Alan Jeffery

Damn, can't sleep. I think I'll post something...

When Martyn says " some people " with reference to torque, he means the practice by a major player of cranking up boost as soon as possible, then letting it flop. The bhp is nowhere near where they claim, but the owner doesn't know this, as the car feels a lot faster due to the torque increase.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing! from thier viewpoint it's probably safer than selling brand new fast cars to those who just might go right out there and break them!

Andy.F

I'm not surprised !!

I slept fine

Did wake up thinking this claim of yours requires further clarification though. If you mean I have no idea what power it would produce on your rollers then you are 100% correct. I have 100% no idea and I 100% don't care ! If I thought numbers on a roller were important don't you think my Impreza (with somewhere around 800bhp) would have been regularly presented to a RR to gain kudos ?


When road testing, to tell me exactly what is going on under real live conditions, I have available to me throughout the rpm range -

Mass air flow consumed
Fuel injector flow rate
Wastegate duty as a measure of turbo loading
Air fuel ratio
Intake temperature
Coolant temperature
Boost Pressure
Ignition timing
Digital knock signal/advance value
Analogue knock amplifier/headset
RPM rise rate feedback (proportional to torque output)

In addition to all the above I can actually feel how smooth the throttle transitions are and I can monitor in real time under real conditions the effects of acceleration fueling enrichment and transient boost control.

On Ecutek cars where the in gear compensations for wastegate and target boost have been enabled, I can set up each individual gears targets. This allows improved acceleration in lower gears without overloading occurring in a high gear. This function alone is a good reason not to dyno these cars, you cannot replicate the acceleration rate achieved in each gear and hence you will confuse the ECU. This will result in under/overboost and the associated errors in measured power.

In a nutshell, I have all the info I need to make the car accelerate as fast as possible for its spec, safely improving the acceleration rate is my no1 priority, not a number.
The UK's fastest accelerating std internals 2.0 Impreza shows only 340 bhp on a DD dyno yet other cars claiming 400+ cannot get anywhere near this acceleration rate.
This is not an isolated case, I refer here to everyday road cars that visit the strip from time to time, all the 11.** sec, std internals cars were road tuned and none of them will impress on the rollers. Suits me fine

Andy

Alan Jeffery

Blimey... there's so much to read here, it's hard to get to grips with the number of slights!


I'll admit the Deltadash is very clever, and we've used it ourselves, but for anyone to suggest that we are inclined to cheat with the rolling road we paid so much for, and no-one could possibly cheat with Deltadash is plain obnoxious. What are we talking about on road driven power runs? uphill, downhill, head or tailwind? slipstreaming the car in front? what?

I don't go around calling other tuners "cheats" and I don't think it's fair to have that levelled at us in particular, considering our considerable investment.

harvey

iTrader: (48)

Jim : Your car is not strapped down onto the road but it has to be on most rollers and certainly for higher powered cars. The strapping down force deforms the tyre shape so it is quite reasonable to run a further 10psi or thereabouts.
BTW, check your tyre pressure after a hard blast on the road and check your pressure after a rolling road run. If the difference from cold was 10 psi you will find it is less after the rolling road run as the tyres do not heat up as much on the rollers.
Also, because of the design of the Dastek rollers they require far less strapping down and on less powerful cars the straps are to maintain position on the dyno only.

harvey

iTrader: (48)

scooby - tc. Steve Simpson maps Apexis on the rollers and finishes them off on the road. He picked up noticable gains for me and not just figures.

Bob : Some do their jobs better than others. Some are more limited than others. Some can give OE car refinement but not the absolute power. I never thought the ten row Link was crude and represented real value for money at the time. The six row was obviousy less refined but it did not stop it developing ultimate power or torque, and while the Apexi gave an OE car like tick over, smoothness and town driving it could not match the ultimate power for that particular model year.

I recognise your ability to improve on rolling road maps and while I know you adjust and improve your map almost daily, that is what I was doing with the six row Link and to a lesser extent, the ten row.
It is because you are prepared to take time that you achieve the results you do.
I am simply saying that for lesser mortals, a combination of road and roller mapping is likely to give best results in my experience and not referring to my STi 6. Remember at the beginning I said I had only come to this conculsion in the last year.

