Innovative Tuning Blog

[Inn-Tune]

As I was at the counter at Wilson Farms to stock up on E85 before they switch to winter blend I got a call from another local shop owner who pulled in right behind me with the same idea. He brought his tester with him and confirmed that the Wilson Farms in NT still has full E85 at the moment.

I did the cold start test on Beven’s STI which went well and took it for a test drive. I made some changes in partial throttle areas to improve fuel economy some and then turned the boost down before testing 3rd gear. At 25 psi of boost on a smooth highway in the heat today it wanted to walk all over the road instead of going straight so I cut the road test short. Tomorrow morning when he comes by to pick it up I’ll have him drive it and tell me if he wants to run more power than that. I’ll be surprised if he still want to run the 29 psi tune after driving the car at 25 psi, but we’ll see what he says.

Two members came in so we could swap an HKS BOV from one member’s STI to the other’s WRX.

We finished removing and tearing down Ted’s WRX engine today. Monday we’ll look things over carefully and see if we find more clues as to why his basically stock car had this bearing failure with such low mileage. The results on his oil sample evaluation aren’t in yet.

We tested the new radiator and coolant expansion tank and bled the coolant system on Wes’s Civic.

The new DSMLink cable came in and Rob’s DSM didn’t blow out another USB port so we’re back on track with that project.

[Inn-Tune]

A lot of people have been asking for a dyno day and I’m sorry it didn’t come until this late in the season, but we’ve been really busy with scheduled dyno time and tuning all year.

10/1/10 (Friday) 10am - 6 pm or whenever all the cars have run

2 runs front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, all wheel drive or four wheel drive will all be at the same discounted rate for the dyno day. $73.56+tax=$80.00

Innovative Tuning
298 Hinman Ave.
Buffalo, NY 14216

Please make sure the car runs safely and is safe to drive at wide open throttle and high speeds, because that’s what a dyno pull involves. If the car isn’t safe to race it may not be safe to run on a dyno. That means it must track straight, can’t have dry rotted or chorded tires, leak fluids etc. If the car is deemed unsafe it will not be run.

Also, we dyno lowered cars all the time, but there is a limit to how low a car can be. It has to clear the ramps, rollers, and we need room to strap it down safely. If your car has very little ground clearance it may not fit on the dyno without scraping (if at all) so keep that in mind. This is a rare thing, but I mention it now to avoid any surprises. Most cars we put on the dyno are lowered and still have plenty of clearance so again…this is not a common problem.

Cars only.

[turbominime4door]

who makes your coolant overflow tanks im interested in buying one for my civic?

[Inn-Tune]

We do. PM me some info on your car. We usually make everything with the car here so it’s a custom fit, but we may have a car like yours here that we can make it on and send it to you.

[Static]

Do you know approximately when they switch to the winter blend for E85? I want to finish the tuning on my car before it happens and thats where I fill up.

[Inn-Tune]

The Wilson Farms in North Tonawanda said they should have switched a month ago, so as soon as their tank gets low they’re going to do it. I’d test anything you pump at this point. I do.

[somedude]

how does the winter blend E-85 effect tuning. I ask because my camaro will be tuned over winter so it will be ready to roll in the spring

[Inn-Tune]

You’ll need to retune the car every time the blend changes unless you have flex fuel sensors and an ECU that allows you to set compensations for ethanol content and fuel temperature. Even then, you’ll need to tweak those compensations as the fuel changes until you’ve got them all dialed in.

They served full strength at the Wilson Farms pumps this summer, but will be switching to E70 any day now and during the transition it will be somewhere in between. In the spring when they switch there will be in between blends as they cross over as well.

I’ve stocked up on full strength E85 for my track car so I will hopefully have enough to get me through until they switch to summer blend next year.

The cars I’ve tuned for E85 this year are either getting put away for the winter, they’re street cars switching back to gas for winter, or they’re track cars and they’ve stocked up on full strength E85.

[Inn-Tune]

Our customer Jay recently picked up a new 2011 STI. He got an extra set of wheels with Dunlop snow tires and we ran the car on our dyno to baseline it before the modding began.

Unlike past body style changes which had to grow on me, I liked this one right away. It looks great, and mean.

Onto the baselining. 215-217 whp and 222-226 wtq. Not bad at all for stock.

Then we got Jay an Invidia catted downpipe and a Borla cat back to help open the car up while keeping it relatively quiet so Jay doesn’t get hassled. The Borla cat back arrived with a donut style flange that won’t work with an aftermarket downpipe so the cat back was modded to work with a flat flange, and to get rid of the bottleneck near the flange.

Jay also removed the silencer from the stock airbox. More on this later…

The car went back on the dyno, the Cobb stage 2 93 v.106 variable boost mapping was loaded, and I ran the car a few times on sport mode. Boost was higher than stock, but power was lower than stock. Something was definitely up. After hooking my laptop and wideband up and running the car again, it was clear that the tune was not working well with this setup.

It turns out that removing the silencer on this new airbox and MAF REALLY throws things off. As you can see from this dyno graph, I was able to make a huge improvement over the Cobb mapping at the same boost level on sport mode. After seeing this I very strongly advise against removing the silencer if you’re not going to get a custom tune immediately. This is not an error in the Cobb map as their stage 2 maps are not designed to be used with the silencer deleted.

After completing the sport mode tuning, I switched to sport sharp and just as I expected I was able to crank the torque up considerably, but there wasn’t much room to safely add horsepower up top.

