Agreed, I wasn't expecting huge gains either, and the powerband in a few spots still has a decent 10+ gain, so not too shabby for what it is.

I did some datalogging for ignition, A/F, etc, that I still have to go through and provide some analysis and review of as well. Will get to that next.

I think this tune is $500-$800 depending what sort of promotion they have going at the time/what sort of rebate you can talk them into.

Not sure if everyone will share your feelings in regards to cost effectiveness of the tune for peak power gains. If you look at the overall improvement, 10-15hp across the range, the subjective improvement in driveability, slightly more fuel efficient, and what feels like a nice bump between 3,000-4,800rpm, I think it was a decent gain. Not much else I can do in terms of mods now anyways, so I'll take what I can get.

Indeed, figured this would be brought up. The dynapack dyno may in fact read a bit lower than most others out there. Maybe my STR is a bit tired and doesn't put out the best of numbers, hard to say. Not really concerned about the actual power figures measured; the dyno is just a tool for consistent and repeatable testing.

I will be hitting the track sometime soon, and the trap speed mph will be more indicative where my STR stands in terms of power.

With that said, because my dynapack numbers read a bit lower than most other STR figures we've seen, it stands to reason the gains in proportion to total power are also slightly smaller. In other words, you guys dyno'ing 350whp on a dynojet for instance, might net a bit more from the tune than what I did.

I still have a water/meth injection kit I been meaning to install, so I may just get around to doing that this week. I might stick to the shell 91 v-power this way, otherwise, I think I will be making a permanent switch to the top-shelf 94 octane.

 

Real life measured numbers finally!!

Thanks for all your work. It was not a big increase but we now know it's possible to get the STR tuned.

Who knows, with more cars tuned and more experience for the tuner maybe the power increase will get bigger. We really are just beginners in this and more is to be found out with time.
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Do our northern neighbors eat turkey on their Thanksgiving Day? Or might it be Canadian Bacon, eh?

 

Indeed, Jerry confirmed this particular tune was still a bit on the conservative side, and he left some room for additional gains. If I was willing to do some dyno runs and pay the hourly rate, he would develop a tune more specific to my application, and therefore get more gains out of it. Not sure how much more that would net to be honest, and if it would be worth it at all. I think thats money better saved for the twin-screw/twin-screw-custom-tune fund.

Would be nice to to see someone else repeat this same test on their STR/4.2SC car, just to see the difference in gains.

 

This was a really informative thread. Thanks for taking the time to post all the graphics. Very easy to understand.
Steve

 

Awesome! finally hard number we can look at. As many have said, not amazing gains but 10-15 HP increase at some points is a good bang for your buck. And thanks for putting all this up for us, its great to be able to finally see results on a STR tune.

 

At that price I reckon more will go for it. Heck, look at the blower port & polish price and how little use it seems to be.

 

Yup- turkey, stuffing, vegetables, cranberry, pumpkin pie all in excess.

You'd be hard pressed to find anything labelled 'Canadian Bacon' up here, that's pretty much an American thing. I'd never tasted it 'till I visited family in Maine.

 

Yep, the real Canadian stuff is called peamale (probably spelled wrong) it is the real deal. Down here in Texas they try to pass off small round bits of ham as Canadian bacon. How wrong they are.

Every time we get up to Canada we head to the Wexford for a great breakfast and extra bacon. Eh with a cold Blue on the side. great way to start the day

 

You wait till breakfast to start drinking beer?

You're right about the peameal- very common here and further west. It's the real deal.

(sorry for the hijack Jake- congrats again on the great post).

 

I had my car on the dyno this morning to see how the AFR's looked after finally replacing the collapsed rear muffler.

The power numbers don't mean much in the end as it's not the same dyno as the previous run. But the AFR's had improved (leaned) considerably compared to before, presumably because of replacing the dead muffler.

The tuner estimated "maybe 10HP" to be had from adjusting the AFR's, which is inline with what's be demonstrated here. It went as rich as 11.5:1, and he would have brought it to ~12:1, so not a big change, & not big gains to be had.

