DINANTRONICS_Tuning Deep-Dive with Steve Dinan

Has always been famous for software .

We've been doing software since 1984 and we went to Ditro on new cars because with every generation hacking the encryption of the software gets more time consuming and more expensive .

And we get later and later and later in the production cycle of the Carter Lease products , we thought it was advantageous for us to make our own E C U .

But we knew what the software was so we could get the market sooner .

Uh Are we able to do more ?

No software will do anything that will do .

It's just an a an advantage to get into the market sooner .

Um But also what we noticed was , and the reason we like software so much is all the piggyback boxes that we see in the marketplace don't do a very good job of controlling all the signals that need to be controlled .

And there was always tuning compromises with the software , there was no tuning compromises .

So the reason it got so elaborate went up with such a big wiring harness , so many signals going through it so we could correct for everything that needed to be corrected for and have it run like it was software .

Yeah , a piggy bat box is just basically an E C U .

The piggy back on top of the factory E C U and then alters the signals rather than actually taking control of the engine where this is a complete standalone E C U .

Here , there's no other E C U running the engine .

There's just one and when we had software , we just used the original E C U that came in the car and remapped it .

Or now we're literally adding a signal modifier is essentially what a piggyback box is .

But there's a lot of signals .

You can do a more thorough job of modifying those signals are , are are less thorough job and the more thorough job you do , the better the drive ability of the car is gonna be and the better the performance is gonna be and the better the durability is going to be because you have to realize what the E C U does is .

It compares the signal to another signal and says , ok , do these two values make sense ?

It's what's called a plausibility test , right ?

So if I've increased the boost and my boost pressure goes up my air flusher go my air mass meters and my waist gate signal should change and my fuel mixture should change and magni timing should changed and my fuel flow should change .

Has it really done all those things in equal proportions .

Do I believe what I'm seeing because the E C U is doing a logic test basically .

And if those signals don't all match , it says I see a problem and either will set a fault are going to limp mode .

So the goal of making the car run good is if you're going to modify one single , every single it could compare to has to be changed in equal amount .

Well , I mean , all modern engines live in what you would call in the olden days into detonation zone , even completely stock they do .

Uh And what happens is the computer then will , if , if it , if it hears too much detonation will pull the timing back or the boost back or a field to try and correct .

Uh But you can get into the range where it does what's called adaptation , which is where it's learning how much it's correcting and it , and it takes those learned uh values and , and , and implements them .

So it winds up with a smooth curve or you can get to where it can't learn , adapting you when it's in a reactive mode .

And when you get into a reactive mode , then the , then the engine runs erratically and it isn't as smooth .

So what we're attempting to do is modify enough signal so that it's not reactive , it's adaptive .

So the overall smoothness of the engine operation is better , this forces you to run just a little bit less boost and it's not a lot , just a little bit less .

Typically , we're giving up about 5 to 10 horsepower from our competition to make the engine run glassy , smooth and be durable and not set a fault .

Not very much .

I mean , you have AM five that makes 700 horsepower .

Does it need to make 705 to run bad ?

You know , M three makes , you can make it make 530 .

So you have to be tuned it to 5 21 for it to run smooth , worth giving up nine horsepower to make the car run smooth .

I , I think it is and you know , not just from a dirty bill standpoint but , but how nice the car drives because it's not just about the ultimate numbers is you don't want the car to run erratic .

You know , for example , if you raise the boost too much on the M three , when you change gears , there's a load spike and the non sensor goes off and the car falls on its face and then it picks back up again once the detonation goes away and you shift again and it falls on its face again and you lose as much time on it falling on its face as you gain by running the extra boost in between .

So the car doesn't really accelerate any faster .

You can certainly put it on a chassis dynamometer .

You can measure a higher power number , but the car doesn't actually go as fast , you know .

So we don't want to compromise the overall speed of the car .

The goal here is to make the car not , you know , as fast as possible , but also uh nice and refined and , and , and , and easy to drive and control and , and , and all those factors are important as well , not just the raw numbers .

So if we have to give up five or 10 horsepower to make the car run better , we'll do it all day long .

Yeah , on the , on the 5 56 57 50 N 63 engine , we put intercooler intake exhaust , turn the boost up and put big turbo charges on it .

And on the dynamometer , it made more power , but we went on the road .

Uh the car was not as fast as we expect it to be .

We lowered the boost a pound .

And on the day on the road , the car went faster and the reason being is on the road , you have ram air which forces them more into the engine .

The heat exchanger cools more the inner cooler and the radiator runs cooler .

So the cylinder pressure goes up because we're basically filming the better when the cylinder pressure goes up , the knock sensor goes off when the knock sensor goes off , it retards the timing and slows the engine down .

So since the engine was making more power on the road , and we can show you this later on with data logging temperatures on the dynamometer versus the road .

Uh it required us to lower the boost because they were making so much boost and knock sensor was very active reactive , not adaptive .

And this caused the engine to lose acceleration and be erratic in its performance .

We backed the boost off a pound .

The car actually went faster .

So boost pressure doesn't necessarily always equate to more speed .

It's a gauge pressure number , right ?

What we really want is the car to go faster and sometimes a little bit less boost makes the car go faster than a little bit more .

Yeah , we , we , we hear a lot that we're conservative .

We don't believe we're conservative .

We , what we believe is we tune the engine directly .

Sometimes that forces us , like I say , to make five or 10 less , we also are very , very accurate about our measurement of our power numbers , which you're gonna see later on as we go through a few more things .

Uh , and a lot of people have a tendency to exaggerate the numbers or pick the best run and then we measure their equipment again .

You know , we've never seen a case where we're not within 10 , oftentimes .

When people claim more , we're actually making more than them .

We've seen the case where we're actually making more than them .

So we're in or about the power other people are making .

But a higher level of refinement and smoothness in the process