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Thread: Dodge LX NGC Tuning - A Starters How To

  1. #1
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    Dodge LX NGC Tuning - A Starters How To

    I have been spending the last few months learning and reading and learning and reading and now trial and error on tuning my own 426ci Whipple 2.9 2006 Chrysler 300C SRT8 with a NGC3 CAN PCM. I want to share the basics I learned and picked up along the way. This is a thread I want folks to post to with their own procedures and questions, but if it is a very SPECIFIC question to a unique situation, appreciate if you can start a new thread and leave this clean.

    First of all, HP tuners has already posted up a description and walk through of the GM E78 PCM, which is the near identical logic the NGC PCMs use, which is torque based closed loop. Basically, the computer tries to calculate what torque your right foot wants, and then calculates what the engine is putting out based on its current state, and makes adjustments via timing and throttle body adjustments. Its a royal PITA, but take the time to read this link, then read it again.

    https://www.hptuners.com/help/vcm_ed...vanced_e78.htm

    I will go in order of the tabs in HPTuners for how to build a baseline tune. These procedures were how I got my aggressively cammed and overspun Whipple to idle and drive nicely. If you have a mild cam and aren't spinning the crap out of your blower, you can dial back my adjustments I recommend or make them the same knowing you may have to dial them back in later tunes. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK, these are my own guesses and experience on getting things right, suggest better ways and I will update these...

    General
    Set your Engine Type - this is your factory engine size
    Set your Engine Size and Displacement - make these both whatever your CURRENT motor is, if factory make the same as Engine Type

    Idle>General
    Stopped VSS - this is the vehicle speed under which idle condition is declared. I raised this to 5mph, as I noticed in parking lot crawls the car would lurch all over the place as it would switch from idle to run mode, you can leave stock to start but if you experience the low crawl lurching right around 2-3mph, I would raise this

    Idle>RPM
    Base Idle RPM - set these 4 tables identical to start, for a big cam car have the bottom two cells be 850rpms, from top to bottom 1100, 1000, 950, 850,850. If you don't have a huge cam, you can start at 800 in the bottom two cells.

    Minimum Reverse - set to 25rpms ABOVE your bottom two cells above, mine is 875. Reverse has a higher load and often needs a bump.

    Idle RPM Limits

    Set all your minimum tables so that your top row is your current bottom two cells of the Base Idle RPM tables, then next one down 50rpms. So mine is 850, 800, 750, 750, 750. straight across. You want your bottom 3 rows to be about 100rpms behind your Base Idle RPM bottom two cells, adjust accordingly.

    Set Max Drive to 1800, Max P/N to be 1,500. These you can adjust, they should be slightly higher than your Base RPM Limits + adders (see below)

    Idle Runtime Based

    P/N Adder - I added 175rpms to the first three columns and from 67.4* and hotter cells. This will make your car idle a little higher each time you restart and then fade back to your base idle. Rest of these adders I left stock.

    Idle Misc

    Power Steering Adder - I put 25rpms in this table. I run a 17% OD lower crank pulley which spins the crap out of my power steering pulley, which puts an undo load on the motor and makes it idle down whenever I turn the wheel. This table will add whatever rpms your put here whenever it senses load on the power steering system.

    Idle>Airflow

    This takes the most time, but in this tab open each and every proportional, derivative, integral drive table (both torque spark and torque throttle) multiply the entire table x 50% or 0.50 as a starting point. Set every single max and min to match your NEW calculated max in min from each table (the top and bottom cells). Pay close attention to the positive and negatives in each max and min and keep them consistent, they don't always make logical sense. This includes cutting in half the Idle Torque Spark Deriv and Max lb/ft fields. Set your Enable RPM Error RPM to 500rpms, this desensitizes when the idle spark corrections can kick in, you're telling the pcm if the rpms are 200 above the base idle, don't do anything, if its 600 rpm above, go ahead and use timing to adjust it.
    Last edited by 06300CSRT8; 07-13-2015 at 01:00 PM.

