Just curious but does anyone know if there has ever been any software made that you could link up a laptop to the car and tune from it instead of using a SCT to reflash? I have a power commander for my bike that can be hooked to my laptop for tuning just wondering why this isnt done on the mustang. Any insight would be appreciated.

 

Good question.

I have seen several tuners work on cars and all have said you actually needed a handheld tuner to load a tune onto a car.

When guys have showed up to dyno days without a tuner, the guy tuning would use someoneelse's handheld to load the tune.

 

I dunno just seems to me with the proper software and a cable this could be done. As for software someone must know enough about the computer in the car since it is basically the same thing you do with a SCT that someone has written a tune for seems like you could bypass the SCT and just change your settings from a laptop. Prob not something the after market industry wants done as it would cut into tuner sales since one person with the software could tune as many cars as he felt like and pass the software around thereby cutting them out of the loop. Anyway if Im wrong about how this works would really like to know its had me curious for a while now.

 

Well I certainly don't know for sure, but...

The one thing I would compare it to would be reflashing firmware on, say, an network router. Basically there are certain things that you can change on the router without having to reflash; it either works by restarting services or simply rebooting the router after a fix. However, to do the big changes, you simply have to throw out whatever firmware image existed and completely re-write it. There is no great way to re-write parts of the firmware.

I would imagine that the car's ECU works in the same way, most-likely for simplicity sake. I've not ever been around a tuner "doing their thing", but I would imagine that they start with a base configuration, load it to the ECU, do a dyno pull (or a few) while datalogging, then making changes based on the results, reloading to the ECU, dyno tuning, rinse, repeat until satisfied.

I would guess that providing an "on the fly" method of changing all of the parameters in the ECU firmware would add considerable cost to building these cars.

That's just my guess; again, no real world knowledge or experience with it

 

I think it may be a possiblity. My dad uses his laptop and connects directly to the OBD port. He can read codes, clear them, and do other things. It can even data log but we never figured out how. I don't recall the name of the software. I think with a fully licensed version, it *may* be possible. I would just do internet searches and see what you can find.

 

I would think you could use either a USB to ODB2 cable or serial to ODB2.

http://www.amazon.com/Crescent-OBD2-.../dp/B001MT0XPK

Not sure what software you would need. Maybe you contact the cable manufacturer to see if they have anything that can do what you need.

 

I think you'd be causing more trouble buy avoiding a tuner, its not that difficult

 

^I'm taking it that he wants to make his own tune. I know with the sct x3 does not have that capability. Whatever is on the tuner is very limited. It only holds tunes that were made from an outside source.

 

I recall seeing some rather expensive software/hardware that would allow you to tune all the paramerters that are currently proprietary on our Diablo's, SCT's, etc. but can't recall who makes it. Try googling (or insert your preferred search engine here) it and see what you get.

 

I think this is what you are looking for:
http://www.snipertuningsfla.com/index.html