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Gentlemen, Hack Your Engines!
Les Gasser writes "Ahh, drag racing! If you've never experienced the scent of nitro or
the flashing flames of a top fueler running 320MPH+ in 4+ seconds in a
standing-start quarter mile run at dusk, you're missing world-class
performance art. (See 'High Performance' for the classic on drag racing history and
culture). Now the NYTimes (registration needed) has 'Gentlemen, Start Hacking Your Engines,' an article on
're-engineering' engine control computers for maximum performance,
combining the drag racing and tech-geek traditions." Having learned everything I know about racing from Gran Turismo, I'm amazed to learn there's more than just buying a "racing chip".
Here you go, tiger.
get your reg-free link right here.
Cobweb...if you had seen "The Fast and the Furious" you would of remembered the laptop that the police officer/(under cover racer) had a mad leet laptop controlling his engine.
There was opengl and everything....
You are so 2 years ago.
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
For real computing in Cars then look at Formula one. Launch Control, Engine Control, Automatic and Semi Automatic gearboxes, traction control etc etc etc.
These are cars that can be remotely re-tuned during a race. From a tech perspective its amazing.
However it ruins what should be a battle of man and machine and enables the big spenders to kill the little guys everytime. Computing is great for some things, but it too often reduces the skill required in sports like Motor Racing, making it a battle of programmers rather than drivers.
Fully automated remote racing with large cars might be quite cool, but what makes it really interesting is that people can make mistakes, and even better take risks that a computer wouldn't think are smart.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Having learned all I know about racing from Mario Kart, I'm surprised they don't just carry some mushrooms and turtle shells.
You may find this interesting, particularly if you're into rallying at all and have heard of both Subaru and Prodrive, who prepare rally subarus and also make a performance pack for road-going cars.
:-)
The new high performance Impreza (STI VII) Prodrive Performance Pack uses a piggy back chip to "fool" the ECU into allowing more boost on its turbo.
The reason? Prodrive don't know how to re-program the OEM ECU correctly.
A third party has hacked a tool to reprogram the ECU - something no-one else has managed. This largely is the work of one guy, who has done something that is apparently not possible
Rumour is that Prodrive will be using the ecutec tool to reprogram ASAP.
Another mate has reverse engineered the ECU for older models and is blowing chips to give increased performance...
ECU hacking has been around for a while. For popular cars, you can get aftermarket ECUs which are tuned for more performance. On a non-turbo, street legal car, the best you can expect is a 10% power increase. On turbocharged cars you could get more (just turn up the boost), but you quickly run into reliability problems because the engine can't handle the increased loads.
To get significant power increases, you still need to apply 'old style' tuning tricks like adding forced induction, changing camshafts and uprating engine internals.
Ah, Gran Tourismo. I love that game :). Is there anything equivalent out there for the PC? For those of you who actually race, how accurate is the game?
Anyway, I think for most drivers, there really isn't much more then getting a "racing chip". I'm not saying geeks could reverse engineer their cars, but there are so many different kinds of car computers out there, it would be hard to 'share the wealth' so to speak, the way you can with Linux programming.
Plus you run the risk of completely fucking up your engine. I'm not sure if I'd really trust my own code when one screw up could cost me thousands of dollars per incident.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Intensive electronic engine control is a very common thing in racing for 20 years now. What was seen in Fast and Furious is major BS. If you wanna see serious electronic action look into Formula 1. They have all kinds of goodies for decades now. Dynamic fuel mapping, traction control, launch control, braking assistance (this particular one is very cool, the system monitors the dynamic conditions of the car and slows any one of the four wheels without even asking the driver) etc...
Another interesting bit is Mitsubishi Carisma Evo 7.
As far as dragsters go, they are way behind. Nothing special nor innovative.
One last note in the last few years prices of engine management systems went down a lot. You can buy a very good one for couple thousand but as long as you dont have the right tools, you cant tune the car perfectly. and never forget the intake and exhaust systems in your street cars are build to the specs written by suits hence very performance limiting.
Any geek out there who wants to make there car go fast follow the common wisdom:
1. Buy a fast car.
2. Cant afford it and stuck with that peoples carier? First make it corner faster (get good springs and dampers) Fast and Furious style car dragging on the asphalt dont qualify.
3. If you want it to go fast make it lighter (look: Collin Bruce Chapman)
4. Make it stop fast (you might need them)
5. You exhaust system is design to be on the very safe side of noise regulations and fuel economy fix it.
6. You intake design sucks too (dont forget the cylinder head lots of power in there)
7. By now you spent as much as you spent on the original car.
8. Not satisfied get real engine management system. Remember eletromotive, haltec, motec.
Or the alternative and more appropriate road for the ones with tools, garage and time: Locost, some sort of open source sportscar project and it can go very fast.
Peace
For one thing, it's required that drivers initiates the gear change. Secondly, true automatic transmissions loose a lot of the power between the engine and the wheels.
F1 cars have a shifter knob that you just push or pull to shift up or down respectively. I forget what it's called. The Toyota MR2 spyder has one of those things as well.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
But Mr. Rascon is sure he does not want a Lexus or a Nissan 350Z. "You get a Lexus or 350Z, and, sure, people will look at you, but that's now what this is about," he said. "This is about getting into something I built and whipping a 350Z. That's the best feeling in the world."
Why wouldn't you want a Nissan 350Z? Seems to me that if you can make a Civic fast, you could make a 350Z faster.. Or is there some sort of weird pride involved in having a Civic that is faster than a stock 350Z (but slower than a modified one)? If I had the money, I'd just buy the car with the most potential, which (I'm pretty sure) isn't a Civic.
Now, if you could connect everything upto a fastish laptop you could use Neural nets to reprogramme the control systems on the fly. Say for more power, speed or fuel efficiency.
It shouldn't be 'too' hard to do and could adjust to the wear of the engine &co. over it's lifetime.
It could even have a special emmissions test mode.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Usually the interface is proprietary across manufacturers, though I wouldn't be surprised if some manufacturers shared interfaces (say, Chevrolet and Toyota, or Chrysler and Mitsubishi, or Porsche, Audi, and Volkswagen, etc).
Nope. See the answer to the first question, and also several older Slashdot stories on the same.
Probably, but you'd still need special hardware for the interface. I know of at least one WinCE-based dynometer software package (I believe there's also a Palm version), but I can't remember the name or website at the moment. Google should help.
Yes, that's the connector for the garage's/dealer's computer, which runs a diagnostic package to read what your computer has stored (ie, if your "check engine" light came on, and possibly why), and do minor uploads (your dealer and/or car mechanic is not going to reprogram an ECU for you).
Talk to your dealer. There are a number of things most dealers will do if you ask them nicely. None of them are performance-related, however. (Why is that? Well, reprogramming your ECU for performance reasons can push your engine well past proper tolerances, screw up emissions, and just generally fuck over your car -- that means if you touch the ECU for performance reasons, you can kiss your warranty goodbye.) Failing that, disconnect the bell that makes the ding, either at the fusebox (if you can), or at the source.
