!
For the purposes of this narrative I'll try to keep things simple here for those that may not have a lot of car knowledge.
The dyno they use is a Dynojet. Stock the car pulls 255 fwHP & 263 fwLB-ft TQ. In Rich's estimation the parastic loss from the FWD transaxle layout is somewhere between 18-20%, so let's assume the average of 19%. Therefore, (1/(1.00-.19) =(1/0.81) = a conversion factor of 1.2345, so the fwHP & TQ numbers above are right in line with the factory crank rating of 303 and 323, respectively.
After that we put the car on a rack and in no time at all the stock exhaust was off and sitting on the floor, and we put on their system. Here is a helpful tip straight from Rich, who told me he writes all the installation instructions on their systems: follow his instructions, and don't take shortcuts! He indicated that the system needs to find it's "home", be cinched down, then heat cycled several times, then undone and READJUSTED. On the SS system, there is 2.25" worth of adjustability built into its overall length. In my car's case, we put it on where it wanted to "sit", did all the dyno work and street testing, then put the car back on the rack and spent another 30 minutes readjusting the whole system using magnetic levels. Then we put the car back on the ground, and checked everything again visually. It is worth it to take the time, as the tips on my system do no stick out like I have seen in some pictures posted. To antipicate the next question, yes, the MF resonator was left on; Rich tells me deleting it is worth only 1-2 HP.
I also had a K&N CAI to work with. With both the K&N and the MF exhaust car on the car and a good cooldown, the car pumped out 263.2 fwHP and 277.9 fw TQ (325 HP , 343 TQ) on a STOCK tune. This is what Rich and I expected to happen with no other changes.
For the tuning Rich uses the latest version of HP Tuners which has new features that allow you to both disable or adjust the DoD features and some other enhancements. In order to write to the PCM, you have to pull the fuses under the hood for both the radio and OnStar. For our purposes and in the interests of time I asked that we disable the DoD for now; however, we plan on delving more in depth into the DoD feature and really tweaking it at a later date.
Rich worked in three stages: simple things first, fuel and P/E (Power Enrichment ) tables second, and timing tables third.
First Stage:
When he loaded the stock tune and went through it, the first place we stopped at was the fan settings. The fans on the LS4 are set to come on gradually at 5-10% at 224 degrees, then they're ramped up to 90% efficiency at 236 degrees. We changed this to 70% below 196 and 90% the rest of the way up the scale. This ought to help the A/C in the summertime, along with the heatwrap I put on the A/C lines that run over the top of the front exhaust manifold.
Another feature we looked at was the A/C function...incredibly, the PCM commands the A/C compressor to continue cycling even at WOT. This was changed such that the compressor now shuts off at WOT, a handy feature.
Shift points: the 3-4 shift on a stock LS4 is commanded at 4400 RPM. These cars can spin to 6200, so all the shift points were commanded to start at 5900 in 1st, 5950 in 2nd and 5955(?) in third, so that by the time the shift actually occurs the motor is in the 6150 range. We had to follow this up with two dyno pulls to match the MPH to RPM, as the shifts will be commanded to take place if one or the other criteria is met. My car liked 50 MPH for the 1-2, 98 for the 2-3, and 130 for the 3-4.
TQ Management: I left this in in case of inclement weather, but we backed it off across the board, IIRC the factor was 0.85.
Shift firmness: it took us a while to get this, as we street tested to find the optimum. I like mine "with authority", but not bark the tires. We adjusted both the part throttle and WOT shifts.
Downshift protocols: tweaked so the the 3-2 downshift happens faster and at a lower TPS setting. After driving the car for a couple of days I want to revise the 2-1 downshift in a similar fashion.
Speed Limiter: Stock is 140 MPH; we raised it to 256, effectively turning it off.
Second & Third stages: very involved, but the highlights were that the stock tune commands 32 degrees of timing in some areas, which is far too much for our oxygenated 91 octane sold in California. For those states with 93 it's okay, but on 91, no. The car was seeing 7 degrees of knock stock, so the P/E and timing was tweaked (P/E threshold brought down, timing reduced to 28). I know this sounds like a short summary, but there was a lot of fine tuning involved. FYI, I use only Chevron or Shell 91.
The best number we could acheive given our 91 gas was 270.6 fwHP (334 crank) and 289.5 fwTQ (357.7 crank); with 93 octane we would have had more room to play with.
In 8 hours we did at least 8 dyno pulls to tune and check RPM/MPH calibrations. Rich even did one just to make sure the "8 CYL MODE" on the display didn't change since we had disabled the DoD ("It probably won't, but let's check anyway...")! With the changes in P/E the car drives so much smoother than stock, power delivery is smoother, shifts are what they should have been from the factory, and I was surprised how quiet the MF exhaust system was at 80 MPH with no DoD.
Rich also said they were seeking a test Impala SS for a new product that is in their protoyping stages, and I offered my car. They do quite a bit of flow analysis work for various certifications and so on, so we will be getting together again in about a month for a test fit, flow test, retune, etc.
At any rate, I apologize for the long post.
Regards,
Morgan
I spent more than 8 hours yesterday with Rich Waitas, the Engineering Director at Magnaflow Exhaust doing some extensive dyno tuning on my SS at their R&D facility in south Orange County. For those that don't know, Rich is one of the premier LSX tuner gurus and is well known in the GTO community (he dynotuned both my LS1 GTO and my son's godfather's heads/cam/headers '04 Goat which is getting a UPS twin turbo setup). He has done countless custom tunes for N/A and forced induction applications. He also works on the TV show Overhaulin'; you might recognize him as he was interviewed on the show not too long ago. Rich is one of those rare ultra-gearheads that is a perfectionist in what he does, is very cool to be around and he enjoys teaching you things as you go along. In 8 hours I got lessons in chemistry, metallurgy, a tour of the CAD area, and during the cooldown after one of my pulls he offered to take me on a tour of their 180,000 square foot production facility located 10 minutes away, but seeing as it was dark he did it via video instead!
