Without any really experianced Evo tuners, that I am aware of, where I live I am curious as to what numbers and 1/4 mile times people are getting with there UTEC's installed and what, if any, the improvment was. I will start with the list of things I have and my before and after results, just be mindful that I started this whole thing off stating that I dont have any really experianced Evo tuners around me.

I have installed in the car right now:

ARC Induction Box
Perrin 3in Exhaust with Downpipe
Perrin Manual Boost Controller set to 20psi
TurboXS UTEC
Walbro 255lb Fuel Pump

Before we installed the UTEC I had the same things listed above running at 18psi and ran 13.4 sec @ 102.98 with a 1.88 60ft time. The dyno had me at 277.9 WHP and 244 TQ. The air temp was 57 degrees.

After installing the UTEC (It was about 3 weeks since I was last at the dyno) the new numbers are as follows:
269.5 WHP and 229.3 TQ but A/F was at 14.5 when we first hooked up the Wideband so we needed to get the car running in a safer A/F. Its now running 11.5, glad I didnt blow the car when running the 1/4 before. The new 1/4 mile time was 13.5 @ 103.18 with a 1.99 60ft time. Didnt have time to get more runs it was late but the Auto Launch and Flat foot shifting is cool. I just need to learn how to utilize it better. The air temp was 72 degrees

So is this in the correct area for what I should expect? Anyone else out there with similar setups as mine seeing better / worse? I am experiancing some driveability issues with the UTEC right now but we havent been able to do much road tuning yet. Once we get that done I expect to see the driveability issues go away. For those that want to know the car jumps when slowely accelerating or when going WOT at around 2500 rpms in 4th or 5th gear. It really shakes the car actually kind of scarey.

I can post time slips and Dyno charts if you are interested. Curious as to why my Torque curve is so different from all the other dyno sheets Ive seen anyway.

 

Stop NOW! You have something seriously wrong. No one is seeing those sorts of AFR numbers when they plug in the UTEC, so I have to wonder what exactly is wrong with your setup.

The amount of MAF frequency we are pulling away from the stock map is actually quite small so that alone is not going to cause such a drastic lean condition.

You need to start looking for intake leaks and you need to check your FPR hoses.

Who tuned the car? If it's the PDX guys, have them call me this morning.

-Nathan
www.turboxs.com

 

Its possible the Aftermarket exhaust, boost controller, and ARC box.. I'm not certain what hardware the UTEC is baselined for..

 

We will be looking for intake leaks tonight to see what we can find. Just one extra note here. Before loading the base map that comes with the UTEC I guess the AFR readings were around 13's. Then once the Map was loaded thats when it jumped to 14's. Is it possible that the ARC induction box is just a bad design? Anyone else have one of these installed?

I am also having serious driveability issues now. The car stalled at 2000 RPM's on the way to work today and actually died on me. I took the car back home and it stalled out 2 more times and there is some serious lurching in the vehicle just when doing slow accelerations. Hopefully we can figure out what the cause is tonight.

 

Pull your UTEC out and go back to the stock ECU. Log your AFR under WOT and report back.

 

We are going to just re-tune the whole car tonight with the stock air box back in. After doing some research on the ARC and other intakes it appears that they are causing lean conditions and making it difficult to tune. The stock air box was designed the way it was for a reason and the MAF was set to work with air flows coming through in a specific manner. It has also been reported by several people that they have lost power when changing intakes and that they had a hard time trying to re-tune the car to run properly with the intakes.

To answer you next question. The first run we did with Wideband attached and the UTEC doing nothing we were getting 13's for the AFR. I truley dont believe that the UTEC is causing any of these problems. I think the problem is trying to figure out what how to tune the car to the ARC intake. Quite honestly I dont think its worth the time and I am going back to stock box with drop in K&N air filters since they have provided the most consistent results without causing lean conditions and hours of ECU tuning.

I will report back tonight however with the results. And Nathan, I really appreciate your concern on this matter and I think it really shows your commitment to your product.

Launch control kicks **** btw =)

 

I just talked to both Jeff and Mick, so I have a much better understanding of what's happening in your situation.

I think Mick will post some thoughts here after he has a chance to talk to you.

On your dyno numbers, it's my understanding that a baseline was done the day you had your UTEC tuned. That baseline was in the 250whp range. From what Mick and Jeff told me, the dyno has been re-calibrated since you were on it last.

If there is anything I can do to help you get your car straight please don’t hesitate to ask. The PDX guys can also contact me at any time.

Have you tried the flat-shift feature yet?

-Nathan
www.turboxs.com

 

Hey Chris,


I just called Nathan, as did Mick. It does appear that the ARC air box has some effect on the MAF sensor. With the UTEC, we were able to correct that effect (thus the car is no longer running 13:1 AFRs under boost.

