2014 E550 - Learning to Tune

[chevota]

The tune will cause a little more heat since the spark is retarded, but I never noticed any change on mine using that map. Even when ambient is >100F.
Interesting you had to add coolant. I suppose maybe it has a leak and the previous owner was topping off with the wrong kind?
I think an oem drive and then coolant flush is a great idea. If there is any gelled coolant, I wonder if it'll just come out, or be difficult?
Have fun on vacation!

[Weancea]

The torque tweak in your tune seems crucial for peak power in your car. Have you noticed any significant changes in performance, and are you considering further modifications for better 0-60 acceleration?

[chevota]

Weancea; I assume that question was for me since we're just starting out with Rescu2000's tune.
My torque map is critical, and torque to load map is wonky but needed. If I set torque to load to 200 across it would kill it. I shouldn't have to raise everything as high as I do but my car has some weird power loss issue so all my #'s are raised quite a bit to get it to work. Compared to low power it had stock, it just might be making twice as much power now. I'd say that qualifies as significant

0-60 is a delicate balance making power but not so much that I lose traction. The throttle and boost pretty much do whatever they feel like doing, so all I can really do is give it part throttle and cross my fingers.
I suppose the only thing I can really do to net better 0-60 is get tires that hook up better. I already have pretty sticky ones so that means wider, and which means wider wheels. Maybe one day, if I find some.

As for Rescu2000, it almost seems like he might have the same, or similar, power loss issue I have. So we'll just keep raising the #'s until it works.

[chevota]

Any luck Rescu? It seems to me a lot of people pop in after buying HP, then we never hear from again. I assume they gave up? I hope you stick with it

[notmypie]

I haven't gave up!! Im still tuning I am curious about everyone elses setup. How is everyone doing and have they made any more improvements to their tunes?

I glazed over this thread and i am not sure if it was mentioned but i would stay under 18psi. 16 tops to be safe. From my knowledge there is a plastic backing after the intake somewhere which can crack causing boost leak. I havnt looked for it but on a engine teardown videos ive heard its a point of failure for tuners. Thats my only knowledge to it.

[chevota]

I too wonder, but people usually vanish and we don't get to hear about what worked or didn't. This is probably the biggest reason I post so much, because I know how hard to was when I started tuning. I think most people just give up too easily. When I was hotrodding non-computer engines, most people would buy a few parts and live with however it ran. I, on the other hand, would spend substantially more time trying to squeeze out more power. Of the people I know personally now, none are interested in tuning anything themselves. I know a few that have bought tunes, but making adjustments themselves is not going to happen. One guy at work was bragging like like he knew about tunes, so I started grilling him because I knew he didn't. The truth turns out he loaded one very mild store bought tune on one eng, the end.
Other than online, I'm the only person I know that is willing to do this stuff. Plus something is up with my car and I don't think anyone could tune it unless they had the car in hand, so to speak. Eg; if I load my generic OE Tuners tune in it it has less power than stock. The stock load is even less than that, so basically I have no choice but to do it myself. Plus, do I really want what someone else thinks is good, or more accurately, "safe"?

I asked OE Tuners and they said their tune in my eng is 18psi. I assume this means it will steady out at 18 in a controlled environment, like on a dyno. It seems other tuners say 18 psi as well, but I was never one to play it safe. I generally push things as far as they go, within reason, and that reason is manufactured by my brain, not someone elses. Like speed limits on sharp curves were made up by someone in an office somewhere who wants to cover all bases, and their butt, so it's unreasonably low. To me 50% over the sign is a safe speed, but the goal is to see if I can double it, and I usually can. Or people say it's only safe to rev x engine to x rpm, so I consider their safe max as my starting point.
Same with reloading ammo, if anyone here is into that. The max load is usually my starting point, but like with cars there are many variables. I mention reloading because most people treat the "safe limit" as if written in stone by God on the ten commandments and you will go to hell if you exceed it. I mean people get really upset when I say I exceed it. Some people are like that with speed limits, but not very many because most have come to realize they're just a guideline written by a government with a different agenda than they imply.
So I consider the safe 18 psi as a minimum. It seems the boost & MAP sensors only read up to ~37 psia? Not that you plan on going that high, but I have many times and it just stops there. The point is my intake is still good, and I've hit 23psi, or 37 MAP, many hundreds of times. I remember a video where an expert on this eng, and the M157 which uses the same intake, said it's good for 2 Bar. He must've meant 2 Bar over ambient so we're good. I'd be more worried about the intercooler stretching and leaking, but so far I'm good there too. Plus you can buy used intake and intercoolers online for a pretty cheap, so the only problem imo is the labor to swap it.