Have to agree with this. On non-forced induction cars, all you're doing is removing any safety margin built into the current map by playing with timing. Advancing ignition may give some benefits but runs the risk of det, or pre-ignition, or pinking, or pinging, or knocking or whatever your locality calls it ;-)
;-) ) but runs the risk of det again which'll knacker your engine pretty damn quickly.
With a turbo on the car, things start getting more interesting as you can get more air into the engine, which means it'll need richer fuelling to achieve anywhere near stoich (or even safety
With the Impreza, which is my weapon of choice, the map is incredibly rich before doing anything... The general concensus is that this is done to keep engines from going bang, as out of the box they'll come with between 218 and 275BHP from a 2 litre engine, along with a 3 year warranty.
Tune them simply and carefully and for a little money you'll see high 200s from them. Beyond that, my opinion is that your internals will need some consideration - particularly con rods and those little gudgeon pins which hold your piston heads on.
The fact that people have done what manufacturers think is impossible is a cause for some small celebration in my eyes, and allows the little guys to stick a finger in the air to those who would have them only use franchised dealers with the necessary hardware to talk to the ECUs...
If you've never experienced the scent of nitro and flashing flames of a Thunderbird overclocked to 3200 MHz starting Quake III Arena in 4 seconds, you're missing world-class performance art!
evoking seasons,
can be extremely hard for
haiku newcomers.
Carsten "Russ" Meyer, editor at German c't magazine, has a few pages (in English) on hacking his Chevy Camaro Z28:
Tuning the PROM
Diagnosing the ALDL
Cool.
I'm not planning to go that far, but I'll be buying an Auterra OBD II Scan Tool interface for my Palm. Lots of interesting information about what's going on under the hood.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
Mind you, it's far more effective to use an aftermarket ECU.
Check out http://farnorthracing.com to see the team website, and http://www.gems.co.uk to download the software I use.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
What you say can be taken in a different way though. Instead of having computer-controlled fuel injection delivering unbeatable performance only to the big boys, it might also work to level the playing field.
When I was into motorcycles as a kid and read everything about them, one of the buzz-words that popped up most often when writers talked about high-performance motorcycles was 'unobtanium.' One of the biggest advantages enjoyed by teams from the biggest companies was access to parts that were engineered to the n-th degree and racing was a game between big companies that was won by the one that could put the most thought into producing advantage by exploiting ever-narrowing margins of difference between machines; 'first make it out of magnesium to make it light, *then* drill some holes in it to make it lighter.'
In any field where hacking the hardware provides the main advantage, the big boys have more, but the value of these innovations evaporate as the technologies they employ become understood by more people. The ability to influence performance through software can be said to improve things for whoever has programming talent.
A small company might not be able to turn half-a-dozen world-class engineers loose on piston head design, but a talented coder can do things that have no material basis, exploiting interrelating factors to improve performance that don't start out life in a cad program like fuel-air mixtures/tire-pressure/tire-temperature and composition.
A ceramic engine block is one thing, but really understanding how *your* vehicle's engine works in a turn and getting the last inch of *extra* out of it might be something that not even a major manufacturer can replicate easily.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
F1 gearboxes have been fully automatic for most teams for a couple of seasons now. They retain the ability to do manual gearchanges if the driver wants to, but that almost never happens.
They are not torque-converter slushboxes like passenger cars. These are sequential-gearchange boxes like motorcycles, with hydraulic-actuated, computer-controlled shift mechanisms. There are zero drivetrain losses compared to a full-manual version, and they outperform a driver shifting in every respect.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Yes! There's loads of information out there...
:-)
The interface in some cars is called OBDII (On board diagnostics) - see ODBII.com, which incidentally claims that all cars sold in the US after 1 Jan 96 have to be compliant...
Now the protocol that they use is something else. There's many flavours, but at least you can start hacking should you be feeling brave
There is, of course, open software to help and naturally it's on sourceforce here.
Plenty more information out there - just google.
Not only can the engine management engineer retune the engine on the fly during a race, most of the teams go even further.
Every team has what is called a "7-post shaker rig". This is an electro-hydro-mechanical device that places a hydraulic ram under each tire, plus 3 more attached to the aero centre for feeding in aero loads. By playing back the loads recorded by the car during operation by the position sensors, load cells, strain gauges, and accelerometers though these rams, the engineers can watch the car operate under real racing conditions in the lab.
Well, the bigger teams transmit the telemetry coming off the car during the race back to the shop in England, where the shaker righ data is played back on a duplicate car on the shaker rig in near real-time, so that they can keep an eye open for problems.
F1 has more money and technical ability than can be imagined.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Unless you an engineer of some sort, you will not be able to 'modify' your engine controllers behavior. You are left with the buying a chip option.
The only thing these chips will do is sacrifice fuel efficience for short term performance. Hopefully one can turn on and turn off the effect, but likely thats not possible.
It isn't just about brakes. It's the maximum torque loading allowed by your gearbox, maximum heat buildup that can be allowed in the slushbox, strength of the universal or CV joints, side loading the suspension can take, aerodynamics, you name it. It takes several hundred people to design a car, and tens of expensive highly qualified engineers to do a proper job of uprating. If even companies like Mercedes occasionally get it wrong (A-Class)it should be obvious that it isn't easy.
I realise that this won't have the least effect on the idiots who think they are God's gift to automotive engineering because they can actually undo the bolts, replace the silencer with a noisenhancer, and do the bolts up...but why is it that the people who do these mods drive so incredibly badly? If the ones around here tried it on a real racetrack, the marshals would have them off before the end of the first lap, assuming they got that far without hitting something. Which is presumably why they do it on public roads, since there are fewer police on the roads than marshals on a racetrack.
The great thing about drag racing is that the thing only needs to stay together for a quarter mile.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Kenny Bernstein was one of the leaders in pushing for pit lane analysis via computer...many, many years ago. I believe he's turned that into a side business since then.
It is really impressive what parameters are monitored and what kind of telemetry they employ. F-1 is the same way...tons of analysis done real time. The Japanese (Honda), again, years ago, would transmit telemetry from the car, on the race track, from one of the many tracks worldwide...all the way to their labs in Japan.
For those with a bit more esoteric interest, note that originally, physics types deemed it impossible to obtain trap speeds in the 300mph range...that was before the spinning tire effect was carefully considered.
Well, to be honest, I don't really enjoy spending my free time "experiencing the scent" of nitrous oxide.
Jeff
stty erase ^H
While 330.88 MPH, 4.477sec, 8,000+hp fire-breathing nitromethane-burning supercharged fire-breathing Top Fuel dragsters are indeed performance art, and I'd love to see how they manage the engines on those beasts...this article was about a bunch of Civic prettyboys and their 220-300hp engines...sort of like talking about ASCI White, and then pulling out an Ars Tech God Box - nice piece of machinery, but nothing at all like what was mentioned.
It doesn't even really talk about the engine management packages or technology that much (the shining example is a fscking Palm program that adjusts your nitro boost on the fly); mostly just about how these kids are making their cars run in the mid-10s, at a piddling 120mph, with the likes of Real sports cars - the closing line is "This is about getting into something I built and whipping a 350Z. That's the best feeling in the world." Admirable perhaps, but not really a hugely tech-involved story.
