How can you trust a tune? (tune noob)

[Benschneider06]

After reading this thread about blown motors, I've learned that a badly tuned n/a motor is more likely to blow than a forced induction motor with a good tune.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showt...ht=blown+motor

The thing is, none of those people knew they had bad tunes. So knowing this happens to people regularly makes me feel like I can't force induct and or tune my car without rolling the dice. Spending $600+(tune) to roll the dice of $23,000 and up car + $5000 and up forced induction kit? People must be rolling in money to trust a tuner with their motor. Especially after spending that $5,000+ on a turbo or supercharger.

I'm really interested in force induction but I just can't see how people can invest all that money into their motor with the chance that the tuner is going to screw up and pop their motor..

Interested in what you guys have to say about this

[Toyarzee]

Tuning isn't some blind test where you hope for the best. It's somewhat like going to see a doctor for surgery. It's not a bad idea to understand the doctors qualifications and possibly get a second opinion. However, no matter who does what and how successful the procedure was, you'll know when you're out and about if something is still medically wrong with you.

Proper data logging and gauging continued performance of the motor will reveal the efficiency and "safety" of the tune. If you're sensing hesitations and hiccups, excessive backfires and your afr's and fuel trims are way off, then you should know if something is wrong before you go as far as blowing your motor, with or without forced induction.

Your car wants to talk to you every time you get behind the wheel so long as you're listening. Ultimately, you should never "trust" a tune. Rather you should be constantly evaluating it along with the components involved affecting the accuracy of the tune.

[FRS Justin]

Originally Posted by Benschneider06

After reading this thread about blown motors, I've learned that a badly tuned n/a motor is more likely to blow than a forced induction motor with a good tune.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showt...ht=blown+motor

The thing is, none of those people knew they had bad tunes. So knowing this happens to people regularly makes me feel like I can't force induct and or tune my car without rolling the dice. Spending $600+(tune) to roll the dice of $23,000 and up car + $5000 and up forced induction kit? People must be rolling in money to trust a tuner with their motor. Especially after spending that $5,000+ on a turbo or supercharger.

I'm really interested in force induction but I just can't see how people can invest all that money into their motor with the chance that the tuner is going to screw up and pop their motor..

Interested in what you guys have to say about this

You have to build a reationship with your car and your tuner. Know your tuners limits and your engines limits. That's why I will only have Delicious Tuning touch my car's tune. If you go to his website and see the list of clients he has had you will see why I choose them. It's no secret I push my car hard but I also maintain my car to the highest level. Tuning isnt voodoo its applied knowledge.

[Benschneider06]

Originally Posted by FRS Justin

You have to build a reationship with your car and your tuner. Know your tuners limits and your engines limits. That's why I will only have Delicious Tuning touch my car's tune. If you go to his website and see the list of clients he has had you will see why I choose them. It's no secret I push my car hard but I also maintain my car to the highest level. Tuning isnt voodoo its applied knowledge.

I dig the advice, I like to drive my car hard as well but don't want to hurt it. I know it can take the abuse if tuned correctly.

What do you use to deliver your delicious tune to your car? OFT, EcuTEK, or?
(Sorry if I sound dumb. I'm clueless about tuning so far, trying to change that)

[phrosty]

Learn how to read logs so you can identify issues before they become catastrophic.

Nobody should be blindly trusting their tunes to be 100% perfect. In the case of OTS tunes, they were made in a different environment on a different car. In the case of personalized tunes, there's a good chance your car was put through a handful of dyno runs that don't duplicate the sustained stresses your car might see when racing.

[Kiske]

First I want to say is there seems to be 4 categories for blown engines. IMO in order from most common to least.

1. Installation Error/or Component Failure. (Part failure such as overboosting because a vac hose popped off.)
2. Running too much boost RESULTING in unsafe tunes.
3. Bad tunes.
4. More power than the stock block can simply handle.

[QUOTE=Benschneider06;2255133] I know it can take the abuse if tuned correctly.

Wrong. Correctly is very subjective depending on what you and the tuners goal are for the car and how it was done.

For instance if your car is dyno tunes it is used to being tuned on the enviroment. It doesn't take into consideration of all the hickups of normal driving. Sure you can drive a dyno tune on the street daily and may not have problems 70% of the time. But, the only way your going to iron out those hickups is datalogging/tuning while in those exact situations. A 3rd get WOT pull doesn't do much for partial throttle traffic driving issues.

Secondly I want to state something that should be obvious but, might not be to some. If your asking your tuner for MAX power runs he very well may do them for you. After all your paying for a service and they will provide what you want. You can't then bitch about how your 91 octane, stock bottomend turbo'd FR-S blew up because you were running 20psi stoplight racing. You asked him for max #'s or whatever you requested... Said nothing about it being safe or reliable.

The same thing goes for people with tunes for say 7psi and decide to crank up their manual boost controller to 16psi without doing proper datalogging to make sure it is safe and re-tuning if needed. If your trying to push more horsepower and torque out of a motor than any part inside the engine can handle then your going to break it. Doesn't matter if the tune is good or not. A bad tune may just speed up the process.

We have high compression engines from the factory. This paired with FI makes for some serious compression and load for the engine to handle. When your using ecutek or other monitoring software to see how your car is preforming you can single out indivicual parameters which will aid you and determining the safety of the car. Or instance, if your running the car and are seeing excessive knock correction, and timing being pulled it is a good sign to back off on pushing for more power.

