Dyno4mance Tests Factory Reflashes....
Jul 20, 2008, 06:03 PM
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Dyno4mance Tests Factory Reflashes....
Well,
There has been a lot of information and speculation floating around about the power gains associated with the factory reflashes issued by mitsubishi over the past several months. As we just cracked 500 miles on our newest shop car, we decided to put an end to the speculation and provide some real numbers for you guys.
The process was as follows:
- Flash the image
- Run the car
- let the car idle for about 1 minute
- Flash the next image
Reflashing takes just about five minutes, so there is about 6 or 7 minutes between runs. All runs were done on a fresh tank of BP 93 from early saturday morning.
First up was the as delivered flash, or revision 0, for the us model GSR. In the graphs that follow this is run 001, or the red lines. Next up was the first factory reflash, or revision 1. Revision 1 is run 002, or the blue lines on the plots. Finally we flashed in the second factory reflash, or revision 2. This is run 003 or the green lines on the plots.
As you can see, the 2nd factory reflash does pickup a little bit of power by some slight leaning up to about 6200 rpm. Nothing major but if your dealer is close and easy to work with, go ahead and get the 2nd reflash if you have not already done so.
Once we finished with the factory reflashes, we flashed in our base map for stock vehicles. This represents the starting point for custom tuning and in most cases there will be another 5 to 10 whp left to be extracted from additional fine tuning:
We did not have time to do any further fine tuning because we had to get the car off the dyno and onto the lift, get the exhaust cooled, and get the Ultimate Racing turboback installed before our first tuning appointment showed up.
Our current plan at this point is to go back to the untuned second factory reflash after every hardware upgrade before custom tuning so we can show everyone what gains you can expect from various hardware alone and with custom tuning.
Next week will be the Ultimate Racing turbo back (with metal substraight cat) and possibly a full set of Nisei pipe (hot pipe, lower pipe, and intake only pipe) provided they get them shipped out in time.
[2008-07-27]
This week we did some testing with the Ultimate Racing Turbo Back. This one is equiped with the metal substraight cat. The following plot shows Power and Torques for the baseline 2nd factory reflash (purple), 2nd factory reflash and TurboBack (red), and TurboBack plus tuning (blue). One thing we noticed right away is that the power falls of after 7,000, this is something we did not see on the last car we tuned with the ultimate turboback with mini muffler testpipe (Noizes car). His car pulled all the way to the 7800 rpm rev limit without dropping more than 1 or 2 whp. We will be replacing the cat with the testpipe next weekend to see if this is the reason. Like last time, the runs were done with about 6 minutes between them for the tuned Vs un tuned. The baseline is the same run we used last time (run 3)
There has been a lot of information and speculation floating around about the power gains associated with the factory reflashes issued by mitsubishi over the past several months. As we just cracked 500 miles on our newest shop car, we decided to put an end to the speculation and provide some real numbers for you guys.
The process was as follows:
- Flash the image
- Run the car
- let the car idle for about 1 minute
- Flash the next image
Reflashing takes just about five minutes, so there is about 6 or 7 minutes between runs. All runs were done on a fresh tank of BP 93 from early saturday morning.
First up was the as delivered flash, or revision 0, for the us model GSR. In the graphs that follow this is run 001, or the red lines. Next up was the first factory reflash, or revision 1. Revision 1 is run 002, or the blue lines on the plots. Finally we flashed in the second factory reflash, or revision 2. This is run 003 or the green lines on the plots.
As you can see, the 2nd factory reflash does pickup a little bit of power by some slight leaning up to about 6200 rpm. Nothing major but if your dealer is close and easy to work with, go ahead and get the 2nd reflash if you have not already done so.
Once we finished with the factory reflashes, we flashed in our base map for stock vehicles. This represents the starting point for custom tuning and in most cases there will be another 5 to 10 whp left to be extracted from additional fine tuning:
We did not have time to do any further fine tuning because we had to get the car off the dyno and onto the lift, get the exhaust cooled, and get the Ultimate Racing turboback installed before our first tuning appointment showed up.
Our current plan at this point is to go back to the untuned second factory reflash after every hardware upgrade before custom tuning so we can show everyone what gains you can expect from various hardware alone and with custom tuning.
Next week will be the Ultimate Racing turbo back (with metal substraight cat) and possibly a full set of Nisei pipe (hot pipe, lower pipe, and intake only pipe) provided they get them shipped out in time.
