BAWC Forums

So it’s been over a year since I swept the cob webs from my disassembly of the 99 VR4 ROM and treked down what (most of) the other 3300 tables in the ROM do. ...and of course relearning what I thought I knew.

I had been laid off from my job and had plenty of free time to get into it. This was interrupted by me getting back into the work force.....making half the money....only to be laid off again because of COVID. Never picked it back up this time and I feel I owe an explanation of why.

There are limitations to this ECU which I can not fix or are beyond my understanding because they require additional components to be added to the board. Things like live tuning, better logger resolution (or even on-board logging) and additional crank triggers for things like true coil-on-plug operation (wasted spark setup fires each cylinder twice per cycle). These things are the true limitations to the stock ECU. Not horse power. Not MAF “restrictions”. But real limitations high HP producing tuners need beyond code resolution.

The processor and memory are plenty fast in terms of capabilities to keep up with the high speed environment of a high HP motor but when the processor can read microseconds (that’s 10 with 6 zeros after it) but the logger can only show you 3-5.... How does that help?

High HP cars (talking 800+ HP) don’t even use knock sensors. I even rewrote part of the knock sensor algorithm to handle the noise of that caliber but literally half a dozen people make that kind of power on the 6Gs today and none of them would be using the stock ECU and if they did they wouldn’t trust their high dollar builds to my code.... Why would they?

No... the real limitation is the user. IE you.

It’s not because of “speed density”. That is the single highest demand you all have. You’ve had the ability to run MAFless since the day I released Chrome V2. Those Alpha N (limp mode) tables are invaluable for this! Literally no one has used them... Hell... no one even uses the stock boost control tables which is one of the most powerful features of this ROM.

Which brings me to my point. I see this time and time and time again and it’s the core reason I got out of even working on these cars on the side. The owners have the Forza mentality when it comes to building cars.

I have literally never plugged my laptop into a car that only needed a tune. Ever!

There’s ALWAYS something else which causes the motor to not run right. Maybe it’s a fuel flow issue (usually fuel pump or line related) Maybe it’s a badly built engine.... Maybe it’s someone trying to push massive amounts of air thru tiny TD04 exhaust housings.... Maybe they’re running a MAFT (which, let’s be honest, only works for WOT and that’s it).

I stopped because the user (you guys) want something that just plugs in and works. What I’ve put out there already does that.

...but nothing I put out there can combat the issues you create with your cars. People dream of making 500whp but think it can be done on pump gas.

I say this to literally everyone. If you plug in our ECU and your motor doesn’t run right, there’s something else causing the issue. You can even get the motor to start and run adequately with 550cc injectors and no modification to any of the tables. That’s how good the stock narrow band feedback is!

It occurred to me that the demand for Chrome V3 isn’t about the new tables I’ve discovered. It’s about a magical ROM which allows the motor to run good without any issue the user introduces to it. That’s literally impossible and ultimately why I bowed out.

Now I’m sure there’s 6 or 7 of you out there that would like to know the full extent of the ROM just for the sake of learning it like myself but I’ve had other priorities like resetting my professional career, going back to school and exploring other interests.

I’ve got 2100ish of the 3300 tables in the ROM disassembled (but not tested) right now with no demand for that knowledge. I’ve also got half a dozen customers that need me to rebuild their cars from scratch because their setups don’t work.... As much as I love making dreams come true, my own self worth and ideals have crumbled due to my own struggles. Thus I’ve lost motivation to continue with this endeavor.

That’s where I’m at. I hope you all understand.

I see this time and time again with 3/s. I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve seen it with Wayne, and ray.....and now you. You all want to help, have the ability to help, but it makes your personal life suffer. Helping 3/s people and building/fixing our cars is chicken (pun for your new venture) feed to what you should be making. Hell wayne would Tavel and be put up in people’s houses and do 60k’s for 500 bucks plus gas and food. Which doesn’t sound horrible but every time he went to do one the car would need something else, or something would break and the 1 day job would turn into 3/4 because he would have to get parts.

Chrome ecu made my car run better with adjusting a few tables than a dyno tune did. Now granted my dyno tune just showed me the problems I needed to fix and then in the process I switched ecu’s. But it was still better. It still handles me beating on my car with virtually nothing touched, minus warm up tables and injector tables, with my 16g’s at 12psi. So in my mind the chrome ecu is a huge accomplishment and help to the community. So thank you.