For the purposes of this narrative I'll try to keep things simple here for those that may not have a lot of car knowledge.
The dyno they use is a Dynojet. Stock the car pulls 255 fwHP & 263 fwLB-ft TQ. In Rich's estimation the parastic loss from the FWD transaxle layout is somewhere between 18-20%, so let's assume the average of 19%. Therefore, (1/(1.00-.19) =(1/0.81) = a conversion factor of 1.2345, so the fwHP & TQ numbers above are right in line with the factory crank rating of 303 and 323, respectively.
After that we put the car on a rack and in no time at all the stock exhaust was off and sitting on the floor, and we put on their system. Here is a helpful tip straight from Rich, who told me he writes all the installation instructions on their systems: follow his instructions, and don't take shortcuts! He indicated that the system needs to find it's "home", be cinched down, then heat cycled several times, then undone and READJUSTED. On the SS system, there is 2.25" worth of adjustability built into its overall length. In my car's case, we put it on where it wanted to "sit", did all the dyno work and street testing, then put the car back on the rack and spent another 30 minutes readjusting the whole system using magnetic levels. Then we put the car back on the ground, and checked everything again visually. It is worth it to take the time, as the tips on my system do no stick out like I have seen in some pictures posted. To antipicate the next question, yes, the MF resonator was left on; Rich tells me deleting it is worth only 1-2 HP.
I also had a K&N CAI to work with. With both the K&N and the MF exhaust car on the car and a good cooldown, the car pumped out 263.2 fwHP and 277.9 fw TQ (325 HP , 343 TQ) on a STOCK tune. This is what Rich and I expected to happen with no other changes.
For the tuning Rich uses the latest version of HP Tuners which has new features that allow you to both disable or adjust the DoD features and some other enhancements. In order to write to the PCM, you have to pull the fuses under the hood for both the radio and OnStar. For our purposes and in the interests of time I asked that we disable the DoD for now; however, we plan on delving more in depth into the DoD feature and really tweaking it at a later date.
Rich worked in three stages: simple things first, fuel and P/E (Power Enrichment ) tables second, and timing tables third.
First Stage:
When he loaded the stock tune and went through it, the first place we stopped at was the fan settings. The fans on the LS4 are set to come on gradually at 5-10% at 224 degrees, then they're ramped up to 90% efficiency at 236 degrees. We changed this to 70% below 196 and 90% the rest of the way up the scale. This ought to help the A/C in the summertime, along with the heatwrap I put on the A/C lines that run over the top of the front exhaust manifold.
Another feature we looked at was the A/C function...incredibly, the PCM commands the A/C compressor to continue cycling even at WOT. This was changed such that the compressor now shuts off at WOT, a handy feature.
Shift points: the 3-4 shift on a stock LS4 is commanded at 4400 RPM. These cars can spin to 6200, so all the shift points were commanded to start at 5900 in 1st, 5950 in 2nd and 5955(?) in third, so that by the time the shift actually occurs the motor is in the 6150 range. We had to follow this up with two dyno pulls to match the MPH to RPM, as the shifts will be commanded to take place if one or the other criteria is met. My car liked 50 MPH for the 1-2, 98 for the 2-3, and 130 for the 3-4.
TQ Management: I left this in in case of inclement weather, but we backed it off across the board, IIRC the factor was 0.85.
Shift firmness: it took us a while to get this, as we street tested to find the optimum. I like mine "with authority", but not bark the tires. We adjusted both the part throttle and WOT shifts.
Downshift protocols: tweaked so the the 3-2 downshift happens faster and at a lower TPS setting. After driving the car for a couple of days I want to revise the 2-1 downshift in a similar fashion.
Speed Limiter: Stock is 140 MPH; we raised it to 256, effectively turning it off.
Second & Third stages: very involved, but the highlights were that the stock tune commands 32 degrees of timing in some areas, which is far too much for our oxygenated 91 octane sold in California. For those states with 93 it's okay, but on 91, no. The car was seeing 7 degrees of knock stock, so the P/E and timing was tweaked (P/E threshold brought down, timing reduced to 28). I know this sounds like a short summary, but there was a lot of fine tuning involved. FYI, I use only Chevron or Shell 91.
The best number we could acheive given our 91 gas was 270.6 fwHP (334 crank) and 289.5 fwTQ (357.7 crank); with 93 octane we would have had more room to play with.
In 8 hours we did at least 8 dyno pulls to tune and check RPM/MPH calibrations. Rich even did one just to make sure the "8 CYL MODE" on the display didn't change since we had disabled the DoD ("It probably won't, but let's check anyway...")! With the changes in P/E the car drives so much smoother than stock, power delivery is smoother, shifts are what they should have been from the factory, and I was surprised how quiet the MF exhaust system was at 80 MPH with no DoD.
Rich also said they were seeking a test Impala SS for a new product that is in their protoyping stages, and I offered my car. They do quite a bit of flow analysis work for various certifications and so on, so we will be getting together again in about a month for a test fit, flow test, retune, etc.
At any rate, I apologize for the long post.
Regards,
Morgan
11-19-2007, 08:37 PM
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Good results, good post,very informative. I recently tuned a 2007 Monte Carlo SS, it was commanding high timing like 32* as well, the customer runs 93 in his car here in AR, and it was still getting KR even with 93, I had to drop to about 28*. We are going to catch up soon and throw the wideband in it and see what the AFR is and get it dialed in, and then try to up the timing some then.
