Engine tuner PA, NJ, or MD

[heinemann]

I need to find an engine tuner in the Eastern US. My car is a 1969 BMW 2002 w/ an s54 engine swap. I was previously running Specialist Components Typhoon 2 ecu for drive-by-cable operation (system is for sale) and changed over to their Delta 800 ecu with drive-by-wire throttle control. The car runs alpha-n currently, but I would like to switch it to speed density. I'm in need of a good tuner who can help my build the VE look up tables for Speed density and help my dial in the engine. Tried Kassel Performance, and Evans but since they are unfamiliar with the the system they can't help me. VAC Motorsports never returned my messages and their mixed reputation makes me hesitant to use them anyway. If you have experience with a good engine tuner in the Northeast US , please let me know. Thanks

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[R3VM3UP]

Is there any particular reason why you are running a standalone ECU and not the stock MSS54? These days it is easy to get the stock DME running just fine in another chassis, and you aren't going to make more power with an aftermarket ECU. I'd be more than willing to help you out with that for free if you go that route. R3Z3N on this forum is also a great source of information and has been extremely helpful to me.

Do you have a custom wiring harness or is this ECU that you have plug and play with the stock harness? If you have a stock harness it would be easy to get the stock ECU working.

I'm not familiar with the ECU that you have, but VE tuning is pretty easy, and I can get you the stock values for cam and spark timing if you need, so it might be worth trying it yourself. If you want any helps/tips on that just let me know.

[heinemann]

Thanks for the quick response. When I ran/went with the original Typhoon system it cost about $1500 compared to over 3k for using the factory ecu. That was in 2012 . At the time it was both a cost issue and seemed like a good choice. The drive-by-cable setup could probably be dialed in , but I just decided to go back to drive-by-wire and I am familiar with Specialist Components products. The engine harness is modified for the Delta 800 ecu. I have installed an AEM wide band (Bosch lambda 4.9 lsu) with controller, an IAT, and AEM 3.5 MAP sensor, so it can be switched to speed density. The engine is stock with no cats and dual 2.5” straight through exhaust. The software is SxTune and is a pretty standard tuning software run on Windows OS. I'd greatly appreciate the help getting this car back on the road. Where is the best place to start? I am assuming building a VE table on a Dyno. Thanks for your help,
Kaleb

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[R3VM3UP]

Okay, I see. Funny how much times change, these days you can use the factory ECU for free and it costs much more to go standalone. If you just want stock-like functionality I would personally suggest to just sell your Delta 800 ECU to recoup your losses and switch back to an MSS54 and unmodified harness. I think that way would probably result in the least amount of headaches in the long term, since it doesn't require any real 'tuning', just a few parameter changes to make the DME run in standalone. Additionally, the stock DME gives you OBDII diagnostics capability which is unmatched by even the most high end aftermarket solutions. Having good diagnostics is can be extremely helpful in troubleshooting. On the other hand though, I'm assuming the Delta offers much improved datalogging capability, which can be equally helpful. If you want to stick with the Delta, it sounds like you are all set up with the correct tools to do so.

If that is the case, I think the correct place to start is to make sure that your cam schedule is exactly the same as the stock MSS54 calibration. Your cams directly influence your volumetric efficiency, so if you start trying to calibrate your VE table now, and then later change the cam settings your VE table will need to be completely redone.

If the car is already in a driveable state, you can do most, if not all, of your VE tuning on the road. You want to make sure that the car isn't running dangerously lean, so I would suggest starting by running a fairly rich lambda, maybe around .75. You can then drive around with all fuel trims turned off, and log your manifold pressure, speed, and lambda from the wideband.

After you've driven around collecting data at various speed load points you then export your data into excel or a similar tool and sort it into the speed/MAP points that your VE table has. At each point, calculate the percent error in the actual lambda vs. commanded lambda, and apply it to the VE table as a correction. This is an iterative process, but eventually your actual lambdas and commanded lambdas should be very close.

Some ECUs that have wideband inputs have adaptive features that help you to calibrate the VE table. I'm not sure if yours does, but if you have some documentation on it I can try to help you figure out the best way to do this.

Also, more details on how the car is currently wired and how well it's running would be helpful.

Some other things that you should also clarify on are fuel injectors, fuel pressure/regulator, and how the fuel injector is characterized in your ECU. You do not want to be using the VE table to falsely compensate for inaccuracies in the injector characterization.

Also, you should swap the AEM 3.5 bar map sensor for a 1 bar map sensor, which will give you much better resolution. Unless you plan to boost the engine, the manifold will never see over 1bar. 1 bar MAP sensors can be had for very cheap, let me know if you need any suggestions on them.

[heinemann]

Again thanks for the quick response. So I guess I need to locate a cheap 1 bar map sensor that fits the aem pigtail. The car runs ok. When I first uploaded the Cal file provided by Specialist Components, the car ran horribly and the exhaust got red hot after about a minute. My understanding is that it was running very lean. They had me update the firmware and now the car runs ok but not smoothly and doesn't hold idle. I know the engine was working before hand because I drove the car from Texas through New Mexico to PA in one shot - on the Typhoon 2 ecu running alpha-n.

As far as the wiring. The engine loom has all the sensors in place minus 1 knock sensor, and the factory O2 sensors. I wired in all the other sensors, but do not have a lamda gauge. Fairly certain the sxtune software can display the reading, but I haven't tried that yet.

My main issue is I am not well versed in the software, so I'm not to sure how to record lambda data as I drive around and I don't want to risk damaging the engine as I fiddle with learning the software.

Here is a link to the sxtune user manual. I have attached it as a PDF also.

http://sxtune.co.uk/index.html

The sxtune software

https://www.scs-delta.co.uk/software

I have attached the pinout information for both the ecu and the section of the harness that receives power, ground, lambda input and tachometer output.

I have the s54 alpha-n base map .cal file , but I can't attach it through taptalk

That's pretty much all the info I have.

Thanks again for your help,
Kaleb

http://cloud.tapatalk.com/s/5bf5f872...%20Pin-out.pdfhttp://cloud.tapatalk.com/s/5bf5f90b...29a0bdaa96.pdfhttp://cloud.tapatalk.com/s/5bf5fb26...ion-Vers-1.pdf

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[R3VM3UP]

I downloaded the software and one of the base files from their site and took a look through it earlier, and I'm not particularly impressed, but hopefully you can get it to work. This ECU is similar to Cosworth ECUs in the way that the "VE table" is set up. Instead of the table being actual VE, it is a base fuel quantity, so anytime you want to change your lambda you will probably need to mess with the base fuel table, which is the most asinine way of doing fuel control IMO, but it can be made to work. I'll browse the user manual to get more familiar with how the software works.

If the exhaust was glowing after just idling or normal driving I'd venture to guess that it was due to excessive spark retard.

Send me the cal file you are running and I can get you whatever stock values you need.