This Evo 9 is an interesting test case. It was tuned on a Dynojet dyno in SoCal. It had the following mods:

TBE with HFC
Invidia O2 housing
Drop-in filter
Walbro FP
Dejon Tool MBC

The owner wanted me to log it for him to see if his tune was OK. I asked him if the car had a bung from which I can get AFR readings. He told me that the shop he took the car to installed a bung on the exhaust. I figured that they installed it before the Cat at the end of the down pipe. I look for it there, but I do not find it. I was confused. Where is the bung? I look after the Cat and I find that they installed the bung behind the Cat on top of the exhaust mid pipe. Take a look:



Basically, the bung could not be used. So we had to head over to an exhaust shop and install a bung at the end of the down pipe, passenger side in the 3 o’clock position. Moreover, the HFC had 2 pinhole exhaust leaks that were fixed by the muffler shop. The owner told the shop about them, but the shop insisted that there were no leaks. How they missed the black soot marks is beyond me.

So how was this car tuned? I have seen a lot of timing biased tunes, but this one wins hands down. The tuner wanted to force the following timing profile down this Evo’s throat:

1500-3500 rpm---5* (block tuned from load cell 160 to 300)
4000-5000 rpm---6* (block tuned from load cell 180 to 300)
5500 rpm----------7*
6000 rpm----------8*
6500 rpm----------11* (an increase of 3*)
7000 rpm----------14* (an increase of 3*)
7500 rpm----------16*

To achieve the above the tuner was forced to run the car really rich. How rich? As rich as a stock Evo. At peak boost the target AFR was set to 7.4 and the knock prone segment of the power band had a target AFR of 8.5. That is so damned rich. But despite all the fuel that the tuner poured on into the cylinders the car still knocked. It did not matter. The ECU simply did not want that kind of timing and was protecting the engine by retarding the timing. Here are the AFR, boost, and knock tables of 4 back-to-back runs.



With the exception of the 7000-7500 rpm section of the power band, the car ran as rich as a stock Evo. It was amazing to see an Evo tuned like this. Average peak boost hit 22.38 psi. The car knocked practically everywhere: 3-4 counts at mid range and 8-9 counts from 6500 rpm to redline/cutoff. This fact helped me prove a hypothesis that I have always thought of: No matter how rich you run an Evo, it will still knock if the timing is too advanced. Don’t waste your time and run an Evo rich in order to get away with advanced timing. It is not going to work. If anything that strategy can be counter productive and produce rich knock.

The owner wanted me to tune the car as is. Loving the challenge, I agreed. We yanked the Dejon Tool and returned to ECU boost control with the #65 pill. After four tuning sessions, these are the AFR, boost, and knock numbers that the car ended with:



The AFR was leaned by almost 1 full point across the power band. The car’s gas consumption was significantly reduced during WOT operation. We noticed that gas needle did not drop as much as before. The boost was slightly dropped to an average peak of 21.94 psi and was tapered to 19 psi by redline. IMO, there is no point in running more boost than this by redline. The timing was set as follows:



With this timing profile, the knock was drastically reduced to 1 count at the top end every now and then and 1-2 counts in the mid-range. I tried to advance the timing beyond 9-10* at the top end, but the car registered 3-5 counts of knock. So I backed off the timing to 9-10* and left it there.

Moreover, with this car I was able to tune boost to be pretty much the same in 3rd and 4th gear. We could not log 4th gear all the way to redline because that will give us speeds of 113 mph on the freeway, so we settled on 3000 to 6000 rpm bursts.



The nice thing is that the car produced almost the same power output with this balanced tune as with the timing biased tune. And it produced power without knocking and without wasting gas. Take a look:




But wait…there is more.

After I tuned the car with an HFC, I felt that the car was not taking full advantage of the O2 housing. I felt that the higher airflow through the O2 housing was being restricted by the HFC. It did not make sense to free one restriction upstream in the exhaust flow and then keep another restriction downstream in the exhaust flow. So I suggested to the owner to switch to a test pipe and slightly adjust the tune.

