Brad Barnhill's Virtual Dyno with HP Tuners

[Leafy]

Updating the original post at Brads Request.



Here is the release of the full version of the standalone HP/TQ graphing application that reads Evoscan logs, and doesnt require Excel or copy and pasting your data.

The interface is pretty self explanatory. You can drag your CSV files to the panel on the left, then enter the appropriate data in the box that appears and your graph should appear. There are several graph options and those can be accessed from the menu at the top. There are only a few cars in the data file as of the initial release but as soon as a few more people test it and get me data on other vehicles I will add more.

The link to the page is http://www.bradbarnhill.com/projects/VirtualDyno/



Click Here to download the latest version.

Feel free to let me know what you think and suggestions on improvements. I know I am opening myself up to a lot of criticism but thats the only way to make this app better.

Thanks to all of you that have helped support this application through development and to all of those who have waited patiently for it. {thumbup}

Many thanks to some who have contributed over and over to its development:
Mellon Tuning
Boosted Tuning

Also if you would like to donate to the project feel free. I dont require payment as I rely on donations to keep the project alive. If you are a tuner please consider who keeps you in business and who develops software to support you. Donate a little per tune to your open source community that supports you so well.

Click Here to Donate

[edcmat-l1]

That's pretty cool. Thanks for the find. I'll check it out using Evoscan and Tactrix. Also will try it with HPT.

[Alvin]

hope you guys are using actual pressure instead of weather station pressure.

[Leafy]

I have to use weather station pressure because my map sensor doesnt read the actual real life pressure (yay using a 2.5 bar map on a 1 bar system because theres no other option). But ideally you'd want to take a map reading from the car with the engine off.

[Alvin]

Your map sensor wouldn't have the resolution anyway. Pilots use actual pressure before take off or land. Look up a aviation weather website like NOAA

[bbarnhill]

Hey guys!!! If you need anything Im the author of Virtual Dyno and Id be glad to answer any questions you have regarding the software. If you have any vehicles you would like to add let me know and Ill be glad to add them if you get me the above information on them.

Hope you enjoy the software and Im here if you need me.

Brad Barnhill
Virtual Dyno

[5_Liter_Eater]

I don't see anywhere where it tells me what PIDs I have to log for it to work. And if it's using delivered engine torque I'm out of luck as it pegs at 640 foot #'s.

[Leafy]

I don't see anywhere where it tells me what PIDs I have to log for it to work. And if it's using delivered engine torque I'm out of luck as it pegs at 640 foot #'s.

Sorry, you need to log rpm and tps at a minimum (well and time too but it does that one automatically), map and wideband are optional. From what I gather this program uses the rate of change with time of the rpm's to determine the acceleration of the car and its horsepower by using the gear ratio and vehicle weight. It should be wheel horsepower.

[5_Liter_Eater]

So basically it's just the rate of change of the RPM?

I have some logs from my dyno sessions but I guess those won't work since I wasn't actually moving? The numbers I got were actually fairly resonable with the Cavalier data but once I changed the tire diameter, vehicle weight and driver weight it went up to above 1000 HP and TQ.

[Leafy]

I have a feeling your gear ratios are a bit different than the cavalier. You can hard program in your own data if you go through the program or you can just send the car info to brand and he'll get it in the next update.

[5_Liter_Eater]

I used 4th gear which is 1:1 and I changed the tire height, final drive, vehicle weight and occupant weight. Could be due to the fact that I was strapped ot the dyno, donno. I would send him the Vette's data but I would have no idea about the frontal area or drag coefficient.

[Leafy]

I used 4th gear which is 1:1 and I changed the tire height, final drive, vehicle weight and occupant weight. Could be due to the fact that I was strapped ot the dyno, donno. I would send him the Vette's data but I would have no idea about the frontal area or drag coefficient.

I'd just google for that info. Should be able to find it on some hyper mileage site. Thats where I found mine and I think I remember seeing values for the corvette as well.

[5_Liter_Eater]

Well I did some digging and found the data for my car and plugged it into the Cavalier file. Still has me well over 1000 HP and TQ but that must be because I was strapped to a dyno. I'll try some street pulls in Mexico tonight.

