First time RT tuning on a dyno with TP5 & $12P

[Holden202T]

Well i had the opportunity on the weekend to tune a V6 Sprintcar on the dyno, and for me while i have done alot with methanol and $12P i had never used the gear on a dyno tuning it in real time.

So as im sure alot of you know, anything that can go wrong will go wrong on the dyno to hold up progress, we had our share, people not arriving on time, engines over heating and all that .... anyways at the end of the day i have to say $12P did all we could ever ask for and TP5 with the Antus Plugin complimented it perfectly.

The only down side i found is that TP5 has no way of updating changes to a table other than clicking the update button at the top whilst emulating, but i got around it without too many issues by clicking in a cell on the table, which then allows you to use the arrow keys to move around the table, then i move the mouse over the update button then hit the mouse button every time i wanted to update a cell.
There is also a reasonably new feature in TP5 which i requested a few months back which allows you to define keyboard mappings for increament/decrement, normally on a full size keyboard you can just use the + - buttons but on a laptop without the numerical pad this is not so easy, so i use A / Z keys and this allows easy changes to cell values then just use the mouse button to update as you go.

When i went to the dyno i was a bit nervous about how well it was going to work and such but i was pleasently suprised at how easy it all was. One of the things that made it so easy was that the dyno operator was able to program the dyno to hold load points that i specified and with a press of a button it went to the next load cell and we just worked our way up the rev range in a matter of minutes! I'm not sure if all dynos can do this but its worth asking your dyno operator if they are able to do this, i simply told the guy start at 1600rpm, go up in 200rpm points to 2400rpm then 400rpm points from there and the same can be done for the timing or any other table for that matter.

I also created a message 6 adx specific to my needs, as message 6 is able to define what items you want to log i select few that i needed like rpm, map, tps, target afr, coolant temp and spark and just made the dash to display them in a row along the bottom of the TP5 window in number form rather than gauges. So from here i just used the dyno's Wideband AFR reading to adjust the VE table till my target AFR matched the actual - it also proved handy to have the coolant gauge go red at 105 degrees so you notice it and can shut the dyno down before anything pops!

Similarly with the timing table i just used the dynos torque reading to increase/decrease timing at each set point to get the max torque, and the dyno operator quickly went up through the rpm cell points with my nod of head after i'd finished one cell.

We only spent 4 hours actually tuning and half of it was waiting for the engine to cool down too so if you get your shit sorted with how to go about it and have the right setup on the laptop before you go you really can make some good progress pretty quickly. Admitedly we really only focused on WOT tuning but it is a race car so they wern't too worried about much else.

So just some general information on our results, its basically a stock commodore V6 and running on methanol, we managed to get 202.6hp and 245lb-ft torque out of it. The most surprising part of it for me is that it made that torque from 1600rpm and at 5200rpm the torque was still just above 200lb-ft, so very good for speedway powering out of corners! and not bad at all for a stock v6!!

[Apples]

Sounds like you had a good day.

[Holden202T]

yeah sure did mate, then after the dyno they had to run to the speedway to get scrutineered etc so me and my brother went to the pub for a counter lunch (at 3:30pm lol) and a few beers to wash the fumes down then went to the track to watch them race for the night! and watch the car i tuned have traction issues he never used to have

we went into the pits afterwards and the driver said he can't give it full throttle coming off the turns now cause it just spins the wheels! he reckons its mostly the same mid range and more down low and up high, that makes sense cause it was pig rich down low and lean up top, the middle was pretty close in fuel and timing and especially low rpms took alot more timing to get max torque!

[VX L67 Getrag]

Nice Work 202!

Sounds like the dyno was a mailline? I don't think DD do the rpm increment function yet!

[VL400]

Nice work With automatic updates from +- buttons it should make it even easier but your method seemed like it got the job done quick enough with a really good result. If TP5 cant easily have auto updates working even being able to have the 'commit changes and upload' button as a keyboard shortcut would be ok.

[Holden202T]

well yeah im not sure, it looked like a dyno dynamics one, and there was a sign outside the workshop for DD but then the program that was running it was dyno max i think ??

yeah i agree VL400, even just being able to use a key and not having to worry about where the mouse is would be sufficient!

[v6bucket]

Well done. Much easier on a dyno than seat of the pants tuning.
What were the hp figure before you started adjusting things?
Are those hp & tq figures at the tyres?

[Holden202T]

yeah all numbers above are at the wheels....

the only real number i have from before the tune is that he got the motor tested on a flywheel dyno and it made 218hp, which if you use the 30% drive train loss you get approx 150hp at the wheels.... but the tunes they use are mostly stock tunes and the ones that are "tuned" are a brothel, no changes for methanol AFR's etc just bash numbers in and hope for the best!

[v6bucket]

It sounds like the "tuners" really know what they're doing.

[Holden202T]

yeah thats it, and people continue to pay good money for this sort of stuff because they simply know no better!