Might be worthwhile to talk to English Racing or one of the other suppliers. Last I heard was that ACD Tuning was able to put up to 6 maps on the stock ECU. I wouldn't consider stock map(s) to be useful at all but may be 2 different levels of aggressiveness in addition to the tarmac, gravel, snow would definitely be nice.

 

I cant do 6 maps on the same ACD computer but we have been spending a bunch of time with both Autocrossers and Road Race guys to get the maps dialed over the last 2 years. The same maps we use on the track are the ones we test on the street and so far it all seems to do exactly what we are wanting it to.

 

The race flash.

I dunno, maybe I'm driving my evo incorrectly?

 

added English to the list of acd tuning shops available. I'll be testing this out myself shortly I believe. I have no idea if Gruppe-S is still in business, and given ACD Tuning's current reputation here, I'm glad evos have another option to try.

::
lol someone literally copy-pasted my post from way back and posted it as their own on some lancer tuner forum... http://www.lancertuners.com/mitsubis...ead.php?t=9531

 

Imitation is the highest form of flattery Kyoo.

Gruppe-S is still in business I believe. They aren't terribly far from me either.




I only really noticed when I was actually driving the car hard, like at the road course or autox. Ive been told my butt dyno is way out of calibration, so maybe that's why I don't really notice much on the streets.

 

Best lap from 5/3/14:


2:25.08

 

Got a chance to test out Aaron's ACD flash to compare with the old ACD Tuning flash I have. I ran it Saturday with some worn 285 R1-s tires and Sunday on Dunlop ZII's. Skip to the end for a quick conclusion.

My experience on the old flash has always been that the only way to get it to work was to set up the car as loose a possible and use the ACD tune's progressively tighter settings to get the car stabilized. Overall though, I wasn't fully convinced with that setup and didn't really feed like I ever got faster with it. I tried, honestly, it just hasn't worked out quite right for me. I never got extra rotation with it either, actually it was quite the opposite for me and caused more of a mid corner push.

On to my experience with Aarons tune. I have 3 settings, Stock, medium tune, heavy tune. Saturday I ran my worn 285 BFG R1-s and Sunday ran 255 Dunlop ZII's with my wife as my co-driver both days. I'm also playing with some bar setups and had a bit too much rear bar so it explains some of my huge rotation.

Saturday Run1 - Ran the stock tune which I haven't run in quite a while as the ACD tuning medium setting seemed to be my favorite of what I had to get more lockup but mid-corner always suffered. The completely stock setting really doesn't like to put power down pulling out of corners with a lot of either front or rear wheel spin. Its just a bit skatey if that makes sense. I would say it feels like not a lot is happening with the diff.

Run 2 - Changed to the medium tune. First thought, Whoa, that's different. Throttling out of corners the lockup seems to hold much harder and the rotation was far more predictable. Before it was easy to control and catch when I needed to, but this time I was like I didn't have to. Hard to explain really, it just loved some heavy throttle in a way the stock tuned didn't.

Mid corner, I went from a somewhat neutral to slight understeer to steady state rotation. "WTF, how is this happening" (My reaction mid course). I really didn't expect the car to actually start sliding sideway mid corner. But it wasn't in a bad way. I was turning into a decreasing radius turn on a large sweeper and with the rear just floating around "For" me to get around the pinch cone. As the car floated around and I needed to accelerate I just counter steered a bit and rolled on throttle. The car straightened out and just shot forward with ease. It was awesome!

Run 3 - Tried out the heavy setting. Ok, now my rear bar is way to stiff cause combined with this I could not keep the back end behind me. Mid corner, slalom, corner exit, everywhere! Any question on if this tune is helping the car rotate was settled for me right away. You want want a hair raising autoX run, Big bars plus this tune, DONE. Im gonna try this again with a softer rear bar, but I almost want to run the car like it was again because it was so much chaotic fun.

Following trying the three settings I ran the middle tune the final 2 runs. The car in general wasn't working real well with the excessively stiff rear bar, front rub caused by reduced front caster (AST to Ohlin change lost caster in the tophats), and 100+ run BFG R1s tires. But the change with the diff was immediately noticeable in improving things. The car absolutely did not like stock but it was completely drivable in the middle setting.

Sunday had a big prediction of rain so I removed a rear swaybar link (so no rear bar at all), softened the front bar to full soft, and tossed on the ZII's in preparation for rain.

