Changing cold start in ECUTEK

[Tatsu333]

Can anyone tell me where and what to change to turn off the aggressive cold start settings in ECUTEK? I haven't been in the software in a LONG time, so I'm just looking for a quick point in the right direction rather than wasting a lot of time hunting around myself.

From what I understand, it's primarily a timing thing to help rapidly warm up the primary cat, but with my ACE header now installed, I have no primary cat to warm up and could do without the extra noise.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help out!

EDIT: I found this thread to search through later today, and it suggests it's valve overlap and timing that are the more aggressive part during cold start to fire up the cats. I'll look through it when I've got a bit more time later, but again, if anyone can point me in the direction of exactly where and what to change in ECUTEK in the meantime, that would be greatly appreciated!

[RToyo86]

Summoning @tomm.brz his settings work excellent.

[tomm.brz]

Honestly...not gonna bother rn listing and thinking of all the mods, tedious to remember right now..Just send me your tune, OP, and I’ll fix it
PM me possibly

[Tatsu333]

Originally Posted by tomm.brz

Honestly...not gonna bother rn listing and thinking of all the mods, tedious to remember right now..Just send me your tune, OP, and I’ll fix it
PM me possibly

No worries - thanks for the offer, but I ended up figuring it out myself after having to mess around in ProECU yesterday to get the software up and running properly after so long away from it.

I haven't updated the software (it's on version 1.0.0.51012) so I can still disable any DTC's for these changes and / or going to the catless headers if need be, but so far no CEL's anyway.

[DarkPira7e]

You're gonna want to remember what you changed because when it gets cold, the enrichment tables you edited are gonna hurt you. Ask me how I know

[Tatsu333]

Originally Posted by DarkPira7e

You're gonna want to remember what you changed because when it gets cold, the enrichment tables you edited are gonna hurt you. Ask me how I know

LOL - I've been there (with tuning my previous car on a standalone). I'm going to be making some more subtle changes RE cold start than a lot of folks did, exactly because of that concern.

It's really not THAT bad because I'm on the stock front pipe and cat back after the headers (and will be staying that way except maybe a quiet axle-back muffler like the STI, Fujitsubo or DC Sports), so I'm just going to work on blunting it down a bit rather than trying to "switch off" the cold start stuff completely.

Slightly lower target idles, slightly less MAF correction and minimal (or no) changes to the ignition timing (since that's the most likely change to throw a CEL). That's the plan.

[tomm.brz]

Originally Posted by DarkPira7e

You're gonna want to remember what you changed because when it gets cold, the enrichment tables you edited are gonna hurt you. Ask me how I know

They are scaled until very cold temps so if you had problems with them it s because they weren't properly set up

[tomm.brz]

Originally Posted by Tatsu333

LOL - I've been there (with tuning my previous car on a standalone). I'm going to be making some more subtle changes RE cold start than a lot of folks did, exactly because of that concern.

It's really not THAT bad because I'm on the stock front pipe and cat back after the headers (and will be staying that way except maybe a quiet axle-back muffler like the STI, Fujitsubo or DC Sports), so I'm just going to work on blunting it down a bit rather than trying to "switch off" the cold start stuff completely.

Slightly lower target idles, slightly less MAF correction and minimal (or no) changes to the ignition timing (since that's the most likely change to throw a CEL). That's the plan.

Cold start is hard coded, it will always act the same way with the injections cycling and all no matter what you change
So yes it is just a taming

Ignition timings triggering a CEL doesn t make sense...

[DarkPira7e]

Originally Posted by tomm.brz

They are scaled until very cold temps so if you had problems with them it s because they weren't properly set up

Indeed, trial and error! We get temps down to -30c here though, I'm sure since Tatsu is in Canada he sees similar or lower and if he's winging it, he'll end up like I did when I was first playing with it and be stuck at work until I remembered what I changed hahaha

[Tatsu333]

Originally Posted by tomm.brz

Cold start is hard coded, it will always act the same way with the injections cycling and all no matter what you change
So yes it is just a taming

Ignition timings triggering a CEL doesn t make sense...

There was mention in the other thread about a US / Canada specific DTC regarding post-start timing changes. I can't remember the exact code, but folks were just disabling the DTC rather than experimenting to find values that didn't trigger it. I'm going to leave "Ignition Timing After Starting" changes to last in my experimenting to find settings that work for me, so I may not even touch them anyway.

Originally Posted by DarkPira7e

Indeed, trial and error! We get temps down to -30c here though, I'm sure since Tatsu is in Canada he sees similar or lower and if he's winging it, he'll end up like I did when I was first playing with it and be stuck at work until I remembered what I changed hahaha

I'm in the BC Lower Mainland, though, where we rarely see below-freezing temps for more than a week or so at a time, and temps colder than -10C are really rare. I'll be sure to document the changes and save a "before" file when making tuning changes regardless.

[Tatsu333]

OK - so it really HAS been a long time since I played around with ECUTEK self-tuning!

I've made my cold start changes in ProECU and saved it as a new ROM file, but I can't figure out how to access the modified ROM file to flash it with ECU Connect (the bluetooth app).

When I search around, it looks like only a master tuner can upload the ROM file to my ECUTEK Cloud to be flashed via bluetooth. Not sure if this is something new, or if I always flashed my car using my laptop and just used the bluetooth functionality for logging...? I feel like that may have been the case, but I'm not sure.

My laptop was reformatted a couple of years back, so it doesn't have the software on it anymore and it will need to be reinstalled. If I reinstall it there, I presume it will then be the fully updated version that locks out changes to things like DTC's, etc., but my understanding is that I can still use it to flash a tune that has these changes in it, just not make further changes to those parameters.

So - I guess my question at this point is whether there is a way for me to upload / access the updated ROM via the ECU Connect app on my phone to flash it via bluetooth?

EDIT: In the meantime, I've reinstalled the software on my laptop and successfully flashed the revised ROM via the cable. Only problem is now that I've used the latest software version on my laptop, it won't allow me to open the old version on my desktop PC! I'm going to look into whether there's a way around this limitation.

At this point, though, the limitations of the newer version RE: disabling DTC's, repurposing sensor inputs, etc. aren't really relevant for me, so I may just go with the newest version on both...