Agreed. That is why I have concluded that a combination of road and roller will, in many cases, result in the best map.


Why do so many of your customers say "Andy says it is 360 bhp or whatever on the road dyno" ?

Andy.F

Alan

My roaddyno runs are done on a level road, clear of traffic and I do it in both directions. When a customer asks me what it will make on the rollers, I tell them I can only guess. I would usually give an estimate within a 10% range based on a roaddyno figure ie approx 300-330bhp.
Generally if someone goes around 3 different rolling roads, roaddyno will be close to one of them.
I have never said to a customer, "your power is *** " I will simply show them what roaddyno states and explain the difference in errors between different RR's

I'm not accusing you of cheating, I'm just saying it is possible for dyno figures to go up or down due to circumstances both beyond and within your control.

I am also not trying to rubbish the DD set up you have, it must be absolutely ideal for most cars. I just hold the opinion it is not best suited to the Impreza, particularly the 01 onwards cars with their very intelligent and condition adaptive ECU's.

Andy

Alan Jeffery

The trouble is Andy, as you know full well, the CAR'S power output goes up and down, due to atmospherics and a million other variables, never mind the ability of any particular roller set to mimic it. You can set up a bolide in the Scottish highlands, but in Devon it's weak.. ( er )

You have the advantage here, as although you can make whatever claim you like, and I dare say, back it up by the fact that the car goes well, ( and so do ours! ) you don't have to actually PROVE anything. You can hide beihind the fact, in your opinion, that rolling roads are inaccurate.

I would be the first in the rush to remove the whole idea of quoting power figures if I thought the industry would stand it, but it won't, and despite your protestations on the subject I think it's highly unlikely that every single one of your customers would accept having work done by you with no idea at all of the expected power increase. From what I can gather there isn't a rolling road establishment in the country who hasn't been asked to check a car that Andy F mapped! - including us. Either you are more prolific than I thought, or curiosity is killing the cat.

I've been taking lately to demonstrating the effect of a conversion first, before flashing the power graph about, then we can erradicate the effect of BHP expectation, and replace it with something the customer can get to grips with.

Andy.F

Yes, I do get around Alan with an average of 12 Impreza's per week over the last 2 years alone, it kinda adds up
I do wonder if any one of them ever got anywhere near the same reading on 2 different rollers

Now thats something I can relate to Anyone who puts out a (for example) 380bhp package and expects every car that its fitted to, to achieve 380bhp at any of the countrys rollers, is quite frankly dreaming !
Even Prodrive can't do that !

Andy

ZEN Performance

Hi Andy. Keep up the good work.

brunny42

just to add my little bit, i have had two different cars mapped by Andy F both of them were totally different set ups, one a 2 door rav the other a uk 2000 awd, both had the apexi, both done on the roads, no silly stuff or daft high speeds, they were both road cars but also spent all day and many a day on the drag strips, they drove there and drove back home, also were a pleasure to go shopping in. they were consistent in there times, they were also very fast in there times, in fact they were a lot quicker and a damn site more reliable than a lot of other scoobies there which were heavilly modified, these two cars still had TMIC standard injectors pumps ignition etc, they were beating a lot of so said big boy scoobies, which were also breaking down popping backfiring and getting pushed of the strips, i am not putting my tongue up Andy,s backside but there is no way ever i would let anyone else touch a scooby of mine as he sets them up in real time conditions on the road, Andy has been doing his stuff for many a years now he has excelled himself in the art of tuning if he really thought a RR was needed he would have or use one, thats my little bit.

Bob Rawle

And so it goes on, Alan and Martyn it beggars belief that you would actually agree with either I or Andy simply because you can't afford to, as soon as you do you ackowledge the truth of what we are both saying.

Martyn a big database counts for nothing if you don't know how to use it, and unless its a big database of Subaru vehicles (which it isn't on your own statement) then it means nothing when we are discussing those cars.

