Fantastic ECU tuning training

[Dr J]

Some time ago, I took the plunge and put a standalone ECU (the AEM Infinity 506) on my car (79 SC supercharged), as many have done before. Afterwards came the learning curve of how to tune it: cold start, warm start, starting at all! How to stop without the car stalling, VE table, spark table, accel enrichment etc. Many others have used MS2,3 or microsquirt. Others have installed Motec or Haltech or other ECUs. While looking to improve my tuning skills, I found Evans Performance Academy.

I was incredibly impressed with their training. The videos are extremely well done. They have a series of videos for the specific functions of the specific ECU. Moreover, they have videos of live tuning sessions. They take a car that may be modified and show all of the steps to getting it tuned and running right. These sessions were invaluable to me as I had experience only with my car, whereas now, I have seen several cars being tuned. It was especially useful in interpreting knock measurements and establishing proper thresholds.

The videos showed real world problems, what was wrong, and how to fix it. They have these kinds of series for a wide variety of ECUs. They even have beginner and advanced series on the theory of EFI. I opted for the $50/mo subscription that can be cancelled. So, for an investment of as little as $50 I had access to all videos from all ECUs and all of the live trainings for the month. I also saw the work flow for tuners and made several changes to my tune based on what I learned. As if that was not enough, you can ask technical questions and have an answer within a day or two through their forums.

I have no relationship to them nor any financial arrangement, but having a background in engineering and in distance education, I was blown away by their training.

Hope this helps all of those DIYers that are stuck in the tuning process or are dissatisfied with the current state of tune of their aftermarket ECU.

[Knockdown]

I did the same during my ITB/EFI install (77 911S) except with HP Academy. Very useful information that took the mystery out of the process.

[mysocal911]

Originally Posted by Knockdown

I did the same during my ITB/EFI install (77 911S) except with HP Academy. Very useful information that took the mystery out of the process.

Right! As noted here on Pelican Parts; Performance Tuning - The Myth -

[rwest]

Great info, I watched a few of the sample videos and found him to be a very good instructor presenting the topics in a pin easy to understand format.

I’ll be signing up when I get close to tuning.

Thanks for bringing this to the forum.

[Harpo]

Same here. The tuning is very intimidating to me

[Nick Triesch]

California is putting an end to the chip tuning!

[CBRacerX]

Thanks for posting this.

[3rd_gear_Ted]

For all the reply's;
Is your tuning done dynamically on a dyno?

[Knockdown]

I did start and idle tuning first, followed by street tuning using the ECU log files, then took it to a dyno shop for fine tuning. That was a couple of years ago and haven’t adjusted the tune since.

[Dr J]

^^^ that is a good method. I am just missing the last step- the dyno. I have it running well with street tune although spark is not optimized (mind you that I have been working on it now for a few years). The VE table is doable on the street. The spark too but it is much better on the dyno, where you have instant feedback on torque produced, and on the hp and torque curve. I was surprised how little time it took in the training video to do VE and spark in the dyno. He did not go cell by cell but worked with regions and smoothed things out to blend well.