I've been looking at MoTec ECUs for my 240SX, now there's some high-tech car stuff - the features and what it can do would make a car-savvy geek twitch and drool..basically full control over every electronic feature in the engine, with optional realtime telemetry. Notice the record-setting Civic uses MoTec, but they don't even mention it in the article; I guess Viper's ultra-l33t nitro Palm app ("Instead of using your PC, now you can sit in your car and change your whole system. The Palm Pilot has all your engine configurations. You can set it to full race mode in seconds.") is more technologically interesting than Ferrari's F1 engine management systems (and the ECU for virtually every other racewinning car out there).
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
The manufacturer I work for wants to know what the aftermarket shops are doing to change the performance of the engine. -- And before you ask, no it isn't so the manufacturer can copy their techniques. Believe it or not, we know what we're doing when we design these things! We want to know how the modifications will affect the drivability and warranty rates on these vehicles.
Fair warning -- watch for manufacturers to increase pressure on dealerships to detect people using aftermarket computer chips, so that they can start denying warranty claims for people who do foolish things like burning up their turbochargers by requesting too much boost.
Some of the technologies we've already implemented will be able to supply information to dealerships about whether any of the data on the computer has been changed, and when the computer was last re-programmed. That will allow the dealerships to catch the people who re-program their PCM (Powertrain Control Module), and then return it to the original program before bringing it back to the dealership for any repairs.
Help find a cure for Gidget.
do those things last? :)
A lot of people here say "Oh, great, the dudes do it better than the automotive industry themselves" or "wow, I got a 5% increase in HP! Damn!" - Engine longevity is important, however and I think those people that set up the system envelope for the engine electronics take that into account very seriously. You'd normally want your car to work for 5 years faultlessly with perhaps a minor repair before the 10 years. Using modded engines means extra wear and tear, also on the supporting components. How long can it last for? Perhaps a year?
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
Just get a K&N filter (or a shiny CAI if you wanna show youir enjun to the chickies), a good set of headers and an exhause (Apexi makes really nice ones, specially if you can kluge an N1 Dual to fit) and throw in a chip - you'll be around 280-300, with very close to stock reliability; a kid i know did this to a very early US WRX, one of the first 500 in i think, and it's still running smooth as silk 70,000 miles later. Embarasses Z06s and Vipers, all for about $3000. then you have that much more to dump into the suspension; a well-done WRX with good coilovers, full tie/strut bars, and really hard bushings handles soooo well...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
In a straight drag race, yes, Viper beats rice. However, a properly configured suspension and tuned engine on a quote, rice, unquote mobile can easily destroy a viper. Initial D, while 'anime'(which some would easily disregard as 'unrealistic'), does somewhat accurately portray the idea that it is skill, not horsepower, that makes a driver. There is no skill on going from one end of a line, to the other. Unless COMPLETELY inebriated.
Then again, a Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R properly tuned and supe'd up could probably smash a Viper(which probably has rice parts in it anyway!)...
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Well,I got as far as the second sentence where it mentions racing a Honda Civic and I can't read anymore. My brain has activited it's "Fast and the Furious" automatic defense system. I'll try again when I'm drunk enough.
Chika Chik-ah... do-e ow ow.
I'd rather be rolling in an Imprezza, before I'd even roll in a Ford Focus. Much less anything of value. They've got a style that the old Cameros, Mustangs and T-Birds didn't.
Although not to say they're not idiots, but I see no beauty in drag racing. Sure, there's pulling more horsepower out of a car, but where's the fun? Sure, you can idiotly run in a straight line, but having to seriously brake for a turn? Pfft. Who needs that? I admit, I do not drift myself, but I admire drifters more than I do drag racers, because there's no style in drag racing. There's no show of driving skill.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
before you rank on all cars from the land of the rising sun, keep in mind that not all of us who drive them want to put stickers all over them. I have a Nissan 240SX that i'm in the process of building up, and it hasn't got a single sticker on it. Not gonna, either, unless i can get sponsored.
Bottom line is, i bought the car because it was cheap, efficient, very reliable, looks mighty nice, and handles like a dream (they hit it really well with that chassis; it's a lot more compact and nimble than the 300ZX while feeling a lot less claustrophobic inside). i want to make it into a ripping fast sports car, although on the track instead of the strip, and since i lack the money for an M5 (damn straight - if i buy a BMW it will seat 5 comfortably), i settled for the best available solution.
ps - imprezas aren't slow, i thought they sold the WRX STi Type R 2-door over there for awhile?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
The article talks about Hondata which works on Hondas. An example of almost the exact same thing in the Mitsubishi world can be found here:
http://www.dsmlink.com
That software was derived entirely by brute force decryption of the '95 Mitsu Eclipse turbo ECU code. We actually wrote the thing before we knew anything about Hondata. Once it was released and I started looking around a bit more, I realized the Hondata guys had done something almost identical with the Hondas.
Thomas Dorris
Racing used to have a driver and a mechanic in each car. The mechanic was responsible for keeping the vehicle at it's top performance. (Sometimes by reaching into the motor to make adjustments to the carb. I don't see the differences between a mechanic on the sidelines with a lap top, telemetry link and computer control system to make those same adjustments.
Tisha Hayes
I meant the data gathering/telemetry business is a sideline. I'm sure Kenny is still racing...can't wait to see his smile next season, and John Force's dirty driving suit.... :)
depends. that immense boat you've wrapped yout 883hp in probably weighs around 4000 lbs, while my little ricer is more like 2500lbs. Means i only need 550hp to have the same power-to-weight ratio, and therefore the same acceleration, and i still probably handle better. If i start ripping out unneccessaries, i can probably get down to 2300lb, and go even faster. Case in point - a 140-bhp GSX1000R will utterly annihilate your 427 from the line.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
No matter how much HP you get a Civic to, it's still a civic. I had 20(+/-) year old guy and his girlfriend in a Civic SI come up next to my 427SC Cobra replica that I built (412hp, 420tq & 2200lbs total weight) and try to run me from a roll at 65mph. I don't care how much ECU tweaking someone does, there is: a) No replacement for displacement b) HP/TQ to weight ratio is KING c) "NAWS" on a stock motor will only last so long d) If your driving a Civic and want to roll against a open-side-piped, fire-breathing light-weight 427SC Cobra, you might want to have your head examined. ...and the girlfriend thought it was the funniest damn thing when I left 2 black lines for 100ft down the interstate...
On the technical side - Most of the ODBII compliant ECU's take a lot of time to crack. Many folks have done it on different models, but an easier way is to piggyback them most of the time.
Reverse engineering the control modules.. smells like a lawsuit from the Big 3.
While i think it silly, this year has already started out being the year of the 'DMCA lawsuit'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Usually the interface is proprietary across manufacturers, though I wouldn't be surprised if some manufacturers shared interfaces (say, Chevrolet and Toyota, or Chrysler and Mitsubishi, or Porsche, Audi, and Volkswagen, etc).
Actually, the ODB standards have forced manufacturers to provide an interface, and you can do some small reprogramming of your ecu with it. The problem is, you can't do it for performance, since OBD stands for "OnBoard Diagnostic" and is intended to be used to test for emissions (the political reason it was created) and as a tool for general diagnostics (the practical reason it was created). It eliminated the old jumper-it and count the blinks method.
