I mean, just as an example, lets say it uses and continuously monitors wideband o2 sensor, baro pressure sensor, manifold pressure sensor, abient temp sensor, airflow meter, egt, air intake temp, coolant and oil temp sensors, knock sensors, fuel press sensor, etc etc etc.

Then with this continuous feedback it adjusts itself to meet certain parameters that we input like afr, ignition timing and split, max egt, max knock level, max coolant and oil temps, etc. for various vaccum, boost, rpm and throttle levels.

instead of messing with injector and timing trims we could enter something like 15:1 afr for vaccum, 11:1 for boost, 1000 F max egt, 230 F max coolant and oil temps, etc and have the ECU adjust in real time, you get the idea...

am I crazy?

 

People already have, in one form or another. See Autronic, almost all high-end OEM ECUs, and the VEMS genboard.

 

Some ecu's do have the ability to auto tune the fuel maps, such as the Autronic units... The problem with auto tuning timing is that every engine needs a differant amount of timing based on a multitude of variables. The main reason we can't do this is due to the engine sensors that are used in most systems are not able to tell the ecu what is accually happening inside the cumbustion chamber, like where in relation to TDC peak cylinder pressure is taking place. The sensors are simply telling what is happening before and after the cumbustion chamber, this is not accurate enough to tune timing from. The most common ways to figure where your timing is at is to use a dyno to measure torque from the engine, or reading plugs... There are some new sensors coming out these days that are able to read cylinder pressures and even cooler is one that reads the ION field inside the cumbustion chamber. These sensors are revolutionizing the way engines can be tuned and it is rumered that the Autronic SM5 will be able to auto tune timing using these technoligies...

Regards
Justin
www.alienauto.com

 

EGT probes are relatively slow reacting and go bad.
Wide-band sensors go bad.
Knock sensors are too noisy and cannot reliably isolate the knock frequency reliabily.

Yep, Bad2ndgen is right.
Big pressure transducers are right around the corner.
These will allow to monitor combustion pressures.
This will basically make piezo-based knock sensors obselete.
The problem with this type of sensor is that it's currently very expensive and very unreliable.
I've seen 200bar pressure transducers priced over $1,000 each!
That's ~3,000psi capable!

The hardware is currently fast enough to adjust, but the sensors are not reliable enough to do this with any consistency.


-Ted

 

yeah but we currently use wb and egt to manually map the systems, and most newer cars automatically advance and retard timing depending on conditions...

maybe have a self tuning unit that locks in tuning maps? Something like the powerfc, we measure and adjust then save the map right? I don't see why this couldn't be done more automatically.

 

get the new E-manage. lol, i wouldnt trust it tho.

 

Why bother? Ion sensing can be used with current technology plugs and ignition systems with no engine modifications. I bet it'll be less than 5 years before you can get a CDI system with ion sensing for < $5k.

You could always give the ECU load-cell output from an engine dyno, in real-time. You'd get a round-about BMEP figure that you could use with EGTs to automate timing setup.

 

I think it's due to liability.
If you're doing adjustments based solely on a sensor and that sensor suddenly fails and kills your engine, who's to fault?


-Ted

 

revival of the thread... is there anything reliable out for this matter? regardless of cost

 

The new AEM Infinity line certainly sounds interesting and has fast enough processing to do real time corrections.

 

very interesting, willing to throw some money towards something like that if its promising anything impressive

 

Check out the thread on the AEM forum for more information.

http://forum.aempower.com/forum/index.php?topic=28808.0

Right now it's Vaporware, and I have doubts that they will release anything RX specific. Maybe a universal one will be released at some point or you could try and adapt one for another model.

 

Until the day someone can program a human ear and common sense into a 1/4 pound black box that costs less than $1k USD to build a good tuner is going to be invaluable

I work in electronics research and development, auto tune is a farce at the moment.