ecu tuning for these?

[Oppenheimer]

I can't imagine that if I'm willing to build my own car, I would be too scared to try and tune it myself - after reading and research.

Different people have different skills. Lots of guys are totally up for building their own car, but are intimidated by doing any of the electrical work. There are guys with lots of experience rebuilding motors that won't open up an automatic trans.

[Xusia]

Indeed. I'd feel completely comfortable doing any and all electrical work - including wiring my own harness if I had to - but I wouldn't crack open the engine to change the oil (OK, I could probably change the oil, but that's about it!). I used tuning software on motorcycles for years, but not knowing the nuances of the Subaru hardware, and the effect some changes may have, leaves me feeling trepidatious about making certain changes myself.

[BrandonDrums]

Well, I tuned my own car, had a blast and learned a lot. Got addicted to driving around with my laptop plugged in all the time. I've gotten comfortable doing everything outside of the engine and transmission.

But after lots of abuse my rod bearing gave out. Preeeeeettty dang common on these engines with stock rod bearings I have learned. I had a cracked oil feed line for my turbo a couple months back and the damage was done. The engine lasted a few months and gave out. It wasn't the tune, the rod bearing just gave out randomly on a normal drive home from work.

Anyway, us DIY guys have a lot of risk to bare. Who knows what caused my bearing failure but I see it as an opportunity to learn how to rebuild my engine.

My point is, everyone is afraid of things but sometimes if you want to learn something you have to just jump in and be prepared to make some mistakes and treat them as learning opportunities.

Having failed my first engine (one way or another) I am hoping I can pop out with more knowledge so I can keep it from happening again. There's no "professional" tuner/tech/driver who hasn't made big mistakes.

So, jump in if you dare. I reccommend it, it's so much easier being mad at yourself and learning something than being mad at someone you gave money to and learned nothing.

[3000gttom]

i was nervous when i reflashed my 3000gt ecu. mostly because the definition file i made my self and i really have minimal software experience... but im glad i did because now i am the only person on the planet who has files for flashing n/a 3000gt cars and i gained a lot of top end power from it... if the car is being built from the ground up, why not experiment a little and tune it yourself

[Rarytas]

there's one company which i forgot the name of, a vendor on 2.5rs.com that sells pre mapped ECU's with Anti-Lag

[longislandwrx]

there's one company which i forgot the name of, a vendor on 2.5rs.com that sells pre mapped ECU's with Anti-Lag

IMHO doesn't seem like a good idea on this car though.

[RCKSTR]

Subaru computers are finicky, best bet is to bring it to a tuner and let them deal with it. People open-source tune these for anywhere from $250-500ish. Another route you could take would be the Cobb Accessport but you'd still need to be protuned afterwards, even with just the basic mods it is a safe thing to do. Cobb tends to run their maps a little rich for the "off the shelf maps" since they try to make them for a wide range of "stages"

In New England there are quite a few tuners to talk to, Bren Tuning, Kinetic, Dent Sport are just a few right off the top of my head.

[AJW Performance]

With our kits we will be offering Etunes separate (will include a tactrix cable as we purchased about 500 of them)

Heres how it will work:
List the modifications you have, the motor etc and we will send you a base file.
Load this to the car and then get some logs of how the car behaves.
Send these back and we will be able to tweak it as many times as possible to make it perfect for your car.

Jay Perry, our in house tuner will be able to log into your computer and talk you through this virtually to assist in all tuning aspects of your 818 project!! This is a great option for people who do not have a tuner close to them.

To Customers close to us, we welcome you to come down and get a full blown pro tune at our facility with full rear wheel drive dynomometer.

If you have any specific questions about the Etuning or about Subaru tunes themselves, feel free to ask them here as myself and Jay are watching this thread to help support your tuning needs!
Some more info: http://818donors.com/package-extras/

-Tim

PS- Takes a little know how to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QuamRhvcAA

[Silvertop]

With our kits we will be offering Etunes separate (will include a tactrix cable as we purchased about 500 of them)

If you have any specific questions about the Etuning or about Subaru tunes themselves, feel free to ask them here as myself and Jay are watching this thread to help support your tuning needs!
Some more info: http://818donors.com/package-extras/

-Tim

PS- Takes a little know how to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QuamRhvcAA

If I have you guys install a set of cams (and maybe valve springs) into my NA Beta Donor package, would you be able to do an appropriate "ballpark" tune of the ECU before you shipped the pallet to me? Or will I need to get it back in a car first so it can be done really right?

[spaceywilly]

So, maybe we can all learn together and work through this example... my car. I currently have my 02 WRX stored in my sister's garage waiting for some snow to play with. Today I started it up for it's monthly airing out and noticed the CEL was on so I plugged in my tactrix cable to read the code. It turns out the code is just related to the dead battery, it wasn't able to spin the radiator fans up so that freaked out the ECU a bit. That is all well and good, but the tool that I used also read back the FLKC and IAM values and I'm not sure exactly what to make of them. I know enough about the Subaru knock strategy to know that it is detecting knock and pulling timing, but I don't know if these values are really out of whack and if I should do anything about it. Maybe someone who knows more about the ECU could tell me if I should be concerned? The car is stock with an open source reflash.

