Hydra Autotune?

Its great to get insightful information, every better when you dont have to make everyone else feel like they are stupid to do so. I should have worded better, I have not used VIPEC management for auto tune, I have used autronic(manually tuned) for last years Targa NFLD alltrac, and I strongly dislike that system. For the systems I am most fimilar with AEM, PFC, HYDRA, and MS, the auto tune is very unreliable, certainly not something I would trust over my own ability.

As it applies to this topic, and the person asking the question my statements remain, autotune is in unreliable. Incase we have forgotten the original post is regarding HYDRA systems, not either system which has been proposed as having a good auto tunee function. I did exaggerate a bit, but it was more to get my point across that if your relying on an autotune function to tune your car then you shouldnt be doing it. Of couse if your and expert like "hic" then you should be just fine with the auto tune. But for the average user, probably not a good idea.

For every person there is a differnt method, and no one should feel they are superior or call another bullshit. For example, if you were to describe your tuning method to my tuning instructior Chris Mancerello fromerly of EFI 101, he would probably chuckle a bit and invite you to a tuning class with him.

Everyone has their favorites, for the money (around 1000 or so used) AEM hydra and PFC work well on most applications. Vipec, motec and some of there systems are more expensive and thus more robust. I like the KISS method, so I stick with what has worked just fine and doesnt break the bank. Weather its my personal 300hp toy celica, or 720 awhp skyline seems to do the job just fine. Mind you the guy at the dyno place locally HATES aem, says it has a random miss(which I think it does to mostly under idle) but that is not seen on every car.

Mafix, knock threshold tuning IMO is only safe on the dyno. The dyno produces maximum load conditions that are hard to replicate on the street. Its actually quite easy to get a very accurate idea of safe timing using best torque method

anyway this is getting long, enjoy the thread.

Klue,

my instructor was Ben Strader, a good friend of mine

Ben used to use SM4 for the class, showing students Autotune on dyno.

I even can find pictures to back this up.

BUT, this isn't a pissing contest and I would strongly tell the user to pay the proper tuning to experienced tuner.

Autotune is great option if behind it is a good quality engineering.

Second thing, you cannot use AEM or some other "shitty" wideband.

I always use Autronic B gas analyzer, and I tuned more than 200 cars with it, and NEVER had a single small problem.

The tools used IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE!

i was only picking at hics brain. i know how to tune and i've been very sucessful in it. and my method is completely different than both of yours. to each his own. but i dyno tune first and then fine tune on the street (in the no boost areas). and my timing maps are very straight foward and i pre write them from a certain base standpoint and tune from there.

the point of my picking on the timing area is that MOST people fail to remember that the timing area is just as critical as the fuel area and is certainly not done by any autotune i've ever used. hence another reason autotune blows IMHO.

but since it's obvious that the 3 of us are tuners, we really should stop bitching at each other, and go have a beer.

Im always interested to hear someone else's opinion. Now that all the background checks are in order lve got a question, whats wrong with the AEM wideband vs another brand? Its hard to get support for autronic stuff here in canada.

AEM doesn't have temperature compensation. Different EGT, different readout. I personally pushed their engineer on SEMA this year UNTIL he admitted

I tend to use only 2 AFR meters (maybe 3).

Autronic B gas analyzer

NGK AFX http://www.ngksparkplugs.com/products/p ... ce/afx.asp with UEGO probe of course

(I don't know if you know, bur NGK has a chip that is in 20 000$$ Horiba laboratory Af meter, so....)

Zeitronix (it is temperature compensated afr readout).

I don't believe any other to tune my engines, and I would use Zeitronix only as a backup to safe tune if my lambda meter dies suddenly.

Ok, so to further that what would you say is the ideal range(EGT) to run an AEM meter with the bosch sensor?
I have noticed some slight inaccuracy when the engine(no EGT temp on this car) temperature gets abnormally high or other heat soak conditions.

Im assuming the temperature compensation units would aslo have a EGT probe built in?

No, you cannot have a good temp compensation with shitty bosch LSU probes, which are pump-cell design, and very prone to pressure and temperature.

You have to use proper NTK UEGO lambda, which is veery expensive just by itself.

the hydra and my haltech use ntk sensors. i'm not sure on my current model but the hydra used l1h1 sensors which had a huge range and were super sensitive. i had no reliability problems at all with them, and to agree with hic, the bosche sensors seem to be as unreliable as they are cheap. that is also one of my biggest peeves about the AEM stuff. great system but they seem to have been getting cheaper and cheaper on what they use and thier price doesn't reflect that.

MS autotune did a fairly good job of the bulk of my fuel table, but i was over multiple hours of driving to be fair. It got maybe 80% of the table to within 0.5 of target AFR which drastically reduced the time I spent driving about with a friend logging. Decent auto-tune algorithms identify when any two datalog points are comparable and a reasonable description of the site being tuned (i.e out of warmup, not in accel enrich, not in too much of a transient). It gets you from a base map to a usable map. But fuel is relatively simple in comparison, and you still need to check the extremities manually - it's not a plug and play solution, but I don't thnk it's ever sold as that..