Probably, but you'd still need special hardware for the interface. I know of at least one WinCE-based dynometer software package (I believe there's also a Palm version), but I can't remember the name or website at the moment. Google should help.
I haven't heard of any hardware yet that'll allow connection of a laptop to the OBD connector, but I'd like to see it. Once someone makes that, then we can have a free software project to do all the stuff that we currently have to pay $5000 to Snap-On to do. Fuck Snap-On. If Microsoft made tools for mechanics, they'd be called Snap-Off.
Heck, maybe I could even disable that annoying , everytime the temperature drops below 4oC. :)
This is from the poster you replied to, and I can't think of anything stupider than disabling the warning noises. Granter, I can't think of a real good reason why you should have a warning that your engine is COLD, other than that if you hear this ping you should start thinking about your antifreeze/water mixture and checking your service records for when you last had it changed.
Here's the token beowulf cluster reference:
How much performance could be gained by running a beowulf cluster ecu? (probably none, last time I checked most ecus were still 8-bit boxes)
Like what I said? You might like my music
I think there are standards for the buses on cars.
And there are quite a few.
'Much has been made of the industry-wide IDB or ITS Data Bus development effort'
A bit of info?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
One of the advantages of the F1 guys going crazy is that their stuff trickles down to us little guys.
Shaker rig time is now cheap enough that even small teams like mine (hey Malda! Wanna sponsor a race car?) can afford it, once and a while.
http://www.morissdampers.com offers 4 and 7 post shaker stuff.
The only reason I haven't used it is that I don't (yet!) have the data to drive the rig. It wants 4 suspension position sensors and 4 wheel accelerometers as a minimum.
But even then, there's still stuff to be learned from even simple stuff like frequency sweeps. The NASCAR guys recently discovered the Ohlins rig in North Carolina, and it's been booked solid for a year now.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I suspect Les Gasser really meant Nitrous, as in Nitrous Oxide.
Here I found the following:
My wife owns a Honda Civic, it's the bog standard 4 cylinder DX model. It's fuel effecient, it keeps my family safe and it gets my lovely wife where she needs to go. 22K miles so far and it's not had any major problems. So far as I'm concerned it's just a nice family car.
Every single day we will be driving and see some other moron in a Civic with those ludicrous big mufflers and a silly looking spoiler. Pet hate of mine. Yes.
So, what's the deal with Civics? Really easy to modify or just fashionable amongst the kid racers of the world?
Kids with big mufflers pretending to be drag racers aside (they usually Darwinize themselves within a few months, or simply grow out of it) I've seen some really impressive Civic mods, like the one in the article. I'd be interested to hear comments from those mature Civic owners.
Kids with big mufflers and silly spoilers need not reply.
So, I was looking out of the window at the traffic down below, and I've come to the following conclusion: tune your car all you want. They all wait at the lights at the same speed!
OK, I know... racing tracks, Autobahn etc. I've noticed that most cars seem to be capped at 250-270 km/h (155-170 mph). Mine certainly is, but that's actually fast enough for me. I don't drag race - if anything, I end up sitting in a jam on the Autobahn, at the same speed as everyone else - zero (see first paragraph). So much for having no speed limits. :-(
Now for something completely different: Audi is taking the record industry to court.
It seems that customers have complained that certain CDs won't play in their cars, and Audi wants the record companies to pay to have the car CD players fixed/changed, as they are producing non-standard CDs.
I heard that two days ago from an employee of said company. It must have been an internal announcement; haven't found anything on the web about it yet...
-- Steve
.. Mostly if you have a turbo. Or, in my case, two.
My S4 has gone from about 250hp to 330hp. And I can feel it all. Before and after - the change was amazing.
Sure, I need to be a bit more careful warming up and cooling down the car. I can live with that. And actually, ever since I've gotten the increase in performance, I put the pedal down LESS. That's weird.
There's also some other very cool tuning.. I have a Vag-Tool which allows me to hook my laptop up to the car and monitor (and change) settings/data in realtime.
Since I've had that, I've made the following changes:
- Holding down lock on my keyfob for about 3 seconds will roll up all windows, close the moonroof, *and* lock the car
- The other way around - holding down unlock for a while opens up all the windows, etc.
- My tiptronic transmission now will not automatically shift out of first gear. (VERY NICE)
- My tiptronic transmission now lives in a non-stop "sports mode"
Now, only if this company that makes the interface/tool would provide hooks into the data collection portion of their app - I could write some realtime graphing utilities..
My Viper will always beat your rice. Not to mention your z0g. LOL
No, actually my rice will beat your Viper for 1/3 the cost. After I've put as much money into my rice as you've put into your Viper, you'll be cautioned not to blink if you wanna see me while we're racing.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Has Linus seen The Fast and the Furious yet?
Kernel 2.6 really needs to incorporate some NOS flow control, otherwise we'll top out at 140Mph!
These people are obviously mildly retarded.
Everyone knows that the engine has very little to do with racing performance.
It all boils down to the simple concept that if you want to be faster, you are going to need a Type-R sticker, some huge chromed wheels on the rear wheels (regardless of FWD or RWD) - or at the very least some chromed hubcaps that look like alloy wheels (the other racers won't know the difference).
you need a monster spoiler, some racing decals, and a coffee can sized exhaust tip.
If you want the power of nitrous, but don't want the hassle and/or cost of an installation, you can just clip a small fire extinguisher to the A frame of your car and other racers will know that you are faster.
All of this talk of "engines" and "chips" just shows a general ignorance about cars that I personally find appalling.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
The first could conceivably lengthen the life of your engine, assuming you're not out abusing the hell out of it from every stop light -- though I imagine that is the precise reason some people mod it in the first place. But the chip mods and such are going to be putting stresses on the engine that it wasn't explicitly designed for, otherwise they would have put the higher performance mod chip in there in the first place (assuming the mod chip affects more than just fuel efficiency -- i.e. torque, hp, rpm-limit). That's why I don't think I'd ever chip mod my daily driver.
Relatively speaking.
If you can give a car a 33% power increase and almost 100% torque increase by reprogramming the ECU *ALONE* (example: VW/Audi 1.8T), then a 10% is really not that significant.
To answer your question, as long as fuel is there and you aren't detonating, longevity isn't significantly affected... but thats not the point.
.. and I'm not expecting my supercharged, hondata controlled civic to run 200,000 miles either.
Think about those fanatics who are tweaking their bios settings for that 5% increase.. or overclocking their stuff fast enough to heat the room. Its the same thing. The same drive. The guy overclocking his Athalon 1800 to 3gig isn't concerned about longevity.
BMW released their new micro-processor (ooooh!) controlled ABS braking system when odd transient failures were reported by some customers - those that survived anyway.
It turns out that in certain excessively high RF environments the processor locked up. One such environment was while driving past one of those huge "Golf Ball" early warning radar stations so "popular" at the time.
