Originally Posted by radz28
07/23/2021 Update
For those who might be interested (maybe more so for California residents than anything), here's another update:
There's another car I'm aware of almost identical to mine (minus a RFBG and 95mm TB) because they have the same intent I do on keeping it visually copacetic at this point, for now. So I'll share what I noticed from that combination, since it would (most likely) be the same for me if I kept optimizing.
Tuning for the other car improved with having more traction available. You could get into the pedal a lot earlier, and stay in it more. On the stock tires (before changing to the DRs), you could roll into WOT in the middle of 2nd-gear and have enough traction as the 2-3-shift approached, and just keep the pedal down. You could feel the car try to spin the tires, and it was on the verge, but was just under the threshold of losing grip.
The DRs went on, and street tuning continued, and is pretty much done. Now - with the DRs, the car will try spinning the tires, from a roll in 3rd, from about 40-or-so, all the way to the 3-4-shift at around 80-MPH. The torque transformation is nearly completely different. This tuning was done recently, in 80-plus* conditions around sea level, on clean asphalt. There was no burn-out or effort made to heat the tires (FULL weight, 20-psi cold tire pressure, no cool down or anything), other than a casual 10-mile warm-up prior to really getting on the gas (this comment was added just for reference for conditions). Rolling into the pedal around 2000-RPMs yielded spinning rear tires moments later (between 7-10-MPH difference in speed to the front tires was logged in the Scanner) through the shift into 4th-gear. I don't know if the owner would say the Driver Demand/Virtual Torque/VVE-tables were necessarily optimized to each other, but they would say there was 100% throttle opening when commanded and zero Torque Management retard. A calibrator might say the tune looks bad, but everything lines-up and there is no limiting. The car's on a blend of Racegas concentrate (orange can) and full tank of 91-octane (trying to get to about 93-octane safely), and seeing around 21* of timing at WOT with no knock (MATs are pulling almost a couple degrees because of temperatures). The standard Maggie tune is about 17*, if I recall, but I think that's based on 91 (and MATs would pull the same timing for the same temps). But the car's an animal now, and rips to redline. It feels altogether faster than my car. No dyno or anything to actually prove an improvement, but there was all manor of throttle and timing adjustments with the Maggie tune (again - as said before - probably protections to the powertrain, like GM does). The differences in mods' should show power, too, but, back to my car:
I still haven't gotten to the track. COVID farked that up until recently and as soon as that kinda' was less of a deal, then it got hot. I don't race when it's more than 90*, so I probably won't be at the track for a couple more months, after it starts cooling off. IATs/MATs all start coming down quickly under WOT, so the intercooling is great. When there is no airflow demand, and at low speeds, there just isn't much a PD-blower can do to cool the air until the throttle opens, and air actually starts moving through the system.
It's cool to see the temperatures start falling almost immediately though. It justifies not sticking to the OEM blower. Anyways - I'll see what the differences are between my car and the other one with the tuning. They feel different, but there are no numbers to show yet. I can see differences (throttle/TMA) in the logs between the cars, and mine's definitely limiting power. Magnuson is advertising different power numbers for this kit now in a way, but I'm not that concerned. It sounds like they're within a couple months of CARB-certification, so that's good for a person like me, with the margins I'm trying to stay within. Depending on what the other car does, maybe down the road I'll relax my constraints on tuning a bit, but I paid for a CARB-tune, and will need it down the road, so who knows? With the mods'
There might not be much left to report for this little project. It's not interesting to anyone else who's not a CA-resident interested in staying legal. I'm not sponsored in ANY way by anyone affiliated with Magnuson. No one asked me to share any of this. I think I wanted to try to offer hope to someone who might be interested or has to deal with similar circumstances. All hope is not lost on us Californians. For a person like me who is keeping this car probably past when there is gas available to drive it, I don't have a mentality of doing whatever I want to the car, hoping I don't get cited for illegal mods' until I just trade it in when smog is due. This is a permanent mod' for a keeper car. As always, I hope my honesty and transparency might be at least a little helpful to anyone thinking about this. There are a lot more exciting and complete builds than this one. I've always said I just wanted between about 600-650 to the tires, and I think my build puts me comfortably in that area.
|