how to map a mini-me?

Wiring up and working with the D14 ECUs
007
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how to map a mini-me?

Post by 007 »

my apologies if this has been covered before and I missed it, but Im really tired right now after swapping my intake manifold and getting everything set up to run my D13Y8 mini-me on a P30 with NepTune RTP.

though I know the theory behind mapping, Ive never done it before. I tried taking a stock P28 map and reducing fueling and ignition by 18 percent across the board but the engine was stinking rich. also minor niggles with the butterfly valve and TPS werent letting the engine idle. Ill get those minor issues ironed out tomorrow.

what I really wanted to find out is *how* one goes about preparing a basemap for our mini-mes.

@Dodo Bizar, youve built and tuned a D14Y8 right? would you mind sharing which existing map you started with and how you compensated for the reduced displacement?

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Dodo Bizar
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Re: how to map a mini-me?

Post by Dodo Bizar »

It's simple actually [edit: simple I said when I started this post... ai] in the end you hardly cut down on fuel. Just start with stock mappings of P28 is the best bet. I eventually ended up running a bit leaner in the lower revs but I needed more fuel in the higher revs. The equation is rather simple... it comes down to the performance, not the capacity. Due to the cam retarding and other semi-serious work I did I got in the region of 130-145 horses depending on which stage of my setup. That simply means you need the same amount of fuel approximately of the stock D16Z6 engine or even a bit more since it only gives 125 bhp stock. Fuel maps greatly resemble the actual torque curve generally.

So stage 0 I would like to call the first guess... go for P28. If it is even then stinking rich (you got 1350 cc approximately?) , my bet is the cam is not on it's best position. And therefore max power is really limited. Ok, leaner mappings will improve on that, but neh... it should not be the endpoint having maps 20% leaner or something. That would mean you only have 125*(100%-20%) = 100 bhp...

On a sidenote, in my experience even with greatly changing cam timing, the ignition timing hardly changes. I often put idle timing on 18 deg BTDC (which is max advance OEM for D16Z6 engine) and that gives me always max power ignition wise. Have detailed many cars out and often the original curves with max idle spec are optimum in performance.

Okay, so that is still the starting point, stage 0, get your P28.

Now there are two serious options to get detailing the setup out.

Either ...
...get a wideband lambda sensor and street-tune the fuel maps out. Leave ignition and cam timing... trying to 'feel' improvement gains will often result in a loss in performance since pychologic effects will tend to have you tuning the car out of the perfect zone. Like: " ow it goes fast now all of a sudden at 5000 rpm" while in reality you tuned a loss before 5000 rpm. Fast engines are often very smooth and tend therefore to be a little bit less aggressive than badly tuned engines... but unawareness of this may result in loss of horsepower. I want a car to be fast, if it feels fast as a result that is nice... but not required for me. So well... listen to the AFR signal coming from the wideband and DO NOT LISTEN to the thing between your ears ;) and put it for full throttle flat at an AFR of 13. Don't do 13.7 or these kind of things... most cars have max horsepower as low as 12 and only high rev Honda's can get max with 13. Doing 13.7 (heard very often in Honda community) is in my opinion a loss of safety factor to prevent detonation and such. Yes Having AFR of 12 will get you black tailpiping.... but both my cars do that at full load sometimes and I love ehm for that. I will not be the best environmentalist around here, but my engines go for reliability which one of them has proven for 355.000 km already. This is my stage 0.5 solution.

