d.kenny

doesnt seem like many people are trying it???

been trying to get my head round this sort of thing for a while and as mapping seems to be so lucrative i thought there would be a lot more people sharing their findings and ideas???

what lead are you using??? tactrix...modded vagcom...does anybody use the piasini stuff???

like i say iv been looking into this for a while but struggling to find the support needed...there must be others in the same boat?

Raptorman

iTrader: (1)

I would say because of the potential profits involved you won't
get anyone "in the game" giving you any help at all. Also the potential
for destroying a engine or bricking a ecu is high if you don't know what
your doing.

Best I could suggest is try the romraider forums and read,read and read again
then if you feel confident try it on your own car. It's nowhere near as easy
as it seems which is born out by the fact that almost everyone who has their
car mapped pays circa £500 for a experienced mapper to do it for them.

d.kenny

Im pretty familiar with all them forums

If got quite a lot of hardware to do it

Winols is a headache

Romraider and other aftemarket software seems a lot more user friendly...iv got a bit of knowledge

My own subaru is equipped with a simtek which i might get the lead for or may get an esl board on another ecu to fire on another car or part of another loom to try on mine to tit about with

Just find it mad how in every other country except for here everyone seems so reluctant to try stuff out

john banks

If you like learning, go for it. Most would find the time involved to learn is not worth it to do it once on their own car, and a professional used to the car will likely in 5 minutes do better than it takes a first timer to do in five weeks. There is ample information available though, and there are some excellent DIY mappers, do not think I'm putting you off!

d.kenny

Has noone got an original file and a log for their own car they could upload...id quite like to look at it then see if i could make a few tweeks

Bit random and will prob take a while and then if someone else wants to double check it with more experience to see what they think the person who originally uploaded the said map could give it a go on their car and report back as i currently dont have a vehicle or access to one or the specific hardware needed to read the flash from a subaru

Would be interesting to see any actual gains

Or even just to view a log and map someone has from a car here in the uk as opposed to random ones from the romraider forum or nasioc etc etc

Raptorman

iTrader: (1)

I honestly don't think anyone would be willing to reflash their ecu
after you had "had a go" at mapping, far too much risk involved.

As I said above you should be building experience on your own
vehicle first.

As a example, someone here flashes your map to their car and the engine
goes bang, they would likely be pretty p'd off and want you to pay for
the repairs.

Unfortunately it's not just a case of uploading a base map changing it
and then flashing back to the car. All of the pro's consider many variables
and are running many logs before during and after to ensure what they
have changed is working correctly as well as listening to what the engine
is doing before and after the flash.

d.kenny

they obviosuly dont have to lol

if someone has the hardware though and a log of their map and the map the log is of to load up so i could have a look at it then it would be appreciated

i was perhaps hoping someone more experienced in mapping would maybe get involved so what im doing would be purely theoretical but they could have a look at it and give it the thumbs up or down and ive me a few pointers to where i am going wrong

i dont plan on making massive changes though haha as thats impossible without the aid of a rolling road and as you say live info

just wanted to see if what i was doing would be acceptable in mapping terms

Raptorman

iTrader: (1)

Think your best bet is if you can get a base map from someone then
make your changes then post the map on the romraider forum
I am sure someone there will give you pointers.

JDM_Stig

iTrader: (3)

as you know about Romraider you can easily find what your after on there.

d.kenny

fair enough

just though it was a bit of a shame that i had to resort to an american forum

i thought the purpose of the 'remapping section' would be more DIY oriented...obviously not lol

il continue on romraider as everyone keeps pointing out haha

cheers

Raptorman

iTrader: (1)

I suppose it is a bit of a shame but destroying your engine
via DIY mapping isn't on the top of everyone's list.

At the end of the day paying £500 to a qualified experienced
pro mapper is better/easier than paying out £3000 for a rebuild.

d.kenny

im looking at it from a different point of view from yourself raptorman

i want to learn...not necessarily save money...but put theory into practice to broaden my knowledge

with noone willing to teach the only way is to try and teach myself

i just put the shout out to see if anybody else was interested the same as myself and had any experience and pointers

i dont mind paying the money out myself...but id rather learn to do it myself...and your engine could blow either way...iv done it myself...iv even paid for a remap and then blown an engine within three laps on a trackday lol

john banks

There is no substitute for live experimentation on your own engine, or the engine of the company or institution teaching you.

Suggest start with a healthy standard car and get familiar with your tools for datalogging, reading and writing flash memory, extra equipment if necessary on your platform for measuring wideband AFR, knock, temperatures. Study the standard maps and the data you get from them, and then make very small and gradual changes, try an extra 10kPa boost in the midrange first for example, and have a means to monitor whether you have gained performance. Get a feel for smoothly adjusting boost control, dealing with oscillations and over/understood, adjustments for different temperatures/gears, road vs track etc. Learn where to richer and lean the mixture and see how your engine responds, same with ignition timing, always having a healthy respect for knock and temperatures. Then start playing with launch and traction control, gearbox and clutch mapping if relevant, tweaking electronic diffs, valve timing, electronic throttle, acceleration enrichment, safety trips/contingencies.

