New Miller Alpha-N System

[mach schnell]

Brody, since it sounds like it is a big sticking point for a lot of people, what would it take for you to add wideband control / closed loop to your Alpha N setup?

Could you offer it as an option to your kit?

You’ve been arguing that it’s not necessary, but ultimately, a lot of potential customers want it.

So why not add it and be done with that argument?

I know I would LOVE to have a setup that is more plug ‘n’ play than the MAXX. I bought a brand new MAXX setup a while back but never installed it because I don’t want to go pulling pins out of my ECU plug or splicing into my engine harness.

I want it to be as plug ‘n’ play as possible. If MAXX’s was plug ‘n’ play, I would have bought and installed it a long time ago.

[clarkson]

Brody, I am considering your alpha n kit for my 2.5 s14 build. I am located in Vancouver BC.

What might make my mind up is if you can dyno tune my car once it is up and running in the lower mainlaind area.

I have run your war chip on my stroker m20 and it was good value for money.

[E30_Dave]

Hi Brody,

Have you done any S14 B20 engines yet ?... I'd certainly consider doing your Alpha-N conversion on my E30 320is.

[Massive Lee]

No wideband control with the stock ECU. We haven't found it to be necessary with proper calibrations thus far.

This surprises me. Esopecially in 2016. With old technology such as a narrowband sensor, the only precise reading and tune you will get in closed loop is 14.7 to 1 air/fuel ratio. The narrowband sensor is nothing more than a binary switch. Rich (whatever the ratio) - Stochio - Lean (whatever the ratio). The reason is that the metal on that sensor only "reacts" when a 14.7 to 1 air/fuel ratio is reached. Above and below, it becomes "numb".

If a wideband sensor was used, you could determine precisely target fuel ratios in closed loop. And you could even "correct" the signal and force the DME into thinking is is leaner, which will force the DME into richening the mixture when in closed loop.

Those of you who want to alter the narrowband 02 sensor signal and fool the DME into thinking that stochio is leaner than it really is, and force the DME to richen the mixture, you could look into a motorcycle product called AFXied. Works great on my two BMW bikes using narrowband sensor. And it is adjustable. 8 levels of correction.

http://sales.nightrider.com/BMW_upgrades.html

[brody]

I am not sure if this link will work. If not, just head over to our facebook page to check it out.

Vites (Bobb) recently installed our Alpha N system on his crazy build. 12.5:1 compression e85 specific build with 750cc injectors and the rest of the works! Sounds amazing and we can't wait for him to return home to get us more footage and a dyno!

https://www.facebook.com/vites.vonghangool/videos/1128242140539784/

[brody]

What can you do for out of state buyers who need initial setup/tuning?

All of the cars have been pretty darn close right out of the box. All have definitely been drivable too. The beauty of the WAR Chip is that we can send you revisions over email with a little info from you first. A dyno run is great, but AFR and RPM is fine for the most part.

You can dial it in yourself too, again, the beauty of the WAR Chip is that it allows you the freedom to do what you want with the tune, but also allows us to help you remotely.

[mach schnell]

What can you do for out of state buyers who need initial setup/tuning?

[brody]

So we have been sending out the Alpha N systems like crazy. We have tuned a bunch in person and the last two I have graphs for are both for 2.3

Jason Spore:

207 WHP / 172 WTQ (DynoJet)

Stock Balanced S14B23
Miller Alpha N System
Carbon Air box with 15cm runners
Stock Cams
Stock throttle bodies
BMW Rally header
VSR exhaust (w/ catalytic converters) with Stromung muffler




Sam Yang:

196 WHP / 157 WTQ (Mustang)

Stock S14B23
Miller Alpha N System
CF Air Box with 48mm Runners
Schrick 284/276 Cams
BMW EvoII/Rally Headers
VSR Center Section
Stromung Rear Section



Have more graphs being sent in but the kit is proving itself quite nicely.

[reelizmpro]

There is no MAF sensor with Alpha N. Two different approaches.

[hankolerd]

battle///m3, I am glad that Miller got your car sorted. As soon as I have the money I think I will take mine to them as well. Did you convert to a Miller MAF along with this Miller Alpha-N setup?

[ja burna]

btw, I used the MAXX-alpha-N, War chip and Dan Miller tune on my S38B36 stroker, with negative results!

[ja burna]

Here is the thing, the system sounds cool and all but I don't see any potential. Sure the MAXX-automotive alpha-N was archaic and old in design but it worked especially if the tuner knew had the knowledge to make it work. That knowledge is extremely limited in the US in most places. Your alpha-N system just like the WAR chip is not reliable and needs work, because it is proprietary in design, I know of many tuners that had trouble with it because it simply didn't work as advertised hence the skepticism with this alpha-n kit. Having a system that only you can make work only convolutes this product.

