40. The Magic Behind Vehicle Tuning, w/ Kyle Larkin

Oh, you're going to do it this time?

Have you practiced your intro? No. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minnoxide podcast. I'm your host, Harris, AKA Minnoxide, man of many automotive aspirations. I'm here with my co-host.

Hey guys, what's up? My name is Sean Bryant. I drive a blue Durango, and it's a Hellcat, and a BMW 1M that's right behind me. Currently, we are at MAPerformance in their dyno room. So, excuse the audio quality, but this is the Minnoxide podcast, where we take you Beyond the Meat, and introduce you to some of the people that make our community so great.

How long until Beyond Meat sues us for saying Beyond the Meat?

I love Beyond the Meat, because every time I think about it, I think of Burger King's Beyond Burger. I'm like, it's a vegan show.

It's a vegan show. Yeah, so pardon if there's any echo, but honestly, let's see what Editing Magic does this time. Nonetheless, today we got Kyle Larkin back, who was waving at the camera.

Cardinal sin of any production.

Breaking the fourth wall.

Exactly.

But yeah, so we wanted to get you back on. You were on an episode 30, I believe it was, 30 or 31. We just wanted to talk a little bit more about tuning with you, mostly because me and Sean, we've never tuned a car in our lives. We kind of figured that our listeners would be interested in learning a little bit more.

Yeah, it's basically like witchcraft. Yeah.

It is basically witchcraft. So just kind of like reintroduce yourself to people who haven't heard.

So I'm Kyle Larkin, as you guys said before. You guys gave me the title of Ultimate Automotive Enthusiast on the last episode, which I'll come to terms with. So I've been wrenching on cars for as long as I can remember. I've had a bunch of different Hondas, and over the last few years of working at MAP and my role here, kind of picked up tuning with the help from a lot of other really, really talented people in this local area. And I just keep striving to learn more and more every day, and I figure what better than to kind of talk about this stuff and help other people that might be interested kind of follow the same path that I am, because this is kind of like a growth journey for me. This is probably like year three of taking this really seriously. And earlier this year, I started my business page and have kind of been marketing myself a lot more. So I figured we could hang out and chat and all kind of learn together. I think that's the best part about all this stuff is being able to talk and help people understand things and you end up learning stuff yourself.

This is such a cool idea too. When you told me this idea, I'm like, let's do it. It's just a, first of all, a different scenery. It's really cool to be here in the diner room with the car community-wrapped BMW. Please go on the rally with us. Got to tell people.

Code Minnoxide.

Code Minnoxide, save $100. But no, we just figured like, let's just get right into it. So tell us a little bit about, you just finished up the WRX for Dustin Williams. So tell us a little bit about how that built up.

Yeah, we can talk about that because there was some big tuning in that. So Dustin's car got dropped off shortly after Modest, the Modest Car Show in St. Paul. I took the engine out the day after it came back to the shop. And then IAG sent us a, they're like 600 horsepower spec, open deck FA-20 block. We got a set of Kelford cams and then a Force Performance FP Blue turbocharger, which is good for around 500 horsepower. And then basically all the MAP bolt-ons. And the point of the build was to kind of showcase all of MAP's products and some parts and some partner business products, I guess, if you will, is kind of an advertisement piece. This is Dustin's car that he kind of blew up on and it sat for a long time. So it needed a revision, I guess, is the best way to put it.

And which car was this again?

It's a 2015.

Oh, it's a 15, okay.

It's a 15 Subaru WRX. So it's a VA chassis is what they're commonly referred to as. And it has a big wide-body kit on it and it's got workmeisters and got a whole bunch of stuff going on to it now. The entire car essentially is changing, but that was kind of like stage one was redo the engine and turbo kit. So Dustin flew down from, actually I think he came, he was home in California for one day after being in Japan and then flew here.

Whoa.

Yeah, he's kind of a mad man when it comes to traveling.

You gotta be when you're like that level of content creator, like you are-

He's all over.

On different sides of the planet, yeah.

And he likes traveling too, so he's all over. But, so he came here and him and I did the build over the course of the week, so we put the engine together, built a whole fuel system. Actually, the night before we were gonna start tuning it, the air suspension took a s***. Like the pump, I was sitting in the car, it was idling, and I was just kind of messing with things, getting the car running good, like just idling and everything. And the car was like kind of moving around like it was in a hydraulics competition. And all of a sudden I like smell burning plastic, and I was like, oh, I wonder if like something came loose in the engine bay or like a belt is like slipping or something weird like that. And I turn it off and I look and like, no, there's no smoke or anything, everything seems fine. But like it really smells like plastic. And I opened the trunk and he's got the, I think it's an AccuAir system. And so it has a pump.