Or ...
... and this is my stage 1, the first decent ECU tune you can perform. Is bring it out to a dynocenter and iterate all your maps. Start with either the stage 0 map or if you did some streettune with stage 0.5 maps. But then you start looping. My recipe... we start to look for max horsepower everywhere in steps 1-5 (duh?):
- 1 start getting the fuel maps right for the current setup, so full load max power with current cam and ignition
- 2 then see if ignition is ok, lower a few degrees over the entire range and see were to change for the better. If horsepower worse a location, increase ignition there. Rule of thumb with NORMAL valves and combustion chambers, detonation will occur 4 deg after reaching max horsepower. Lakai his car was not 'normal' and did detonate before this point. Luckily enough I was able to hear it and abruptly stop the test.
- 1R only in case of big changes in step 2, redo fuel maps now (1), if not proceed to 3
- 3 to the first cam change, my suggestion is the smaller engines (D16 is base case, D15 is smaller, D14 then smaller, yours smallest) I notice a trend of cam retardation up to one tooth for my personal EJ9!. And for reasons of valve hitting, cam retardating after a succesful run is safer since VTEC valve hitting pistons is not possible. Only goes for SOHC VTEC cars this advice!!! I always believe valve-piston clearance is hardly an issue and I boldly change cam gears even on DOHC engines... but truth is I just might have been very lucky all these years not to have wasted an engine since extreme cams in SOHC-VTEC are measured by a friend of mine and he did reach hits pretty easy... but well, you have stock ESi cam not? No aftermarket? So... change by a few degrees cam... perhaps half a tooth max for the first attempt.
- 4 I make this another bullet, decision time. Look at the maximum performance for both cam positions attained. If one of the curves is much lower than the other your probably far away from the ideal zone. You probably figured out you should go to the other side and try a third position, redo 3 on another position and get here with another pair of curves. But when you are already close to the optimum it gets difficult. Textbook says this: generally cam retarding gives more horsepower at high rpm but with a loss of hp at lower rpm. Well: my experience tells me it's a very tiny moment this actually happens. With all the SOHC VTECs I've changed cam timing over the years and even the non-VTEC I saw that changing cam timing either increased or decreased hp over the entire range up to 7000 rpm. Right at the peak performance and then retarding it further, I often squeezed out a few hp more at 7000 rpm or such high numbers but lost 10 - 20 all of a sudden over the entire range from 2000 up to 6500 for example or something similar. So I always say there is a very definite un-debatable optimum. Despite loosing 1 or 2 tiny hps somewere in the sky I always opt for this beefier curve... I'd say the surface under the curve must be optimum and often cam timing is pretty strict in the best position for this.
- 5 continue all the previous loops again untill you get stuck at the optimum...
- 6 yes there is another step... detail out closed loop and low load areas for optimum fuel efficiency! Many tuners seem to forget this, but here is the reason my B16B can get 14 km to 1 liter and my D14 once had a setup capable of doing 16 km to 1 liter... which I think I destroyed by putting the S2 IM and TB... now 15.3 best summer average. A dyno with low load options is really convenient. You just put car at 50 km/h for a while and ask 10 hp or 5 hp or so and then see what is the leanest to get it. Do this for a whole lot of points and interpolate a bit in between and presto... part load fuel efficiency the factory cars cannot beat! Well... I sound like a salesman, often you can get, sometimes the setup will not allow for it.

So this is my recipe as how I built up experience in ECU tuning a car by streettuning and/or dyno tuning it with a strong favour for the latter IMHO. My recipe is based on speed and reliability. I often hire a dyno centre and tune 6-8 cars with CRX2. I am the guy shouting and the owner of the dyno and CRX2 do the actual work and taught me this recipe. But with us as a team we need less than 1 hour on average to completely tune a SOHC-VTEC full out to it's max and perhaps up to half an our more with DOHC VTEC including cam gears.

Tip: look at various dynographs to learn how the optimum should look like. I often instantly recognise a D-serie or B-serie Honda engine by the shape of the graph and can even tell what's been done to the engine in basic lines or when it's a fraude... here at DU we once had the non-VTEC 153 bhp case which happened to actually be (still ass-whooping 129). Your car should have lower torque numbers due to it's limited capacity, but it will have these torque numbers typically at higher revs making up in horsepower a lot. You might have power all the way up to 8000 rpm in theory... please don't over rev it and stay below 7600, but still. Max power I expect just there.

Now if you read all this and think... dyno? Wideband lambda? I can't get my hands on that for whatever reason. Especially dyno can be scarse... or sea it as a reason to start your own enterprise locally :mrgreen: . Well in that case I can't give more info then my stage 0... and my experience about ignition (keep stock), cam timing (retard half a tooth to one full) and expect fuel maps not to be as lean in high revs as you r indication. Tuning with exhaust smell, sparkplug checking and these sort of things... out of my experence, I try to avoid relying on such basic methods.