I remember this because of the interesting discussion of what the fail-safe behaviour of a braking system ought to be:
void brakesPressed(BrakeEvent e)
}{
Oh I don't know about it being of no use to us roadgoing people. The AEM ECU in my car will be updated shortly with acceleration based traction control similiar to what the F1 guys have been using. :-P
Not sure I like this article highlighting to the masses that this kind of thing is being done though. It's all we need for someone somewhere with no clue to wake up and think that by gosh these people must be stopped! I'd hate to see programs like LS1-Edit, LT1-Edit, Hondata, and who knows what else banished in a fell swoop of legislation. Same with replacement ECUs - they're "off-road use only" but you just know some twit will see this and get a wild hair trying to please some special interest group. Thank God for SEMA!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Based on the following, it will be quite some time before the electrics are doing 320+mph and 4s in the 1320.
Some interesting Top Fuel dragster facts:
* One dragster's 500-inch Hemi makes more horsepower then the first 8
rows at Daytona
* Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1 1/2 gallons of
nitro per second, the same rate of fuel consumption as a fully loaded
747
but with 4 times the energy volume.
* The supercharger takes more power to drive then a stock hemi makes.
* Even with nearly 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger
on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into nearly-solid form
before
ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock.
* Dual magnetos apply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output
of an arc welder in each cylinder.
* At stoichiometric (exact) 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture (for nitro), the
flame front of nitromethane measures 7050 degrees F.
* Nitromethane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above
the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from
atmospheric
water vapor by the searing exhaust gases.
* Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After 1/2
way, the engine is dieseling from compression-plus the glow of exhaust
valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting
of
it's fuel flow.
* If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds
up in those cylinders and then explodes with a force that can blow
cylinder
heads off the block in pieces or blow the block in half.
* Dragsters twist the crank (torsionally) so far (20 degrees in the
big end of the track) that sometimes cam lobes are ground offset from
front
to rear to re-phase the valve timing somewhere closer to
synchronization
with the pistons.
* To exceed 300mph in 4.5 seconds dragsters must accelerate at an
average of over 4G's. But in reaching 200 mph well before 1/2 track,
launch
acceleration is closer to 8G's.
* If all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for
once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs $1000.00 per second.
* Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have read this
sentence.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
I ment to say that the older style cars do not have the style that gets me hot and bothered. I'm 20 years old. I grew up in an asian area(ClarkAFB, the Phillipines) and in the nintendo generation. Can you blame me for having my sense of taste? Then again the 'Impreza looks like a shopping cart' comment wasn't entirely unwarranted. It somehow appeals to my style more than anything else.
Anyway, yeah, my dad went on about hotrodding in the 70's a bit. so I have some idea what kind of art it is. -Those- rice boys ARE idiots. Light cars like those should be out on windy curves, sexy and alluring like a fine woman, not running straight lines.
And yes, I was kidding about a Skyline taking a Viper. If you're going down to the line about how finely worked on it is, it comes down to the mechanic who worked on it.
Maybe it was different in the early days because it would seem that those who did the work also did the driving. Which is far different from today, which I quickly assumed as similar, with it's modern version "Fast and the Furious" style attitude.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
What year is your impreza? I thought that they hadn't been made with anything smaller than a 2.2 for the last 7 or 8 years, or a 2.5 more recently...
BTW I love my subaru, but I have a legacy (I am practical to a fault sometimes)
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
that immense boat you've wrapped yout 883hp in probably weighs around 4000 lbs, while my little ricer is more like 2500lbs.
Shelby Cobras ran Ford 427 side-oilers and they weighed under 2,400 lbs.
2500lbs. Means i only need 550hp to have the same power-to-weight ratio, and therefore the same acceleration,
And how are you going to get 550hp out of your "normally-aspirated" engine, Ricer X? If you want to see what big-blocks can do with blowers, nitrous, etc., just watch any drag race. Have you ever seen a car turn the 1/4 mile in 5 seconds at over 300mph using a hot-rodded Honda Civic engine? Didn't think so.
Now let's talk drivetrain. Have you ever tried to get 550hp to hook-up with front wheel drive? Your only hope of beating the aforementioned 427 is if you race on snow.
and i still probably handle better.
Than a Shelby Cobra? Are you on drugs?
Front wheel drive cars with high horsepower handle horribly. That's why you don't see Indy, Formula 1, or other race cars with front wheel drive. Ever wonder why Ferraris, Corvettes, Vipers, and even Honda S2000s all have rear wheel drive? When you use front wheel drive, you are prone to all kinds of handling problems when you try to apply power while in a corner.
Starting with a Honda Civic in order to make a performance car is like starting with a 68K-based Mac to make a high-performance computer.
On the BMW mailing lists a few years ago, there was a guy who posted often about such issues. His name is Jim Conforti, and he makes one of (if not the) top aftermarket engine chips for BMWs. We are talking uber-geek here. He is one of the most knowledgable on the subject, and had to "defend" himself several times on the list to know-nothings who were spouting off. He was a nice guy, but if you riled him he could absolutely bury you with his depth of technical knowledge. Just seeing the information that he posted to the list, and knowing that he had 1000x more in his head, I realized that engine management isn't something you should just play around with. Maybe this is just from the BMW perspective, but I'll bet it applies to any engine.
One last thing - all the high-tech tuning won't do you much good unless you have a well engineered engine to start with. I have a 1988 BMW M3. 2.3 litre 4cyl naturally aspirated, with 198 BHP. (chipped to 210) This was made in 1987 folks, and there are few cars out there today that are engineered this well. In competition the engine put out well over 300 HP, and that was without any type of forced induction. But engineering something like this isn't cheap. But I have never driven a more fun car. On the track it is simply amazing.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
My dream has always been to modify my Ford Tempo to take a V12 Lamborghini engine and destroy everyone else out on the road. I don't really care if my car crumbles to dust after I destroy all of your cars - I'll take the Darwin award.
Wouldn't you be ashamed to be a person who mods his car or takes a great appreciation of fast cars only to be schooled by a Tempo?
Oh really? That's a bit broad of a statement don't you think? Miata with turbos are making 1/3rd more power witha turbo on stock guts - no problem. Mustang Cobras are making about 50% more pwoer on stock guts. Toyota Supra make about 100% more power on stock guts if not more. you don't always have to jump into the engine and swap things liek cams , pistons, and rods! Tune it RIGHT and you're fine.
Also realize that auto manufacturers often do things in the tuning to compromise performance for political and warranty reasons. Look at the 93-95 ford Cobra fro instance. GT40 heads, intake, 65mm throttle body, 1.7 rockers, and revised cam got them what - 35HP more? Gimme' a break! The Cobra ECU had a crapy timing map in it because Ford knew that those parts would make mincemeat out of the glass T5. They even retarded timing WAY back on shifts and speeds over 85mph. The Miata has a funky tip-in timing issue too but for no known good reason. Manufacturers aren't perfect in their programming either - they actually make mistakes occasionally. Ask any FD3 RX7 owner if they've ever experienced a hiccup around 3K at part throttle. The inejctors actually will shut off under the right circumstances at that RPM - it's a BUG. These are the kinds of things that reprogramming will fix...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Formula-1 cars have used software to control several factors in the car for a few years now. Everything from traction control, ignition control to repairing the car remotely from the pit garage during a race.