Aren't they out of business right now?

This would make sense. Maybe it's not AccuAir, I don't remember.

I can't remember one of the big.

No, AccuAir is like one of the largest.

One of the big ones went out of business.

Yeah, they went out of business like not that long. I mean, it's probably a while at this point, but yeah, I opened the trunk, and his is like an all-in-one. It's a tank and a compressor built in together. It's just one big unit, and it just reeked of like burning nastiness. And then when I was like, okay, well, it's not the engine. I can go start it and go back to what I was doing. I realized the car wouldn't air up. So the pump died, and we had to put coilovers in the night before we were supposed to tune the car, and it was like 10 o'clock. And we were like, f***, at least we work here and can just go in the back and grab a set of coilovers because otherwise we would have been hosed. So with that car, I don't tune a ton of Subarus, but obviously a friend and a work thing, I was like, okay, let's do this. So tune the car on Cobb. It's a direct injection only engine, and we didn't add any port fueling on top of it. So it did end up making 490 horsepower, which is pretty impressive considering the fuel system mods that were kind of keeping us from eclipsing that power number. A lot of the guys that are used to DI cars know, like, you don't get very far on direct injection, and eventually you have to do everything you can to upgrade that, and that usually involves port injection. So making it that far with direct injection only, a top-mount intercooler, TGV still installed, a cat, like, was pretty impressive. It was a pretty cool feat. And with that, I mean, it ended up, there was some goofy stuff, there's some hurdles in the tuning process that we had to go through, and I had to, as we talked about in the last podcast, call in my good buddy, Brian May, who I was trying to get on this podcast. I was, we had some, my, mostly me being poor at scheduling, but Brian came down and we hung out in the car for a little bit and figured some stuff out.

So what does that next tier look like? Because it was like 490 wheel or whatever. What's that next tier look like if you get past those restrictions, I guess?

Yeah, so I mean, that turbo, we kind of landed in a spot where it was perfect, where out of fuel system, we couldn't really eclipse any more power with the fuel system, but also the turbo was definitely pretty close to running out of steam. I gotta remember to move this around with my face. The turbo was pretty close to just running out of what it could do, because it still is a drop-in bolt-in turbo. It used our header, our turbo manifold, I guess, depending on what you want to call it, but it's still a factory frame style. It's not like a T3 or a T4 flange. So it definitely was reaching its limits. So, I mean, let's say you put a larger turbo on it, like, let's say like a Garrett G30 in a various size. Obviously, G30 doesn't mean much of anything like that. But a smaller frame G30, Garrett turbo on it, and port injection, the next roadblock would be like around 600 horsepower.

Wow, okay.

Which that's still, for like a street car or a show car, that's a lot of, that's more than you need.

Yeah, that is a lot of power, especially in a Subaru.

Yeah, right.

Because that's not exactly a heavy car either, is it?

I don't-

Like 3,400?

Yeah, I would say like 32 or 3,400. I mean, they're not light. The car felt quick. And like the thing that you got to realize too, and this will kind of get us diving into like tuning and more so like part selection of like, you know, you can make a big number, right? But a number is just the max the car ever outputs. And the way that a car drives and how fast it actually is, more so depends on like the curve of the graph and how it actually makes power and where it makes power. Like a good example is of one that's kind of goofy is like GTIs. So, I mean, you can make a stock, I mean, an IS38 is better, but like a stock turbo car can make like 330 and make a lot of torque too, like on E30. I think one of our development cars is like in the 300 wheel horsepower range and like close to 400 torque. But it makes all of that super down low. So, I mean, you're making that for the first couple, you know, from 3000 to 5000, maybe, but you're revving the car out to 7000. And the torque and the power is just come is petering down because the turbo can't keep flowing.

Correct.

That much power all the way to redline.

So, yeah, we always talk about this in our Mark 7 Chad, which has like 70, you know, MQB people in there. And it's like, they're always comparing setups, like IS 38 or IS 20 or whatever cases. And yeah, they're like, it's scary how those little turbos like they put in work.

