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Nobody knows how much time they spent testing or tuning or whatever, it could have just been as simple they found a crack in the ecu put it on the Dyno did some adjustment and bam they are done, all I'm saying there's zero proof of the gains rr-racing claims, not from them or the people that bought the tune
Dynos can be manipulated to falsify numbers. Not saying this is happening ... at least I hope its not. lol
Not saying it doesn't happen. On the SRT4 forums years ago it seemed like there was a scam a month and not small ones.
Anyways, I say we wait a bit to see results from lots of different samples. Let's see the data logging. Let's see track times, more dynos, more videos, etc.
Nobody knows how much time they spent testing or tuning or whatever, it could have just been as simple they found a crack in the ecu put it on the Dyno did some adjustment and bam they are done, all I'm saying there's zero proof of the gains rr-racing claims, not from them or the people that bought the tune
I would say Alientech was working on it for years when they finally made the break through late last year. It's not like RR Racing cracked the ECU themselves. That's why you saw other tuners come out at the same time. TTFS and RRR announced (at least as far as time stamps) their products almost at the same time on the same day. Granted you can't really use edited time stamps. Anyways, now there's others as well.
Well, comparing the results of before and after data logging between multiple vehicles, the tune is doing "something" to MAF and ignition timing. How this is impacting peak power and power delivery is still up for experimentation at this point as independent results come in. What we have noticed in our data logging so far is that MAF rates have increased as well as timing. Generally MAF rates correlate to HP , although rough it can at least provide a detla for comparison, it's just how volumetric efficiency works. So technically if we are seeing higher MAF after tune then HP should be increasing at some point along the curve. The same thing happens when you install headers, MAF rates increase. I don't think the tune is a scam because it is doing the things that it says it does but the power output seems to vary with alot of outside factors. I have been doing product development engineering for along time now, part of it in automotive and I know collecting data and coming to the correct confusions even if they aren't what you hoped is just part of the process. Some of us have to "buy the tune" to get it done for the group.
Now that I have had more time to drive the car, I will give my honest opinion. This is just my opinion based on how the car feels as I drive it, no dyno numbers I've put on roughly 400 miles since install. From the time I installed it till now, the car has more power but I was expecting much more. This could simply be because the car was sitting all winter long and needed to relearn regardless of the tune. I'd say at this point in time, this tune is not worth the money, not by a long shot.
Now that I have had more time to drive the car, I will give my honest opinion. This is just my opinion based on how the car feels as I drive it, no dyno numbers I've put on roughly 400 miles since install. From the time I installed it till now, the car has more power but I was expecting much more. This could simply be because the car was sitting all winter long and needed to relearn regardless of the tune. I'd say at this point in time, this tune is not worth the money, not by a long shot.
Have you done any data loggingl? since it is a NA tune that multiple factors come in to play for the tune to be effective. The best way to see if you are getting the right numbers and reading from the ECU is to log and send them to Rafi and see if the numbers are "right". I think this tune is more complicated than the plug and play that we where expecting.
Let me address the posts here with the following points:
(1) We are absolutely doing a legitimate tune on these cars, I am sorry for the pessimism, but its simply a fact.
(2) Those guys doing street race comparisons: No one denies that header equipped cars make more power on a dyno than decat cars. That has been well documented here on CL. But, there are also many who have posted that in a street race comparison, cars were essentially even. This simply tells us that street rolls are dependent on other factors as well, such as car setup and driver, not just raw hp on a dyno.
(3) In order to maximize dyno results, it is necessary to do more pulls than some are doing. 6-8 pulls are usually necessary, with the caveat that you should really be tracking the intake air and coolant temps. The problem with dyno vs. road is that the radiator and intake see significantly less airflow on a dyno than on the road. Those of you who are pulling in 6th gear are getting to 160mph+, yet the cooling airflow is signficantly lower than that. This is one of the major factors that leads to variability on the dyno.
(4) Because the stock ignition timing is already aggressive, a tuned car is going to be more sensitive to intake temps and fuel quality than non-tuned car. There is no way around this. Those who expect magic... I am sorry.
(5) On turbo cars, it is easier to get more consistent results because most of the power gains come from simply increasing airflow by increasing boost pressure. IS-F depends are running right at the peak timing for best torque, but it also has 4 knock sensors and sophisticated ignition learning strategy that will quickly pull timing under certain conditions.
