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Thread: 1.4T Cruze/Sonic Tuning Thread - Where to begin

  1. #1
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    1.4T Cruze/Sonic Tuning Thread - Where to begin

    Instead of clogging up the other thread, i figured we should start our own thread for others to find info easier.

    - Attached is my stock tune and my current modified tune.

    - You can do a compare against my stock tune to see what i have changed.

    - Here is a rundown on the things that have made what i feel is a giant impact on performance.

    Background: I had a aftermarket tuning solution in the car the last 6 months and while it def made a difference i didnt think it was as refined as it could have been. Wicked lean till 3500 rpm, surging under WOT which i found to be the result of a 10.3:1 AFR once above 4500 and 5-6 degrees of advance, with slight KR. Also i didnt like how fast the throttle ramped in, it was not linear at all! My car has an Injen CAI as the only other mod.

    Starting with factory stock tune...

    So here is where i started. I raised the TM functions (engine peak torque and brake torque) well above what i would see on the scanner for output torque.

    Next was getting the AFR in line. i tweaked the pedal % for PE to be enabled to come in sooner. @ WOT I commanded about 12.2 coming in down low vs the 15.7-16.0 from 2500 thru 3500 and played with the maf scale in the proper hz range to get that to be where i needed it.

    Next i moved to top end WOT and commanded a 11.7 AFR and then dialed in the maf hz range again to get this close. At this point NIGHT AND DAY performance increase with no other changes.

    The car drove WAYYYYYYYY better than it ever had, the power delivery was linear and responsive. Best of all NO MORE WOT SURGING! and i didnt even have to re-gap my plugs from or to factory specs as others indicate being required to fix certain issues.

    Next thing i attacked was the timing tables, i basically went against the grain here and got rid of other factors that alter the advance at WOT with the exception of the KR. I did get rid of timing adjustments for the variable cam spark too @ wot only. Next unorthodox thing i did was try ti get rid of/limit burst knock intervention. Now with all that done i start feeding 10 degrees into it then ramping up to 12. Its taking this timing too in 90 degree heat on just pump 93 and at stock boost level which appears to be about 15.5 psi. I see 1-2 degree spikes of KR here and there and i left it at that for now.

    The top end pull is NOW how i feel it should be! it doesnt plain off at 4500 anymore and feel vauge thru 6k like it used to.

    I havent dabbled with the boost much yet as im still trying to grasp the theory of the control methods, all i did thus far was raise the max boost levels and up the duty cycle about 5% and that brought the boost to 16.7 psi, so i gained about 1 psi doing that. Ran out of time to go further. I also left the dynamic airflow setting where they were for now too.

    To sum it all up, even in 90 degree heat, the car is a riot to drive now! i can feed power in with my foot instead of it all showing up instantly and feeling that flooring the pedal actually makes a difference lol. And the car i feel is FASTER on 'close to" stock boost than it ever was with the other solution on its hottest setting which i logged to be about 21 psi. I compare the 3rd gear pull the car has to that of an LS1 f-body, obviously not that fast but thats where it does its dirty work now, feeling wise.

    I should have some time this week to get my car on the dyno see where im at, its reporting a steady 165-173 ft/lbs across the whole power band thru the scanner now.

    Its also worth noting too, that injen intake with the tube near the maf yet has NOT skewed my maf readings at or near idle, nor part throttle. havent changed from stock and they are -1.6 @ idle and -2.3 during cruise and 0 @ wot. They were approaching -15 at idle and -7.6 during cruise and WOT with the other solution.
    Last edited by BAD LS1; 06-18-2012 at 09:57 AM.
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  2. #2
    Advanced Tuner silverbullet08's Avatar
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    Ill be joining in on this thread to help out very soon as one of my family members just picked one up. He wanted me to tune it on the way home from the dealer but I told him he should wait until he at least has some miles on it to allow everything to break in on it properly lol.

    It looks like your off to a good start though! I may scan through what your working with shortly.

