Pretty general question. The way I see it even the best tuners had to start somewhere. So, how does one learn to tune? Any good books out there to start off with or anytihng like that?

 

I bought the Haynes Engine Management book. It has some good information in there, but it doesn't even cover forced induction.

Just read everything you can, including this forum, and experiment.

 

Experimenting is the scary part. Can't just pick up a new engine at the grocery store you know.

 

You can pick up a 13B at the junk yard for about $150. Most junk yards have some type of warranty so you can return the engine within a certain amount of days if it's blown. You could also learn on a piston engine since the basic tuning concepts are the same.

I think the best thing is to hang out with one of your friends while they are tuning an engine. If you want book knowledge, I'm sure that your school has thermodynamics courses that you could take as electives.

 

yup, already went through thermo and propulsions. Waiting to see if they have the upper level propulsions class next year. Neither of those classes went into things like timing or a/fr's

 

Does your school have any practical degree programs like an aviation pilot program or some type of engine maintenance program? Those darn theoretical engineering courses never seem to cover any hands-on tuning.

 

Nope. Gotta goto the tech school for engien maintenance type stuff. Dont know about the aviation programs. Would that be the route to go?

 

The aviation program is only good if it is for pilots or mechanics. Pilots tune from the cockpit, though, so you would learn mixture and load but not ignition timing. An aviation engineering program probably will not have what you want, because they never deal with reality, lol. You may want to try a local tech school.

 

This AEM EFI Basics manual is pretty good:
http://www.scuderiaciriani.com/rx7/A...asics_V1.3.pdf

 

The best way to learn is by blowing motors, lol.

 

Do lots of reading,do search for timing, egt,afr,fuel curves,ignition curves.find out how timing works,load and rpm..once you catch on these things,theres more things you'll learn on the way..Thats how i started and i'll be tuning my own car next summer..im more confident then ever, and im taking automotive tech in college right now,they taught me various things..im in for almost a year of reading now,i waited this long before i dare touch anything to do with tuning..

 

I'm learning how to tune right now. I just got my Tech Edge WB and Datalogit talking to each other. I got a ton of help from another forum member(hyperion). He was good enough to spend a Saturday with me to teach me the basics. We did a few runs and made some fuel map adjustments. Basically to make sure that I was running in a safe rich AFR range.

That took alot of the fear out of the process. Right now I am just working on fine tuning my partial throttle/non-boost cells of my fuel map. I figure that it's a lot safer to practice in this area where detonation is less likley.

As fo timing, I have no clue. I just know that a negative spilt underboost is bad.

 

I think cause a negative split fires, the trailing before the leading causing automatic pre-ignition, which can be as harmfull as detonation....

 

That was good readin'. Any more stuff floating around that I could read?

 

Get a stand alone ECU manual, read it and read it again and what you dont understand go press the search button and get the facts. Most piston ignition systems are easily understood when it gets complicated is when dealing with the rotary setup.......you have leading and trailing ignitions to deal with trailing split, trailing toggle etc. etc.
Most stand alone ECU's skim over various types of installations, you will have to dig deeper to get additional detailed information to gain a greater understanding.
In closing it is an interesting and fulfilling task this tuning thing, nobody taught me I learned when I first bought my first stand alone ECU.

 

The Haltech ECU manual has quite a nice introductory paragraph that contrasts the differences between FI, and Carb....
A Good read....

You can DL the manuals and software that comes with the AEM on their site, under Forum, and then look in teh Mazda section, they have all their manuals in PDF form, they ship them on a CD when you get the ECU, so there's no manual with the actual product....

 

this may be the wrong way.......

but what i'm doing with my haltech is giving it lots n lots of gas.
about the time you see black smoke, the a/f ratio is probably around 8:1 or maybe even a little richer.

like i said, this is probably wrong, but i gave it a bunch of gas until i saw a little black smoke, then took about 20% out.
i'm thinking this may be about close enough to limp it to the dyno and let a professional take over.

one more time in case i haven't made it abundantly clear....this is most likely the WRONG way to do it.

BUT
i'd rather foul a spark plug than blow a motor..........think about it

 

Smart choice.....as the saying goes "start rich and tune slow" you can never go wrong with replacing a set of plugs.

 

i'm too cheap for that....wire brush 'em
LOL

 

You are correct guitarjunkie, what I always have troubble with, is the wideband AFR Jumps around like nuts, and I never quite know where I sit exactly, and that makes the 20% less across the board a bit tricky... I don't want to lean out the engine... what I understand quite well is the add - remove fuel cells, when I get confused is when you add all the other tables, like enrichment tables based on rad temp, sparc advance / retard... there are far too many tables, and they do way to many things that can cause disaster... for me I understand the basics, I get lost on the intecrecies of the tuning software, which some of which seems to do nothing... cause it's for V8's.... ???

I Plan on negotiating with my tuner to be there when he does it so I can learn, if I'm spending $500 to tune my 7 i'd like to get a little bit of education in the process...

 

if you're in LA, just hook up with me and we'll go down to sleeper (or what used to be sleeper...they changed their name) in san bernardino.
it's normally $100 an hour but if we get a little group together, we can get a better deal.
pm me and i'll give you my number. my best guess is it probably shouldn't take more than an hour or two per car. that should be plenty to make adjustments and get them close enough for rock n roll.

but if you want to go it alone, i talked to the seth down there at spd racing in san diego. basic tuning is $250 but if you start out pretty close, they can do some good things.
here's their number:
1-866-spd-race

 

I'm more worried about the fact that the AEM isn't that common, and that I want someone with AEM / and / or Rotary experience so I take one of the "Unknown" Equasions out of the formula, I had plans on going to R&D Dyno in Gardena, since that's the place where AEM did all their testing before they got their own dyno, so I figure he should know the computer well, and if he's seen a rotary before that's a start

I do appreciate the offer though, and I might take you up on it in the future, but for now, I'm very scared, as I had Identical Mods on the '94 with the AEM, changed the ecu to the '93 and Boom blew a seal, houseing, and turbo, so I'm Very Paranoid untill I get Knock controll, relief valve, and race gas in there nobody's tuning nothing

 

fair enough.

i'm gonna try to get something together for mid january anyway if you wanna just come and hang out.

 

Cool, let me know