In my case ~$1500 to fit an interceptor to the MAF and run it on the dyno for a day for 10HP = not worth it.

The local Viezu agent quoted me $1000 for a flash tune for 25HP and 30Nm, but you can take those numbers with a grain of salt, as we've seen now.

Thanks for being a guinea pig on this one. Big thumbs up!

 

Yes, thanks for making the leap! It is good to know that there is a reasonable path to a custom tune out there.

I honestly don't understand why those interceptors cost so much, there really isn't all that much to them.

I've started playing with the 85mm one of these: Abaco Performance LLC

Only been running with it for about a week, so I can't speak for reliability, but being able to easily modify the MAF curve yourself is pretty nice.

 

The bulk of the cost for an interceptor is the install & the dyno time. The box itself is only like $300, but a full day on the dyno, if it's $100 an hour, you can see where the money goes.

Now if GTR42's tune can be dropped into anyones car for $800 and it delivers 10-15HP, its a much better proposition right?

I'm curious to know what else Eurocharged can do with our ECU's.

- Up the rev limit?
- Extend the air/fuel table for higher boost applications?
- Change the diff ratio?

What else is on the wish list?

 

The question is how far you want to be from the detonation border line. The sharper you go the higher the risk.

So the one tuner that gets the most with a tune, doesn't have to be the safest one, something to keep in mind besides that a tune is specific for a setup, and most tunes are based for stock cars!

If you want to have the sharpest tune, then the best way is to take out the knock control, use your own knock sensors, check on the dyno where the limit is that knocks happen, and then take back the tune to safer level. This is costly and requires also some tooling/knowledge from the tuner. Some tuners will not search for the limit and just take a modest setting.

 

So, Avos, if I get your drift, after an ECU tune on an already highly factory-tuned Jag with 3rd party add-ons like filters, input elbows and pulleys, you should now protect your engine by using the highest octane gas available?

 

agreed, i rather leave some safety margin than attempt to tune it to very edge; would be pretty foolish to try and chase those minimal gains,
and as i mentioned earlier, on the third dyno pull we had detected ping around 5,000rpm, leading me to believe this tune is plenty aggressive as is,

i am considering installing this water.meth kit and sticking with shell 91 v-power, or making a permanent switch to sunoco94 which is available at certain stations around here...

 

Yes, at least that is what I would do and what I recommend. Although not big, it does give extra protection again. Over here I only us 98 ron fuel, think that is 93 aki or so for you in the US.

 

Agreed. If boost/compression and/or ignition timing has been altered from stock bringing the engine closer to the onset of detonation, and the possibility of the knock sensors kicking in and spoiling the party is a factor, then yes higher octane gas might be of benefit.

 

After going through some datalogs of the dyno runs, I would like to clarify and expand on a few things,

On the third dyno run with the eurocharged tune, we netted 315.4hp / 333.4lb-ft,

This run the dyno operator slightly let off around 5,000rpm due to ping, and did not complete the pull at 100% throttle.

I wouldn't consider this a 'valid' run,

The fourth and following pull, we netted 322.6hp / 332.7lb-ft,

So, lets average the three stock tune runs: 311.4hp / 333.5lb-ft,

Now, lets average the three tuned runs (1, 2, exclude 3, and 4): 322.8hp / 339.2lb-ft

This results in an average gain of 11.4hp and 5.7lb-ft, figures which looks a bit better than the two best before/afters overlaid,

Looking at the each set of three dyno runs, suggests the eurocharged tune puts out more consistent power, a good thing... maybe...

Further more, based on the logs, the dyno operator was trying to avoid the transmission kicking down from 4th to 3rd gear, so he would be about 80-90% throttle into the 4,000+ rpm range,

This sort of effects the peak torque figures as it sort of depends on when the dyno operator chooses to hit it, so take it with a grain of salt, but i believe we could establish a better idea of overall torque gain if it was possible to dyno a little lower in the rpm band,

Some more food for thought fellas,

 

Thats definitely worth the money in my opinion. 11.4 HP and 5.7 Torque, sounds like a nice increase all the while avoiding extreme modifications.