I had the pleasure of using the WAR chip and a tune that Dan put on the car and neither one worked to my satisfaction and no one could figure out the interfaces, code and other bugs that went along with it. Not just me or the tuner that had this problem but many others.

While I applaud you for bringing products to the market for these older motors and being innovative. I think more research and development needs to be done to make it user friendly for everyone to use, not just the company developing it.

[battle///m3]

Not jumping into the middle of this, but I was the car who started all this. To be honest I don't know much of what I had in my car. Bought the carbon box and everything i believe on a group buy on s14 several years ago. I installed the system(with help from other s14 owners) and had CarbConn(Seattle area) tune it. Believe it was his 1st alpha-n tune. The car never received a correct tune, it would sometimes bog out in the higher rpms. (I've owned the car for 14+ years, and most of those 14 years I may get to drive it once a month(drive a company car 7 days a week). I just dealt with it due to how infrequent I used the car. I then wanted to drive from Seattle to Bimmerfest so I found a guy with a dyno who said he could tune it. He made the car run better, Got from Seattle to Bimmerfest and back. I was happy but not totally satisfied, I knew it should run better/cleaner but kept on driving it.

The car then couldn't pass emissions back in 2010, frustrated I parked the car and waited til it about 2 months ago to get the car back on the road. Waited til it was 25 years so I didn't have to pass emissions/family life, etc. to get the car back on the road, I missed her.

So I had a great shop in the Seattle/Redmond area, West Werks drain all the fluids, new belts and a full tune.(highly recommend them for any BMW needs in the Seattle area/east side) The car felt great, with all new fluids/ plugs etc. but after a few drives I started to get that feeling that it was heading back to the way it was due to the tuning.

So I looked into getting it retuned for the 3rd time. I couldn't find an alpha-n tuner in washington. went back to carbconn to see if they understood or have tuned any recently. The guy said he may have done 1 since he did mine way back when. And the only person who tuned alpha-n in the area move from Washington to Arizona of something. I was then told about Miller performance here on r3v and that they have a new shop in the Seattle area. So I talked with them about going to their MAF system and brought the car up to them. I was excited to have someone in the area who had tuned and was willing to tune the s14. I got a call from them later the night I dropped it off and they asked if I would be willing to let them try(what we now know as the miller alpha-n system) to my car. My whole point on every time I called them going into the MAF is that I am not looking for more power, I just want my car to run clean. I want the car to start up and just go whenever I wanted to go. So when they asked me to try this out I was weary but I went a head and let them do it.

All I can say is that the few times I have driven the car since I have had it back it feels great. That gut feeling that something may happen I used to get is going away. The car feels more snappy and clean. This is without going onto a dyno either, which We want to do soon. What ever they did to my car @ miller has made me happy.

Ultimately my original system was never tuned correctly, I'm not saying it was or is a bad product(plenty of people run it) but I couldn't get it to work in my situation.

[reelizmpro]

Fair enough. I am not Mr s14 history buff, so I didn't know there was something BEFORE ECU4a as well.

Who is the reply from john aimed at? It is kind of confusing as it sounds like it is a response to me from someone who doesn't read what our product is AND is from 2004?

To touch on a few points there...



WAR Chip. Lets you change all fuel and ignition, idle speed, O2 sensor control, cold start, rpm limit etc. No burner, no eeprom, comes with a user interface that has everything laid out so a 12 year old could understand it.



An emulator is the same in terms of function and layout as the interface you get with MAXX. not sure why he would say only tuners would use that? If you are tuning the maxx box yourself, you are doing the same thing a tuner would do, only with MAXX not Motronic.



WAR Chip - Included with our Alpha system...



Street car OR race car, why not optimize everything including timing to the specific car? NO TWO ENGINES ARE EVER ALIKE. I don't care if you built them identically, they will NEVER BE EXACTLY THE SAME.

The WAR Chip that comes with our alpha n kit allows for 4 different tunes that can be swtiched to on the fly. It allows you to optimize ALL parameters needed to tailor a tune specifically to a car, ignition included. You do not have to wait for revised timing tunes to be sent to you. Make the change in 10 minutes by yourself if you want.

I don't think we will see eye to eye on 100% motronic control vs the maxx box. For years we decided NOT to make alphaN because we assumed the maxx system was 100% perfect due to its long standing name and use. But then we got to see one run in person BEFORE a customer removed it and saw what many stock ECU tuners would consider issues leading to true accuracy and knew we could improve upon it.

Again, if you are able to hook up with Dan while he is in LA, he would love to show you exactly what we are talking about from a technical see with your own eyes perspective. Then you could probably try one of the recent miller alpha N customers cars to see that our system is at least equal to the maxx in terms of performance and driveability OR better.

