I want to learn how to write custom tunes.

Alright I know how to tune. I have done it before with success, but never on a tdi. What software do I need and what hardware do I need to get started? Do I have to buy a vin key like tuning a duramax? Someone point me in the right direction, there isn't a lot of information online

winols
mpps cable
should get you started

So is it just a connect-download ecu file-adjust mapping and deletes-reflash ecu?

he said just guys.

Just.

That's why I'm asking. It seems too straight forward. There has to be a complicated part.

MorganHatfieldx said:

adjust mapping

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This ^^^^^ is where all the time, effort, and skill comes in, and it's what makes commercial tunes worth their weight in gold for most of us.

Otherwise it's the school of hard knocks... or pings, as the case may be... and it's why you're not finding any simple how-tos on the interwebs. The folks that have invested the time and effort reverse-engineering this stuff rarely have time leftover to write html pages too.

I delved into megasquirt and that was complicated, although I did learn quite a bit, I'm sure there are countless subtle differences based on altitude, pressures, etc etc. I did an internet search for winols and found a guide to diesel tuning using that piece of software. Might want to read that.

I have tuned multiple vehicles, big turbo corvette, a few duramax's, cummins. I'm not the best but I have a ALH that's pretty beat in my lot that I want to mess around with some tuning in. Nothing insane, just a little timing and a little fuel. I would really just like to know how to do deletes

I really just need to know how to load custom tunes. The first comment should be the correct software/hardware correct?

If you have to ask.......

I just posted this yesterday in a different thread. Should begin to point you in the right direction. If you've already done a few diesels then this should be fairly straight forward.

Exenos said:

I'd read through this thread first http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=375099
Theres a lot of good info in there.

I used a clone MPPS cable from amazon and EDC15 suite to to the actual tuning.
Heres EDC15 suite http://chiptuning.pw/vag-edc15-suite-download/
and this is something like the cable I bought https://www.amazon.com/AUTOS-FAMILY...TF8&qid=1490236599&sr=8-3&keywords=mpps+cable

Somewhere there is an actual tuning guide floating around that will more or less step you through a stage one tune. I cant seem to find it right now though. There is a link to it somewhere in that tuning thread.

Obviously the standard disclaimers apply, You could damage the engine but honestly I don't actually know if thats possible with stock hardware. Its not a terribly complicated process but you do need to understand what Is happening before you go playing around too much.

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Hi,

FWIW - I recently got a tune mailed to me and I was curious as to what it looked like BUT I couldn't even open it up to read it...UGH.

I'd imagine if you can at least open the file to look at it tinkering could start...

If you ever get going on this let me know...I have some ideas for some tunes!

Andrew

Exenos said:

I just posted this yesterday in a different thread. Should begin to point you in the right direction. If you've already done a few diesels then this should be fairly straight forward.

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Thank you so much for those links! They are very helpful!

Does this also work for a BEW? I'm looking to eliminate the egr(tune it out) for off Road reasons of course. Also what about immo defeats?

EDC16 is a total different animal. Very complex ECU and all the maps are based on torque limitation. Unfortunately it not well documented either.

turbocharged798 said:

EDC16 is a total different animal. Very complex ECU and all the maps are based on torque limitation. Unfortunately it not well documented either.

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Oh, oops. I didn't even see that he had a pd. My bad

Exenos said:

Oh, oops. I didn't even see that he had a pd. My bad

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I also have a ALH and might be buying another one.

Are your bew's edc16? I thought that was a mk5 thing?

Apart from that I know nothing lol

There are some decent pages around on the web though, tell you what's what and all that, should find something useful with a bit of a google.

Here's one decent forum

http://www.ecuconnections.com/

I'm not sure if they are. It's a mk4 BEW Jetta. I really just want to turn off the check engine light for the egr not flowing correctly

MorganHatfieldx said:

I'm not sure if they are. It's a mk4 BEW Jetta. I really just want to turn off the check engine light for the egr not flowing correctly

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EDC16 is torque based, but in the end is almost the same, you cannot use the edc suite software with edc16 files, choose winols, its better.