A couple of things about the power differential:

(1) The dyno was recalibrated from when you did your previous reading, and that was the primary difference in power. The dyno had been recalibrated a month earilier (before you previous runs), but the load measurement mechanism came loose and moved , offsetting all of the values. All of the cars we have ran since the recalibration were lower in power, and much closer to the power levels of several months before.

We believe the dyno is now closer to what it was a few months ago when Shiv was onsite tuning. If my memory serves me right, most of the Stage 1ish (exhaust, intake and Xede) cars were doing right around the 250s whp. (Shiv might be able to comment if he remembers).

(2) After completing the dyno session, we installed a secondary boost gauge and determined that your Defi boost gauge was reading high by almost 2 pounds. As a result, we were tuning at 18psi, not 19-20psi. I should have noticed this, as I have found that the Defi Boost Gauges all ready a significant amount higher. In my subaru, it regularly hits 26psi, when I am really only at 23-24psi.

It is often difficult to gauge the power differences across different dynos. It is even more difficult to determine which dyno is correct. Looking at the trap speed can be helpful, but you also have to factor in differences in temperature, etc.

Either way, we are looking forward to getting your car tuned to the best that it can be.

Jeff Sponaugle
PDXTuning
jsponaugle@pdxtuning.com

 

Crap..I'm installing my UTEC as we speak and I have an ARC Induction box. Should I be concerned?

I'm taking my car to TurboXS on Friday for tuning..

 

Any aftermarket air filter fouls with the MAF Sensor a little.. Its important that if you keep it installed, that you need to adjust your settings slightly to compensate for it.. In other words, there is a chance that it can cause a slight lean condition, but it can be fixed fairly easily, but requires a little tuning knowledge and a wideband to be safe..

 

Looks like Jeff beat me to the reply and has covered most of the points.

On the technical aspects the ARC intake did lean out the car a lot. Check out the AFR's from this first log. This is with the UTEC is bypass or stock mode. Stock ECU is doing everything... Sorry the formating maybe a little off. 12.78 under full boost, not nice.

Now a small extract from one of the UTEC dyno tuned logs:

We will be checking the Short Term and Long Term fuel trims this evening. I expect that due to the intake they are drifting. These trim values effect how the car runs under ECU control and can effect the UTEC tune as well. If they are drifting we will place values in the 0% UTEC load column to compensate.

The 0% fuel column MAF modification will fool the ECU into thinking that more air is flowing into the car that the MAF is reading dues to the intake. The result will be that the trims will no longer drift, the ECU will also run the correct timing for that mass of air.

More info will be posted when we make these changes.

If you have the ARC intake you will have to modify the TXS base map otherwise you will be running lean.

Mick Posner
PDXTuning
mposner@pdxtuining.com

 

Whoops, I just re-read my original post and I really did forget to talk about the dyno numbers. I have a better understanding now of what was happening with the dyno then I did when I wrote this last night but I wanted to mention that I did not perceive that installing the UTEC robbed me of any power. The car did not feel less powerful by any means. It was clear to me that the Dyno had been recalibrated and this had somehow changed the numbers from before. The nice thing was that everyone that was running that had run before was showing lower numbers so it didnt really concern me. Dyno's are strange beasts anyway. I still dont understand how anyone can be sure of there numbers when each device measures things differently and there doesnt appear to be any agreed upon standard for measurements between the various shops. This is why we have peeps posting 20 to 40 WHP higher then others with the same mods IMHO.

Anyway, PDXTuning has been talking to me all day about everything and we are going to work on it a bit tonight and see if we can resolve the driveability issues and hopefully get rid of the car stalling around 2000rpms in second and dying on me occasionally.

And yes, I did try the flat footed shifting. It was very awkward to not ever take your foot of the pedal and will take me sometime to get used too but man what a sweet feature. The only thing that I stumble on the most is it kicks in the microsecond you touch the clutch and since the clutch doesnt engage, for me, until about half way down it sometimes jerks me around a bit. Is there a way to set a delay on the inj control to compensate for the sensitivity of the clutch switch?

 

Well Mick and Jeff from PDXTuning went to work on the car tonight and they were able to get a full turn around on the driveability issues! The car runs really smooth now and I didnt have any shudders at the low or mid-rpms that I had earlier in the day. Still a little work to be done yet in some other areas but overall the car is running %100 better!! Kudos to PDXTuning for immediately addressing the issue and working late at night around my schedule to solve the issue!!!

 

Good to hear that!

BTW, is this done with or w/out the ARC intake box?

 

There might be a mechanical adjustment you can make to the clutch switch. We also may be able to put a user definable time delay for when the LC is activated after the clutch switch is depressed. I'll talk to the guys in AUS about this and see if we can get it in the next major UTEC software revision.

-Nathan