An in-depth talk about FL5 ECU tuning

[Vito.FL5]

@Vito.FL5

Thank you for sharing the details. I find the information you shared to be very helpful.

What methods and hardware are you using to flash the ECU?

I am using Autotuner, flashing directly at the ecu pins and logging with Bflash via OBD.

These are expensive tools but I work on this market so I hapen to have all of them.

Right now I am not happy with the logging parameters I have so I am trying to find time to make my own logger accessing the can network post gateway.

I just figured out how to remove mode 23 security so I could log any ram variable with that method. Will be great for development.

Also working on enabling CCP protocol to do real time tuning or maybe get PRJs FK8 protocol working past gateway

Either way I am doing all this for fun and at some point I will switch to hondata when they have sufficient tuning tables (this will happen soon, tbey are working very hard on this I am sure)

but I may keep a secondary ecu for testing out stuff then pissing them off to add tables when I get good results lol.

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[Vito.FL5]

I have another thing to add:

I have been looking into the cooling system for quite some time now and I got it sort of figured out. I should open a specific thread about this but lets give this as a easter egg for whoever gets this far on my topic lol.

Both the picture and the Honda manual shot are form an FK8 but it´s all very similar on the FL5 so lets take a GOOD look into it.

Now take a look AGAIN.

If you do know how a cooling system works, yo know that theses cars are designed to pickup heat quickly, mostly for emissions and to avoid seizing the engine on short runs.

Look at how the water the goes to the transmission, to the throttle body and to the cabin heating system circulate from and to the thermostat housing.

And also how the turbocharger coolant line, that goes to the turbo than back to the engine at the water pump inlet.

Now lets think together: This coolant is flowing in and out of the engine without passing trough the radiator when the themostat is closed. Also this coolant is responsible for opening the thermostat when water temperatures rise.

The coolant heats up, the water flowing back and forth heats up the thermostat (remember the thermostat is in the INLET of the water pump not the outlet of the head) then thermostat opens, cold water comes from the radiator, into the engine, then it cools down the thermostat that closes again.

It works in cycles... But even with the termostat opened, a big part of the coolant flows into other paths, other than the radiator, and this cant be good.

Now look at how the TCR type R is set up.... Every other path the coolant could go is blocked. Even turbocharger cooling is deleted so now 100% of the coolant has only one path to go: Trough the radiator and back. Now this has one issue: It would not work with a thermostat, since the thermostat seats in the lower water hose so it is fed cold water, and the expanding element that opens the thermostar in the correct temperature sit on the other side of the flow, so it relies on the coolant flowing in the parallel systems to open.

This car has no parallel systems, therefore, it has no thermostat.

This is almost perfect, besides the fact that to run such system at the street you lose transmission cooling, cabin heating and turbocharger cooling.

I am not concerned about losing turbocharger cooling since I have deleted it in many cars and never had an issue, but I dont want to lose the heating, and the transmission lines so my plan is the following.

Adding a electric valve that blocks coolant flow into the cabin for the heating element (many cars have this from the factory, but not ours), removing the transmission cooling from the main system and adding a separate radiator for it. Deleting turbocharger coolant lines, delete stupid throttle body heating and to finish: adding a thermostat on the TOP coolant hose, with the expanding element facing the HEAD so it gets fed hot water. Ad a couple holes in the thermostat housing to keep the water pump from cavitating and VOILÁ, a TCR coolant system WITH a thermostat to keep you from running too cold at the street.

Add an engine oil cooler to help and you should be good to go.


Now how the fuck did I got this far, am I on mushrooms? No. I was about to install a secondary water radiator in line with the transmission water line, and that would have been very stupid. As stupid as everyone else that did the same and got no results. I would just introduce a little cold water into the thermostat housing, that would delay even more the opening of the valve. Not good.


If I made no sense, keep in mind Its midnight here, I have a 1 year old girl, and english is not my first language.

Thank you

 

[Vito.FL5]

Now to finish before I go to sleep. A couple cool things I tested this week that may interest:

Increased rev matching response: This worked wonders, helps downshifting faster at the track.

Unlocked ECU code clearing with the engine on.