    Edit: Here is something to test out. Try adjusting your PE table to run a little leaner in the section where your iats are cooler maybe like a 11.9 or 12.0 the 68 to 86, then taper it to go richer as the iats climb to your original 11.7. Not sure what these engines like yet but it may help with some of the kr your talking about. I would imagine you could run a bit more timing, I compared your timing tables to the ones I pulled from the cruze im working with and Im wondering if you made any major adjustments? The ones I have are much more advanced all over, by up to 15* in most areas. even the cruzing areas. Il try posting them up.
    Last edited by silverbullet08; 06-18-2012 at 01:50 PM.
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  3. #3
    Senior Tuner Higgs Boson's Avatar
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    Would be interesting to see if you could have left the MAF curve alone and "leaned it out" to 11.7 just by raising the boost..... Doesn't the "other solution" claim to bump it into the low 20s???

    Of course, I had to leave town for two weeks the day after I get access, I got a chance to get a few changes in and can tell a difference which makes me want to play a lot more. Sucks.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by silverbullet08 View Post
    Ill be joining in on this thread to help out very soon as one of my family members just picked one up. He wanted me to tune it on the way home from the dealer but I told him he should wait until he at least has some miles on it to allow everything to break in on it properly lol.

    It looks like your off to a good start though! I may scan through what your working with shortly.

    Edit: Here is something to test out. Try adjusting your PE table to run a little leaner in the section where your iats are cooler maybe like a 11.9 or 12.0 the 68 to 86, then taper it to go richer as the iats climb to your original 11.7. Not sure what these engines like yet but it may help with some of the kr your talking about. I would imagine you could run a bit more timing, I compared your timing tables to the ones I pulled from the cruze im working with and Im wondering if you made any major adjustments? The ones I have are much more advanced all over, by up to 15* in most areas. even the cruzing areas. Il try posting them up.
    I rebuilti t all from .40g/s and below. After it goes thru all the other bs like iat, cam timing etc it brings it down to about 7 stock vs that 15 you are seeing in the high octane table
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    Quote Originally Posted by Higgs Boson View Post
    Would be interesting to see if you could have left the MAF curve alone and "leaned it out" to 11.7 just by raising the boost..... Doesn't the "other solution" claim to bump it into the low 20s???

    Of course, I had to leave town for two weeks the day after I get access, I got a chance to get a few changes in and can tell a difference which makes me want to play a lot more. Sucks.
    Well i wanst able to look at the other solution as it wouldnt let me DL the tune with it in, obviously its proprietary info, that i can understand. All i know is with the hot tune active it would peak out about 21 psi.

    Another side note, be careful with the smoothing buttons on the maf curve too, one click is all you need, try to make it perfect and it skews the low end of the curve and my trims tanked way -. These things run really low hz too when on the pipe, i think im at about 6400 hz by 6300 rpm now. seems if you are seeing 5% correction, just make 1% and its right on the money lol
    2007 Suburban - Slammed, Cammed, Geared and Stalled.

  6. #6
    I pickup my Cruze in 2 days

    with regards to spark always be careful zeroing the IAT retard table at high intake temps. It's there to protect you against knock, especially when you nail the throttle after sitting in traffic for awhile on a hot day with the AC on

    Another thing i noticed is the factory cals have 2deg of static retard on one cylinder at high RPM, interesting...
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris@HPTuners View Post
    Another thing i noticed is the factory cals have 2deg of static retard on one cylinder at high RPM, interesting...
    Where are you seeing this? i noticed this in my logs as they seem to never go over 2 degrees but it always seems to have this 2* of kr regardless of if the timing is at 6 or 12 above 4k rpm lol
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    Senior Tuner Higgs Boson's Avatar
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    What's the deal with logging timing on this car? It is some combination of ignition advance and TqMgt Advance? If I add them, they seem to equal what is in the main spark advance table. Are there idle timing tables?

    I must be doing something wrong, this is quite a bit different than the V8 stuff I have been tuning.

    Also, I moved my MAF Enable to 2K RPM instead of the factory 7K. It definitely feels different like that.

  9. #9
    I can not say for the 1.4t, but the 2.2 Ecotec's like a 12.2 AFR in boost.

    I can't wait to be able to get ahold of my buddies car to play, but he is also a auto.

