Into the rabbit hole of EFI tuning. ( Speed density/VE )

[folkenheath]

That's just the display axis so you can see it in 2D, the red and blue lines, which match the red and blue numbers at the top, are the actual up and down shift points.

The gray lines are from the other shifts, and the black line is the WOT shift for that gear.

 

[Babaganoosh]

Ok I'm starting to understand it more, so how do you get it to shift and downshift at a certain mph?

Sorry about the noobie questions.

 

[folkenheath]

Change the blue and red numbers at the top, or drag the triangles in the red and blue lines, they both do the same thing.

 

[Babaganoosh]

I don't think I'm asking the question right.

With those numbers, how do you know when it's going to shift? if you are looking at the far left, say for instance my screen shot. The trans will try and shift into 4th gear at 23 mph-109mph? Then if I'm half throttle at 77 it will down shift to 3rd?

 

[folkenheath]

Think of it this way.... your TPS%, or load, will determine at what speed it shifts or downshifts at from the chart line.

The more throttle, the higher the speed it should shift to keep it in the correct RPM range for how you are driving.

So in your capture, at only 10% throttle it will shift at just 25 MPH, and at 60% throttle it won't shift until 120 MPH.

To be honest I would change that, no reason to shift to OD at 25 MPH at any throttle really.

 

[Babaganoosh]

Now this is starting to make sense.

Watching this video and you explaining that is helping me understand exactly what that table is.

My plan with the way I set it up was to copy GM's table and use it in the holley, I really liked the way it shifted then.

 

[folkenheath]

If you click on the help within the Holley software it explains every parameter anywhere in the software. It really helps understand exactly what it does straight from the source.

From help...

 

[Babaganoosh]

I knew I should have brought my personal laptop into work today, can't download the Holley software on the work laptop.

I think my best bet is to load the Holley base tune and adjust it. I really appreciate your help today, this makes a TON more sense.

 

[folkenheath]

If you use the handheld to do a wizard, it should create a base trans tune for your gearing, WOT RPM, and tire size to start from. Although its just as easy to fix that one.

It would also erase your paid engine tuning so save that if you do it so you can load or paste that part back in if you want.

 

[Babaganoosh]

If you use the handheld to do a wizard, it should create a base trans tune for your gearing, WOT RPM, and tire size to start from. Although its just as easy to fix that one.

It would also erase your paid engine tuning so save that if you do it so you can load or paste that part back in if you want.

I was going to pull the SD card and re enter in the trans base that holley suggests and combine both.

 

[folkenheath]

With a laptop its pretty easy to copy and paste entire charts if you only want to change a couple charts and leave the rest of the tune the same.

 

[jekquistk5]

I hear ya there. I'm in the same boat! I can't own a rubics cube and be okay with only finishing one layer. Luckily the Holley system is set up to be pretty easy to use but, I want to get to the point where I can have my learn compensation at 10%. And do all my changes myself when I notice a problem area and then tune correctly for power adders when the time comes for a pro charger or supercharger.



I stumbled upon this publisher of books when I was re assembling my LY5 with AFM. I was very impressed by the small clear font, key information and reference points. And figure it's trust them again when it came to trying this Avenue. So far I know this book already has more than I'll understand in it so I'm happy. Here's the book as reference. It is geared more towards speed density than MAF but still explains maf systems. The same author published another book focusing on MAF systems.

View attachment 396624

Greg's books are great, and his classes are too. I find grabbing GM tunes and other tunes off of HP tuners repository, helped me tremendously when learning to tune. Just comparing two files and seeing the differences.

 

[Babaganoosh]

Found this video to be helpful on setting timing, one thing I don't understand is the temperature map. what do the colors mean? Red seems to be "cold/low" and pink seems to be "hot/high" Meaning red is least and pink is highest. But what does blue and green mean?

 

[folkenheath]

I don't have time to watch the video, however the colors basically transition through the order of the rainbow in between just try to give you an idea of how it flows.

Does he go over timing for different engines and combustion chambers, or just LS engines, or what is in there? Because its kind of scary to say all motor timing when it varies so much from engine to engine, but I don't have time to watch that stuff to see if it's good or not.

 

[Babaganoosh]

I don't have time to watch the video, however the colors basically transition through the order of the rainbow in between just try to give you an idea of how it flows.

Does he go over timing for different engines and combustion chambers, or just LS engines, or what is in there? Because its kind of scary to say all motor timing when it varies so much from engine to engine, but I don't have time to watch that stuff to see if it's good or not.