Full exhaust flap control. In my case I have now exhaust flap 100% open in R mode, 50% open in Sport mode and closed in Confort. (at WOT and above 3000 rpm it is open in every mode)

POPs andfreking Bangs. (I hate it but whatever) I borrowed the code from the DE5 integra, and it kinda works, but need some further polishing.



Now a little off: I found a OBD2 scan tool that works with Apple carplay, it is probably the only option for iphone users, and paired with a BT4.0 obd2 dongle it allows us to read more stuff in the screen. I will come up with a better solution but for now it is a good way to monitor lambda without having the pc on

For those who interest: the OBD2 dongle I use is a cheap "VGATE ICAR PRO" and the software is called ONTRACK. It is free up to 2 parameters.

 

[ForeverCar]

@Vito.FL5 You rock! Hondata is no doubt more user friendly but with WinOLS, you’ll always be as many steps ahead as you want.

I likely have many questions still to come as I am considering going down the WinOLS path. First, I need to get the factory service manual so I can get as many answers as I can myself and be more helpful too.

You referenced compaction ratio. Does the car have a pressure sensor before the turbine?

 

[Jester04]

Now to finish before I go to sleep. A couple cool things I tested this week that may interest:

Increased rev matching response: This worked wonders, helps downshifting faster at the track.

Unlocked ECU code clearing with the engine on.

Full exhaust flap control. In my case I have now exhaust flap 100% open in R mode, 50% open in Sport mode and closed in Confort. (at WOT and above 3000 rpm it is open in every mode)

POPs andfreking Bangs. (I hate it but whatever) I borrowed the code from the DE5 integra, and it kinda works, but need some further polishing.



Now a little off: I found a OBD2 scan tool that works with Apple carplay, it is probably the only option for iphone users, and paired with a BT4.0 obd2 dongle it allows us to read more stuff in the screen. I will come up with a better solution but for now it is a good way to monitor lambda without having the pc on

For those who interest: the OBD2 dongle I use is a cheap "VGATE ICAR PRO" and the software is called ONTRACK. It is free up to 2 parameters.

I have been brainstorming on this quite a bit, even discussing options with pointbypatrol. I came to the same conclusion of thermostat placement did not go as far as deleting lines since I wanted the system to be as oem as possible. Did consider a thermostat delete but then heating up the car for street purposes becomes an issue. Also thought about a electronic thermostat that you could just control to open whenever you desire but that involves fabrication which I cannot do plus figure out a way to control it.

I will be testing some stuff in the near future hopefully and report back my findings.

 

[Vito.FL5]

I have been brainstorming on this quite a bit, even discussing options with pointbypatrol. I came to the same conclusion of thermostat placement did not go as far as deleting lines since I wanted the system to be as oem as possible. Did consider a thermostat delete but then heating up the car for street purposes becomes an issue. Also thought about a electronic thermostat that you could just control to open whenever you desire but that involves fabrication which I cannot do plus figure out a way to control it.

I will be testing some stuff in the near future hopefully and report back my findings.

A thermostat delete on a stock system would not be very benefitial since you would still have lots of water flowing in other directions.

The "street friendly" version of what I mentioned, would be adding a valve to the heating hose, delete the trans cooler, and replace it with an oil cooler. Deleting the throttle body line is no issue.

Now for the turbo line, you can add an inline aux radiator to that line and then put an inline thermostat on the top hose.

 

[Jester04]

Now to finish before I go to sleep. A couple cool things I tested this week that may interest:

Increased rev matching response: This worked wonders, helps downshifting faster at the track.

Unlocked ECU code clearing with the engine on.

Full exhaust flap control. In my case I have now exhaust flap 100% open in R mode, 50% open in Sport mode and closed in Confort. (at WOT and above 3000 rpm it is open in every mode)

POPs andfreking Bangs. (I hate it but whatever) I borrowed the code from the DE5 integra, and it kinda works, but need some further polishing.



Now a little off: I found a OBD2 scan tool that works with Apple carplay, it is probably the only option for iphone users, and paired with a BT4.0 obd2 dongle it allows us to read more stuff in the screen. I will come up with a better solution but for now it is a good way to monitor lambda without having the pc on

For those who interest: the OBD2 dongle I use is a cheap "VGATE ICAR PRO" and the software is called ONTRACK. It is free up to 2 parameters.