Like with most things that rely on software, there is probably an accident waiting to happen. In the 2000 Austrian Grand Prix, 7 cars stalled it on the grid because their ignition control failed to work. This was the first race where the whole field was using them. Had this happened in the next race at Monaco there would of been a catastrophe due to the narrow road and the limited amount of time it would take to clear the field before the rest of the field comes racing through. Would of been red flagged surely but the RISKS are there. (Risks have always existed in motor racing, this is just a new spin)
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
http://astro.temple.edu/~kmr/Chauffe2.mp3
http://t04r.com/
;-) Did you upgrade the internals or leave them alone? MUCH more impressive when you don't have to dive into the motor and start pulling out pistons and rods isn't it? You retain A/C, heat, stereo, and comfort? ;-)
BTW - is that 883 at the wheels or the crank? Sure hope it's at the wheels or you're going to get spanked in the HP wars
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Top Fuel Engines ONLY turn 540 revolutions from light to light!
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Prices have dropped fuirther than you realize! www.aempower.com\bbs is th esupport board for the AEM PnP computer. It covers Hondas, Supras, Miatas, FD3 RX7, and a Ford application is about to come out with many more on the drawing board. This puppy costs LESS than $2k! You DO need a laptop and W/B O2 to tune it but it's a terrific value.
:-)
Holly has their Commander series which is decent and SDS has a pretty decent setup that uses a handheld programmer - it's running a pile of fast cars!
If all of that doesn't suit you look into the DIY-EFI mailing list for their project. You can also look into LT1-Edit and LS1-Edit for many GM V8 cars, that software allows reprogramming of the stock ECU. Hondata mentioned in the article does much the same thing using an emulator chip and some PROM burning software. This stuff just keeps getting better and better
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Been to the track, watched rice-row, laughed at the excited 18 second runners.
I outta point out that the serious rice-boy hot-rodders laugh at those guys too. :) They're funny, that's why we laugh. :)
OTOH, K&N filter + exhaust + chip is actually a bad place to start, in my opinion, even on a rice-burner. Your stock ecu will handle plenty of performance in more useful places, and I put the ecu on the list of things to to in the middle, or afterwards, but not first. FIrst you gotta do your cam(s) (if you've only got one on a rice-burner, maybe you should think about getting a different car, heh). That is, you do your cams first only if you're not tearing down the motor, which is what *should* be first. Exhaust is almost worthless without corresponding intake work, although it does help.
My point is, knowing where to start is half the battle on a rice-burner, because there's so *much* to do. I like the 800hp civic mentioned in the article, though. 2L, 4 cyl, 800hp. That's sweet. A lot of guys can't even get that out of a v8.
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A lot of these threads are making me want to be a mechanic again. Heh.
I found farther down in the thread a link to a project on sourceforge that does exactly what I was wanting, and has links to hardware manufacturers that make connectors for your parallel port to ODB-compliant systems. That's cool.
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The ping is only really annoying if the air temperature is hovering around 4 deg. The reason is simple, ice/frost can exist up to 4 deg, with consequential issues over black ice. Normally this is a good thing to be reminded of unless you really want to test your ABS.
See my journal, I write things there
Before you slam drag racing too hard, it's an art. If the skill of a driver like John Force can overcome a 2000 HP deficit between a Top-Fuel and a Funny car, there is something to be said for how it's driven. All that said, I personnally like autocross the best. There is no better showplace for driving skill anywhere. The best part is when you have guys in saturns beating out corvettes, supras, and whatever else people show up in.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
While something drawing your attention to falling temperature can be useful, I guess the developers didn't test the car when the temperature was hovering around 4 degrees. Having it ping every two minutes really gets on my nerves.
1. As an american, like most americans, I'm not very good at reading celcius. :)
2. I wasn't aware it was external temperature.
Think of something stupider.....
Think of something....
Think of....
Think....
......
Ok, maybe not right this minute. :)
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I agree for the most part with the stereotype that honda drivers think stickers make you faster. I've always got near bone stock Honda driver thinking they can take me on. But the most annoying is the newer model camaro/firebird owners. You don't seem to fall into that category as you have done modifications to your car, still I can't go a week without some bone stock new camaro thinking he has something on my '71 Charger, '73 Roadrunner, or '70 911. Every single time they get humiliated, but camaro owner after camaro owner steps up to the plate. I think most camaro owners are buying the sticker makes cars faster hype and judging their ability on the fact that they can beat a honda with stickers.
Safety margin, sure, but they have to engineer for people who might not put in premium all the time. If you're into performance you (hopefully) know what you're up to =). Many of the chips for Tegs actually lean out the mixture a bit because they assume you are using quality gas, and therefore make more power while getting better mileage. Remember that octance actually makes gas burn slower, so if you use good gas you can tweak the ignition appropriately and get a good amount of power.
There is no skill on going from one end of a line, to the other.
Ever try dumping a clutch and and stomping a throtle at the exact moment to precisely cross the starting line as the light turns green; Professional reaction times are running arround 0.04 seconds.
How about keeping a cars straight while the tires are spinning, and increasing in diameter in unequal amounts. Not to mention the torque from an engine putting out at least 2500 hp tring to twist the cars frame into a pretzel.
No all motorsports require tons skill, just because you don't understand doesn't mean it isn't there. That would be like saying F1 or NASCAR is easier than top fuel drag racing because in them if you blow a shift or a turn you have the rest of the race to make it up
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Any sort of non-driver-initiated braking is illegal in F1. Traction control for the drive wheels is allowed, however that must be done using the engine, not brakes. The engine either non-fires cylinders to reduce power, or slips the clutches, or both.
If you can get Mopar-built racing parts for your Viper, you'll smoke any non-turbocharged/supercharged rice car in no time flat. :-) 750+ bhp and a big fat torque curve?
Maybe I was harsh on Drag racers, but it still just seems like a giant penis waving contest. Even when outskilled, having incredible amounts of horsepower seems to be able to win in the end.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The normally aspirated Imprezas are 2.5s.
:)
The turbos (as used in the WRX) are 2.0s, I believe. Less inertia, easier to get spinning at higher RPMs, and smoother in general.
Of course, since all Subaru engines are horizontally opposed all-aluminum (They were originally designed to be aircraft engines), any Subaru engine is pretty smooth to begin with.
I don't have a Subaru myself, but if I had the cash I'd seriously consider a WRX. If Subaru made a mid-to-large sized convertible (Comparable in size/trunkspace/interior room to a Chrysler Sebring) I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Way back in 1983, Saab introduced a system called APC (Automatic Performance Control) which controlled boost from the turbocharger. If it detected knock, it could open the wastegate until boost descended to a safe level.
The coolest thing about the APC is that it's an analog computer. Want to turn up the boost? No problem! Just grab a screwdriver and crank the potentiometers a bit. Lots of fun.
Where are my mod points when I need em'...
Does anyone notice the parallels between this and the PC world?
i.e. manufacturers tuning hardware drivers to give "false" results on specific benchmarks?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I stand corrected.
Look at VW. The same 1.8L Turbo engine in the lowly Jetta/Bora/Golf/etc all the way up to the top of the line Audi TT. Most of the components are the same. Apparently they detune the engine on the VW's so that it doesn't compete performance-wise with the more expensive Audis. My 1999 Passat gets 150HP, where as the TT gets 225HP (it also has some other features that improve power too, including IIRC a second turbo). I can chip it for an extra 40HP. This is considered pretty safe and within spec for the components (which are also shared with the Audis).