If you want to be commercial, show some long term results from the above to your relevant audience through the appropriate social or local media, with the right insurance and a viable business plan and appropriate investment.

d.kenny

this is more what i wanted to hear

do you map cars for a living or have you done it to your own vehicle?

i just want somehwere to start as there are that many different types of software for different cars etc

just want something with a good user interface to start that i can then build upon with different stuff

obviously it would be nice to do it full time as it is what interests me but like you say its just gaining the knowledge which is the hard part and then there is not really anywhere/anyone to turn for an experienced persons advice or guidance as they do not want to help others out generally as it is their line of work that they have had to learn for themselves

many willnever put it into practise anyway and just like pickin the experienced peoples brains and the information will never go anywhere so in that respect the tuner is wasting their time...im actually mad keen to learn and have been struggling to do so

i think i definitely need to invest in another test vehicle...what though and storage etc is another matter...blowing it up does not bother me as i learn from my mistakes generally haha

john banks

Started with a PPP on a nearly new Subaru which the installing dealer couldn't get to boost smoothly. I thought I could do better so I started making my own electronic boost controller and then when Ecutek came along I became a tuner for a few years, starting with my own car and applying stage 1/2 type tuning to cars on standard turbo, developing things on my own car. I then faced a choice in 2003 after just becoming a partner in a medical practice how to try to continue juggling the time demands and stopped commercial tuning, but continued developing my own Subaru until 2005 when I had six months in an M3 and then moved on to Evos. When openecu arrived a few months later I developed various open source mods to the ECU - speed density, realtime mapping and deciphered a lot of the inner workings of the ECU. When I moved to GTR in 2009 the ECU had the same processor that I'd learned on the Evo, so I could use my experience and fill a niche at Cobb tuning developing similar things on the GTR, but after two years the job was abut complete on the model I had and I faced the same decision as 2003 and decided to have a commercial break as it involves a lot of hours juggling a medical practice and ECU development, so one had to go for my long term sanity. Just about everyone that has touched the GTR has found the streets paved with gold, great market to be in, although I found the early discovery when we had a market leading product and were innovating was more exciting than medicine, it didn't have the long term appeal, so I bought more of the medical practice and now concentrate on that and am happy for now. The commercial options in the industry can rival those in most other fields if you can develop skills and reputation, but it can be cyclical, reputations can be won and lost unfairly and it can be luck or good management to be on the cusp of the next trend. Your innovations can also be short lived as others catch up, things are easily copied or bettered.

d.kenny

you clearly have a good understanding of things and i can even relate to the sanity thing as iv spent that much time trying to learn and understand things myself

i almost feel that im trying to jump on the bandwagon to late though so to speak as i cant seem to get to grips with the basics when everything keeps leaping forward

i think from what your saying you have more experience on the graphing side of things as opposed to whats very basic when you start talking about that in remapping

i want a full understandiing of what im doing and i suspect the only way of getting that is by keep researching and then tryiing on different cars

im sure the more i start getting down to it then the more sense it will make...its just i come from a totally mechanical background and have never really been into computers etc so it makes it even harder the fact i am trying to learn all of this!

what would your advice to me be then? just focus on one type of car and type of software then just make minor changes like you said

i sort of want to be shown some of the basics and make sure what i think is right and then progress from there but i dont think that is going to happen haha

john banks

I started with boost control, then remapping/tuning then reverse engineering, finding most interest in the latter. I had a computing background and learned about engines later.

Not everyone mechanic crosses into the computing side and vice versa. You'll need to see what your aptitude is.

I would focus on one model of one car and one type of software. There are various guides and books you'll be able to search for to see how you like it.

d.kenny

I will do

Do you know of any software other than winols similar to romraider etc with a similar user interface to use with files i can retrieve or have retrieved with my fg tech or mpps as you have to find the location of each map instead of them being spoon fed if you like as is the case with romraider

I take it thats your expertise if you have reverse engineered the maps?

Do you have any experience with the said winols or similar software?

john banks

Winols is mainly used to find and edit tables on German ECUs and can take a (sometimes difficult to obtain) a2l file which describes the thousands of tables. Even better if this and a functional description document is available in English. Most of the tuners then identify the tables they need in unknown ECUs by pattern recognition. Winols and the whole Bosch ecosystem was so secretive and had a high cost of entry that I didn't buy a car to tune and stuck with Japanese which apart from some recent exceptions is still much more friendly to modification for a variety of reasons.

Japanese ECUs tend to have fewer tables and are less complex, pattern recognition with a good old hex editor can find a lot if you have a description for a similar ECU. Only reverse engineers disassemble the code to define and alter the behaviour of undocumented tables, of which there are many, which can cause limitations to overcome.

You are best tuning with a spoon fed romraider definition!

d.kenny

So with respect to japanese stuff...which the equipment i have now will not interogte generally as its more focused on bosch stuff etc te same as winols what is a good hex editor to start with?

