Stage 2 Update
Hey guys. I know a few people have asked what the difference was in the V2 release of our Stage 2 tune. I got Brian to do a quick write up to help explain what we were trying to achieve:
As with any calibration, whether OTS or custom Pro-Tune, there will always be room for improvement and optimization, however insignificant or tedious. With the influx of user datalogs from Mk7 GTIs running MAPerformance OTS Calibrations from many different environments, we’ve been able to find some areas to add further refinement and optimizations to improve performance and consistency in all environments.
The datalogs sent in from Stage 1 vehicles showed very good boost control, healthy ignition timing, and by virtue of the advanced ECU modeling fuel control is usually flawless. In the datalogs sent in from Stage 2 cars showed equally good fueling and healthy ignition timing, with good single-gear boost control, however there were a few users experiencing repeatable post-shift overboost which was not instantly damped and returned to target. Upon further analysis, the vehicles in question appeared to be having a more difficult time achieving boost targets, causing the I-term portion of the PID boost control system to reactively add a considerable amount of WGDC in order to meet targets. Confusing how a car struggling to achieve boost targets also has overboost issues, eh? As mentioned above, the single-gear WOT pulls showed good boost control, meaning Boost Actual is meeting and closely following Boost Target. In order for Boost Actual to meet Boost Target for these cars, however, it required a considerable intervention of the PID system, and since the P-Term was insufficient to close the boost error the I-Term was forced to step in and close the gap. Then, with the I-Term supplementing the WGDC in upwards of 5-8% at higher RPMs, that 5-8% WGDC was too much of a supplementary addition for the post-shift RPM and the speed at which the I-Term was reducing its’ intervention was too slow to bring that post-shift overboost down as quickly as desired. This is easily resolved through ProTuning each individual car, but what we’ve focused on and proven successful in many platforms is to bring OTS (off-the-shelf) calibrations much closer to levels much to the refinement, consistency and performance previously only associated with ProTunes. With the tweaks in the Boost Control PID strategy and calibrations, the MAPerformance Stage 2 v2 Calibrations are one more step in the never-ending quest for optimization.