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    Airflow> Electronic Throttle

    Pedal Power

    Multiply your Pedal % Request table by 50% first 4 columns, 40% for 5th column, 75% the 6th, 7th and 8th leave stock. This is by far the BIGGEST impact to the car launching into boost with minimal pedal. Lowering these numbers makes it less sensitive, raising brings power on earlier. The HP programming says you must also make the Expected Pedal the inverse, but I have never had issues leaving this table stock and not the inverse.

    Desired Airflow

    Startup - this needs to generally be raised a good bit to get the car to fire without pedal being applied, my cam needs about 130-140 lbs/hr of flow. So top of my startup table is 491, 68* is about 150, 266* at the bottom is 125 and scaled evenly between.

    Torque/Airflow Factor - lowered this by 15% across the table (not sure 100% I understand how this should be baselined)
    Torque/Airflow Offset - generally higher, start at -11 at the top and work your way down to -8.5 or so by the bottom (same as above, not sure why)

    Desired Airflow Min - I raised this 30% (multiply by 1.3) in the top 3 cells, I will be raising this more in time as I have some dipping in the rpms letting on/off the throttle in low rpm situations.

    Flow Factor Min - Set this between 0.5 and 0.75. This effects how quickly the throttle blade moves relative to changes you command to airflow. Crucial to move towards 1.00 the bigger your cam and the more your are spinning your blower. Makes drivability much better.

    Desired Throttle

    Left everything stock here.

    Throttle Body Airflow

    If youre stock, leave stock. If you have a bigger TB, do the math to scale the entire table by the larger flow rate of the new. Also the 0 voltage row will help you if you struggle with airflow at idle (besides the minimum desired). Raising the 0 cell will tell the PCM if you have a drilled throttle body or a non-sealing throttle body at full close (BBK). Raising this cell gives it LESS airflow, since it will think the throttle body flows more at 0 volts than it did before.

    Pedal WOT

    Pedal WOT - set to 3,300 (its in millivolts)

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    Airflow>General

    VE Bank 2 Disable

    Set this to "Yes" meaning it SHOULD run all fueling off VE Bank 1. Worth noting this didn't work for my car and so I would paste in my VE tables to both Banks


    MAP
    Map Sensor Linear - 1 bar = 21.46 2 Bar = ? 3 Bar = 61.85
    Map Sensor Offset - 1 Bar = 7.00 Bar = ? 3 Bar = 6.8
    Map Sensor Offset (V) - 1 Bar = 0.10 2 Bar = ? 3 Bar = 0.12

    Volumetric Effiency

    This takes a lot of work, but to start most cams need about 15-20% taken out of the idle cell areas. I would start would multiplying all cells from 400-1300rpms and down to 80 Kpa by 0.85. The rest of the tuning can be done was its running and logging your fuel trims or if you have a wideband and a pro version of the scanner use version 2.4 and do a histogram of AFR error vs pressure ratio and apply changes. I am going to attach an excel sheet later on for recording your LTFT and STFT and apply it to your VE table to adjust.

    Correction Factors

    Left all stock, have seen the VE ECT Mult and ECT Factors adjusted, worth noting, not sure how impactful this is.

    Limits

    Max Airflow - set to 13,000

    VE Max - set to 180% (most will see max of 110 or 120 but this is just a top limit)

    Manifold Temp

    Left Stock

    Pressure Ratio Limits
    Pratio Max/Turbo - set to your MAP sensor bar (1 Bar = 1.0, 2 Bar = 2.0, 3 Bar = 3.0)
    Last edited by 06300CSRT8; 08-03-2015 at 03:32 PM.

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    Fuel>General

    I left everything else stock except these...

    Injector Pulse Width

    InjPW vs. Fuel Mass - hopefully your injectors provided you flow data to fill this out. ID injectors do. If not, you will have to do some math versus a stock injector to get you a baseline. Not ideal but sometimes the only way.

    Fuel Mass vs InjPW - inverse of the above table

    Startup InjPW

    Startup Base - cut these in half by multiplying entire table x 50% or 0.50

    Closed Throttle Mult - cut these down by 17.5% to start by multiplying entire table by 82.5% or .825

    Min InjPW

    InjPW Min - just know this usually is lower than the stock injectors if your injectors are aftermarket, though each injector is slightly different. I have .152 for ID850s. Hopefully injector company provides this to you.

