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Stratified Automotive Custom Etune

2slowvw

Moderator
Location
VA
Car(s)
2022 Tesla Model 3
I just want to put this out there to prevent this thread from becoming an echo chamber. Each tuner has their own theory and method of tuning. It doesn't make one right and the other wrong. It depends on what you are looking for reliability, performance, smoothest power delivery, etc. Give your tuner a chance and see the results. If you are unhappy with the results go somewhere else and share your experience, but i would hold the criticism until your tune is finished.

I know generally the first 2 revisions of 5150 tunes are pretty underwhelming, but then as the revisions come on the tune feels stronger and stronger.
 

n2rcn4fun1

New member
Location
VA
I just want to put this out there to prevent this thread from becoming an echo chamber. Each tuner has their own theory and method of tuning. It doesn't make one right and the other wrong. It depends on what you are looking for reliability, performance, smoothest power delivery, etc. Give your tuner a chance and see the results. If you are unhappy with the results go somewhere else and share your experience, but i would hold the criticism until your tune is finished.

I know generally the first 2 revisions of 5150 tunes are pretty underwhelming, but then as the revisions come on the tune feels stronger and stronger.

Good Advice, patience
 

dlau9

Go Kart Champion
Location
Canada
I just want to put this out there to prevent this thread from becoming an echo chamber. Each tuner has their own theory and method of tuning. It doesn't make one right and the other wrong. It depends on what you are looking for reliability, performance, smoothest power delivery, etc. Give your tuner a chance and see the results. If you are unhappy with the results go somewhere else and share your experience, but i would hold the criticism until your tune is finished.

I know generally the first 2 revisions of 5150 tunes are pretty underwhelming, but then as the revisions come on the tune feels stronger and stronger.

Agreed, have the patience to finish the tune. However, I believe it is more important to understand what a general or target finished tune will look like before you choose your tuner.

Understand the tuners goals with boost, timing, AFR etc etc before taking the plunge and then realizing it does not align with your own personal needs or wants.

However, I also do think there needs to be some sort of standard of excellence within the tuning community and a benchmark should always be set to be held against. You cant have Joe Smoe coming on offering tunes and then blowing up cars because they have no idea WTF they are doing or offering COBB OTS levels of performance tunes for $$. The Market (forum) should act as a way for members to gut check them against such standards.

EX. this AFR topic is one that is pretty well nailed down IMO.
 
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Cameron1292

Ready to race!
Location
Florida
Agree on all of that. Power wise this first tune wasn't anything special. Boost was where I wanted it though and came down a bit near redline. and knock was low as well. But afr was low. So I'm going to work this out to get that up and keep knock down. If it all works out after a few revisions I'll be happy. I'm paying for a custom tune right?

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk
 

Cameron1292

Ready to race!
Location
Florida
Update on the tune. He emailed me back and said he will start leaning out the tune until we reach a good number. He was happy with the first set of logs and per virtual dyno I'm making better numbers than the MAPerformance ots stage 1 I was previously running. I flashed the 2nd revision today and drove to work. I'm seeing better afr for sure. I was able to get a clean 4th gear pull and I think the lowest it got was 11.80 so we're making our way up. Previous low was 11.02 I believe. Also very little knock. Also boost is a steady 25ish, and tapering down to 19-20. I haven't had a chance to check the logs to see the exacts of it but I will tomorrow morning when I get home from work. So far I'm happy with it. It's smooth and very linear. At first it didn't seem as powerful, but that's because the MAPerformance tune was very punchy and boost happy. This is a lot more evened out, it pulls through the whole gear. Not to mention the great noises it makes after a hard pull and shifting to the next gear. Lots aggressive pops and bangs.

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Cameron1292

Ready to race!
Location
Florida

marauder

Go Kart Newbie
Location
Northern Va
Hey guys, sorry I'm a bit late to the party didn't see the thread. I work for Stratified to help with customer service(not a tuner).
We start our base maps out conservatively. It is a good way to see if there's any issues with the car or surrounding that we or the customer weren't aware of. We then build up from there. There are plenty of times where we notify a customer of an issue, like a boost leak or poor fuel quality. This allows us to address those issues before pushing the engine hard and potentially damaging something. Like over spinning a turbo because it's trying to compensate for a boost leak.
We work with boost, apr and timing with our tunes. Generally adding in timing later in the revision cycle.

One thing to keep in mind, this is not me saying that other tuners are doing this, but tuners have the ability to adjust the sensitivity of the knock sensors. So not seeing any timing pull isn't necessarily a good thing.

Your car makes the most power at the knock threshold. A proper tune will step up timing to reach that point. It doesn't know what that point is on every single pull and run, so it will very likely hit that knock point. Where it will step the timing back until it stops knock and then start the process over again adding timing back in. This is one way to see how healthy your tune is. If you get a knock event and your car isn't recovering quickly and instead is constantly pulling timing it can be sign the tune is too aggressive or some other issue.

If your tuner hasn't adjusted your knock sensors and you're not seeing any timing pulls it can also mean that your tune isn't pushing the car enough, as it is not stepping up it's timing to the point it reaches the knock threshold.

In one case you could have to much power and causing damage, the other is you have power left on the table. A good tuner will find the middle ground.
 