Darn I should write books or something about this stuff...

007
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Re: how to map a mini-me?

Post by 007 »

wow thats quite a bit of information to digest Joris. I promise I will go through it with a fine tooth comb.

however, I am happy to report that I got my car running nicely. :)
initially I had bungled an electrical connection in my patch harness [interchanged VCC2 and SG2] and was getting crazy low readings for IAT and ECT, nothing for O2 and inverted TPS readings. in addition, one of my injector wires had a loose contact at the ECU pin. I fixed all that, then downloaded a P2P [stock D16Y8] bin since I figured that would be more apt than a P28 [D16Z6], opened it in CROME and physically copied the Low Cam and Ignition maps over to NepTune.

before the sensor issue was fixed, the ECU was dumping fuel [because of the correction factor I assume] but after everything got sorted, she cranks up and idles and runs like a champ from whatever little driving Ive done. :)

my next step will be to copy over the High maps, tweak some other settings here and there and take her out on the weekend for a long-ish drive and see how things go.

my displacement has gone 18 percent under a stock Y8 and my injector capacity lower by 28 percent . so on a stock Y8 map I should be running 10 percent leaner. for now, Ive left Closed Loop enabled to sort things out but once I get my hands on a wideband controller I will begin to play with the maps. I also have my pocket dyno [aka VBox :)] and enough open road at my disposal to get my mapping right. :)

after a frustrating weekend thanks to all the fuel dumping and sensor nonsense, things are finally looking up. :D
Last edited by 007 on Wed Apr 04, 2012 7:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

pardizzle21
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Re: how to map a mini-me?

Post by pardizzle21 »

Dodo,1st wow great info on a rare topic!I assumed the d14 vtec would need fuel maps lowering alot on stock p28 ecu, but my car seems to be running fine mixture wise(car hasnt yet been remapped)
Going by what you say, a wideband lambda sounds a very useful bit of kit for a proper custom tune :D any idea on a price for them?

It sounds like you have spent a hell of a lot of time researching and tuning,would you say ectune or chrome etc are the best ways of getting the most out of the ecu?as it seems detailed stuff to do...

but anyways, great info ;)

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saxophonias
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Re: how to map a mini-me?

Post by saxophonias »

Joris is the man :)
You can get an AEM UEGO, for 200euros or maybe cheaper?

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SquirtAndSpark
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Re: how to map a mini-me?

Post by SquirtAndSpark »

serious stuff running there :D

007
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Re: how to map a mini-me?

Post by 007 »

saxophonias wrote:Joris is the man :)
you can say that again. :)

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Dodo Bizar
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Re: how to map a mini-me?

Post by Dodo Bizar »

Hehehe thanks guys. The deal is I've been interested in this stuff for 8 years now I reccon. In those first years I actually HAD to work on Civics to get by in life as a student with a... let's say not so nice women at my side. I needed every scrap of money I could find which made me dive nose deep in the D14 and D-series. And as a third, I was lucky enough to build up a big amount of experience with friends and other enthusiasts over the long run, especially with SpeedCentre. Those 3 factors combined have brought me here... and it's still hobby... let's not talk about what I do for my paid job ;). But since I have a paid job which I can never beat with Honda tuning, I decided to put my knowledge out in the world and built this website. Educating people and building a community gives me a much bigger ego trip than getting scrap money for a tuned car :mrgreen: .

Now quit bragging...

Widebands, I am a succer for Zeitronix ZT2 which also sells from 200 euro or 300 with display which I always buy at http://www.dutchpowertrading.nl . And I practically install them in all my cars, got 3 working ZT2 sets right now. Btw the sensor is almost always the same... the Bosch LSU4 or a derivative.

And really glad your D13 problems were all electrical installation issues Venkat. Glad it runs smooth now. I actually really hope you get it on a real dyno one day and get some nice numbers, I'd be more than curious.