(6) If anyone is skeptical about our dyno results, we have no problem dynoing your car on the same DynoJet 424x we use. Unlike other dynos which can easily be manipulated with RPM/wheel speed calibration data, Dynojets do not have any user input calibration data. We have posted vidoes of the car getting dynod, and plenty of results. We use the dyno at Fabspeed Motorsports. It is a very large climate controlled facility with two very strong fans.
(7) Found this great article about how wide a variation dyno readings can give. This is only exacerbated on a highly tuned NA car that depends on sufficient cool airflow to achieve peak timing. The example they use in the C&D article below is a highly tuned Dinan M5, made anywhere from 334 - 415whp depending on the conditions. 334whp was with the hood closed and a weak fan... exactly the same conditions that someone on this forum documented with expressing his disappointment at his results (there were other problems with his car as well).
me and a few guys did the dynoed before the tuned. with i/h/e we did well over 400 rwhp , we havent put in the miles and enough pulls to re dyno yet but soon. will be super pissed if we are losing hp . same dyno place also . :P
I know my car definitely makes more hp with the tune and headers. My track time can't be taken into account yet because of the bad track conditions.
As far as the dyno, I just did it because they were having a special but without having a base run I can't compare. I'm not sure why my numbers are low or why the big difference between 6 th and 4th gear. The guy dynoing the car told me that the roller in that dyno weights 5500 pounds and that I should expect to see a 30 hp increased in other dynos. I'm not sure if that's how all dynojets are. As a comparison there was one supercharged V8 Mercedes and it put down 372 hp.
Anyways, I'll keep testing the car at the track and perhaps even take it to another dyno to see how it does.
Nobody knows how much time they spent testing or tuning or whatever, it could have just been as simple they found a crack in the ecu put it on the Dyno did some adjustment and bam they are done, all I'm saying there's zero proof of the gains rr-racing claims, not from them or the people that bought the tune
I know how much time, actually. Ever since RR-Racing got into the ISF business, Rafi's been pulling his hair out with tuning (I've talked to him multiple times). Fast forward a bit to when Denso flash protocols were released, RRR immediately invested effort and time. The goal was not only to release the tune quickly, but to squeeze every last bit of pulp out of the orange. You can debate the product itself (butt dyno, actual dyno, whatever--although actual dyno results showed my car making 25whp and a gob load of mid-range tq), but one thing that you can't debate is the R&D. RRR cares more about its integrity and community than anything else...hence why the tune was priced, IMO, low (TTFS had to cut their rates in HALF in order to match RRR)...I would've been like Novel and priced it at $2500
I suppose that if or when a supercharger comes out, there will always be those few people: it made 3whp less than advertised!!!
Hey Guys,
I want to jump in here and try to provide some facts and data around the tune. Please note this is still a work in progress for me but I feel it's important to provide some information to the group. I know it is long but please try to read through the whole story before coming to any conclusions about the tune.
The executive summary (IMO) - the tune is real and 20-40hp is not an exaggeration.
My relevant Mods:
Standard RR Intake (not the new tuned version)
PPE Headers
HKS SSM w/ Custom mid-pipe fully decatted
RR AOS
RR Tune (7200)
My baseline dyno was performed on a dyno jet 224x on 2/18. I made 3 runs with the car at operating temps (~190F Coolant, warm transmission, 3bar oil temp, etc...). Hood up with 2 smallish squirrel cage fans running. SAE corrected baseline was 384whp/368tq. They were all within 5 hp of this. Results were a little lower than I hoped for I/H/E but reasonable given we were using SAE correction and not STD. Plus the HKS setup probably doesn't produce the highest HP gains either.
Installed the re-flashed ECU on 2/25/16. Made many 3rd and 4th gear pulls as recommended and the car felt pretty good. I had also started data logging with Dash Command (iPhone). I sent a few logs to Rafi and he immediately noticed that my IATs were going up over 45F during my pulls from ~70F to over 115F during WOT runs. This is not good for several reasons. First, the high intake temps are not as dense resulting in less HP. In addition, the timing maps are dependent on IAT and will retard with high temps. In Rafi's words - double whammy. Sure enough, my MAF readings where much lower than expected. Actually very similar to stock without any mods at all.
After some head scratching I realized I did NOT have the plastic engine shrouds around my engine bay (the passenger side one covers the top of the secondary intake). I had these removed to work on my suspension settings. Long story short - make sure you have these on. They make a huge impact on IATs. Now because I had been running with high IATs my timing correction was not where it needed to be with the tune. Rafi suggested I reset the ECU and restart the learning procedure again. It's fun doing WOT pulls every chance you get
So after a few hundred miles of "re-learning" I went back to the dyno. Blue is baseline and Red is the after pull. Conducted the identical setup of the baseline. Peak gains were +6HP and 5TQ. Pretty disappointing. However, if you look at the at the mid-range you can see more substantial gains. 10-12 HP and 10-15TQ. This is fairly significant area under the curve but I was still disappointed.