So how would you two deal with this on the rollers ... serious question that came up on car 3 this pm, under light throttle the car "pulses", can be felt when driving, owner only started to notice after an exhaust and induction upgrade. No issue under any boost at all, no issue at speed.

How would go about replicating the condituons .. could you even do it and if answer is yes how ? Then what would be your proposed solution.

Real test real question, took me less that 4 mins to suss and fix on the road.

Andy I make it 6.4 - 1.1 to us now.

I'm also suprised that the mods haven't asked for some posts to be edited since this is supposed to be a technical thread.

bob

brunny42

and on a different note power figures are for the small minded and probably small trouser area people, what really matters is actuall performance as all agread RR tuned cars give big power figures, but actually put them on the raod against a road mapped car which is said to have less power, my guess is the road mapped car will win every time as it is now on the place where they spend the majority of there time " the tarmac " that is where it counts,

andy97

iTrader: (1)

Ive had my car mapped twice with Api/Paul on the road, the second time for tweaking after further modifications. I can see the virtues of using a rolling road for intermittent faults or indicative power/torque/boost /afr printout levels, but my own has been straight forward each time.

It has been noted that cars that are mapped on the rollers are finally setup with a road session, this is obviously to check that it behaves properly and doesnt have any minor niggles. This is the same for road mappers with large database maps ready to base map virtually all configurations of car (Impreza). This saves initial setup time and only takes a small of time to tweak on the road.

The cost of rolling roads must cost £70k+, that is a lot of dosh to recoup in rolling road sessions, as so, I understand the business demands that dictate that they are promoted as the best tool for mapping etc.

I believe the majority of cars can be mapped for the road on the road, besides its good fun having the car mapped whilst you drive.

Andy

Alan Jeffery

that got you all going! I knew I'd poke the right spot in the end.

The daft thing is, we aren't that far apart! We've never said Andy couldn't tune a car. He was a big help to us, I've said that many times. I've told all and sundry how clever he is, so does everybody else. If he walked on water I wouldn't be shocked. I have no idea about anyone else.
I believe one chap has a beef because I had the temerity to test a car he'd tuned, having been asked to by the customer. You'd think I kidnapped the car from the reaction I got! I'm going to ring him personally tomorrow to discuss that one.

Martyn and I have had to sit down here all this time in disbelief, Listening to Andy slagging off our tuning methods when with my own ears I heard him praising our rolling road and its abilities. I don't want him to be accused of hypocrisy, so I won't quote him like someone else did!

12 a week? Fascinating..

The thread asked if road or roller tuning is best. Naturally enough, we wanted to debate the issue, or isn't debate allowed if your opinion is different from someone else's ?

We haven't actually said roller tuning alone is best! We map on the road as well as appropriate. We have the option! We said a combination of both is best, so I can't see why we should have to put up with being belittled, purely because we have our own rolling road. Not when I've been successfully using one for thirty bloody years! We do very well in our own rock pool thanks.
I employ eight staff!

I think it's time that the obvious was conceded to, and to admit that there is a place for, and a point to, dyno tuning.

For the LAST TIME, we use our dyno as a TUNING tool, and are even less interested in the ACTUAL FIGURES than you are. We just acknowledge thier importance to the man PAYING THE BILL.

You mentioned "small trouser" people Brunny. Well, you stop asking about size, and I'll stop telling you what you actually got.

Alan Jeffery

Hi Andy 97.
Not disagreeing with anything you said as such, but I'd like to point out that our rollers are virtually constantly in use, and not just with Subarus!
Andy F made the point that Subarus have special needs. He's quite right, and we know what they are.