[BrandonDrums]

So, maybe we can all learn together and work through this example... my car. I currently have my 02 WRX stored in my sister's garage waiting for some snow to play with. Today I started it up for it's monthly airing out and noticed the CEL was on so I plugged in my tactrix cable to read the code. It turns out the code is just related to the dead battery, it wasn't able to spin the radiator fans up so that freaked out the ECU a bit. That is all well and good, but the tool that I used also read back the FLKC and IAM values and I'm not sure exactly what to make of them. I know enough about the Subaru knock strategy to know that it is detecting knock and pulling timing, but I don't know if these values are really out of whack and if I should do anything about it. Maybe someone who knows more about the ECU could tell me if I should be concerned? The car is stock with an open source reflash.

So that code just means the coolant isn't cooling down as expected when the fans are switched on which for a lack of a more specific diagnosis just indicates how the ECU figured out something is wrong but not what is wrong. Hopefully it is battery related but even with a low battery, the radiator fans will turn fast enough to cool the engine off. From my experience you're more likely to get a fueling related code for a low battery than anything else.

The timing could mean a couple things, you have lots of learned knock correction retard so the tune isn't 100% healthy or the car isn't 100% healthy. Usually you'd just want to see 3 or less cells with -2.11 degrees or less of learned timing retard, no more than wot shifting knock or just some statistical noise. You have far more areas of knock correction than most would like to see but fortunately no big areas of knock correction. There's also the IAM like you mentioned, you're at 15, the max is 16 so the ECU is learning new redundant knock instances to dial out but that's nothing major, with seasons, gasoline quality and whatever else going on, a healthy car switches back and fourth between 15 and 16 to continually learn and revise the fine learning knock correction values needed to always operate without any ping. Genius really.

The AFR trims actually look pretty good for a stage 2 reflash, almost spot on aside from the 2nd cell but it's close enough for jazz.

So, you're on the border here, there could be something factual about that code where the car for whatever reason is running hotter than normal and is getting additional knock sometimes. You were at a coolant temp of 203 degrees which isn't hot, the fans aren't set to come on until 205 degrees on the upswing. If it isn't overheating, it could just be old gas causing some ping. Combine hot weather with stale gas and you'll get a couple more pings than ideal.

Go drive to the gas station to put fresh juice in it. While you're on the way pull up romraider on the dashboard view and log coolant temp knock correction and all the other normal things. If the engine is detecting knock and/or heating up much past 205, then we might want to look into the code a bit more.

[RM1SepEx]

Different people have different skills. Lots of guys are totally up for building their own car, but are intimidated by doing any of the electrical work. There are guys with lots of experience rebuilding motors that won't open up an automatic trans.

I'm totally mechanical, no problem with anything mechanical... tuning my ECU... nope, could I do it, sure, but I have little interest in spending my time doing the research and actual tuning.

I'm buying and installing parts, a tuning shop will be doing my tuning. My quandry... Cobb or open source?

I do have access to a Dynocom 15000 dyno with a huge eddy brake in one of my friend's garage... http://www.dynocom.net/catalog/detail.asp?iPro=106

BTW His projects would make your head spin... early 70's Sonett, Yellow Thunder, http://www.vintagesaab.com/sonett/yt/ytmain.htm, Mitsu 3000 GT with huge turbo upgrade, Saab Viggen with turbo upgrade, 1993 Miata with big turbo, 1993 Mazda RX7TT

[BrandonDrums]

I'm totally mechanical, no problem with anything mechanical... tuning my ECU... nope, could I do it, sure, but I have little interest in spending my time doing the research and actual tuning.

I'm buying and installing parts, a tuning shop will be doing my tuning. My quandry... Cobb or open source?

I do have access to a Dynocom 15000 dyno with a huge eddy brake in one of my friend's garage... http://www.dynocom.net/catalog/detail.asp?iPro=106

BTW His projects would make your head spin... early 70's Sonett, Yellow Thunder, http://www.vintagesaab.com/sonett/yt/ytmain.htm, Mitsu 3000 GT with huge turbo upgrade, Saab Viggen with turbo upgrade, 1993 Miata with big turbo, 1993 Mazda RX7TT

Fortunately, open source tuning has many advantages over cobb and it's free! (aside from the tatrix cable) The main downside is not being able to make changes in real-time, you have to re-flash for every little tweak so the tuning process is MUCH slower than Cobb. Also, Cobb allows you to switch maps on the fly or fully re-flash the engine, opensource does not.

However, you can adjust EVERYTHING with opensource and that goes a long way the more intake and fueling mods you throw at a subaru. Subaru ECU's are known to struggle with making aftermarket induction and fueling parts run as smoothly as stock in closed loop (normal, partial throttle driving). Just look up "hesitation below 3k rpm after tune" on nasioc and you'll find hundreds of threads about it. Opensource has a little bit more access to the factory closed loop tables that make it a bit easier to get the car feeling as close to stock as possible after putting in aftermarket injectors etc.

However, cobb's are pretty neat little devices and for folks wanting to run multiple tunes and be able to switch on the fly etc. they can't really be beat.

As for not wanting to learn how to tune, if you're comfortable rebuilding an engine then you should worry about learning how to tune. I promise that building and blueprinting an engine is more challenging and there's less online expertise and electronic aids to assist in the process compared to learning how to tune. You can probably learn the basics just by driving around with romraider plugged in and learning how to read data logs without even making a single change.