Yes, we plan to ship the controller pre-configured. I have full control over all parameters as needed, no concerns there. But our approach is focused on "no tuning required" system.Erik712m wrote: First, from what I read, your controller is preset from you guy's with no adjustment needed? Jake has stated several times in post that some adjustment, would be needed by the installer do to differances in gas in are local area.
I can understand Jakes positioning as needing some tuning, but not necessarily for the gas reason he gave.
Detailed EFI discussion follows, skip if you are not into specifics!
Yes, gas differences can be in issue on high compression, high HP turbo engines. But the pinz low compression is pretty tolerant of fuel changes. I'll ask you this, do you change your carb tuning for winter to summer fuel blend differences? Most do not, as it's not that big of a change on low compression engines.
The biggest area you would ever see an issue would be in timing advance, etc. Just not as big of an issue on the pinz.
Fuel quality/mix concerns are an EFI generalism in the import tuner world that we have not seen, as we are low compression, non-turbo. Would absolutely be a factor in Jakes high compression turbo VW & Porsche worlds. But as much due to octane/mixture cooling as anything else. (Blends don't cool the chamber/valves as well)
The bigger issue is with a partial kit, to be installed by whomever, you have limited control over fuel pump, regulator, and thus pressure. That's probably the biggest single variable in an EFI system. How much fuel get's injected per N millisecond pulse. And one of the main reasons we are not offering a partial kit..... we (like an OEM) need to make sure the fuel supply side is consistent from install to install. This just means a consistent pump & filter model, same regulator set to same spec, same plumbing.
There may be need to allow for different regional fuels, but it would take something like mexican gas to make a noticable difference in the pinz, and even then the system should compensate.
Again, good caution from Jake for a partial kit install. Lot's of variables. We are trying to make as many consistent as possible.Erik712m wrote: Second, he has stated several times that not all engines perform the same do to what i'm guessing wear of the engine so some adjustments will be needed by the owner. From what I read in your post, you're saying all engines are the same even if the engine is worn the Efi is going to treat it the same. The worn engine is just going to preform like a worn engine with no adjustment needed?
Erik
What we can't control is engine wear & muffler backpressure. (We do control air filter). Compression is probably the biggest change you would see, maybe a little reduced flow due to valve/cam issues. All of these factors would manifest as slightly reduced VE (Volumetric Efficiency). VE is essentially how much air the engine actually pumps divided by it's theoretical CFM based on displacement, rpm, and cam timing & valve size. It's typically a percentage. Really high flow engines get up in the 70+% range. The pinz get's significantly less than that!
So what's the impact on the pinz? Well, it's already a fairly low VE engine, unlike highly optimized sports car engines. It operates at almost half the rpm range of most aftermarket EFI cars, etc and an even lower VE range (idle to peak)
In a MAP (Manifold absolute Pressure) or MAF based system, reduced VE shows up as reduced vacuum/higher absolute pressure (MAP) or reduced airflow (MAF), two different measures of the same thing. You would shift slightly in the tuning matrix (another thing called a map). But it largely self compensates..... reduced flow -> reduced rpm -> less airflow/higher pressure shifts you to a lower portion of the matrix. And it sends less fuel.
Notice I said largely self compensates. It's not an exact thing, but it reduces the correction required by the closed loop control. So new engine to well used but not broken, the difference is well within closed loop correction range. In the cases we run open loop we are intentionally rich, and the small difference in VE will not have much impact.
Again, this is a big issue in the import tuner high HP/turbo world. They are dealing with huge spikes in there effective VE due to boost. Much more complicated, and in most cases they are running on the ragged edge. But that's not the pinz. The pinz has a very smooth VE curve with less than half to 1/3 the VE change idle to peak than the average euro or asian aftermarket EFI vehicle sees.
We may provide access to a scaling factor that allows a few percent change in the baseline fuel calcs to compensate for engine wear, different exhaust systems, etc. So far this has not been needed.
Change a cam, change the intake, all bets are off, which is what drives most folks to need to retune. Thus our focus on box stock 2.5l and 2.7l with cam. We may add others, but these are the two with the most demand.
OEM's deal with this issue all the time. You don't have to reprogram your ECU from new to 200k miles in your normal car/truck, even with muffler/air filter changes, etc. They do add an extra step of trim with newer systems (OBD & later). The system constantly measures the error correction for each bin, and it converges over time. That's what goes away if you disconnect your battery. You start fresh and the ECU compensates just like ours does.
What we intentionally are not providing is a home brew, tune it yourself system. You should not have to, and if you want to do that, then our system is not for you. We can't support a system which has users changing parameters willy-nilly.
There are roughly 1000 individual parameters we specify in the controller. (Plus many we are not leveraging, as they are not needed) Net-net: lot's to break if you provide full access to the variables. One small change impacts dozens of others, outside of a few areas like warmup, etc.
Think you have a problem? We'll have you record a datalog which we will look at. If there is an issue, we'll send an updated file or cpu one.
What about altitude? System is constantly measuring barometric pressure and compensates automatically.
Temp? Both ambient air & engine temp factor into the calculations real time as well as drive cold start/warmup/fast idle control
MAP/vacuum & rpm are the main factors, with both also being used as thresholds for timing changes and certain open loop operation when desired. We even change the target air/fuel ration in certain cases.
Throttle position drives accel enrichments, as well as triggering settings for "wide open", Flood clear, and decel/idle
The system even compensates for engine voltage variations as that impacts injector open/close time, and thus fuel per shot.
And with closed loop idle/fast idle control, you don't even see RPM variance between temp/altitude in that like you do in manual idle systems. 800 rpm warm idle at sea level or high altitude. Even in 2nd gear idling up a steep hill!
We have not implemented knock detection... it's not been an issue with the low compression pinz, and if you use standard unleaded with normal octane (Is it 87?) you won't see any. We use load based retard as needed.
So outside of the specific VE differences between individual engines, we pretty much measure/control the things which impact the engine. And if the VE is off by more than 1-2%, there is something major wrong with the engine that needs to be fixed. (extreme low compression, valve, clogged muffler, etc)
OK, probably way more than you wanted to know. But don't mistake the fact that we do not require people to do their own tuning and assume that it's a simple system. It's not, it's very complex. We just shield the pinz driver from that just like your daily driver does.
Have fun,
Alan