The maps can be found/recognised in winols but like you say in order to obtain the correct map locations the software is very expensive and typically to manually recognise te stuff you have to trawl trough over 200 od potential maps on some of the stuff

I think im trying to junp into learn to many different things...winols...megasquirt...jap rom editors etc and by you saying you avoided erman stuff beause it is so much more wffort its just helped me to make my mind up lol

Do you have any files you can upload fr me to look at or email and then tell me what software to download and look at it...or is it a waste of time and have i got to do it on something in front of me?

I dont understand though what youdo with the older stuff that could not be mapped like the classic subarus etc??? What did you do with them oter than put an afternarket ecu on??? Is that just how it was...or did you edit the chips with a rom loader?? Thats getting wayyy above my head and knowledge...thats more computing as opposed to tuning i think which is more what you are into i think isnt it?

john banks

There are free hex editors online, but I would stay away from hex given what you've said. You want to select a car and a tuning package that is inexpensive or free, which is a popular tuner car to learn tuning. Since we are on a Subaru forum, then Romraider is a great place to start and the forums have tuning guides. The year of car will change which cable you need.

The classic Subarus up to 1998 had EEPROM chips that were replaceable. Some have made boards which simulate the chips so you can tune more easily. 99/00 are mainly Ecutek. Your cheapest tuning/car route of entry might be a 2001- Subaru for which you have cheap cables and readily available free software, definition files and forum experience.

Another thing to consider if EFI University. Or learn to program a standalone ECU. The tuning experience and your mechanical knowledge transfer, the individual platform and tools widely vary and this is why you need to focus on one car as you are not an IT nerd.

d.kenny

I think what your saying is what iv sort of come to terms with in the fact the more i look into it then the more programming focused it is and geeky it becomes

I like bolting stuff together and hammering it around a track but as time gos on even from a mechanical point of view you have got to start looking into the electrical side of things which is what im exploring and trying to learn

Iv got a megasquirt and a car to put it on albeit a nail but il feel like iv taken a big step up and understand the control side of it more if i get the car up and running and driveing well and if it makes more power than standard and i understand it il be happy

And i probably will get another later subaru and tactrix cable so i can experiment with maps on that aswell

It is hard work but if i crack it il be happy

Thanks for your advice and input...if you ever get into mapping cars again or have a car that you could show me a big about and the fundamentals of mapping and you dont mind showing me a few things id be keen to travel to you and learn a few things!

Cheers

john banks

Not done a megasquirt myself, but read a lot. Your main issues will be getting the electricals right, if I was doing one I would want something that is commonly megasquirted for forum support, with a well trodden path of sensors, especially trigger wheels. If the car already works on its standard management then that would surely help.

Altering the tune in an OEM ECU Subaru is much easier, harder stuff is drivability, starting etc rather than performance.

I could show you stuff on the GTR, but I'm in Scotland. You can see various tuning guides for many turbo engines that would give you a similar briefing, but there is no substitute for sitting in the car doing it.

d.kenny

Its a 1.8 focus zetec so pretty well supported i think haha

Shame your in scotland as in in the midlands

Subaru is definitely gonna happen i should think

Just looking into purchasing a tactrix cable now for when the time comes

Iv got a good few books im getting stuck into but i think reading it makes it out to be more complicated than what it probably would be in practise so il see what happens when i start doing it in reality and like you say if i get stuck there is support there

Il update this thread when i start doing a few bits and let you know how i get on and next time im acotland bound i may be in touch!

d.kenny

just purchased a tactrix cable in advance of buying a car and learning on

im looking to buy somethiing with full obd compatibility so i can reflash the ecu

iv been looking at early foresters 01/02 as romraider states these can be done however after doing a bit of digging around it turns out that not all edm foresters have full obd compatibility so can anyone confirm what years of foreter can be tuned by opensource and the tell tale signs when i go to purchase one or is it a case i need to get a late bug eye wrx as from what i believe all of these ecus can be accessed via obd?

cheers

Andy Stevens

Our manual gives a useful reference for classics, if you are interested in Subaru remapping it should prove interesting:

http://www.enduringsolutions.com/Manual.pdf

d.kenny

Yes i have had a good look through your products

Iv got a simtek on my classic and have bought a tactrix to try and gain some experience on an older obd equipped vehicle that i can run around in to as my classic is a track car

Do you have any ideas on what foresters etc are conpatible with my tactrix

Pretty impressed with some of the features of your ecu boards...good work haha

And without sounding like i wanna cream over you if i was to buy an ecu i think id be coming your way purely becase of the more diy approach and willingness to dish out info haha

Tidgy

O god, here we go again.

last person i know who did this ended up blowing up 7 of the 20 cars he mapped, takes years to learn under the wing of someone who knows what there doing, even some of the raved about mappers are totaly rubbish when you actualy go a look at what there doing and how the cars they map turn out.

d.kenny

So basically what you're saying is you CANNOT map a car unless someone with more experience shows you?

Thats a bit chixken and the egg isnt it?

How dd the raved about mappers learn? Do you have any experience of mapping cars?

Cheers

brendy76

iTrader: (6)

I went down the tactrix/romraider/ecuflash route and as long as you read plenty, make small changes, log/analyse, then read some more, you will be just fine.