He mentions it's for a ls engine and every engine is different. It's just to set a base and "safe tune" and gives a few examples of how to blend, and view how your engine is going to be set while viewing the table live running.

Without a dyno it would be hard to adjust the timing to where it likes it. I guess you could hook a vacuum gauge up, get the most vaccum then back it off a degree and pull plugs.

 

[dyeager535]

Without a dyno it would be hard to adjust the timing to where it likes it. I guess you could hook a vacuum gauge up, get the most vaccum then back it off a degree and pull plugs.

That's not going to work well for any transition areas or low load/cruising situations.

The colors seem to correlate to a certain number for timing. That way, as you change the chart, if you see an odd cell (or group) in the middle of another color field, you probably missed it and will have a bad timing transition at that RPM/load (MAP) area.

I've felt pretty comfortable starting conservative and running mine up against the knock sensor, and adding fuel or retarding timing to see which works better where it starts to want to knock. I'm not talking massive knock, only where it retards timing a degree or two, where you won't hear it but you might start feeling it as timing is pulled. I've found tuning for power when transitioning from cruise to something like pulling a big hill (especially with a trailer) or dead stop full throttle much more challenging to tune than steady state cruise.

I'm just playing with an L31 and TPI, a relatively primitive setup, so it's a lot of trial and error. Maybe with the LS setups much of that is calculated for you. It would certainly be easier with a wideband O2.

 

[Babaganoosh]

That's not going to work well for any transition areas or low load/cruising situations.

The colors seem to correlate to a certain number for timing. That way, as you change the chart, if you see an odd cell (or group) in the middle of another color field, you probably missed it and will have a bad timing transition at that RPM/load (MAP) area.

I've felt pretty comfortable starting conservative and running mine up against the knock sensor, and adding fuel or retarding timing to see which works better where it starts to want to knock. I'm not talking massive knock, only where it retards timing a degree or two, where you won't hear it but you might start feeling it as timing is pulled. I've found tuning for power when transitioning from cruise to something like pulling a big hill (especially with a trailer) or dead stop full throttle much more challenging to tune than steady state cruise.

I'm just playing with an L31 and TPI, a relatively primitive setup, so it's a lot of trial and error. Maybe with the LS setups much of that is calculated for you. It would certainly be easier with a wideband O2.

My thought process is you could tune for idle, part throttle and WOT with the vacuum gauge then blend the table so it doesn't have a bad transition.

I'm a newbie at this but find it very interesting and challenging.

 

[folkenheath]

You can really only tune idle and part throttle timing with a vacuum gauge, and that is more for A/F ratio than timing.

If you go too high on the idle timing sometimes it can "diesel" when you shut it off, meaning it rattles and shakes and runs on for a second or two after key-off because the plugs are too hot and self igniting. This can also be caused by too hot of plugs, poor fuel, overheating, etc.

You won't be able to tune WOT with vacuum because well, there shouldn't be any really, or your throttle body is too small. Sometimes if you locate the vacuum sensor or gauge too close to the air moving by it, it will create a vacuum based on the venturi effect, but that's not the true vacuum of inside the intake.

For part throttle and sometimes WOT, if you ever hear pinging you should definitely back it off a couple degrees at a time until it goes away in that spot.

If you want to simplify getting a good base timing down to seconds instead of 20 minutes, just put it in simple mode (top left) and enter only 3 numbers(idle, cruise, wot) and the Holley will populate the table for you. This is what I would start with on most LS swaps in simple mode...

Then if you take it off simple and put it on 2D table again you can change any of the up to 1024 cells you want.

 

[folkenheath]

Don't worry too much about the transition with the timing, you could literally lock every cell in the whole chart at 28 or 30 with the right converter and drive it around just fine. I wouldn't recommend that for a truck, and I don't recommend it when you can set it so much better in seconds, I am just trying to make the point that for most performance builds you don't need to spend a bunch of time on curves and transitions with the timing map when you can get it so close in so short of time, and then tweak it from there if you aren't happy.

If you don't have a dyno, the best way to set timing at WOT is to take it to a drag strip and set the timing for the best MPH through the big end. Start at 28 for an LS and go up two at a time until it drops stays the same or drops off, then put it back to the lowest number that gave you the highest MPH.

For a small block I would start at 34 and a big block I would start at 32, and go up 2 at a time to see what it likes.

 

[folkenheath]

If you want the colors to make more sense put it in 3D graph mode, here is what the "simple mode" looks like in 3D...