I usually end up ~22 psi at peak. I've tried to control it down to 20 but it's just too much work. Say you wanted 10psi, that would cover the entire rpm band and would be a nightmare. I only worry about 3-4k rpm which is the only spot it can exceed 22, and I control how quickly it transitions from that to fully closed wastegates to ensure max possible boost before and after that.
Another problem with a lower boost, like 16, is it moves around more. At least for me, and I'd wager it would be around +- 5psi most of the time that more or less averages 16. The higher the peak boost I shoot for, the less of a problem that is. I can remember trying to shoot for 18, and I gave up. Maybe yours will cooperate better, but fyi. I'd imagine lower vacuum to the turbo solenoid help tame it, but it also costs you power.

If you do shoot for 16, then I'd try not to let it drop at higher rpm. The stock tune lowers boost on purpose after x rpm, and tunes I've seen basically mirror stock so again you miss out at higher rpm. My turbos are working 100% after ~4200. If you go with 16 then I think 5400 rpm is your #, simply because I make 16 at 5400 and it drops from there. Mine drops steadily to 12.5 at 6k because it's simply the best my turbos can do, can't tune that out. So I'd want to see 16 from wherever it starts making that to 5400, then drop steadily to 12.5 at 6k and nothing less.
Setting like that means my turbo duty cycle is 100% after 4200, so if I see the DC drop below 100, I know something is wrong with the tune.

By "wrong" I mean I have a big problem with bad tunes. Nothing I did, they just don't make power. I normally start with a known good tune, usually the one that's in it if it was working. Then make changes which could be anything, even simply adjusting the Fan speed, then load the tune and I lose bunch of power. I then make another tune from the same original, with the exact same specs, and it's good to go. It makes me wonder how much this has set me back because when I first started doing this I'd make a change, it sux for reasons that don't make sense, but I note that change was a bad idea. I usually didn't revert back to the oem tune as a starting point unless I got really frustrated. So as far as I know I spent 90% of my time playing with bad tunes. Now that I know what works, and have several known good tunes that make peak power, I can easily spot a bad tune if some change kills it.
So fyi it's something to keep it in mind if things don't seem to be going as expected.

Now I have a new issue that started maybe 8 months ago, with a fuel lean out condition. Same deal where it happens when I load a new tune. I get these lean spots at lower rpm and part throttle. It only does this on one side of the eng, per the O2 sensors, and usually the left side. It seems unrelated to the aforementioned bad tunes because these ones usually make full power.
At first it was very rare to get a lean out. I might drive all week and nothing, then a brief 1-2 second lean out under the right conditions. Then it became both more common to have a bad tune that causes this, and it leans out more often when I did. Lambda, per the O2's, read anywhere from 1.00 to 1.9 while under boost. The leaner it is the more the car falls on its face.
The Desired and/or Command will be lean too, so it's not some fuel delivery issue. I've tried to force a leaner than 1.00 Lambda and it wont work, it simply commands 1.00 or richer. So how/why could it possibly command leaner, especially under boost? Why only one side leans out, per the O2's, I don't know. So I make an exact copy of the tune to load and it goes away. Sounds like a glitch to me...
Now it's happening so often that it affects about half my tunes. This means that often the replacement tune does it as well and I have to roll the dice again. If I get frustrated I'll load a known good tune, no changes, and it works. A bad tune will not start working better later on, so as long as the bad tune is in there, it will continue to have lean outs. Based on all this, I don't think it's not my car at all, but HP doing it? Either screwing up the tune or maybe the loading process? I dunno... If it were the car it would have nothing to do with what tune, or when I loaded it, it would just be a problem.
Maybe it's my personal jinx, and I have many when it comes to electronics. Let me know if you see unexplainable glitches that suggest the same.