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    98 degrees here today in milwaukee... a real ball sticker! The car feels balzy even with the ac cranked just putzing around in traffic. This stuff really made my week after tolerating the performance of the car over the last 9 months ive owned it.
    2007 Suburban - Slammed, Cammed, Geared and Stalled.

  11. #11
    Senior Tuner cobaltssoverbooster's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JMHZ2401 View Post
    I can not say for the 1.4t, but the 2.2 Ecotec's like a 12.2 AFR in boost.

    I can't wait to be able to get ahold of my buddies car to play, but he is also a auto.
    you talking about the lnf eco which runs 12.6 @ 24psi?
    last i checked there arent any boosted 2.2's unless they are converted. the only reason they like it lean is the direct injection system.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris@HPTuners View Post
    I pickup my Cruze in 2 days

    with regards to spark always be careful zeroing the IAT retard table at high intake temps. It's there to protect you against knock, especially when you nail the throttle after sitting in traffic for awhile on a hot day with the AC on

    Another thing i noticed is the factory cals have 2deg of static retard on one cylinder at high RPM, interesting...
    Found it, Spark, Retard, Static retard vs cyl. (in the lower right corner) Cyl # 0? lol wtf
    2007 Suburban - Slammed, Cammed, Geared and Stalled.

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    Also just did the dynamic enable point lower for grins, didnt make much diff other than id need to retune the WOT AFR again though! looks to have went lean judging by the narrow bands (yes i know) compared to before and promptly shit out 5 degrees of KR in the process... yeah going back to the VE/maf blend o matic.
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    As a little side note, and while im not one to partake in conspiracy theorys which i think alot of people have bit into whith these cars.... i did for grins remove my plugs and check the gaps. They were mostly .024" and one .025". I moved them up to .029" which seemingly in my mind wouldnt make much difference base off a few thousands of an inch. Driving around it seems the same, at WOT it does seem to have a slightly cleaner pull up to 6k now. It could be all mental but none the less seems slightly diff. After reading on the cruze board about .035" being the factory spec and "tuned" cars misfiring and falling over up top, i found that .029" seems to be the common ground others agree on that works.

    Co-work has a rock stock '11 RS auto who complains it surges and runs rough in mid to high range once in a while, so im going to tweak his gaps at lunch today and see if it fixes any of this for him as kind of a confirmation.
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  15. #15
    Senior Tuner Higgs Boson's Avatar
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    How did you tune WOT if you left your MAF switchover at 7K?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Higgs Boson View Post
    How did you tune WOT if you left your MAF switchover at 7K?
    Set the PE to a 11.7ish, then dialed in the Maf in the hz ranges it was seeing @ wot from 2500 thru 6300 to get it where it was close to commanded on my wideband.
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  17. #17
    Senior Tuner Higgs Boson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BAD LS1 View Post
    Set the PE to a 11.7ish, then dialed in the Maf in the hz ranges it was seeing @ wot from 2500 thru 6300 to get it where it was close to commanded on my wideband.
    well i agree that's how you do it but what about switching to MAF only, open loop full time, etc etc?

    you just left it in hybrid mode and let the maf curve pick up (compensate for) any VE errors?

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    The first time i spent the 30 min or so to get it dialed in, i forgot about switching it to MAF. I then switched to MAF for a test, then realized it was Lean at wot (guessing by narrow bands that went from constant 920's to 890's), the trims were getting goofy in part throttle in certain areas, then switched it back as i didnt have a wide band in to re do the whole useable end of the maf curve at that time. So yep it works just like how the factory left it go for the time being in hybrid mode.
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  19. #19
    Senior Tuner Higgs Boson's Avatar
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    Hmm, I think I will set my MAF at 3K and just retune it CL and OL/WOT.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by cobaltssoverbooster View Post
    you talking about the lnf eco which runs 12.6 @ 24psi?
    last i checked there arent any boosted 2.2's unless they are converted. the only reason they like it lean is the direct injection system.
    No I was talking L61's. From the factory n/a motors, but when add boost they like a 12.2 AFR, and they are not direct injection motors.

    Yes a LNF is direct injection.