If you can do your own tune it is much better than a commercial tune. The main reason being you have more time to change maps, fine tune maps, build on your tune, customize as you upgrade hardware. Especially for EDC15 and EDC16 all the info. is out there. In ecuconnections.com/youtube videos you can find everything. The learning curve is a bit steep not due to complexity but to due to secrecy. People still charge huge sums to tune these old cars. However in ecuconnections.com amateurs now share this information freely and are often better than profis. Once you know the mechanics of what to do (reading/flashing), the goal is with time to find ALL the relevant maps, limiters, pertaining to your car and adjust them.

eddie_1 said:

If you can do your own tune it is much better than a commercial tune. The main reason being you have more time to change maps, fine tune maps, build on your tune, customize as you upgrade hardware. Especially for EDC15 and EDC16 all the info. is out there. In ecuconnections.com/youtube videos you can find everything. The learning curve is a bit steep not due to complexity but to due to secrecy. People still charge huge sums to tune these old cars. However in ecuconnections.com amateurs now share this information freely and are often better than profis. Once you know the mechanics of what to do (reading/flashing), the goal is with time to find ALL the relevant maps, limiters, pertaining to your car and adjust them.

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Just curious BUT could a commercial tune be looked at and then simply modified to fine tune.....seems to be a good way to avoid having to start from scratch...

Just a thought to potentially save time / effort

Seatman said:

Are your bew's edc16? I thought that was a mk5 thing?

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Yes, EDC16U31s. Fuel by gear is nice

Diesel tuning is considerably harder than gas in some respects, otherwise more people would be doing it. Have megasquirt on my 1990 GTI 16V with a wideband, can just hit auto-tune and set AFRs then go for a drive. Really impressive program all things considered. ME7.5 + ECUs can make a lot of adjustments on their own as well to accommodate for fuel/spark changes etc so "off the shelf" tunes work fine for them. Not that much left on the table with generic diesel tunes either, but there are safety factors that're typically there for a reason.

Are you sure about that?

There are sooo many more PIDs and so many more factors than afrs and autotune on gas cars. Knock signal, ignition advance tuning, closed loop regular driving afrs to ~14.5, WOT needs to be around 12.5 (engine dependent)... go more rich and you lose power, go lean and melt stuff. Get ignition advance wrong and ruin head gaskets, or bend rods.


For diesels, it's generally add fuel, add air till it doesn't smoke, fine tune timing, and drive your heart out.

Everyone in Europe is tuning diesel.

Yeah, I take that back

Neither is easy, that's for sure. I guess the main difference would be that gas cars had widebands knock sensing etc and would cut back/correct values 15 years ago, whereas EGT limiters weren't very common until EDC17s which came out ~ 5-6 years later. Still room to blow up either motor setup, but far more reliance on injection mapping on a diesel than on a gas motor, and the ECUs don't make the same kinds of corrections.

I tune BMW MS41, MS42, and MS43, N/A and added FI... and yes, they do adjust... but they're actually adjusting for mistakes, as well as minor environment conditions.

Add too much fuel you get knock, take away too much, you get knock, too much ignition advance, you get knock.

Yes, knock sensors pick it up and pull ignition advance... which just burns more fuel down the exhaust, and raises EGT and not power. Sensors help keep it safe, not powerful.

Still have a lot of tuning potential left in variable valve timing, electronic throttle improvements, etc.


Now of course, stand-alone systems or even some piggybacks have made it much easier, almost silver spoon tuning.



Good diesel tuning is obviously tougher, but most TDIs can easily stand a simple +10% or +15% multiplier to fuel maps, smoke limiter, and torque limiter maps, and not even smoke, or be dangerous... without even touching turbo maps or any other maps.
Of course that's not a 'good' tune, but it'll work.



I do agree with you, they tend to be the same, when you try to get in depth. And neither can you just "OK let's learn to tune, give me info" and tune in a week. It'll take months to years.

Andyinchville1 said:

Just curious BUT could a commercial tune be looked at and then simply modified to fine tune.....seems to be a good way to avoid having to start from scratch...

Just a thought to potentially save time / effort

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Every piece of information helps. There is a 'diff' function in winols that you can compare to original files and see what changes have been made. But the tuner will only provide a hexdump without map information. So you have to kind of reverse engineer the tune to figure out what was changed and recognize and label the maps/limiters yourself - which can be done by following some of the tutorials. The other problem is that alot of professional tunes are very poor quality (time is money), so if you cannot get a kind of gold std. tune, you could be propagating junk. There is a so called DAMOS file which is like a gold std. ref. describing all the maps. The one I found on the net for my current car 2,7 tdi edc16 is quite good and I have found alot of the relevant maps switches by diffing that file vs mine. Folks on ecuconnections also gave me alot of hints and help. The idea is to start small, see if you can do like an EGR off, then slowly build on the experience.

The thing people often forget is that frequently you're not just paying for a tune exactly: you're paying for the time in development. You still pay for tuning on standalone systems and those require no reverse engineering. But, it takes experience and skill to get it right in a reasonable period of time.