[2008-07-27]
This week we did some testing with the Ultimate Racing Turbo Back. This one is equiped with the metal substraight cat. The following plot shows Power and Torques for the baseline 2nd factory reflash (purple), 2nd factory reflash and TurboBack (red), and TurboBack plus tuning (blue). One thing we noticed right away is that the power falls of after 7,000, this is something we did not see on the last car we tuned with the ultimate turboback with mini muffler testpipe (Noizes car). His car pulled all the way to the 7800 rpm rev limit without dropping more than 1 or 2 whp. We will be replacing the cat with the testpipe next weekend to see if this is the reason. Like last time, the runs were done with about 6 minutes between them for the tuned Vs un tuned. The baseline is the same run we used last time (run 3)
Last edited by Dyno4mance; Jul 27, 2008 at 03:41 PM. Reason: updated image links
Jul 20, 2008, 08:59 PM
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Can't see the graphs...but what is the bottom line...is the 2nd flash even worth the time? I had the 1st flash and didn't notice any huge difference, maybe 1mpg more and it eliminated the stutter up top.
Jul 21, 2008, 06:14 AM
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Interesting results. I live in Bham and may need to schedule an appointment soon to get ecuflashed 
I like the idea of getting a flash and driving the car the same day.
I like the idea of getting a flash and driving the car the same day.
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Jul 21, 2008, 09:21 AM
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Bruce, So it appears the OEM flashes cure low end problems, e.g., idle but yeild only small increases up top. ECUTec tune yeilded ~47 whp in bone stock form which is probably within the margin of error of what others have found ~50-55 which shows again that a tune is by far the best performance mod you can buy!
Also, your approach to methodically adding each physical mod relative to the base tune is what everybody would like to see so that each can develop their own strategies to building power. In fact, it would be interesting to develop a flow chart with corresponding costs of different directions in power developement. Many tuners offer different stages to achieve more horsepower like jumping immediately to a larger turbo, etc. while others have taken more conservative approaches and sometimes achieved similar power outputs. But I guess this is what tuning strategies are all about!
In any event, what you are doing is definitely going in the right direction
Later, Ken
Also, your approach to methodically adding each physical mod relative to the base tune is what everybody would like to see so that each can develop their own strategies to building power. In fact, it would be interesting to develop a flow chart with corresponding costs of different directions in power developement. Many tuners offer different stages to achieve more horsepower like jumping immediately to a larger turbo, etc. while others have taken more conservative approaches and sometimes achieved similar power outputs. But I guess this is what tuning strategies are all about!
In any event, what you are doing is definitely going in the right direction
Later, Ken
Last edited by KPerez; Jul 21, 2008 at 09:25 AM.
Jul 21, 2008, 10:27 AM
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Bruce, So it appears the OEM flashes cure low end problems, e.g., idle but yeild only small increases up top. ECUTec tune yeilded ~47 whp in bone stock form which is probably within the margin of error of what others have found ~50-55 which shows again that a tune is by far the best performance mod you can buy!
Also, your approach to methodically adding each physical mod relative to the base tune is what everybody would like to see so that each can develop their own strategies to building power. In fact, it would be interesting to develop a flow chart with corresponding costs of different directions in power developement. Many tuners offer different stages to achieve more horsepower like jumping immediately to a larger turbo, etc. while others have taken more conservative approaches and sometimes achieved similar power outputs. But I guess this is what tuning strategies are all about!
In any event, what you are doing is definitely going in the right direction
Later, Ken
Also, your approach to methodically adding each physical mod relative to the base tune is what everybody would like to see so that each can develop their own strategies to building power. In fact, it would be interesting to develop a flow chart with corresponding costs of different directions in power developement. Many tuners offer different stages to achieve more horsepower like jumping immediately to a larger turbo, etc. while others have taken more conservative approaches and sometimes achieved similar power outputs. But I guess this is what tuning strategies are all about!
In any event, what you are doing is definitely going in the right direction
Later, Ken
There will come a time (fairly soon) where it will not be feasible to go back to the 2nd factory reflash. Once we add injectors and fuel pump it just won't be possible to go back for comparison. But, we should have enough data at that point to extrapolate a bit.
Until that time.. we plan on going back to the latest factory reflash with each hardware change.
Jul 21, 2008, 01:32 PM
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The only thing I'm wondering is this... Looking at Flash "0" on the graph, it looks like the car is running smoothly all the way to redline. Was it having the hesitation problem on the dyno? I'm sure this hesitation would show up on the graph at least with a small dip in power, right? So could it be possible that the dealer reflashes could show greater gains from the base flash in vehicles that had the severe hesitation problem?
Jul 21, 2008, 01:40 PM
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The only thing I'm wondering is this... Looking at Flash "0" on the graph, it looks like the car is running smoothly all the way to redline. Was it having the hesitation problem on the dyno? I'm sure this hesitation would show up on the graph at least with a small dip in power, right? So could it be possible that the dealer reflashes could show greater gains from the base flash in vehicles that had the severe hesitation problem?