So you go out and spend £50,000 on a top of the range Mitsubishi Evo or Subaru Imprezza, then spend money on chip mods and reprogramming the engine manangement to get the maximum possible performance.
And then some wee nyaff on an out of the box, bog standard £5k Suzuki GSXR-600 comprehensively blows your car away with respect to performance.
Oh dearie me.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I guess this is a good excuse to post this fine example of the precise, computer-controlled fuel management of an F1 engine.
:-)
This particular engine is a 10-cylinder Asiatech F1 engine, running through a pre-programmed warmup procedure.. and somebody had a little bit of fun with the programming.
http://zzz.com.ru/asiatech.mp3
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Go look up Toyota Supra and the mods that have been done for them. You can buy turn key cars, and kits that put out from 500-1500hp, admittedly mainly through the use of turbo's
To give you an idea of this acceleration, the current TF dragster elapsed time record is 4.477 seconds for the quarter mile. This means that you could be coming across the starting line in your average Lingenfelter powered "twin-turbo" Corvette at 200 mph (on a FLYING START) and the dragster would BEAT you to the finish line FROM A DEAD STOP in a quarter mile distance! Unbelievable, but true ...
since at 200mph, it takes you 4.5 seconds to cover a quarter mile.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Why don't you read the F1 rules ?
Transmission
Transmission
Only two wheels may be driven and automatic gearboxes are banned
Each individual gearchange must be initiated by the driver
The minimum number of forward gear ratios is 4 and the maximum is 7
All cars must have a reverse gear operable any time during the race when the car's engine is running
Nitrous Oxide is indeed used, its sprayed into the intake as a fog with a lot of fuel. firstly it cools the intake gasses as it evaporate into gas, when it get compression heated to a certain temp it breaks down into n2 and o2 gasses endothermical greatly reducing ping/predetonation, lastly it releases a lot of oxygen. If the extra fuel stops something else will burn like your engine instead.
Nitro Methane is a fuel,called nitro or fuel, and is used in things from engines for RC cars and plane, go-carts and some drag racing engines. (it's also used in explosives, that's why McVey wanted it) Nitro has a distintive smell when its burnt and burns slow allowing engines to have a lot of compression and boost to make mega-power.
Nitro is corrosive to metal and a lot of plastics so its useage is labor intensive in engine applications.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
an interesing thing to compare however is BMW's SMG (sequental manual gearshift) which has the same drivetrain loss as their manual version (since there is no torque converter) which shares some similairities with an F1 gearbox.
The odd thing is, in a recent european car issue, they tested the SMG in its various sport modes and the manual still beat it, despite the SMG launche modes and being able to shift faster than any human possibly could.
The only reason I can think of this happening is that their drivers have much more familiarity with a manual than an SMG system. Everyone who has an SMG raves about it. I however and buying a manual M3 this weekend, mostly because i like a clutch pedal.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Since this gadget connects your Palm to an ODB-II connector through a serial port, I'd think it wouldn't be too much to lash up an adapter that would hook it into a computer. The big question, though, is where most of the device's intelligence is located. If it's mostly in the bundled software, that could be a problem if you want to try to roll your own. (OTOH, you should be able to run it on a Palm emulator. IIRC, emulators and ROMs are available here.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
heh, beat you to the punch, i have matched JWT cams and an ECU, with Apex'i N1 headers and exhaust (SO SWEET), ripped the restrictors off the airbox and put in a Filtercharger. i'd say it's ~190 by the seat of my pants, which is enough for the time being, until i get the N1 2000-spec coilovers, the Cusco replacement suspension links and bushings, and the lower tie rods and make the thing into a true handling beast. Then i'mm looking at a T06/07...mmmm....efficient horsepower...with a MoTec M4 of course :D
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
that was a typo, morning coffee hadn't kicked it...should have been $1000, maybe $1200 (600 for exhaust, 300 for headers, 300 for ECU)
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I bought my civic (97 EX) in 97. Well before the phenomenon of what I refer to "punking" the cars became popular.
Its actually embarrasing to tell people what car I have, simply because of the "guilt-by-association" phenomenon. I am 30 years old, and I have talked to these kids and asked them: "why a civic?".
What I personally fail to understand, is after spending all of this money on modifying a civic, some (seriously) could have bought a real sports car and would have had no need at all to do that.
Of course the movie, "The fast and furious" which reaaaallly sucked IMHO (crappy acting, unbelievable story and plot) added fuel to this subculture. I just wish the kids would try to race lambourginies with another brand of tacky looking modified car. Hondas are reliable, maybe that is a justification.
I guess the next time I need to purchase a car, I will have to pick another fuel-friendly, reliable car brand to get me from point a to point b.
With many newer vehicles, you can get away with just twiddling some bits in the computer through the diagnostic connector. Here's one line of devices that do that for several late-model domestics. Looking at the info that would apply to my '02 S-10, their device tweaks several operating parameters:
These can be set up for either 87 octane or 91 octane (though if you're going to spend the $$$ for one of these gadgets, you might as well start burning premium).
(Disclaimer: I don't even own one of these, so I can't vouch for the claims. I've considered picking one up, but a stock S-10 with a V-6 and the ZQ8 sport-suspension package runs pretty well as-is.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
...and drifting is orders of magnitude harder than keeping a car going straight, even if it is a 70 Camaro with 650+ rwhp. keeping a car straight really just needs an intuitive feel for how the car fishtails; you have to be able to feel the car starting to come around and be just a split-second ahead with a tinly little correction. it's not *easy* as such, but once you get the hang of it it almost comes naturally, without much thought. a full four-wheel intertial drift, where the force to slide the wheels comes soley from excessive corner speed (as opposed to brake drift or throttle drift, where you use a touch of brake or gas to slip the tires, see the Gran Turismo manuals for some good background) OTOH takes a lot more skill to learn, and to repeat over and over again, since the car will very rarely drift the same way twice, even through the same corner. the really hard part of that is picking your speed right, with a finely tuned car you only have a ~3mph window between no tire slip at all and a spin into the gravel (if you're dumb enough to be drifiting on public roads you deserve to hit the trees); you have to focus totally on the sounds of the tires and the squirming of the car underneath you. i'm not knocking drag racing; it's defintely a challenge to keep a car straight (i can't even imagine what 8000hp would be like), but in my somewhat limited expericence (i still need two more full days to get my SCCA license)a proper inertial drift is a LOT mre challenging than a proper drag race.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I found it on another thread (or perhaps its farther down in this thread) but I read it on a different computer, so I can't find it in my history (of course).
There's a project on sourceforge that provides the software and the project pages have links to manufacturers that can provide the hardware. The post you were responding to was posted before I read that. :)
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I had a beamer with this feature and it seemd to be ok. If you are driving through varied territory (we have hills up to 800m/2450 feet in my neighbourhood) - some bits may be risky (especially as cold air can be trapped in 'frost hollows'), some bits not and I don't mind the bong warning me or less experienced codrivers to take it easy.