Maybe for some they might enjoy messing with the car for months/years to get it perfect and hopefully not break anything (baby steps), but for most people they would rather spend a bit or money on it and not have to worry about it anymore.

In reality you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince and the prince doesn't have time. At least that was my experience.

DT_Tuning said:

The thing people often forget is that frequently you're not just paying for a tune exactly: you're paying for the time in development. You still pay for tuning on standalone systems and those require no reverse engineering. But, it takes experience and skill to get it right in a reasonable period of time.
Maybe for some they might enjoy messing with the car for months/years to get it perfect and hopefully not break anything (baby steps), but for most people they would rather spend a bit or money on it and not have to worry about it anymore.

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^^^this.

I would like to add: the single MOST important thing is that you UNDERSTAND HOW THE CAR WORKS...BEFORE you start tuning. If you can't wrench on it and fix stuff with any sort of expertise, or troubleshoot when things go wrong, you shouldn't be messing with it. This is especially true with the later cars.

it's easy to "change stuff" and say look I made a tune!

Then you look at some of these tuner websites and they list every european car ever produced. Got a car? there's a mac for that!

I can tell you it is not possible to provide top tier tunes for everything ever made. It takes a ton of time to get each car right. Or at least to the level that I like to see.

So I choose to specialize in a fairly narrow area. But I get very deep into each car. When it works, and works well, that's not a miracle or snap of the fingers, it is a lot of hard work and yes trial and error and many hours and long nights and often years of work when you finally buy it.

But it's really hard for the consumer to be able to tell what they will be getting just from looking at a web site or even reading forum posts. Sometimes a wish there was a way to do an A/B comparison so an informed choice could be made. But sadly that's not how it works.

it's not hard to buy chinese clone stuff and find hacked software with hidden malware in it, and get a read on your ecu and make changes. Voila! tuned!

Well, ok.

You probably won't blow anything up or burn your pistons or whatever like some guys try to tell you. But it probably won't be what it could be, that's for sure.

It's all about the time, and support, and being able to pick up the phone and get an answer when you need it, and having a car that's wicked fun transportation instead of a science project on blocks.

Of course some guys just have to see for themselves, and don't mind having a car that's a science project and all that entails. There are definitely rewards that go along with that and everyone needs a hobby. But it may or may not be fun after a while. IMO not something to approach casually or at least not without being prepared (at least mentally) for unforseen hassles and be sure to have a backup car to drive.

but that's all part of the fun for those of us who can't leave well enough alone. "no user serviceable parts inside" means I have to take it apart and find out why.

- 'Development' doesn't need to be limited to businesses. Essentially by development what is meant is to make small changes in the tune and observe the effects. As mentioned previously time is not a factor working on your own car to do this. Flash it 60 times and log. Be ready if bricked. In any case Development to me means something totally different. There is, give or take, no real creative component. You can also be smart about it. Learn from the resources out there. Get help in other forums.
- Having the proper cable and editor doesn't make you a better tuner. In fact in Europe I've seen big business professionals use a clone and starting out business tuners out to make a quick buck have the big bucks cables.
- Everyone has to start somewhere. Even one of the resident Gurus here from benelux told me he went to the other big name tuner in benelux and guy wanted big money and had no time, so he thought he could figure out himself and he did. Now he usually abuses me every time I post.
- Most on tdiclub have hardware knowledge and experience and have blossomed with hardware mods but not many are tuning. In Europe it is a bit different. I think it is a shame EDC15 tuning which is so old now, has not been taken up more at an individual level, despite the mk4 TDI being almost a cult car in NA. (I guess I have my theories as to why this happened)
- Tuning Complexity increases with higher power. But a mild tune can be done without too much heartache. I have seen professional files which have tried to increase power in EDC16 for example, just with lambda maps and have hit a cealing. If you bought that file you are a sucker.
- I dont think it is a business vs non-business issue. You have a whole spectrum of tuners and amateurs here in Europe. I had a really good EDC15 tuner in Germany but when it came to EDC16 on my other car he was unable to help. That's how I got started. (Your point about tuner websites with all the cars listed, is a bad sign) Anyone who has some technical skill can learn basic engine operation concepts and learn to tune.
- I understand people who are doing it as a business. They put in the 'Development' time in order to make money and have pay bills to pay. I respect that if they are doing a good job. But it does not mean someone private cannot learn to tune or become good at it.
- At the same time I think there is a kind of conflict of interest between Prof/Amateur in this regard on forums and in some forums more than others, which can negatively impact the dynamic of the forum, which I think is a shame.