    WOT Thresholds

    WOT Pedal Thresh - set to 3.300 volts

    Power Enrich

    FA Power Enrich - set this table to be your WOT fuel air ratio. Math is (1 / Stoich FA + FA Power Enrich) you want. Or inversely if you know your AFR you want, plug it into this: =(1/AFR)- Stoich FA (not AFR). My stoich is .067 or 14.9, so for me I wanted to command 11.6 AFR under boost so =(1/11.6)+.067 = FA of .019. I put .019 to all the rows in the FA Power Enrich table up to the .75 pressure ratio row, then I scaled it to the equivalent of 13.5:1 by the top row. This blending helps the transition when going from cruising to WOT.

    Fuel> Cutoff, DFCO

    RPM Limits

    You set these to be what you want, factory TCM and MTCM is set to 6700, if you have factory or MTCM you are limited to 6500 here or you will hit limp mode.

    Torque Reduction - Rescale left side to be -250,-200,-125,50,0 and set to 100,100,50,0,0 for percentages. Gives you a "soft" rev limiter where factory will just bang on it pretty hard.

    Fuel> Open and Closed Loop

    Closed Loop

    Coolant Temp - set to 32*, factory 14* makes no sense, risks a frozen block trying to run in closed loop? Use this also as your toggle for Open and Closed loop for VE tuning

    Closed Loop Enable

    ECT Rear - set to 374* as you don't want to ever be using your rear O2s for fuel trims

    Fuel Trim Cells

    Idle VSS - I set this to 5mph, you can leave stock and see if you have any fueling issues rolling around at slow speeds. If you see weird fueling right between 2 and 3 mph then come back to this.

    Fuel>Transient

    If you are stock intake manifold, leave this alone. If you have a roots blower, this should be bumped up but not sure exactly how much. try 12.5 to start.

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    Spark>Advance

    Part Throttle


    PT Base - Set all 400-1000 rpm columns top to bottom to timing of 10 or 11*, take 5* out of the stock values across the board in the rest of the table, blend your 1000-1300 step as much as you can without going much above 14-15* at the 1,000 rpm column, copy and paste this table to the PT Base Alcohol table

    WOT Spark

    WOT Base - I usually make the bottom 4 or 5 rows identical and be my WOT timing that I want. For me it starts around 13* and gradually makes it to 18* by my 6600 redline. Above these rows, I usually blend the rows into my last 4 rows, and leave the rest alone. I then copy this over to the WOT Thermal and WOT Thermal Alcohol. I don't care for the car to have different timing for e85, that's up to you.

    Throttle Rate Spark

    Throttle Spark and Throttle Spark Knock - multiply entire tables by 50% or 0.50. This lessens the "dead" feeling when you give the car quick throttle as these tables are preset to pull timing based on the voltage change of the pedal

    Minimum Spark

    Min Spark - important changes here, I made every negative to zero value one by one be +5*, then blended in the rest. This helped to alleviate the swings in idle timing, since idle timing is combo of MBT, PT, and Minimum spark tables.

    Min Spark TqRed - All idle area cells changes to +4*, basically from the 40kpa row on down and all the way across. Also in the lower kpa values below 40 but only between 400-788 rpms also made them 4*. Same as Min Spark, helps stabilize the timing.

    Baro Spark

    Set the last few rows to all 0's, as this will just generically pull timing from your WOT table anytime you're in boost, no need for this. If you wanted to rescale this table to have a Y axis higher than your boost Kpa you could use this for overboost timing, say scale to 300kpa, and if you're running only 200kpa but suddenly overboost to 250kpa you could remove some timing after the 200kpa line. Just a thought.

    IAT Spark

    Cold Spark - zero out

    ECT Spark

    Hot Spark - multiply by 50% or 0.50.

