A while back I took my '02 F150 Harley Davidson to have it "dynoed". I wanted a baseline before I installed different crank and supercharger pulleys. I asked the people at the shop about doing a tune after installing the new pulleys. They told me that I should buy an SCT X4 and bring it to them and then they would do the tune. I was and still am confused. I though that tuners hooked up a laptop computer to the OBD2 port and modified the stock settings .
Why do they need me to buy a hand held device? Were these guys scamming me?? I am still trying to figure out carburetors and I am an old guy.
BTW, the dyno results were pretty good. The torque/hp figures at the wheels were 20-25% less than the advertised figures at the crank by the factory. Not bad for a truck with 180k miles. Since then I've installed cooler plugs, K&N panel air filter, and replaced the fuel pumps (it takes 2) . The pumps support 500hp not that I am anywhere near that.
I look forward to been enlightned on tuning computer controlled engines.
Thanks
I don't know SCT, but when I tune with HP Tuners it is done through a more or less free dongle and definitely not free ($100-800) license credits per computer.
Maybe SCT doesn't license that way, and just sells single-car-use dongles?
A lot of the SCT stuff (including the stuff for my Jeep) has you load the tune to a handheld and then to the vehicle.
All tuning setups vary a little bit, but the SCT method isn't unusual. You pay for (and keep) a device that can load a number of different tunes on your car. It comes with some built in, so you may not need your local tuning company at all if there's an off-the-shelf tune that does what you need. If not, then you get them to tune the car and you keep the device.
The advantage to this is that the device is licensed to your truck. If you want to load a different tune in - say, one for race gas or one optimized for towing - you can do that. If you want to go to a different tuning shop, no problem. You own the license. Usually it also means you can take logs and check OBD-II codes as well, which is useful.
If you don't own the device, then you're stuck with your tuning shop. Any time you want to make a change, you have to see them. If they go out of business or you move across the country, you get to pay a license fee next time you want anything done.
We have the option of doing it both ways with our setups - but we've found that it's in the customer's best interest to own the device so we've gradually stopped licensing tunes to our own hardware. Instead, the customer buys the hardware and they take it and the license with them when they leave.
I did not intent to focus on SCT. My confusion stems from my perception that the "tuning" would be a done by someone with a lap top ala MegaSquirt not a canned one size fits all tune.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Thank you for the explanation and the pros and cons.
The difference is the interface. On a MegaSquirt, it's built in and the open source nature of the platform means there isn't any extra cost involved and any laptop can talk to it anytime. Ford was not so kind with your truck.
Focusing on SCT makes sense, because each tuning hardware vendor does it differently. HPTuners generally prefers the hardware to stay in the hands of the tuning shop. Ecutek can go either way but you still need a laptop. SCT has dedicated hardware that lets to reload existing tunes (both off the shelf and custom) anytime with a small handheld device. Superchips does the same without the custom tunes but each tuning doodad can only lock in to one ECU - SCT may be the same there.
The SCT stuff I've used is sorta ECU locked. It locks to the VIN when you flash it and unlocks if you flash it back to stock. So one handheld per vehicle.
Everyone above nailed it.
You should talk with Mike from 5 Star tuning. He's the ford truck guro and can set you up with 3 tunes you can switch at any time dependant on what your doing. Tow, lightly loaded gas mileage, or power.
fortee9er said:
I did not intent to focus on SCT. My confusion stems from my perception that the "tuning" would be a done by someone with a lap top ala MegaSquirt not a canned one size fits all tune.
So you know, even for actual production work, you don't just plug a laptop into the OBD port. It's either done with some kind of interface box to the port, or you have a specific module that has the development board built into it. Either way, there's a box of some type between the laptop and the computer. One of the major reasons is that OEM's use different programs to run their cars. Heck, even when using someone else's module (say Bosch), you use proprietary software. That way, it's harder to hack- both for aftermarket and other OEMs (not that we really care to be able to calibrate someone else's system).
Realistically, the MS and other systems like that are essentially development modules.
alfadriver said:Heck, even when using someone else's module (say Bosch), you use proprietary software. That way, it's harder to hack- both for aftermarket and other OEMs (not that we really care to be able to calibrate someone else's system).
Some of the aftermarket tuners will even alter the code so that it looks to different memory/storage addresses for map data, so that other people can't just look into/copy their tunes. (For some reason MTM comes to mind)
Knurled. said:
alfadriver said:Heck, even when using someone else's module (say Bosch), you use proprietary software. That way, it's harder to hack- both for aftermarket and other OEMs (not that we really care to be able to calibrate someone else's system).
Some of the aftermarket tuners will even alter the code so that it looks to different memory/storage addresses for map data, so that other people can't just look into/copy their tunes. (For some reason MTM comes to mind)
Just remember, most OEM's know when the calibration has been altered. And dealers will use that against you when covering warrantee items. And that is perfectly legal, since it's actually not legal to alter an OEM calibration.