Well I told you didn't I? Anyway, the quotes were from different threads on S14.net and John's response was to someone who didn't like piggybacks, especially the cost of MAXX and insisted Standalone (DTA, Vipec, etc) was the only real solution to be considered and insisted the price to setup both was about the same. The discussion turned into a nice thread about S14 engine management and pros/cons of each setup. I included the year it was posted to point out that it was not in response to you guys but Chip AN in general. Granted, the WAR chip you guys came out with gives more flexibility but it's still a chip, is it not? It begs the questions...Why did BMW move away from it? Why did Cyntex go under and the product pulled? Was it because of the chip or the approach? My understanding is it wasn't user friendly. The Miller WAR changes things a bit since people can now rewrite the chip without removing it AND store 4 switchable maps. I get that. That definitely helps but is it enough? With realtime tuning you see what's going on when it happens and can fix it right way, not make guesses later and use trial and error. That doesn't seem very user friendly to me. There's also other big reasons you want real time tuning. For example: I thought I was getting wot but when I floored the gas pedal I found out thru the MAXX software in real time that the tps was only reaching 60% never really reaching WOT. Throttle cables can stretch, tps can go bad or fall out of calibration probably due in part to the buzzy nature of the s14. You just wouldn't find that without real time monitoring. This goes back to my point about being user friendly.

The reason why I was sold on the MAXX besides being one of the only Alpha N kits at the time (and I looked at SMT, Unichip, Megasquirt, LINK, DTA, Redline, AEM, MoTeC was 1) it's a piggyback, reversible and kept all my motronic functions 2) it's very user friendly with excellent support via Maxx or S14.net itself. 3) I knew BMW used it on their early cars and if it was good enough for them, it's certainly good enough for my 250HP street car. 4) It was less expensive overall ($800 at the time) than standalones and designed for the S14.

#2 shouldn't be underestimated. John having been on S14 from the start has intimate knowledge on the Motorsport M3's. Pardon me for saying but you didn't even know they used a piggyback. So please understand my skepticism when someone comes out claiming they have a better product. I will be in touch with Dan hopefully before Bimmerfest.

[brody]

Fair enough. I am not Mr s14 history buff, so I didn't know there was something BEFORE ECU4a as well.

Who is the reply from john aimed at? It is kind of confusing as it sounds like it is a response to me from someone who doesn't read what our product is AND is from 2004?

To touch on a few points there...

BTW, changing rev limit in eprom is extremely simple, for anyone
who doesnt know how to do it, we can send a new eprom or the modified binary file via email for the user to burn.

WAR Chip. Lets you change all fuel and ignition, idle speed, O2 sensor control, cold start, rpm limit etc. No burner, no eeprom, comes with a user interface that has everything laid out so a 12 year old could understand it.

Chip AN also has programmed fuel and ignition. But not everyone
wants to work with an eprom simulator. Tuners usually do that.

An emulator is the same in terms of function and layout as the interface you get with MAXX. not sure why he would say only tuners would use that? If you are tuning the maxx box yourself, you are doing the same thing a tuner would do, only with MAXX not Motronic.

If the user wants something changed, e.g. cold start is off (a 1 day tuner
session usually doesnt get this right),
then he has to return to the tuner just to correct this. That lacks
in flexibility. What the user saves $$$ wise in electronics, he
pays for in lack of flexibility and additional tuner time. When
you look at it that way, a MAXX system is really cheap because
with a little aptitude a user can make the correction himself.

WAR Chip - Included with our Alpha system...

As ignition is just a pre-programmed table and not in closed loop, for street cars it must
be setup to run under a variety of conditions. It cant be setup to
run on the cutting edge as is done on a race car. Is it better to
do a custom chip (this is true independent of AN, MAF or AFM setup)
vs. a generic tuner chip, yes it is. But, "optimal" depends on several
parameters and the application.

Street car OR race car, why not optimize everything including timing to the specific car? NO TWO ENGINES ARE EVER ALIKE. I don't care if you built them identically, they will NEVER BE EXACTLY THE SAME.

The WAR Chip that comes with our alpha n kit allows for 4 different tunes that can be swtiched to on the fly. It allows you to optimize ALL parameters needed to tailor a tune specifically to a car, ignition included. You do not have to wait for revised timing tunes to be sent to you. Make the change in 10 minutes by yourself if you want.

I don't think we will see eye to eye on 100% motronic control vs the maxx box. For years we decided NOT to make alphaN because we assumed the maxx system was 100% perfect due to its long standing name and use. But then we got to see one run in person BEFORE a customer removed it and saw what many stock ECU tuners would consider issues leading to true accuracy and knew we could improve upon it.

Again, if you are able to hook up with Dan while he is in LA, he would love to show you exactly what we are talking about from a technical see with your own eyes perspective. Then you could probably try one of the recent miller alpha N customers cars to see that our system is at least equal to the maxx in terms of performance and driveability OR better.