Alan Jeffery

Sorry Bob, not ignoring you, I just didn't read your question.
As you probably know, we can replicate virtually every condition on the rolling road, apart from slow over run, which you can only pick up on a road test for obvious reasons. We can monitor power down to 2 or 3 bhp. We can wind in as much or as little load as you like. We'd try and approximate the area of difficulty. We'd use deltadash if applicable to check for coded faults. We'd check lambda voltage on light load, and assuming it's low, I'd look for an air leak, possibly split maf sensor to turbo hose? that could cause a lean mixture on light load, but may close up under higher vac! Failing that, I'd do what you'd do, and start again! I would generally look for a mixture issue if I was presented with what you just told me. ( Pulsing as opposed to misfire or just flat )
We can run a four gas on the rollers and monitor that as well. We can hop out and actually fiddle under the bonnet with the engine running under any load and I've found more faults that way than you've had hot dinners sunshine. Try that up the high street!
I've only run myself over once doing that, and I'm not doing it again!
Sorry Bob, I have to ask, what sort of rolling road or engine dyno have you used personally?

Andy.F

I think there is a major difference between 'slagging off' and raising a valid technical arguement explaining some of the Impreza ECU features which render it unsuitable for rolling road tuning, in addition to providing a number of technical examples of situations that can only be catered for on the road.

Andy

Bartop

That'll be me then !

Awesome job sir

All I can say is it's a hell of a lot more fun having the car mapped on the road if nothing else !

Bob Rawle

Dyno Dynamics, Maha, 2000 bhp engine dyno at Peter Knights premises (got the Team Ice engine to 709 bhp on that), the Hyundai Schenk dyno at the Hyundai WRC premises. To name the main ones.

Anything else you would like to know on that?

Thanks for the answer to the question, wasn't a trick, you would never foind it on the rollers though which is why, of course, I asked, problem is simply maf scaling, and the amount of positive/negative fuel correction needed at low engine loads. (damn giving away secrets again)

The level of bhp you can measure is irrelevent in this case.

BTW never saw a reply relating to callibration ?

Bartop ... awesome car despite the rom file issues, again apologies for the delay, absolute pleasure to map it, definately the quickest Forester done to date. Graph will follow tomorrow.

bob

harvey

iTrader: (48)

I think some of you guys are missing the point.
Most people that recognise a use for the rolling road as a tuning tool believe and have stated here that best results are achieved from a combination of road and rolling road mapping. That was not my view until perhaps a year ago but with increasing experience it is now my firm belief, unless like Bob, you are prepared to spend whatever time it takes to get the desired results, regardless of commercial consideration(read time and money) and are prepared to hire Bruntingthorpe for the most powerful cars.

Andy : Funnily enough, an owner asked me to drive his car last week. You had mapped it and he says he was told it would have 340 or 350 bhp. I think he said 350 bhp. By some means he ended up at a Rolling Road Day in Plymouth and produced 317 bhp and 319 bhp from memory. Not happy with the result, he then went on the rollers at Steve simpson Motorsport and got 322 bhp and 323 bhp. Relatively close and a long way from 340 bhp.

When you fitted the Apexi to my 95 WRX, 22-02-06, I told you then that I was very impressed with the smoothness compared to the six row Link but the car had lost some of its urgency. This was bourne out at Dastek later that same day. Still looking for the power loss I did a run on the rollers at SSMS 16-03-06 and got a best run of 361.9 BHP. The following day after a remap on the rollers and some road checking we had 376.6. The car had some more urgency and better spool. Overlaying the graphs show the improvements clearly.

At the end of October I was involved in remapping an STi3 that had been recently road mapped. I drove the car 25 miles or more to the DSA Dyno Dynamics rolling road facility. The best run before remapping was 368.2 bhp. After mapping we had 391.3 bhp and when the car was run on the road, no further adjustments were necessary and the car was generally more willing.
Driving the car back to the owner, it felt much stronger, particularly at low and medium speeds. After a short blast up the road, when the car was given back to the owner, his comments were; "The car has come alive" and "The car feels completely transformed"

I understand that Zen Performance are installing a rolling road. I am sure that someone with Paul's experience and ability would not be investing a substantial amount of money in such equipment if he had not clearly identified a need for it.

Alan Jeffery

Hi Bob.

