01MGGT

Ok so I am messing around in Special Forces trying to get a basic tune put together for when I put my cams in tmrw. (CMS Stage1) I have some basic questions and can provide a HTML of the tune thanks to the great program Cliffy made. Ok so here we go...

Fans: After alot of research and reading,including a tuning book by Greg Banish Hoss or someone told me about, it seems keeping coolant around 180* will give me some room to play with ignition. I am just curious what I should set my fan High and low speed temps to in order to maintain a friendly temperature for the timing increase.

Returnless Fuel Pressure: Most say to keep it stock but I am curious if I should increase it a little with the cams?

Octane: There is no 90 octane tune in SF. 90 octane is highest we have here in Alaska unless I could find an affordable octane booster that actually works properly. Does this setting even effect anything? I heard nothing changes with it and that you do it all manually in the ignition and fuel section of drop down boxes. What should I do here? Set it to 87 and then do the other stuff or what?

Fuel Pressures: I have options of low mid and hi RPM fuel modifier. Should I leave this stock for now or is there a safe value that may work with my mods I could try? I have a wideband 02 sensor and gauge installed and will be data logging to my laptop. I also see the two bottom options here for Global fuel PT and FT modifiers. What should I do with these if anything? I won't be able to drive the car to do any testing for another couple months at least because of the snow

Ignition settings: I have set the low mid and hi RPM modifiers to +1.0 and the Global to +2.0. Is this safe on 90 Octane? Should I make any changes on any of those? Will going any further be safe or produce any positive effects at all?

I think that's about it right now. I know the car still won't be able to leave the garage for a while but I am excited about the cam install tmrw and wanted to play with the tuning some I am still waiting on my Belkin usb to serial converter to come in the mail to hook up my Inovate LC-1 to my laptop to datalog the wideband/AFR. Does the logworks software that comes with the give me what I need to simply log the AFR or do I need even more software? My car should feel really special, I put Windows XP on my MacBook only for the purpose of tuning my car basically! lol.

01MGGT

One more question...I saved my tune and the HTML report shows all my changes. However if I open SF again and go into load tune to make changes, my traction control setting is reset as are all my spark settings. Are these settings supposed to do this every time? They are getting saved correctly in the tune right?

H0SS302

Leave fan settings stock, and mark EVERYTHING that is stock in your car as stock on SF. If you dont have upraded injectors put stock, your fuel system should be all stock also.

Wtih stage 1 cams Iv had the best luck with JUST a 2* global timing adder. My buddies car got 300RWHP on a hot *** day with a low compression motor, full bolt ons and stage 1 turbo cams with stage 1 heads. Thats pretty dang good.

you should be fine with it set at 87..iv found it really doesnt matter at all. After you get done making a tune just go for a drive and punch it a couple times. Listen for pinging(sounds like marbles being rolled into eachother), if there is pinging back that rpm range down a .5*

stangalator

i would say get a 180 stat and then have the fans turn on a little earlier, but with you in Alaska I dont think that would be a good idea. Its not like you have to worry about over heating, lol. I agree with above in saying keep your "fuel" settings stock unless you upgraded what you are selecting. Keep the pressure stock too.

With your WBO2 system you should be shooting for 12.8-13.2 ish at WOT. With cams i know you will have to adjust your idle rpm up a 100 or so rpm so you wont die at idle.

I did the same thing you did with windows on the macbook for basically sniper tuning. Well that and starcraft, haha.

HaneyMotorsport.Com

As HOSS said, leave the fans alone for now. As well for fuel system....if stock.

Go ahead and choose the 91oct. setting. This will add 2 degrees globally to the tune. Do not confuse this with adding global in the "fine tune" page. If you add 2 degrees in the "fine tune", you will have 4 total.

The "fine tune" parameters and saved tune file -

SF Will Not keep/save the changes you have made. For example, you add 2 degrees in the mid and high rpm area in "fine tuning" , then save the tune file, then load into the car and test. Now, you say, I want to add 1 more degree to both areas. When you re-load that "saved" tune in SF and go to the "fine tuning" page, those previous setting are not there. You need to add 3 degrees to mid and high, not just 1.

If you hear knock at a certain rpm area, pull at Least 1 degree from there.

Casey

cliffyk

Without a 180° thermostat, altering the fan settings will do nothing as the OEM unit will keep the engine at 200° to 210° regardless of how much the fans run. Also, the fans will not run at vehicle speeds over 38 for low speed, and 40 for high speed, unless these values are changed in the tune--SF does not alter these settings.

No, it's not advised to mess with this-you will need higher capacity injectors anyway, so just buy them big enough to squirt what you need at 40 psi.

The octane selections in Special Forces do not affect anything for a normally aspirated tune, they do come in to play as major considerations for power adders.

The first pass "base" SF tune increases the Global Spark Adder by 2.0°, and adds 2.0° to the Spark Borderline table values at higher loads (70%+)--regardless of the octane selection.

SF also leans out the mix a bit in the Stabilised Open Loop Fuel table (a table of AFR values at certain TPS and RPM combinations), at TPS levels over 50%. These can be done universally because the OEM tune is so lame, with very conservative timing, and generally a bit rich in open loop.

Don't mess with fueling at all until you can drive the car. As I said above SF has already leaned it out a bit in open loop mode. The RPM based settings affect the aforementioned Stabilised Open Loop Fuel table, the PT and FT modifiers alter the low and high Fuel Injector Slope settings (these tell the PCM what the injector capacity is at low and high pulse widths).

Those are a bit aggressive, however with the lower ambient temps you'll have in AK you should be OK...

The way all this works is that the PCM uses input from the MAF, IAT, ECT, RPM, TPS, and other considerations to calculate a spark setting. It then compares that value to the appropriate entry in the Spark Borderline table and uses the lesser of the two values--then adds the Global Spark Adder value and goes with it.


One last thing, it is normal for SF to not save some settings--this is to prevent "double counting" of timing and fueling changes , and also for liability concerns (traction control, etc.). My SFScrape program will let you "stuff" those values into SF from a saved HTML report (the SF unsaved values are hidden in the HTML file).

01MGGT

Awesome guy. Thanks so much for the quick responses and all the explinations! I will eventually understand all this. The book was a good read but can be tricky to follow at some points. Again thanks alot and I will let you guys know how it runs!

01MGGT

Forgot to mention you have a PM cliffy