Get with your tuner and decided what you want and how much risk your willing to roll. If you ask your tuner for a safe tune daily driving don't be suprised when it comes in under 270whp on pump gas... there is a usually large room for errors with a conservative/safe tune. That is why many of us (atleast with ecutek) have map switching. So we can run multiple tunes to suit our need. I for instance have mine setup with 3 tunes (easily changed while driving The first is a safe daily driving tune. The 2nd is a peppy tune for more spirited drivng. The 3rd is my stoplight racing fool tune. When I switch to my last tune I know the risk and I know what I'm asking of the car. I also won't be bitching to my tuner blaming him if I snap a con rod while pushing her WOT.

[DarkSunrise]

Data log. My tune felt pretty good at the track (and I was even running higher octane fuel to be safe), but turns out I was still getting moderate knock. Would never have known other than by reviewing data logs.

[FRS Justin]

Originally Posted by Benschneider06

I dig the advice, I like to drive my car hard as well but don't want to hurt it. I know it can take the abuse if tuned correctly.

What do you use to deliver your delicious tune to your car? OFT, EcuTEK, or?
(Sorry if I sound dumb. I'm clueless about tuning so far, trying to change that)

EcuTEK is what I use with Delicious Tuning. Logging is fairly simple and you can do it anytime you please. AND you can remote tune it as much as you want. Make a change to your setup and data log it then email it to them receive a new map in a day or so load and go. Of course data log the new map to check everything out. Honestly if you go with his flex fuel setup it's bullet proof on the safety side I love the flex fuel setup...

[SUB-FT86]

Originally Posted by Benschneider06

After reading this thread about blown motors, I've learned that a badly tuned n/a motor is more likely to blow than a forced induction motor with a good tune.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showt...ht=blown+motor

The thing is, none of those people knew they had bad tunes. So knowing this happens to people regularly makes me feel like I can't force induct and or tune my car without rolling the dice. Spending $600+(tune) to roll the dice of $23,000 and up car + $5000 and up forced induction kit? People must be rolling in money to trust a tuner with their motor. Especially after spending that $5,000+ on a turbo or supercharger.

I'm really interested in force induction but I just can't see how people can invest all that money into their motor with the chance that the tuner is going to screw up and pop their motor..

Interested in what you guys have to say about this

I was thinking just like you about the same things you mentioned. Met a guy who is boosted and found out he went through a lot of transmissions because of big power. If I had money to blow then maybe I would do the same.

[Scott@HKSUSA]

It's no different than trusting someone to bolt a part onto your car. You pick the part. You pick the shop. You pay for the service. You enjoy your car. Hopefully you did some research on the quality part you chose and the quality shop you chose to install it so you're not worrying about parts falling off as you're driving.

Tuning is no different. Choose quality management. Choose a quality tuner. Pay for their service and enjoy your car.

[xxBrun0xx]

Originally Posted by Benschneider06

After reading this thread about blown motors, I've learned that a badly tuned n/a motor is more likely to blow than a forced induction motor with a good tune.

I don't think there's even a single documented case of NA engine failure that's 100% tune-related. Yet there are plenty of unexplained FI engine failures. It's a high compression engine, what do you expect?

[Tcoat]

Reading that thread has scared the crap out of many people on here. What most miss is that a good number of those failures happened in the very early days of these cars when the tuners were still trying to work out just what the limits really were. It is mentioned a few times in that thread and several in others that many of them went into the exercise fully expecting to blow an engine or two in the name of R&D. Over the last few months the reported cases of tune/FI related engine failures have dropped off to nothing.
Follow the advice already given and be realistic in your demands and your risk is actually much lower than it would appear on this forum. There are 1,000s of cars out there running tunes/FI without a single issue.

[Phantobe]

Originally Posted by DarkSunrise

Data log. My tune felt pretty good at the track (and I was even running higher octane fuel to be safe), but turns out I was still getting moderate knock. Would never have known other than by reviewing data logs.

Can knock really blow an engine though?

From what I've read, the stock tune is very knocky running IAM less than .70 (on 91 its probably lower). To my understanding, the ECU pulls timing to protect the engine from knocking its the safeguard essentially, which is why you'd see IAM less than 1.0.

I also recall shiv saying somewhere (ive read so many dang threads about tuning) not worrying if IAM drops below 1.0 as its the ECU doing its job, however most folks will pull timing from the tables to prevent knock so the ECU doesn't have to.

[Toyarzee]

"Detonation (Spark Knock ) is a form of abnormal combustion that results from too much heat and pressure in the combustion chamber. The fuel ignites spontaneously causing a sudden rise in cylinder pressure. The result is a sharp hammer-like blow on the piston that produces a metallic knocking or pinging noise. Light detonation is considered normal and should not cause any damage, but heavy or prolonged detonation can crack rings, pound out piston ring grooves, punch holes through the tops of pistons, smash rod bearings and blow head gaskets." -AA1CAR

From a performance tuners perspective, detonation is likely to exist simply from too much timing advance and lean afr's. On an already high compression motor, this is more likely to happen and can have a greater adverse effect on the motor.

Long story short, yes, you can blow your motor driving hard when you hear knock. The sound under heavy load should be a sign to immediately stop what you're doing.

I have caused engine failure while road tuning on a piggyback after introducing a separate methanol controller into the tuning mix and under certain loads, the methanol motor would stop pumping and the afr would climb instantly.