See my journal, I write things there
If I want performance, just give me a recent vintage Northstar-powered Cadillac STS, with maybe a new blower and exhaust. Sub-6 second 0-60, 12-second quarter mile. Oh yeah, and fucking luxurious as hell inside: truly great Bose stereo, heated leather seats, and just total elegance.
The 'piggy back' comment is misleading. The ECUs are actually gutted and replaced with a complete standalone programmable unit because the rules only require the stock case. Although there are piggy-back units, they aren't allowed in rallying.
Some links here and here, though these are just to give you an idea of what is available.
An interesting bit:
In rallying, the turbo is kept in spool at all times with a special feature programmed into the ECU known as 'anti-lag'. Under low load conditions, the ECU delays the ignition spark to the point that the exhaust valve is already opening. Since there is nothing to expand against, the charge gets blown out the exhaust and uses most of its energy to spin the turbo, which only lasts a few hours under this gruelling condition. The spectators in some countries have come to call this the 'bang-bang' system since it makes quite the gunshot-like sound upon activation.
Though this isn't a rally car, some good videos can be seen here. The strangled-chicken type sound that you hear is the turbocharger compressor going into surge when the throttle is closed. On a normal turbo car, they use an anti-surge valve (aka blow off valve) in order to prevent surge - it opens when the throttle closes such that the large volume of unneeded charge air can escape. On a race car, this valve becomes a point of failure so they eliminate it and drive the turbo into surge, which unloads the turbo (essentially spinning in a turbulent vaccuum) but creates some strange noises.
The interesting thing is that most aftermarket anti-surge valves are designed to sound like compressor surge because most (ignorant) enthusiasts want that sound... If they'd just remove the valve altogether, they could save a couple hundred dollars...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
The redline is actually quite high at 9500rpm.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Ah! But as soon as the 48V electrical system becomes the norm, you will be able to apply some of those 'old style' tuning tricks via software. With 48V systems will come electronically actuated valves (bye-bye camshaft, timing belt, lifters, etc). I predict that valve timing will be just another set of chip params, and that good ECU's will be fiddling with the 'virtual cam' timing dynamically.
Read it here first - I also predict that Cadillac's dream of the variable cylinder count engine will be realized - with electronic valve control, inhibit fuel injection, close the intake valve, hold the exhaust valve open and voila! You have one less gas-guzzling cylinder!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Nokians anyone?
...
Great tires - don't have a WRX (just a Saturn right now...), but
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
I have many, many Viper owning friends who are very accustomed to thrashing everything else on road courses. You have to step up to Challenge-class 360's and modified Porsches before the playing field is leveled against a daily driver Viper with the most basic mods (tubes & filters). Probably brakes are the only place where those two examples would far outclass a Viper, and the really good amatuer drivers I know would disagree with me there, too. On the other hand, there isn't a Japanese car made today that can compare to the suspension on a Viper. Straight out the factory door, it's as close to a ready-to-road-race car as you can get, except perhaps Porsches. In fact, road racing is what I had in mind when I wrote that, not drag racing.
I enjoy watching drag racing, but I don't find the endless waiting-in-line very much fun. Especially when the race only lasts a few seconds (best recorded bone-stock quarter-mile time for a Viper is 11.23, by the way).
But road racing -- that'll get your adrenaline flowing!
Besides, that last part of my original post was just a little joke -- not intended to spark a bunch of replies -- y'know, so my links weren't such obvious karma whoring... ;)
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Why I prefer a big block to any riceboy one-point-whatever-liter engine is RPMs. The racing is fun, but I can also cruise comfortably all day at 100 MPH at 2000 RPM. Sure riceboy can cruise all day at 100 MPH too, but his little mousewheel is turning 4000 RPM to do it. That wear-and-tear adds up fast. After eight hours of driving (don't scoff, I once did 19 hours averaging 96 MPH) riceboy's engine has turned over nearly one million times more. The valves have banged around, the plugs have fired hundreds of thousands of times more. It's no wonder all the high-HP Japanese cars in town always seem to be in the shop...
Yeah, I'll stick with the big engine, thanks.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Twice five syllables
Plus seven can't say much, but
That's Haiku for you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"500 inch" is a common expression meaning 500 CUBIC inches. Which is approximately equivalent to a metric car having an 8.3L engine.
Note that in the 1970s, Cadillac put out street vehicles (mostly Eldorados) with a 500 cubic inch (8.3L) V8 engine.
Granted, they were substantially milder than a Top-Fuel class derivative of the Chrysler Hemi, but it certainly should make any imbecile who thinks that Honda invented performance cars think twice before entering into a stoplight confrontation with a real car.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Whether speaking of dragracing, circle track or road course, it is customary to use integer time. If someone lapped a motorcycle at Willow Springs at 1:27.98, then they would have run a 27 lap. That is common informal racing phraseology.
Street racing, I agree with you there. Too many unknown variables you can't account for. But, your comments about drag racing tell me that you have probably never driven or raced a fast car. Racing of all of the forms I have tried involved loads of adrenaline, road course or dragging. My educated guess is that you would probably have a difficult time getting that 10 second Civic within a second of it's best time. Racing at the top levels takes skill, nerve and realtime thought and evaluation. That holds true with cart racing up through F1. Heck, even Nascar where most races involve turning left several thousand times take skill.
Hmmm, so being "signed up" for track time in the future makes you qualified to bash forms of racing you have no experience with and say they are easy? I see a long and painful learning curve for you and hours of being skooled on the track by the real racers that will be running while you take your practice laps.
I just checked your website and see that you have a Porsche Boxster that you will be taking to the track. Don't be surprised to see many "lesser" cars passing you unless you are gonna run in the Boxster only races. If you are gonna take the high horse posture, you should have at least gotten the Boxster S. Buying a Porsche dosen't make one a racer, racing does that and judging from your attitude, real racers will enjoy spanking you on the track.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
No, it won't do you much good unless you have a detuned engine to start with, or you could say unless you have a powerful engine, because one of the following is nearly always true:
Hence a camaro with an L98 can be brought up to a higher level of performance than a corvette with an L98 (This is the 5.7 liter 350 with TPI) by using corvette cams and programming it with hotter settings than the 'vette engine. The camaro is detuned so as not to take away corvette sales, AND the corvette is not tuned to be as powerful as possible. I don't know if this is as true of camaros vs. vettes in the days AFTER the L98 engine was the common ground.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you do make them, the things which it is imperative to fix are the 6400 rpm rev limit and the tip-in retard must be removed. I assume you'll be figuring out how to do these things before a release; without them you're sunk because those are the two most interesting things to do without doing a whole turbo kit which usually comes with a computer or at least an ECU upgrade.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I assume by "rice" you're excluding actual Japanese race cars like the Skyline GT-R.
(And boy were Aussie car fans upset when Subaru released a station wagon that could cane their beloved V8 Group A SS Commodores...).
And aren't interested in competing in forms of racing like, oh, rallying.
You are absolutely correct. We have some Supras in town for whom I have a great deal of respect. You'd never know they were fast by looking at them, they don't have a big old gReddy fart-can hanging off the back, and they don't look like a rolling Uncle Ben billboard from Osaka.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005