Run 1 - Went back to stock setting. Ground was pretty damp at this point so right at that greasy stage. Pulling out of corners we really didn't know if the front was going to step spin the wheels or the rear. Really felt like the diff just wasn't doing much of anything. Any where on course you'd think we weren't in an AWD car at all

Run 2 - Went back to out favorite medium setting and surprisingly the car worked pretty dang good. The rain stopped and we had drying conditions and while mid corner I didn't have rotation without the rear bar, it also didn't push either. Throttle out of corner was where this shined. It just kicked out a small amount, held, and went. So much smoother and predictable than how the stock map puts down power.

Run 3 & 4 - Well, I'm kicking myself in this moment of reflection for not trying more than the medium setting. It was working fine and the wife was happy with how it handled that I decided to run it as a consistent car and what we could get out of it. I think I had top time of the morning since the sun poked out and dried things up, not bad for street tires and no rear swaybar.

Conclusion: I really need another day testing this when I swap back to my old bar setup but I can say for sure this is massively promising for me. I think I might have to get a light - med - heavy flash combo cause stock is completely useless at this point. I know a couple of the things Aaron does on the tune and with that, I can understand why stock turns to crap in certain situations.

If you are thinking of getting an ACD flash or the Rear diff mod, thats a hard question to answer. I have both, and I think I would recommend to fix the diff first only to get the mechanical bits fixed first and then use the ACD flash to balance things. It will also give Aaron a chance with a couple of the local NW guys to figure out a few more things before this just becomes the defacto ACD tune. Though if you want something now to try out, It works and damn well at that

 

Great review. FWIW, I have the exact same impression from both the Gruppe-S tune and ACD Tuning's tune. This kind of weird, binding understeery feel on turn in - Dallas J and I briefly discussed it, and there was a "work around" to it.

Glad to hear this new ACD tune is better - I think English Tuning have unlocked what I was thinking of when I first made this thread. All the overseas guys insisted unlocking the handling magic was in tuning the ACD and disabling AYC - looks like we're catching up a little. I'll be testing this new ACD very shortly, can't wait to see how it performs!

 

Thanks, I think you'll see the same things I did since we were a bit on the short side of the success rate with the old flashes. This one was massively noticeable to even my wife who just wants the car to be stable (She doesn't like oversteer, silly girl). She drives just short of the limit and less throttle coming out of corners and can stay planted the entire run with ~3sec slower times.

 

Thanks for the review Dallas, let's me know what direction to push and keep the fine tuning going. I think some cars will end up with a completely different "base" flash because of the current settings rather than have the car back track on mods.

 

Nice thread kyoo! Thanks

 

Bump any updates on this? I was anticipating reviews from folks who have tried the English Racing ACD flash.

I've been entertaining the idea for a few years now but figured I would take care of the essentials first. At this point I've got various bushings, TRE rear diff, Ohlins, bars etc.

Dallas-How has it been working out for you?

Does anyone else have feedback? What did you like? What needs improvement?

 

I still have the Gruppe-S race flash. I will be heading out to track the evo soon and am interested in doing a comparison of these two flashes on the same track. Maybe after I come back from getting a baseline with my current acd tune I can get the English Racing acd flash and compare, from my setup. It would be amazing if the ER race flash is better than the Gruppe-S. My only beef is the binding issue, but that only occurs in low speed autox courses. Im getting a fair amount of corner exit oversteer, and I have the stock rear swaybar.

 

^ The low speed binding was definitely an issue with the ACD-Tuning flash which just made for understeer. The ER flash goes the otherway though, more lockup at higher throttle and speed. BrianAWD on here got to try the ER heaviest map on his street tired evo and it went from being a pretty neutral car with some throttle rotation to spin-city. He literally could not complete a run without the car nearly spinning and having to skip gates to not kill cones.

He really needed the mid-setting but we were testing things and he didn't have that available. For cold race tires or street tires, the low and mid setting are great. With hot race tires the high setting gives me a ton of mid to exit rotation and definitely keeps me on my toes driving. That said, Its been worth some significant time in my case. Hard to quantify how much because its course dependent but with late corner rotation I can lift for rotation and roll on throttle much earlier so less boost lag, earlier acceleration, and tighter lines in many needed places.

 

First track event is 8/30.