This graph shows the Cobb map and pulls on my map in sport and sport sharp modes.

This graph shows the best baseline pull when the car was stock and pulls on my map in sport and sport sharp modes.

The weather here is awful at the moment. Jay and I went out on a test drive to check drivablity and made a few partial pulls. We’ll complete the road testing when it’s not snowing and roads are totally clear and dry. The car seems to run great, but it’s hard to say when you’re tip toeing in poor road conditions.

The fuel system is maxed out. I had to back things down up top to keep the injectors from going static. I also adjusted the new wastegate and boost target trims per intake air temperature to help keep the injectors from maxing by dropping boost as it gets colder.

Jay has been into modding turbo diesel trucks and this is his first foray into modding a turbocharged gas setup so he’s exited to see what we can do with it together. After today’s tuning session I’d say the engine is broken in and we’ll see what the future brings for this great new car.

[Estorvito]

Cool beans man. :tup:
We should throw my Suzuki Samurai on the dyno… and turn up the boost to
20psi to see what it does. Fucking engine loves METHANOL lol
No hickups! haha

[Jack]

@Inn-Tune

Jay has been into modding turbo diesel trucks and this is his first foray into modding a turbocharged gas setup so he’s exited to see what we can do with it together. After today’s tuning session I’d say the engine is broken in and we’ll see what the future brings for this great new car.

He is a good guy… can’t wait to see what the 2 of you end up with!

[vq30de]

I saw your Nicolas-proof skid plate lol.

Looks like it’ll hold up. Good job!

[oily_evo]

yes thanks mike for the skid plate so far i have not broken it or anything else i will be in this week to talk to you about things.

[Inn-Tune]

@Jack

He is a good guy… can’t wait to see what the 2 of you end up with!

We continued with that project this week.

We added injectors, a fuel pump, and the Cosworth air intake kit. Happily the intake did exactly what we hoped it would, which was to increase horsepower in the mid range and especially on the top end. The peak WHP only went up 19, but as you can see in the following graph, the gain near redline was massive for such an inexpensive modification. I put boost on the graphs so you can see that the change isn’t from simply cranking the boost up.

The fuel mods got us back down to a safe maximum injector duty cycle, with room to grow for the future. I’m hitting at max of about 68-70% duty cycle now.

Sport sharp pulls before/after today’s mods:

As usual I set sport sharp and sport up to do different things. Sport is a bit more conservative overall, less twitchy, and has a flatter torque curve. Here’s the two settings after today’s mods and retuning:

And here’s stock vs. today’s final tune to show the overall progress:

In terms of driving impressions…I’ll leave that up to the car owner once he’s had a chance to test out the changes.

---------- Post added at 07:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:02 PM ----------

@vq30de

I saw your Nicolas-proof skid plate lol.

Looks like it’ll hold up. Good job!

Sweet. He mentioned he scrapes his bumper on his driveway and I know he’ll hit things while having fun so I decided we should extend the plate just forward of the front lip. We hadn’t done that before, but now it’s my favorite feature. I think we’ll do that on all rally grade skid plates we make from now on. It barely looks like it sticks out, but it’s enough that it hits anything before the bumper does, even if it’s a curb you hit dead on.

Only time will tell if it’s Nicolas proof. I let him know I’m covering it if it breaks (short of something like a 50 mph head on collision with a wall :)) and we’ll beef it up more if need be.

@oily evo

yes thanks mike for the skid plate so far i have not broken it or anything else i will be in this week to talk to you about things.

Awesome!

[snowracer101]

Inn-tune, I wish I was in NY because then I’d go with you guys, but I’m all the way out in Washington so I’m prob going to go with Tim Bailey at surgeline…

they wrote me up a quote for the power/times I want, and it’s close to $8k… but includes Deatschwerks 1000cc injectors, 300lph FP, TGV deletes, up pipe, 44mm EWG… Is all this necessary to run low 12’s?

Shouldn’t low 12’s be possible with a TBE, bigger FP and a good tune?

[Inn-Tune]

I don’t know Tim, but the Cobb guys certainly have faith in his tuning ability.
Mods required to achieve a low 12 depend on the car you’re starting with. What do you have?
What altitude will you be running at?

In shop news, we’re in the middle of 6 built STI engine upgrades, 1 built Acura engine upgrade, and an 06 STI stock engine rebuild. Tis the season for engine builds.
06 STI head with upgraded valves, valvetrain, cams:

One of our built longblocks going together:

[system]

I believe he has a brand new STI Mike.

[Inn-Tune]

STIs are good for mid 12s with full exhaust, pump, and a tune on pump gas.
To run low 12s at full weight on street tires you’ll need a bit more power. The stock injectors will max out so you’ll need something bigger.
The setup we posted above that made 280 WHP should be good for around a 12.3. I’m not sure if that’s low enough in the 12s or not.
300 whp on our dyno is enough for 11.9-12.0 at full weight on street tires in a WRX or 07+ STI.

Washington may not have 93 octane fuel. If you’re stuck with 91 octane, you’ll need more mods to achieve those times.
The same goes if you’re higher than 1000 feet above sea level. The higher you go, the more you have to do to make the power to run a given ET.

[dftsilvia]

I know im late but the subaru that holds the whp number, is it black?

[Inn-Tune]

If you look back a page we posted a picture of the car with the graphs and it is black.
http://www.nyspeed.com/showthread.php?156184-Innovative-Tuning-Blog&p=3139599&viewfull=1#post3139599