With that said, I still have issues with the car on the mechanical side and ecu side. Mechanical meaning I have some boost leaks past the maf and ecu meaning I’m at a loss when I look at the logs and still wish someone could come tune my damn car. Because all a tune does is tell you what you what direction you need to go. If that be fix something or break something. Anyone that is under the impression that they are gonna go in a dyno and car is gonna be perfect than they are stupid. But every tuner also wants to make the customer happy because they just spent tons of money to build this “dream” car of theirs.


In short, make yourself happy first dude. I hear Ray is happy and I know wayne is. Also, come tune my car. lol.


Coop

Yeah, a lot of the questions I see on FB and various places about Chrome are easily and completely answered in your initial guides to setting it all up. People just don't want to learn anymore, they want the instant gratification and don't want to put the work in.

This is exactly why I didn't try to stay more involved with it. It's also why I'm desperate to get out of IT. I can't handle carrying the ignorance and neediness of the end users.

[quote=""Jeff V.""]This is exactly why I didn't try to stay more involved with it. It's also why I'm desperate to get out of IT. I can't handle carrying the ignorance and neediness of the end users.[/quote]
There are days that I feel the same about IT as well. Many, in fact. But there's nothing I can do that would be as lucrative as IT, and I'm getting closer to retirement and then I can do whatever the hell I want.

We do mostly F5-related work, and recently F5 had a really bad vulnerability exposed. Well, one of our customers are really a bunch of dumb-asses and had their F5 management interface exposed direct to the internet (and removed the firewall rules we put in place to at least restrict who could get to it) and hackers got into it and patched in some nasty malware, including an unknown BIOS change. Of course, the customer had no recent configuration backups and we had to essentially wipe the whole thing, reflash everything we could on the box (BIOS, OOB management, switchboard, etc), revoke and reissue all their PKI certificates, and reinstall from scrach and try to get their sites back online.

...and then at the end they didn't want to pay our emergency rate. I was tempted to just go back in and delete their configs and tell them to go fuck themselves. I let loose on them, and they ended up paying the emergency rate, but damn... Some people.

I'm not going to turn this into a work rant, but suffice to say I feel the same way. Unfortunately, there's nothing else I'm good enough at to earn a decent living.

I have found myself wondering about locksmithing lately. I think I might be good at that. I've got no idea what the pay is like though.

We are all going thru a midlife crisis.

Honestly it doesn't matter what industry you are in. People are just dumb. As a whole. Every facet of the workforce has dumbasses just barely making it by and those that actually know what they are doing picking up their slack.

Also I didn't realize 500whp on pump gas wasn't attainable.

[quote=""tabasco122""]Also I didn't realize 500whp on pump gas wasn't attainable.[/quote]

Oh it is, but you have to have everything right. DR650s will get you there, DR750s will get you to 600whp on pump.

I hear you not wanting to push further. Honestly as tough as it is to say the 3S is dying, and the majority of people in it now, don’t understand the costs involved.

The only thing I really wanted to see was if possible, a true flex fuel solution. Other than that Chrome V2 has everything you need for up to 600hp even.

I don’t use the stock boost control tables because I already had an electronic boost controller.

[quote=""tabasco122""]Also I didn't realize 500whp on pump gas wasn't attainable.[/quote]

You need something extra to cool the AITs. Like meth.

[quote=""aaronatstate""]Oh it is, but you have to have everything right. DR650s will get you there, DR750s will get you to 600whp on pump. [/quote]

No they won’t. Ray had some ethanol in the gas tank when he made those numbers.

If that was true everyone running those turbos would be able to make those kinds of numbers.

[quote=""aaronatstate""] The only thing I really wanted to see was if possible, a true flex fuel solution. Other than that Chrome V2 has everything you need for up to 600hp even.[/quote]

Coding this was very very easy. There are a few extra multiplier corrections already there in the code. They were just all set for 1. You’d then need some kind of 5V sensor to adjust that correction factor.

ECU-wise, we had a couple extra 5V inputs (like fuel tank pressure sensor) that weren’t used in pre-98 cars which you can wire the flex fuel sensor into.