Alex@Stratified

Go Kart Newbie
Location
Richmond
I wrote what I mentioned below in a different thread but I think it's worth mentioning here as well.

I see knock sensor sensitivity being mentioned here as well. The knock control system in the GTI is quite reactive and this is calibrated as such from VW because even the OEM calibration relies on this system quite a bit. We have to be a little careful when adjusting how the knock sensors are used within the calibration as we are running higher cylinder pressures than stock and this means that knock-derived pressure waves can be more severe than on the OEM calibration.

The good thing is that we have a lot of freedom in the calibration - not just how knock is interpreted but also how the calibration reacts to it. How much timing is pulled per knock event, at what RPM and load level, as well as how the system adds timing back once knock subsides.

My experience over the last decade is that sensitivity is not something you want to alter as this is something that is carefully developed in a laboratory settings by VW which we don't have access to - and likely they have done a good job at it. Adjusting just how the calibration reacts to perceived knock and how it adds and takes away timing can be carefully adjusted. Based on my testing with the MK7, I would not want to stray too too far from OEM in the handling of knock for the sake of long term reliability. The engines are well built and stout but part of the reason they stay together so well is due to the resilience and flexibility of the control system. We must make sure we don't forego this in the search for a spotless datalog or the last hp.

On to fueling ...

Fueling looks to be a hot topic and rightfully so. It is one of the important parameters to consider when calibrating the vehicle but not the only one.

The OEM calibration runs quite lean initially - however with extended running under WOT when turbo and catalyst protection tables come into play the targets drops to 11:1 AFR even for the OEM calibration.

When running the engine above the OEM parameters, fueling has to be revisited again. Higher boost pressures as well as more advanced timing which are used to increase performance will make the mixture within the cylinder more prone to knock. A more concentrated mixture (of both air and fuel) within the cylinder will also make the mixture harder to light and possibly cause misfires.

Further, with DI engines it is important to operate the injectors within a relatively limited window to not have them continue to inject too close to the spark event as this can harm efficiency. The HPFP flow capacity has to be considered as well - a decrease in pressure on the high pressure side will increase the injector pulsewidth and once again possibly cause misfires.

A balance must be found and this is what the calibration or tuning process entails. All variables have to be considered - from the vehicle modifications (what is the potential for airflow?) to the fuel used (ethanol content and octane) too all the parameters that us calibrators have access to (fuel, spark, boost pressure, when how and how much).

We do A LOT of testing with our own development vehicles (we own every vehicle platform we tune), and we couple this with with our experience with multiple other DI platforms in order to select the parameters we run. We then adjust these further based on data from the vehicle and feedback. These are not haphazard choices and we use these tools to tailor them on a case by case basis to optimize the calibration and achieve the optimal result in terms of performance, flexibility and resilience.

Hope this clears some of this up, feel free to get in touch with further questions.
 

BronxBomber

Ready to race!
Location
Orlando,FL
Hey Alex. In your opinion, which platform is more difficult to tune? Ford or VW. I know VW makes more power from the tune, but which platform is more difficult to work with?
 

Alex@Stratified

Go Kart Newbie
Location
Richmond
Hey Alex. In your opinion, which platform is more difficult to tune? Ford or VW. I know VW makes more power from the tune, but which platform is more difficult to work with?

This is a multi faceted question. The ECUs in both the EcoBoost and EA888 Gen3 are similar in terms of capabilities - they are same generation ECUs.

Currently the EB has more custom features since it has been developed by COBB over more years. I expect lots of exciting features to be added here as well.

Both engines are speed density, headifold design, DI only (at least in North America). Both have by cylinder knock, both have widebands built in. Both have 3 bar MAP sensors. The VW has a bigger twin scroll turbo, ST single scroll but the RS and Mustangs (2.3) has a twin scroll as well. The EA888 looks to be a more robust, better flowing engine - at least from what I have seen so far. It has variable valve lift which the EB does not have.

The ST/RS has a more playful chassis, the VW has a very refined one. Both can be made very quick around corners.

There are a lot of similarities under the skin.

The EB has a more flexible octane learning mechanism where it ADDS timing when there is no knock and learns octane, the VW only takes away timing.

VW has the DSG which adds another level of complexity (and speed) and which I am looking forward into delving into - calibration wise.

To answer the question simply - I think both have their interesting aspects and both are modern, complex, powerful platforms to tune. I enjoy both, drive both, and I like tuning both.
 

Cameron1292

Ready to race!
Location
Florida
I appreciate you coming on here and sharing your knowledge you have on the platform. As I've said in emails, I'm excited to see where this tune goes.

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Zx2man

Ready to race!
Location
Vancouver, Wa
Nice to see Alex over here on VW. Like others im sure I am a previous Mazdaspeed/ecoboost owner. On the forums over there, if you ran Cobb, you knew of Stratified. His rep was very solid from anything I ever saw. Another good tuner for this platform, right on.
 

Cameron1292

Ready to race!
Location
Florida
By the way Alex, congrats on the mention in the recent article on the RS on jalopnik

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airjor13

Ready to race!
Location
NOVA
Hey Alex nice to see you on here!


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