As of now, using the hondata app on the phone to log the things I want. Its not perfect and needs a lot of polishing for it to do the things I want but at least I’m not blind.

 

[Jester04]

A thermostat delete on a stock system would not be very benefitial since you would still have lots of water flowing in other directions.

The "street friendly" version of what I mentioned, would be adding a valve to the heating hose, delete the trans cooler, and replace it with an oil cooler. Deleting the throttle body line is no issue.

Now for the turbo line, you can add an inline aux radiator to that line and then put an inline thermostat on the top hose.

I’m not too concerned about turbo cooling since I have also ran oil cooled only turbos with no issues.

And yes water would still be flowing to a lot of places. It’s not a simple solution as of now. I have deleted throttle body coolant recirculation in all my previous cars also but on this one I have not considered it yet. But from the diagram it seems very simple to just bypass that.

 

[ABPDE5]

Really cool insight, guys! Really appreciate your willingness to put time / effort into sharing value. Looking forward to where you guys take this and what I can learn!

 

[Vito.FL5]

@Vito.FL5 You rock! Hondata is no doubt more user friendly but with WinOLS, you’ll always be as many steps ahead as you want.

I likely have many questions still to come as I am considering going down the WinOLS path. First, I need to get the factory service manual so I can get as many answers as I can myself and be more helpful too.

You referenced compaction ratio. Does the car have a pressure sensor before the turbine?

There is no sensor, but as many other things, it is calulated. To understand the pressure at the turbocharger inlet the ecu measures ambient pressure and then calculates the pressure drop at the intake tube, like this:

this is pressure drop as a function of air mass.

Now to know the actual pressure on the turbocharger outlet, it does the opposite. Since pressure is measured after the intercooler, it calculates the pressure drop on the core and does the reverse math from it.

On most cases, compaction ratio tables are provided by the turbocharger manufacturer so it is usually safe to raise torque request values until the car starts running on these tables.

 

[ForeverCar]

@Vito.FL5 Ah, got it. I thought you meant the pre-turbine pressure divided by the intake manifold pressure. If possible, I would like to set up a car at 1:1.

 

[Vito.FL5]

@Vito.FL5 Ah, got it. I thought you meant the pre-turbine pressure divided by the intake manifold pressure. If possible, I would like to set up a car at 1:1.

It is possible, if you zero out both tables. But remember you still have to divide the "boost value" by the atmosferic pressure in order to have this table work as "direct boost"

Still, this is not the proper method to tune this ecus, it should be done via torque request tables, not sure why everyone does the opposite

 

[ForeverCar]

Yeah, not enough “tuner” understands torque target strategy sadly.

It is like tweaking VE values not according to the hardware but finding values to make it sort of run okay.

 

[Jester04]

It is possible, if you zero out both tables. But remember you still have to divide the "boost value" by the atmosferic pressure in order to have this table work as "direct boost"

Still, this is not the proper method to tune this ecus, it should be done via torque request tables, not sure why everyone does the opposite

People like seeing the numbers. Omg I’m running 30 lbs of boost! Instead of just going off of torque values which will yield the results consistently while adapting to the environmental factors.

 

[Vito.FL5]

Not a lof of updates lately, wife is pregnant and we have a 1 year old girl, so not a lof of spare time.

Either way, been working on a lot of cool things, one of them is a CAN LCD to display ecu data on a 5 inch touch sceen display, AND, another can module that goes on the engine bay, that gets all sorts of extra sensors data and throw it on the can.

It also controls extra radiator fans.

So from the inside of the car I can see on the same screen, conected to the can wires my sensor data together with ecu data that is not available at the dash like lambda for example.

SImple board design at one side, based on arduino uno because Im lazy.

THis, somewhere on the dash. Not sure where, but will 3d print something that makes sense


And I´m finishing the design of the board that goes at the bay.

Then another 30 days to manufacture in china because im too old to make pcbs at home lol.



Then we´ll see.




Also from a tuning perspective, added lots of cool features to the tune, just haven´t had time to test. Car is filthy dirt at the garage but hopefully on sunday I can test it.

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