Tuning is stupid simple but I needed someone to set it up on their cars so I could figure out the sensor scaling and then beta test.

I have that. As I put on a 97+ plenum and evo pressure sensor.

Aka. Tune my car.


Coop

[quote=""DCIV""]I have that. As I put on a 97+ plenum and evo pressure sensor.

Aka. Tune my car.


Coop[/quote]

I was talking about the pressure sensor on the fuel tank. Which is hilariously almost the same sensor as the one that goes on the plenum like you’re talking about.

Do you really need me to fly out there and tune your car? Now honestly would be a good time for that.

[quote=""Monochrome""]I was talking about the pressure sensor on the fuel tank. Which is hilariously almost the same sensor as the one that goes on the plenum like you’re talking about.

Do you really need me to fly out there and tune your car? Now honestly would be a good time for that.[/quote]

That would be amazing. I bet tickets would be cheap. I though you were only like 3/4 hours from me for some reason though. Last time the TN crew had Ray out we rented out a dyno in Knoxville and had like 3 of us do it. If I could set that up
would you be game for something like that? Paul has a flashed ecu, I do, I bet Scott might do it, dwain if he’s feeling well (he’s got cancer), I might be able to sneak brent away for it.


Coop

[quote=""Monochrome""]Coding this was very very easy. There are a few extra multiplier corrections already there in the code. They were just all set for 1. You’d then need some kind of 5V sensor to adjust that correction factor.

ECU-wise, we had a couple extra 5V inputs (like fuel tank pressure sensor) that weren’t used in pre-98 cars which you can wire the flex fuel sensor into.

Tuning is stupid simple but I needed someone to set it up on their cars so I could figure out the sensor scaling and then beta test.[/quote]

Wish I had known this, I would've gotten the GM sensor. I was always under the impression it would be out in Chrome V3, and that it wasn't ready to test.

Flex fuel would be super nice. I would love for it to know what fuel I’m using.


Coop

[quote=""Monochrome""]Coding this was very very easy. There are a few extra multiplier corrections already there in the code. They were just all set for 1. You’d then need some kind of 5V sensor to adjust that correction factor.

ECU-wise, we had a couple extra 5V inputs (like fuel tank pressure sensor) that weren’t used in pre-98 cars which you can wire the flex fuel sensor into.

Tuning is stupid simple but I needed someone to set it up on their cars so I could figure out the sensor scaling and then beta test.[/quote]

I would still be super interested in this (and I think other people would as well). The GM flex fuel sensor scaling is known, so it should be fairly straight forward to get the tuning done. I just checked my "E85" yesterday when I filled up, and it is actually E70 right now...I feel it's probably E70 most of the time, since that is the min required. I know my current tune is safe for E70 (no knock at 19.0 psi, ~11.8-12:0-1 AFR, and fair amount of timing).

I would have loved to have flex fuel capability for my recent trip to Dallas. There were no E85 stations in Dallas where I was, but I calculated I had enough to make it back to OK where I had stopped on the way down. I did have enough, I put 19.25 gallons into my 20 gallon tank I was sweating bullets for the last 20 or so miles haha. Would love to just be able to fill up anywhere on cross country trips without having to take my computer with.

I also suppose that if you used the stock boost control and the stock boost control tables, you could even have it lower boost based on Ethanol content...

Understand though that you don't want to continue with it. And it really is quite annoying that people just expect a magical ECU/ROM to fix all their issues and get them all kinds of extra power on a beat ass car. I see the same thing in the RS community as well. People by a Cobb and expect an off the shelf tune to get them 400whp+ on 91, when you need significantly more stuff than that, including a different block if you want reliable power.

[quote=""Monochrome""]So it’s been over a year since I swept the cob webs from my disassembly of the 99 VR4 ROM and treked down what (most of) the other 3300 tables in the ROM do. ...and of course relearning what I thought I knew.

I had been laid off from my job and had plenty of free time to get into it. This was interrupted by me getting back into the work force.....making half the money....only to be laid off again because of COVID. Never picked it back up this time and I feel I owe an explanation of why.

There are limitations to this ECU which I can not fix or are beyond my understanding because they require additional components to be added to the board. Things like live tuning, better logger resolution (or even on-board logging) and additional crank triggers for things like true coil-on-plug operation (wasted spark setup fires each cylinder twice per cycle). These things are the true limitations to the stock ECU. Not horse power. Not MAF “restrictions”. But real limitations high HP producing tuners need beyond code resolution.