    Spark>Retard

    No changes

    Spark>Knock Sensors

    Knock Threshold

    This is NOT an exact science, but for MOST forged supercharged engines, about a 20-25% bump up in the voltage thresholds is pretty normal. I would open each table and multiply by 1.20 to start. Proceed with extreme caution, if you are unsure on figuring this out start lower and observe the engine, check plugs or watch out the tailpipe for huffs of black smoke, or belt jumping while on the dyno, all signs of true detonation, adjust accordingly
    Last edited by 06300CSRT8; 07-13-2015 at 02:18 PM.

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    Torque Management>General

    Worth noting here I am unsure how much of these changes are making it through to the PCM and TCM, as currently the editor doesn't support TCM changes. Even though I have set the ESP torque management below to Disable, obviously torque management is still working as I see the light on in the dash and it does still work.

    Auto Trans TqMgt

    Set all of these to Disable

    ESP TqMgt

    Set all of these to Disable

    Bobble TqMgt

    On an automatic the only Enabled is BB Tip-in Tq, I have yet to see a noticeable difference disabling this, so for now I left it enabled. I may try to use some of these features later on.

    Stall TqMgt

    Noticed a fluke, but doesn't seem to really effect anything right now, on my version of NGC3 CAN PCM both the Brake on and Off Torque were zero whereas any other versions of NGC3 CAN and NGC4 these are set to the max values of 967. I noticed no ill effects but seems logical to set them to the max instead of leaving at zero. If the PCM goes into stall condition, zero will basically make it disabled. Both FSO and Spark are set the Disabled, but I am guessing ETC is still active which means the PCM can swing open the throttle body if the car wants to stall, this would be a good thing in my opinion.

    Torque Adapts

    Another fluke here, noticed in my PCM read all the friction fields were +/-118 lb ft whereas all other reads I have compared to have the same values here as are in the Trans adapts just below. Set them to match if they do not, again pay attention to the +/- here to make sure you keep it directionally the same as factory.

    Torque Management>Engine

    Engine Torque Model

    I don't have an exact science here but in general this should be set HIGHER than factory if you have a super charged motor. This table models out how much torque is lost to friction, or in the case of turning a blower how much torque is lost to spinning the blower. I would start by adding 10% to the lower half of the table and 25% to the top half, then blend the entire table. The only way to ever come back to this table is if you knew 100% all the other torque calc inputs were 100% right and you put the car on the dyno and saw torque as calculated by the PCM was off, you could adjust this table in conjunction with the torque factors set in your Airflow>Electronic Throttle table.

    Spark Retard

    Left stock, but can be used to increase or decrease overall spark correction in certain VE spots. I decreased this across the board by 50% and induced idle hunting as it couldn't react quickly enough. So I put it back to stock.
    Last edited by 06300CSRT8; 07-14-2015 at 07:26 AM.

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    Engine Diagnostics

    This is the area where you need to raise up the various limits set into the PCM, many of these are just to move the PCM "out of the way" when it comes to max values so that the tune will function even with some things not perfect.

    Torque Correlation

    Torque Delta - set to 966. This is the basic compare the PCM is doing of your right foot torque versus engine output. At this point you don't want the PCM to start meddling in between, example is you build this tune to produce 400lb ft at WOT based on the pedal inputs and the PCM calculates the motor is making 300lb ft, you DO NOT WANT it to start adding more timing and fuel to get the two in line. Just max out the difference allowed.

    Torque Delta Fault - same here, set to 966

    Airflow Max RPM - not sure what if anything this does once the above two tables are maxed out, but safe to say mine are stockish and I have exceeded these airflows in my logs with no ill effect.

    Airflow Max TPS - here it gets even stranger, if you look these values are exactly 50% of the throttle body table set in the Engine>Airflow>General>Throttle Body Airflow in the stock tune. Why would a maximum be half of the actual flow?? No idea, but safe to say keep it this way. If you have a larger throttle body, make sure to update both of these tables keeping the Engine Diagnostics table to 50% of the Throttle Body Airflow table. Again shouldn't have any effect if you don't do this since we have maxed out the torque diagnostic thresholds.

