Widebands and romulators and tuning!?

[nfswift]

The convenience of tuning on the fly has captured my attention and likely soon my wallet as well...

I'm biting the big one and purchasing a wideband and a romulator to help get my 7730/3500 swap tuned and running like a top.

I'm seriously looking into buying one of these Innovative Motorsports combos to keep a close eye on my AFR.

http://moesperformance.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=30&products_id=1173

http://moesperformance.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=30&products_id=124

The difference is about 100 dollars for some more functions on the gauge.

But now I have to decide between emulators, and I honestly have no experience here, the price difference is virtually non-existant between Ostrich 2.0 and The Pocket Romulator, which product offers more for your money? Opinions?

[SappySE107]

Its not convenient when you are driving. Its not easy to do the math to figure out your fueling while you are driving or while your are riding. I wouldn't buy it. Log, go over the log, make adjustments according to the log.

Wide band is a great idea but you have to run an emulator for narrow band and if you don't run wide band later on, your tune will probably not stay where it was with the wide band. Close, but not dead on.

last note, pocket romulator is something I would completley avoid. Their pocket programmer crapped out on me and they wanted yearly payments to update their shitty software. Moates is where its at, if you insist on emulating.

[nfswift]

Ok, I'm really trying to go for convenience and ease of tuning.

If I'm starting with a good stock 3500 basline tune for the 7730, from Ryan, or possibly Superdave, then I'll be able to drive (gently) and datalog and work on it from there.

I'll buy some re-writeable chips and go from there I guess?

Anybody got 7730 with a V6 DIS memcal they want to sell?

[SappySE107]

emulation is easier than pulling a chip but its not nearly as bad ass as people think it will be. I have an ECM but I don't know that I have any memcals. I have 27SF512 chips however and ryan hess has the chip adapters for $15 if you solder it yourself.

[Joseph Upson]

Ok, I'm really trying to go for convenience and ease of tuning.

If I'm starting with a good stock 3500 basline tune for the 7730, from Ryan, or possibly Superdave, then I'll be able to drive (gently) and datalog and work on it from there.

I'll buy some re-writeable chips and go from there I guess?

Anybody got 7730 with a V6 DIS memcal they want to sell?

Give the Zeitronix WBO2 outfit a look at also. I purchased mine new off Ebay, it was about $20-30 cheaper than going directly to their site. It allows you to datalog other sensors which is more beneficial than just a WBO2 signal alone.

I also have the Moates APU1 emulator, which can burn and electronically erase chips. It was frustrating initially because the instructions were a little on the weak side failing to mention the firmware file available for it that I actually ended up needing to get the equipment to function properly with 8F bin file I was using. I stumbled across it while searching for help on the Moates site.

Once I finally got it working it helped quite a bit. The Zeitronix unit helps give me a good idea of the overall tune however the simple ~$25 air fuel ratio meter from Summit is very helpful also because it was pretty much in tune with the way the engine was running, bottoming out when fuel was lean and peaking when it was rich then holding in the green right in the area where BLM and the Integrator were reading 128, despite running off the stock narrowband O2 sensor.

[Superdave]

I'm using a WMS wideband an Ostrich 2.0 and a home built ALDL circuit.. Couldn't ask for more. I've pulled off into many parking lots and off onto the shoulder of highways a few times to make quick changes.

[davida1_hiwaay_net]

Wether or not you emulate real-time, you MUST be able to datalog wideband AFR and some other parameters. The ECM tables are related to MAP and RPM mainly, so they are the 2 main ones to log. If you do serious tuning you will want to log the knock sensor too. Not sure how you would do that on a 7730 since it has internal knock filter.

With MAP, RPM, Knock, and AFR logged, you can correct the fuel tables and main spark tables in an educated manner.

When it comes to tuning very heavily modified setups, there is no way to eliminate some trial and error. This is a necessary evil and with an emulator, this phase of the tuning is a snap. The idle quality and sound; the tip-in response, and pump-shot are VERY tough to get exactly right without doing it real-time.

Having done it both ways (pulling chips and emulating) I feel like an emulator is worth its weight in gold if you want to fine tune it. In other words if your emphasis is on the sound, drivability, power, and feel of the engine more so than having "perfect" BLM's.

I'm using a Tech Edge 2-B-Zero wideband datalogger and a Pocket RomulatorII. Never used an Ostrich because when I bought my equip. I didn't know it existed! If I had to do over again would use Moates hardware because it does way more for the money; and because Craig Moates is "one of us" engine tuners.

The Tech Edge datalogger has been near flawless and the only minor issue they corrected via e-mail in an hour.

Bottom line if you want convenience and ease of tuning, you need an emulator, wideband datalogger, notebook PC and alot of time and patience.

Your car should look like this:

[Guest]

^^^^ LOL, nice. My car looks something like that right now, though maybe with less wires floating around.

Real time tuning is great, I'll never trade my Ostrich 2.0 for anything. When I'm tuning others cars, and ride in the passenger seat, I can make changes and see immediatly if it's right or not. I can also ask for input from the driver, right there and then, kinda like when you go to the optomitrist and they ask: "Is it better now, or now, what about this one, or that one?"

When I'm tuning my own car, all I need to do is plug in the USB cable (it's always on the passenger seat lately) and then upload a new bin that I have changed when not in the car or if I see something not quite right, like at idle, then I can change it right then, without needing to pull the EEPROM, and my programmer to change a small item. I think real time tuning is even more important when getting to the final tweaking where the changes are small, so that you can see the results immediatly. Too much time between changes can make one second one's self, and not be able to definitivly say "Yep, this is better".
Like Dave, I've pulled off to a parking lot or the side of a side street to make changes. I've been running my Ostrich 2.0 in my car for nearly a month, I was worried about using it as the only form of "chip", since I had only used it to tune and then burned an EEPROM in past instances, but has been flawless so far. (I've probably just jinxed myself now.)

I don't see the correlation between removing the WBO2 and changing the way it runs. In most cases the WBO2 is a completly seperate entity, that is used only for reference, and the VE tables/MAF scalers are tuned based on the information. Which means nothing will be different after the WBO2 is removed. Even if the NB sim output is used form the WBO2 while tuning, the only change in actual tune would be like changing from one NBO2 sensor to another, they all have tolerances in manufacturing, and would expect that a properly set (programmed) NBO2 sim output to be within the parameters that a stock NBO2 would be.

On the subject of WBO2 sensors, I use an LC1 in my car now, I have it permanently installed in the car, though I am not using the NB sim output, yet. I think I will be shortly since my NBO2 is either painfully wrong, or my gauge that I have connected to it is. When the WB shows 14.7, my NB gauge shows completly lean. I need to actually compare the NB voltage on the ALDL dash to know for sure.
I also have a second LC1 that I use for tuning other cars, where the WB is only needed for a short time.