[TiredGXP]

I did some playing around with this in the fall, before we iced up for the winter...

Very easy to use, and certainly can give you a sense of how tuning changes have affected on-road performance. Some logs result in "funky" multi peak dyno curves, not sure why that happens.

I don't have any good logs from my GXP, however here's the results of a log from my Legacy GT back in September (early days of tuning, just 91 octane. Dinky VF54 turbo will not hold boost past 5,000):



Prior to finding this, I used a couple of different spreadsheet based programs to derive road dyno plots, this is much quicker, and generally provides very similar results.

[Leafy]

I think the weird looking multi peak dyno graphs come from being on a road with some slight bumps or slops to it that you dont notice.

[Pyros777]

I used 4th gear which is 1:1 and I changed the tire height, final drive, vehicle weight and occupant weight. Could be due to the fact that I was strapped ot the dyno, donno. I would send him the Vette's data but I would have no idea about the frontal area or drag coefficient.

I think I've got the Cobalt SS figured out. It should translate well to other cars too. I might try the vette tomorrow.

Drag coefficient was posted online, and heres how I came up with frontal area for my car:

Advertised dimensions for the coupe are 67.9w x 55.5h

The quick way to calculate frontal area is (((w*h)(0.85))/12)/12 = fa

0.85 is just a rough estimate of the area that the car actually takes up.

So, using that formula gives us 22.24, which seems about right when compared to the Impreza example.

The more involved way is to take a high-res straight shot of the vehicle like this:

, and use a program like photoshop to find the exact area the car takes up. The key is to set the canvas up so that you have a ratio of 1px:1in, based on the resolution of the image you are using.

The easiest (but less accurate) way is to use the advertised width and height with a pixel per inch setting of 1 for the canvas size:


I traced the car out in its original resolution, then copied the selection to the 1:1 canvas. At this point I resized it to fill the height of the canvas. When I initially resized according to the 67.9px width, the height was incorrect because apparently the mirrors aren't included in the overall width measurement:



From here, I selected the white area, inverted the selection, and colored the car all red. With the car all one color, this enabled me to count all the red pixels using the histogram window:



3171 pixels (inches) divided by (w*h) = 84% or 22.02.

Sounds good if you ask me!

Going to go ahead and use the following for the Cobalt:

Edit: Updated

<CarMake>Chevrolet</CarMake>
<CarModel>Cobalt SS Supercharged Coupe</CarModel>
<StartYear>2005</StartYear>
<EndYear>2007</EndYear>
<Weight>2991</Weight>
<TransGear1>3.38</TransGear1>
<TransGear2>1.76</TransGear2>
<TransGear3>1.18</TransGear3>
<TransGear4>0.89</TransGear4>
<TransGear5>0.70</TransGear5>
<FinalGearRatio>4.04</FinalGearRatio>
<DragCoefficient>0.324</DragCoefficient>
<FrontalArea>22.02</FrontalArea>
<TireDiameter>25.63</TireDiameter>

<CarMake>Chevrolet</CarMake>
<CarModel>Cobalt SS Turbocharged Coupe</CarModel>
<StartYear>2008</StartYear>
<EndYear>2010</EndYear>
<Weight>2926</Weight>
<TransTypeManual>true</TransTypeManual>
<TransGear1>3.38</TransGear1>
<TransGear2>1.76</TransGear2>
<TransGear3>1.18</TransGear3>
<TransGear4>0.89</TransGear4>
<TransGear5>0.70</TransGear5>
<FinalGearRatio>3.82<FinalGearRatio>
<DragCoefficient>0.324</DragCoefficient>
<FrontalArea>22.02</FrontalArea>
<TireDiameter>25.10</TireDiameter>

[SargeZ06]

Here you go vette guys.

[SargeZ06]

I get error E101: not all columns needed for calculation found.

I have time, frame, RPM, Speed, TPS in the CSV file.

[SargeZ06]

Okay I fugured it out. It was formatting int he csv file. Now in 4th gear I'm over 1000HP and in 3rd gear it closer to actual HP.

[Leafy]

hmm thats weird with 4th gear.