    Engine Diag>Airflow

    Manifold Absolute Pressure Sensors

    Map Max - set to max of 250kpa
    Map Min - set it equal to your Map offset value put in the Engine>Airflow>General>MAP Sensor Offset (Kpa)

    Map Deltas - set both to max 250kpa

    Add Adap Max - set to max 238lb/hr

    Add Adap Min - set to max -238lb/hr


    Engine Diag>Pressure

    Barometric Pressure

    Noticed the Baro Min looks odd in the stock file at 2.28volts, my tune its lowered to 0.95 volts. I would change it.

    Engine Diag>Misfire

    Detection

    This is the famous P0300 code popper. Most forged motors just cannot make it by the misfire detection and will constantly throw a code if you leave this function on in the computer. Set it to above your rev limit by a couple hundred rpms. My rev limit is set to 7,000 and this detection is set to 7200.
    Last edited by 06300CSRT8; 07-14-2015 at 08:13 AM.

  8. #8
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    Gold right there!!!! Even if It won't help my project too much directly, that's a ton of good stuff.

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    Looks like I may be giving HP a shot on my set up. Maybe this can calm down the 4.2
    '07 MSRT8 426- 4.2 KB- Paramount Super Pro-1000HP club-

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    Pls feel free to post up corrections, observations, etc and I will update. This again is information gathered by folks and tuners giving me advice and helping me along the way. I make no claim to have figured this all out on my own, and its not the "BIBLE" to how things should be done, but it worked for me, car runs well and hasn't blown up.

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    Great info I want to learn more this is very different from the GM but same in lots of ways!!! how much of this will apply to an N/A motor 6.4 ltr?

    Darren

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    A lot of the same techniques can be used, though the entire VVT concept isn't covered here. Biggest difference to tune N/A will be the airflow adjustments made to the throttle body tables, you shouldn't have to touch these unless you have upgraded the throttle body. You also will not have to adjust the pedal power % tables, as these are to compensate for the PD blower.

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    Great help thanks for sharing

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    What about N/A cars ??

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    Thanks so much. Disabling the rear fuel trims got rid of such a big headache.
    2014 HO SRT8 Core Challenger M6
    Petty Front Strut Bar and HP Tuners Beta

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    Quote Originally Posted by RevHard View Post
    What about N/A cars ??
    Take a stab

    Just kidding....an N/A build on these cars is a good bit easier when not dealing with all the quarks of boost issues.

    A lot of the items discussed carry over to an NA build. Once I actually tune a pure NA build I will be sure to share my results.

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    Like you I started to get a the hunting idle when I pulled the TQ out of the Spark Retard table. My goal was to firm up the shifts since I could see TQM was retarding a lot to get that gradual shift feeling. Anyone find a way to stop the spark retard for shifting reasons?

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by 68Poncho View Post
    Like you I started to get a the hunting idle when I pulled the TQ out of the Spark Retard table. My goal was to firm up the shifts since I could see TQM was retarding a lot to get that gradual shift feeling. Anyone find a way to stop the spark retard for shifting reasons?
    ENGINE>Torque Management>Shift Torque Reduction - it has this labeled as torque but I believe it is timing. You can try to set these to zero or cut in half to start. I have never played with it so I am unsure if it will actually do anything. Most torque management relating to Transmission is held in the TCM which we do not have control of.

    ENGINE>Torque Management>Shift Torque Reduction Time - could also try to set this to 0.00 seconds, its the amount of time you let torque reduction be active during shifts.
    Last edited by 06300CSRT8; 08-04-2015 at 12:50 PM.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by 06300CSRT8 View Post

    Torque Adapts

    Another fluke here, noticed in my PCM read all the friction fields were +/-118 lb ft whereas all other reads I have compared to have the same values here as are in the Trans adapts just below. Set them to match if they do not, again pay attention to the +/- here to make sure you keep it directionally the same as factory.
    I ran across this exact same "fluke", messaged you about it.
    99 T/A WS6, original LS1 turbo

  20. #20
    What causes stalling when transitioning between P/N and D/R? I'm guessing the PCM is requesting X torque and not getting it, because the timing, AFR or throttle angle is off?
    Last edited by Grant; 11-01-2015 at 12:40 AM.