During my conversations with Rafi it became evident that there are some critical factors that will determine how much power the F makes. It has 4 knock sensors and is very sensitive to any sign of knock. In order to squeeze out the extra power we need the additional timing. If the knock sensors are sensing activity, the ECU will pull timing to make them happy (which is a good thing for durability).
I went back to my data logs from the dyno to see what was happening. In this chart you can see my timing curve vs timing curve from an ISF without tune (Thanks Juanmedina). Very large mid range timing difference but it drops quickly in the 5-6.5k range and not much better than stock.
After more discussions with Rafi, I decided to borrow Tech Stream (thanks again Juan!) so I could see where my learned knock values were running. I was at 17.8. To get optimum timing results this value needs to be in the 22+ range. My knock sensors were sensing activity but I didn't know why. To rule out any chance of having real knock, I ran about 1/4 tank of 1:1 93 octane mixed with 110. I then made a bunch of WOT runs while monitoring my learned knock feedback value. They immediately started climbing - ultimately getting to 24+. This was great, but I have zero intention of using 110 octane in my DD. So, after running through 1/4 tank of this mixture I went back to regular 93. Surprisingly the values stayed high and have even continued to slowly climb. Evidently I had some crap gas as it's been fine with several fill ups since. To be sure though I am planning to change my plugs and go one step colder (in preparation for boost).
Here are my most recent data logs with improved timing. There are major improvements in timing and MAF flow. We have also seen very similar results from Piston1047 and ZaxF who are just as addicted as I am to data logging now .
Mass Airflow Plots (Lbs/Min) - You can see that my MAF readings have gone up substantially compared to the 390whp dyno run. These are all with very similar atmospheric conditions (~65F). MAF is a great indicator of power.
The data shows great improvements but I have not been able to get back to they dyno due to my work schedule. However, I have started using Virtual Dyno so I want to throw this out there. Note that this software is great for RELATIVE comparisons of your cars performance as long as you use the exact same segment of road to do the runs.
Although I wasn't intentionally logging data to use for VD during this time, I was able to go back and find a data log from a section of road that I could easily replicate. It is a very long flat, straight on ramp. The run from 03-01-16 was after correcting my IAT issue but still had very low timing. Ironically it shows 388whp which is very similar to the 384whp I got on the actual dyno jet. I apologize that the RPM range is so small but it's the best "historical" data log I could find that I could repeat for comparison. Note that these are runs are SAE corrected using weather data from the exact time I made the runs. This software shows a gain of +37whp. TQ is hard to tell because the baseline run started past peak torque.
So in summary - I believe the tune is real. Timing is up 4-5 degrees at peak power. MAF rates are up to where they are expected to be for 420whp ballpark. I can't say enough for Rafi's customer service through all of this. They have answered my countless emails, texts and FB messages quickly. Rafi helped coach me with what to look for and although the results were disappointing initially, I feel very confident that my car is running better than ever. I will try to keep you updated as I hope to hit the real dyno again in the next few weeks.
Just skimmed through some of the recent posts and see there is some concerns and questions? We can not speak on anyone else's tune but we guarantee our tunes are legitimate. We tune many platforms with proven results and data out there for anyone to see.
FYI - Frank will be making a trip to Colorado to assist our Colorado customer get his tune dialed in. He will be there in person to help anyone that has tuning questions or would like to have a live tune performed. The trip has not been booked and we do not have dates yet but as soon as I have more specific information I will post.
I know a few Colorado owners were experiencing issues with the high altitude. He will be there to assist. Frank is willing to go the extra mile to make sure the tune is at full potential.
We could make a new 100 page thread on dyno's and how they work and the debate over numbers but that has been done many times before. The delta is what shows your gains. On the cars we tune in house we do a before and after on the same dyno, same day, we do not unstrap the car in between runs. When you compare across different dynos the numbers won't be the same. So many variables come into play. Also time slips are a good measure but again variables come into play as well. We do not want to start a debate but just wanted to post in case we had any of our customers doubting the tune.
For our customers we assure you the tune is legitimate if we have anyone with questions. Also as time goes on we will continue to provide data to prove that it is.
03-28-16, 07:04 AM
AHAHHAHAH