The processor and memory are plenty fast in terms of capabilities to keep up with the high speed environment of a high HP motor but when the processor can read microseconds (that’s 10 with 6 zeros after it) but the logger can only show you 3-5.... How does that help?

High HP cars (talking 800+ HP) don’t even use knock sensors. I even rewrote part of the knock sensor algorithm to handle the noise of that caliber but literally half a dozen people make that kind of power on the 6Gs today and none of them would be using the stock ECU and if they did they wouldn’t trust their high dollar builds to my code.... Why would they?

No... the real limitation is the user. IE you.

It’s not because of “speed density”. That is the single highest demand you all have. You’ve had the ability to run MAFless since the day I released Chrome V2. Those Alpha N (limp mode) tables are invaluable for this! Literally no one has used them... Hell... no one even uses the stock boost control tables which is one of the most powerful features of this ROM.

Which brings me to my point. I see this time and time and time again and it’s the core reason I got out of even working on these cars on the side. The owners have the Forza mentality when it comes to building cars.

I have literally never plugged my laptop into a car that only needed a tune. Ever!

There’s ALWAYS something else which causes the motor to not run right. Maybe it’s a fuel flow issue (usually fuel pump or line related) Maybe it’s a badly built engine.... Maybe it’s someone trying to push massive amounts of air thru tiny TD04 exhaust housings.... Maybe they’re running a MAFT (which, let’s be honest, only works for WOT and that’s it).

I stopped because the user (you guys) want something that just plugs in and works. What I’ve put out there already does that.

...but nothing I put out there can combat the issues you create with your cars. People dream of making 500whp but think it can be done on pump gas.

I say this to literally everyone. If you plug in our ECU and your motor doesn’t run right, there’s something else causing the issue. You can even get the motor to start and run adequately with 550cc injectors and no modification to any of the tables. That’s how good the stock narrow band feedback is!

It occurred to me that the demand for Chrome V3 isn’t about the new tables I’ve discovered. It’s about a magical ROM which allows the motor to run good without any issue the user introduces to it. That’s literally impossible and ultimately why I bowed out.

Now I’m sure there’s 6 or 7 of you out there that would like to know the full extent of the ROM just for the sake of learning it like myself but I’ve had other priorities like resetting my professional career, going back to school and exploring other interests.

I’ve got 2100ish of the 3300 tables in the ROM disassembled (but not tested) right now with no demand for that knowledge. I’ve also got half a dozen customers that need me to rebuild their cars from scratch because their setups don’t work.... As much as I love making dreams come true, my own self worth and ideals have crumbled due to my own struggles. Thus I’ve lost motivation to continue with this endeavor.

That’s where I’m at. I hope you all understand.[/quote]

Yea people suck and dont understand the work that you have put into this. I can only imagine the crap you have to filter through with much of today's users. Lots of younger, less educated and lower income individuals that dont take the same pride or care of their vehicles. Like you mentioned many 3s's are cobbled together before your tune is even installed, so its already an uphill battle before they can start to tune effectively.

Personally Ive really enjoyed watching you figure all of this out and try to help where I can. That was initially why I joined BAWC. I think I even bumped your V3 thread a couple times this year in hopes you had made new progress. Its a great product.

Thinking back I ive used about half a dozen ecu's in mine, or friends cars over the years. Hell, i have one in my mighty max with a 3.8L MIVEC and she runs great! Im actually planning on installing one in the Montero and Ram 50 in the not too distant future too. All of which would not have been possible if it wasnt for you pushing this platform forward.

Anyways I dont know what your plans are moving forward. I know you said in your V3 thread that there were some inherent issues with V2 as you had now learned that code wasn't correct, or needed modification. To be honest that had me worried and I was eager to know that you had been working towards a remedy.

I get you need to sort personal things out in your life. Thats most important for you and your relationships, so focus on you.

If there is anything we can do to help Im sure any of us here wouldn't mind chipping in.

My code for the Active Exhaust isn’t as great as stock.... That was the only big thing.

I do need to fix this for the 5 or so people in the entire world who run AE.