Thanks for the answer to your question, although it was a bit like trying to find the answer to " eye spy ". I didn't realise your intention was to attempt to make me look stupid. You, me, Britney Spears and everybody else knows that there are certain parts of mapping that require road testing. Well done for pointing out the bleeding obvious. We can handle maf scaling perfectly well.
As one who fault finds on a regular basis, you'd be wrong to assume that mapping is the only situation you'd come across. We start from basics, then we don't get fooled trying to tune something that needs fixing first. I think maybe you've been doing what you do for too long, and you need to get out more! there's a World out there that doesn't need a laptop.
I'm glad to hear you have extensive dyno experience, but it leaves me wondering why you don't actually own one! you can't deny it's at least handy.
How would you know the power output of the Team Ice engine if you didn't have a dyno? Are you saying you didn't need one? Was all that effort a waste of time?
Can we all see Bartop's graph? I'm eaten up with curiosity!

Harvey is spot on.

Alan Jeffery

Andy F ..

Quite right, and a fair point, although one I haven't argued with!
My problem is, you keep saying there is no use for a rolling road, and I keep saying there is. So did you when you used ours!
I didn't realise I should have recorded the conversations!

Andy.F

Bob, We will never get them, or anyone else currently operating (or considering the purchase of - harvey) a rolling road to agree with our findings on the Impreza. They will keep throwing up numbers which have been proven beyond all doubt to vary depending where you go, who operates it and in some cases, the result they want to achieve.

Ok, I'll summarise quickly as I have better things to be doing than further explain the methods Bob and i use for tuning some of the UK's fastest Impreza's.... as they say, you can lead a horse to water ...

For those reading, please base your judgement on the technical examples given, treat with caution the dyno numbers spouted unless of course you can be sure they are totally unbiased and 100% accurate

Andy

ps, did I ever mention my customer who achieved a RR figure of 415 bhp from a VF34 on Optimax Now. I'd really like to believe it but

dynamix

iTrader: (3)

I bet he was chuffed


until someone with much lower figures from a dyno came past him

Alan Jeffery

Neat ball control there Andy! you should play for England...sorry, Scotland!


How about if I summarise?

It is possible to set up a Subaru just using a laptop
There is a place for dynos when performance tuning Subarus

Any problem with the above?

Maddog

Easy one to resolve if there's a car made available to test.

On the same day, allow Andy to map it on road and obtain acceleration figures (real world results), then, (after reverting the car back to what it was), allow the rest to map on dyno only or dyno and road and repeat the tests.

Or, since it's been mentioned cars have been improved on a dyno after road mapping, then map it on road, get results, then ,map it on dyno (dyno/road) and do the same thing.

Has to be done on same day, same road, same weather etc etc for obvious reasons.
Can't see it happening for logistical reasons, but it would put this one to bed and allow you all a good nights sleep as some of you have been suffering over the last couple of days...

lunar tick

iTrader: (2)

Good idea and I think I suggested something similar to this earlier in the thread. It was put to me however that this kind of test would reveal more about the mappers than the tools they used (ie a test comparing 2 different road mappers or 2 different dyno mappers might produce a greater difference in results than one that compares a road mapper and a dyno mapper).

However not withstanding that, I definitely think it has lot of merit and could certainly lay to rest some of the arguments on here one way or another .

Maybe the ultimate solution is to get two or three road mappers to out their heads together and jointly produce the very best map they can for a car and measure in-gear acceleration times then hand it over to a team of dyno mappers to see whether they can better it using a dyno. This would help eliminate the inter-individual variability element between mappers.

dynamix

iTrader: (3)

The only problem with this is that it would encourage mapping the cars to within an inch of their life and without consideration to engine going bang two weeks later or fuel ecomony or car behaviour at lower or part throttle useage.

It is all a balance - choice of mapper is the key and getting ones that understands your needs and the cars requirements with a view to what useage to the car will be put through.

lunar tick

iTrader: (2)

You could make things like fuel economy, boost/knock data etc available for all to see or even place 'safe' limits on how much boost can be used in the overall map. No comparison will ever be perfect, but you should at least try. To go on about "choice of mapper is the key etc" is meaningless - how do I choose the best mapper if I don't know how he (or she) compares to others out there?

Alan Jeffery

Maddog-- Funnily enough, the reason I haven't been sleeping is due to the neighbours dog barking all night! We found a way to fix that ...