jbrown

iTrader: (17)

So I had my car tuned Friday at JapTrix in West Palm Beach, FL on their Mustang Dyno by Mase.

Some people know Mase as a Honda tuner, but he does it all and really knows his way around the AEM EMS. He made 641whp on my buddy's Civic with a turbo B18. That car was a monster. Some of you may have seen an FQ-340 he just did that was awesome, too.

I had previously had my car tuned by Al at Dynoflash, but he was rushed for time because some other people before me were having problems and didn't really give me the attention I needed and I was a bit miffed, especially since I paid more than anyone else there as I was the only AEM tune that day. The car ran better when I left there, but at that point I was doing all of the tuning myself with some very helpful free guidance from Roger at JapTrix, so Al making improvements on what I did myself probably wasn't tough. After he was done I was still making about the same power, but the car was running smoother with consistently lower EGT's, so I was happy-ish.

What I didn't like was the excessive black smoke I was getting at WOT, plus Al tunes with boost compensation mapping, which sounds good in theory, and might be fine for drag racing, but isn't really all it's cracked up to be for a daily driver. I had it dyno'd at Japtrix on the Mustang and made 304whp and 296wtq.

Well a about a month ago, Machines Gone Wild did a free dyno day for Evo's down in Miami. My car was running pig rich and only made 337whp on their Dynojet. That's about 10% difference between the Dynojet and the Mustang results I've seen elsewhere on this site. And it's not bad, but it's not great either. Seeing the black smoke up close while my car was on the dyno made me nervous. I told my friends I needed a tune bad. I made a few changes myself, but didn't want to get carried away.

Then, as a fluke, this past Wednesday Mase called and said he'd be in our area this weekend so I scrambled to set something up. Japtrix was very accommodating and squeezed me in on Friday.

I told Mase I wasn't trying to extract every bit of horsepower out of the car as it's my daily driver. I'd rather have it run good for a long time every day than risk detonation from some bad gas or an extra hot and humid south Florida day. All tuning was done on 92-octane pump gas and I never ran more than 20psi. My highest peak HP was right at 350, but he pulled a little timing at the end to play it safe, which is the graph that is shown.

Here are the results:


As you can see the before and after dynos are only 45 minutes apart. He really knows his stuff and can whip through a tune really easy. When all was said and done, I gained 26whp and 16wtq peak and an average of 16whp and 18wtq! Plus my AFR's are much flatter and still conservative (<11.5) My car runs GREAT now and rips through every gear, AND WITH LESS KNOCK!

Mod list:
Works o2 housing (hpc coated)
Works 76mm DP (hpc coated)
Buschur test pipe
Buschur cat back / Magnaflow
Buschur ported stock exhaust manifold (hpc coated)
Buschur UICP
Buschur 680cc injectors
DeJon Tool Intake (no MAF)
XS Engineering FMIC (not the crappy ebay XS Power one)
Walbro 255lph pump
Perrin Fuel Rail
HKS SSQV (VTA)
HKS 264i / 272e cams
HKS EVC V (set at 20psi)
AEM EMS w/ UEGO (speed density)
10.5 hotside
Exedy SD Twin Cerametallic
Full Sheptrans treatment
And lots of fun suspension bits

Everything else is stock, and I don't drag race, so I doubt I'll have trap speeds to share any time soon. Hope this is helpful to some people. If you have a chance to get Mase'd, I say JUMP ON IT! He's a really nice guy too.

jbrown

iTrader: (17)

55 viewers and no comments?

My car is tearing *** all over the place like it's going out of style, just ask the poor bastard in the M3 today. He never saw it coming, but he sure as hell saw me leaving!

To be honest, I kinda felt bad ... for like a second.

Clutchdc5

iTrader: (1)

cause he bs-ed the topic, i thought he got mased from a cop or somthing

JVLTuners3

nice.... topic was catchy... lol u got mased

Richard Sierra

iTrader: (4)

Numbers look good. Why do you think boost comp is not good for everyday driving?

travman

iTrader: (26)

im not trying to be rude, just wondering......

but what is the point of an aem for 350hp? seems like a waste of money to me especially since you dont race and its meant for a total dd?

thatsMR2u

iTrader: (19)

aem does seem the best to extract every last hp in a setup and probably bought it before ecuflash was out- and in FL he doesnt have to worry about emissions

jbrown

iTrader: (17)

Thank you for questioning my decision-making ability. Let me enlighten you.

My car is an '03, I bought it in April 2004. And when I got my AEM shortly thereafter, my options were UTEC, Power-FC, Autronic, or AVC-R. Dynoflash was one of the only games in town as far as flashes and I didn't want to have to wait for a re-flash every time I bought a new part. The MoTec was just coming out and hard to find. If it had been more widely used at the time, I would have gone that route.

And yeah, I am not exactly stopping at 350 hp anyway. I already have 60-70hp in parts in my garage. The car will be paid off in about a year and then it will be gutted, caged, and road raced like I stole it.

So with that in mind, why would I nurse the stock ECU up to 400 or 500 hp and THEN try to learn the AEM? Doesn't it make more sense to work all the bugs out with minimal mods so I don't spend weeks searching for problems with no idea whether they were caused by my mods or my EMS?

jbrown

iTrader: (17)

Because every car has a different VE at every load site. That is reason enough to say no to it. But if you add a turbo, you get another reason.

As boost goes up, heat goes up, as heat goes up, the n in PV=nRT goes down.

n = air molecules = combustion

so at 29psi you do not need exactly 2x as much fuel as you do at 14.5psi because your air intake temps went up and your VE may have gone up or down depending on head design, combustion chamber design, camshaft profile, etc.

I'm not trying to completely bash it, I mean it's good for a quick and easy tune for a drag racer because he can just spend the time needed on the load sites hit during a drag run because they are almost always the same sites on every pass, and then aside from cruising speeds, the rest just works itself out.

And if you don't have a mustang or dyno dynamics dyno or similar unit that can hold the vehicle at a constant speed, you can't lock in a specific rpm and tune every load site for that rpm. Boost comp mapping is a great band-aid for that too.

SWOLN

iTrader: (6)

Well, at least someone has figured out how to build their temple from the ground up. Nice job.