The power gains from the test pipe were very nice indeed. Basically the test pipe did double duty: it allowed us to take full advantage of the O2 housing better airflow and added more flow by removing the restrictive HFC. Take a look at the power curve:




The gains are everywhere from 3500 rpm all the way to redline. The gains are especially pronounced in the mid range of the power band. The average hp and torque gain from 4300-6000 rpm was 12.8 hp and 8.2 ftlb. The peak gain at around 6000 rpm was even more stunning: 21.3 hp and 16.2 ftlb of torque.

The car would simply pull all the way to cutoff without any hesitation. So the lesson from this is not to remove one airflow restriction and add another restriction downstream from it.

 

Nj, you're damn good. can I say the name of the shop? i really, really wanted to.

 

I am just an amateur Let us keep the name out of it

 

91 octane FTL! Those were some insane timing goals for 91! I can squeeze out 4* peak load to 16* at 7500rpm and a hair more boost but thats with 93 and lots of tweaking(self tuning I did after the dyno tuning by turbotrix). A reliable tune is better than an aggressive tune any day. Good job man.

 

Evo 9's also take much less timing up top than Evo 8's. I see you have a 8 according to your avatar.

 

That I do, also listed under what I drive,lol. I totally overlooked it was a IX he tuned....its 3am here

 

thats aggressive timing for 93 octane... cant imagine trying to run that on 91.

 

Agreed...but that particular shop seems to think that it is all in the timing advance. The attitude is, if a little timing advance is good, then a lot of timing advance must be better. There is no regard to the concept of MTBT (minimum timing best torque). This is what Klaus Almendinger (VP of Innovate) named Bubba tuning.

Check out this funny quote from Klaus:

Hi,

I think the "more advance makes more power" originated with mechanic "Bubba" in the 1950s. Working on a customers 55 Chevy he found when he rotated the (centrifugal advance) distributor to advance a few degrees it ran faster, hence:

"Them engines make more powa when you advance more, and more is betta, what do them thar damn engineers at GM know. That electricity from that there coil goes into the engine and mixes with the gas and that makes the pistin jump jus' like you jump when you touch the raw plug wire. Putting it in earlier the engine is ahead of the wheels more and that makes more powa. And here's another trick: if you then also put big wheels in the back and small ones in the front the engine thinks is going downhill and therefore uses less gas because all cars use less gas downhill.
Now I only need to find out how they make red, green and yellow electricity for them traffic lights."

Worked fine until the car went up a steep hill in the summer. An engine rebuilt then every 10-15k miles was then just more money into Bubbas pocket.
From there the myth spread that "more advance makes more power", so if a little more is good, much more is better, just like money. So some people are now pouring fuel into the engine so they can run "more advance".

Regards,
Klaus

 

I want to thank you Nj for your great tune, the car is running just amazing. Unfortunately driving home last night there was quite a bit of traffic, so I couldn't punch it, but let me tell you guys, this car is running so smooth and feels like it wants to go all the time without any effort. By the way, the car in this write up is mine. GREAT JOB NJ AND THANK YOU VERY MUCH for a fantastic tune.

 

Your welcome. Glad I was able to help you out. BTW, you need to change what you drive under your name. It still says that you drive an 05 STI

 

nice that nj helps others +1

 

I hope the shop isn't RRE? I've had my IX tuned there and never hear from others with the same tuner.

 

 

AFAIK, RRE does not tune on a dyno. The reason you never hear about bad tunes on SoCal Evo is because you get banned if you speak out. I have been threatened with a ban multiple times, so I stopped posting about the bad tunes that I fixed. Had I posted this thread on SoCal Evo, I would have been immediately banned.

 

Your right, they Street Tune with Scot Grey. I've never heard anything bad about his tunes, but then again, I've never had anyone else look at the tune. What area are you in? Pm if you want.