Now there was a question regarding which program to go by... eCtune or Crome ...
Crome... is not developed anymore as far as I know, had a lot of bugs never resolved. My first 116 bhp chip was build on Crome.
eCtune... very long a great promiss with a great community behind it and a dedicated solist working on it. Much richer in it's options and especially better datalogging. But currently.... development is halted, support is scarse and I very recently tried to log and it failed with the newest. Probably I did something wrong but for nw it;s a fail. So I am decreasing in my happyness of judgement regarding eCtune.
Now there is Hondata which I have no experience with but it might be good, there is a slightly bigger company around it probably getting longer sustained support compared to one man tuning solutions.
There is also AEM I believe... it's one of the rare companies offering a 6 cyl OBD Honda ECU for mapping!!! (Found in my search for NSX solutions).
And there is Neptune, which is more like eCtune I believe but I hear less bad nes about support than eCtune.

Now there are also (expensive) universal solutions. One of them I am researching now since SpeedCentre sells it a lot... it's KMS (dutch company!) with an universal unit capable of engines up to 12 cyl and even multiple mappings... VTEC. It's expensive, but since it has a broader audience (and is not an educational toy like MegaSquirt), I guess the support is bigger and more experienced compared to the Honda only companies. Ow and this might enable me to tune my yesterday bought Mazda 626 with 2.5 liter V6 engine which I believe is rare!

007
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Re: how to map a mini-me?

Post by 007 »

you should try NepTune too Joris. feature rich, easy to use and the support JR gives - within reason - is second to none. it is an awesome combination with the Demon board and probably the best value for money solution out there.
those electrical problems werent diagnosed easily. initially I thought it was a bug in the ECU of NepTune so I bought a CROME Pro license in an impulsive fit. so I will be trying that out as well. now I realize it was unnecessary but it doesnt look like a total waste of money to me either.

yes, I do plan to put her on a dyno the next time I am headed to that area. however, I promise you that I will be posting plenty of real life acceleration results very soon. :)

in my book, torque = linear acceleration, and I can measure linear acceleration at 10 Hz. plus the VBox numbers are much more relevant to real life situations.

that said, I am curious to put a HP number to my engine so the dyno run will happen. :)

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Dodo Bizar
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Re: how to map a mini-me?

Post by Dodo Bizar »

Hmmmm... today I dove into the specifications of the Kronenburg / KMS systems. They are really versatile and I think can pretty much run normal street use as well. Many features which normal ECU's have as well (cold enrichment, idle control and MOST important, lambda closed loop control). Features are reasonably explained and well, hopefully working correctly (something I can't say of the eCtune tip-in/acceleration enrichment for instance). And Megasquirt does not provide lambda control...

Some creativity is needed to get the crank sensor working... normally you should install a special plate with 36 or 60 teeth with 1 or 2 teeth missing or some variations. This would be tough... only one place, crank pulley, which might not have much space left for a plate and sensor which would be spinning in open air. But there is one other option, called 'Honda - bike', involving 12 teeth with 3 missing. Now I just checked a OBD1 camshaft sensor for crankspeed.... which has 24 teeth. Quick thinking tells me that removing 2x3 teeth gives exactly the correct pattern to fool the KMS unit in thinking it has the crank sensor with 12 teeth and 3 missing.

Besides that the KMS unit is able to pick up the CYL and TDC sensors as well for additional features unclear to me now (since I read an old manual consisting of 50 pages, got tired and found a new manual online with more pages and some pictures telling me this).

But silly negative point... there are only 1 cylinder bank on MP25/MA25 or 2 banks on MD35... while I spent my time on getting SFi converted to proper MPFi so many years ago... would be painful to run it back.

On the other hand... I also got a Mazda 626 now with KLDE engine (yeah I dove deep in it last weeks, I should probably start dedicating an obscure part of the forum to the KLDE / KLZE engines since I read a lot of 'myths' in just 2 days of googling which in my experience are simply not true (knife edging and removing VRIS being the most persistent and annoying ones). And well, for the KLDE / KLZE family (well, the KL - family) there is no proper chiptuning available at all like we have for D-series and B-series. There seems only to be piggy back solutions, i.e. fooling MAF signals towards the ECU so you get creepy ignition values. So going KMS might be a much more decent solution for this engine one day.

Btw the number in the KMS units stand for the number of wires in the ECU connector. So 25 and 35 is not much... hence the cylinder banks grouped together? But in the pricelist I see notion of a 70-wire machine.... that might be a 100% MPFi ECU.

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