He set up the SAFC and road tuned my car.

 

bout time...i basically have the same mods as you, minus the cam gears but i have the 10.5 hotside and im putting down 352 and my car pulls haard....

get your car dynoed again and tell us what your car is putting down now!

 

In you original post you indicated you dynoed your car at 310 whp on a Dynojet. Did you happen to dyno "tune" your car as well after the Dr. Gray tune? And if it did not feel like it pulled, you should have brought it up with Dr. Gray right then and there. I am sure he would have been happy to make a few more adjustments. The thing about his tuning for the average joe is that he wants a setting which not only makes power, but is also safe for the car.

 

do the cars you are referring to have 720 cc injectors and a Walbro fuel pump? This is going to be too far off the base map for the SAFC to be effective.

 

No, this is not true. The S-AFC becomes most effective when combined with a fuel pump and injectors. This is the standard path that the SoCal guys use (Dr Gray), because with the injectors, they are able to pull out ~20% fuel across the board, which gives back all that lost torque in the low-end/mid-range while giving great peak WHP. 720s do not put the S-AFC out of its adjustment range, but you can't go much higher than that.

Injectors are the key mod for S-AFC users to be able to regain the lost torque that flashes, standalones, and more advanced piggybacks are able to provide.

 

Right on!


As for the request for proof of SAFCII tuned cars not making torque, I am not sure what kind of proof you are looking for but will dyno graphs work for you?

http://www.socalevo.net/index.php?op...&topic=12590.0

and this:

http://www.socalevo.net/index.php?op...&topic=14883.0

(I guess 389 ft/lbs of torque is too little huh?)

I am not trying to say the SAFCII is the best tuning tool, but it is a tuning tool that works if done properly.

 

Fwiw, those are both on race gas. The S-AFC has no torque limitations when using race gas, because you get to pull fuel out like a madman. This is why I had so much fun on my nearly-stock 05 with just an SAFC, because I'd go to the track with almost no mods, toss in unleaded 104oct, crank the boost, and lean 'er out. That's how I ran 12.2s on the cat-back with stock cams/intake/piping/clutch/injectors. It was also much more fun on the street, because my torque matched my HP, but once I went back to 93, all the fun was gone. I maintained my peak whp, but lost 25-30 points of torque. It's just the nature of the beast.

Anyway, that first link shows 319/320 on pump gas, which is the more telling example. This one had the 720s, so it shows how you overcome the SAFCs main limitation when using upgraded injectors.

 

The SAFC is indescriminant with fuel adjustments though, it will adjust the MAF signal in both open loop and closed loop, so that when your cruising around not at WOT, the MAF signal will be about 20% lower than the ECU "thinks" it should be, even though it is running of the 02 sensor feedback and not the MAF. A long term fuel correction will be added to the base map because of this, and the ECU will "retune" itself with those correction factors. SAFC's work great if you play with the higher rpm range, the range where you see a lot of WOT operation and very little closed loop operation. Or at least that's how most ECU's work. The Mitsu may be different, but I doubt it. I'd love to be shown wrong, I'd go buy SAFC today for future mods (tweak kinda mods, not wholesale changes) instead of re-flashes. Warr, do you (or Dr. Gray) know this as fact?

 

Where'd you get that idea? The SAFC _IS_ discriminate. This is why it has separate low-throttle and hi-throttle settings as well as user-defined low-throttle/hi-throttle engagement points (mine are 25% low and 65% high). I always have my low-throttle set to 0% across the board, then I adjust my 4k-7.5k range on the hi-throttle settings.

Now, with injectors, you do have to pull fuel out on the low-throttle side for idle purposes, but there are many cars running S-AFCs with injectors with no adverse affects in closed loop. I am not educated enough to explain the low-throttle details of how the ECU handles closed loop with 20% fuel removed on the SAFC, but I'm sure one of Dr Gray's minions could explain it. All I know is it works and has worked for many years on DSMs. We didn't even have flashes back in the day...this was all we had for the average owner, and injector upgrades were much more common, since we only had 440s (or 450s).

 

I'm showing my age I guess, I haven't played with piggy back fuel controllers since they had maybe 5 rpm adjustment points (and this was only 5 yrs. or so), with no hi/lo throttle choices???? That's interesting, and could explain a lot of why it works, but how does the SAFC know throttle position? Or is it just determing "load" based on MAF output, and any low load output is considered low throttle?

 

Mine is 5 years old, but is the S-AFC with digital display, not the really old regular AFC with knobs.

It bases throttle settings off the throttle position (TPS). I set my low-throttle at 25% and hi-throttle at 65%. This means that the SAFC chooses my low-throttle fuel settings from 0-25% TPS, my hi-throttle fuel settings from 65-100% TPS, and averages the mout betwee 25-65%. Simple.

 

True, but the request was for proof of a SAFC tuned car without a flashed ECU. No mention was made about type of fuel. Regardless, those are respectable, if not great numbers regardless of type of tuning.

Here is another I ran across.

http://www.socalevo.net/index.php?op...&topic=16157.0

 

Yes, but once again, it has 720cc injectors. The vast majority of us don't want to have to upgrade injectors just to make our tuning device useful. That's an extra $350-400 on a complicated item that simply is not necessary with other tuning devices and shouldn't be necessary at all on the stock turbo. It really is a band-aid approach that is working, but is not really advisable. You can get the same gains with no injectors on a regular flash that doesn't require a wideband o2 purchase nor the purchase of a logging device, nor the purchase of a patch harness. I have been through all this and was about to get injectors for this very purpose, but it just didn't make sense. I couldn't justify upgrading a fuel-related part that works perfectly well on the stock turbo even up to 400whp just so that I could get my low-tech piggyback to work equivalently with basic flashes.

One other thing I have yet to see is a TT car hit trap speeds to match the dyno figures. I have not browsed through the SoCal examples, so I've only seen a few examples on here that did not quite match. One off the top of my head is Gonzo.

 

Warralton: So I am sure you understand that injectors and the SAFCII go hand in hand. You can get away with stock injectors, but for the full potential, bigger injectors are required to "fool" the ECU.

Also bear in mind (although I am sure you are also acutely aware), that the stock injectors operate near 100% on some flashes. That, in many people's eyes, is not safe should something go minutely wrong. Like I said, the SAFC is not perfect, but can work. And I am not here to argue that it is better than a flash, just a different viable option for Evo owners.

Comparing trap speeds is also tough as well, considering the altitude of our nearest track here in So. California. (correction could always be used but still not the same).
Oh and War, I am truly jealous of your 1/4 times and trap speeds. Good going. I wish I could get thos kind of numbers. My buddy trapped 113 mph on his 03 20G Evo with the old SAFC!

 

Not sure if this will help, but I'll throw it out there because I did it today -- I cleaned the MAF sensor on my 2003 Evo with electronic contact cleaner. Now, it feels like the car revs smoother and pulls a little harder. For me, the cause of the dirty MAF was oil from my air filter.