Yeah, yeah. And it's like, it's just a different, it's a different feeling. So with like Dustin's car, it made 500, and it actually made a pretty solid graph where like everything was happy, where it came into power, and then it kind of flattened out for the most part. And it did towards the, towards Redline start to kind of lose momentum just because it's running out of airflow, whether it be the cams or the turbocharger. But that, what that results in is like a, it's a pleasurable powerband. It feels good because when you step on it, you have that torque hit and it keeps you in the back of your seat where it's like, you know, an IAS 20 is a stock turbo for a Mark 7, right?

I believe so, yeah.

Whatever the stock turbo is from.

Whatever the name is, yeah.

So like my friend Hector had a Mark 7 with, you know, it just pulled on.

Yeah, I've heard of Hector.

Yeah, you've heard of Hector. Hector Civic is outside. It's that purple one.

No, no, I've actually heard of this Hector.

Oh, have you? Well, maybe it's the same Hector. But yeah, like his car, you know, you'd step on it and you'd feel that torque hit, but it would fall off so soon that you could be like, why am I still in this gear? Like, why haven't I shifted like 2000 RPM sooner? Because all of that momentum is lost. So there's a big factor in like when you're choosing parts, how you want the car to react and how those different sizings of everything is gonna make the car feel in and out of power. And you know, like that's a big crucial key thing when you're picking parts for your cars, like understanding where is this gonna make power and where am I gonna lack? Or like what are my shortcomings going to be as far as things go? So that car was paired very, very well. So even at 500 horsepower, it felt really fast just because of the way it hit and the way it carried power.

I'm glad that you segue this into the picking parts because let's talk a little bit about the flow of a system. Cause I always hear about expert tuners talking about flow and you want, you know, the front and the back or whatever. Just take us through step by step when you're developing the flow for a car, what do you do? Like what are the decisions you're making along the way?

Well, so we've actually, you know, we're working here. I've done a couple. We've done a bunch of, we do a bunch of videos on the MAPerformance YouTube channel, a little plug there, but we've done a couple of videos on this. And like the biggest thing I always stress is understanding what your application is. And like we were just talking about how you want it to make power because, you know, there's some instances where you don't want a car. Like if you're a drag racer, you don't want your car to make a bunch of low-end torque right off the hit, because it's just going to blow the tires off. Or let's say you're trying to push a stock engine, you don't want to make a lot of low-end torque because you're going to end up blowing the rods out of it. Like that's the number one way that you kill an engine is throwing a ton of torque at it down low and it just blows the rods out. That's why you see a lot of guys on stock turbos blow their s*** up. And then you see guys that are making more power on a larger frame turbo, and their engines last longer because they're ramping the torque in. So a big part of it is understanding what your application is and how, you know, what do you need that power to be delivered or how do you need it to be delivered? Do you want it to be linear? Do you want it to come on progressively? Do you want it to come in all at once? You want it to come in slow?

What's the most common application that you see here?

For me personally, I have either like drag race or like street race or street car guys is what comes in mostly that I'm doing. And those guys, they want good mid-range and they want a high number and they want good mid-range and peak power output at Redline. So most of the cars at iTunes are generally larger non-factory frame turbos or like with the Civics, they're larger frame turbos and cars that are making over 500 horsepower. And so like when you, a lot of times, the lower the horsepower number, cars feel quick because they're using a smaller turbo and that will end up, they end up spooling quicker. So they feel quick. And that's why like when you get into like a weird area where if a car is turned down, it feels really slow because it has a large turbo and it comes into boost super slow. So like let's say you have a two liter Honda Civic with a 6466 on it, that's a 800, 900 horsepower turbo on it, but it's making 10 pounds of boost. It feels like a dog because it takes so long. Let's say it makes 300 horsepower on 10 pounds of boost, but it takes forever to get into boost. It feels like a dog versus if you had a car with a GTX 2876 or some smaller Garrett turbo that made 300, but it comes in super early, it feels fast. So it's all about how everything comes in and picking your setup starts with understanding what you're gonna do with the car. So the drag race guys, they're gonna pick a larger frame turbo that can carry everything to redline. They're gonna pick more aggressive cams that can with stain all that. They can allow that extra air that comes in because that's the biggest thing is like, you have to tailor everything together. If you have a large turbo that's moving a lot of air and you have small ports and you have a small cam that can't let all that air in, it's useless. It's not gonna do what you want it to do.

You gotta get a happy system.

Yeah, if you have a small turbo with giant ports and a large cam, that's also not ideal because then you're outflowing the turbo. And you have to understand the efficiency of your engine, the efficiency, I guess I keep talking about turbo cars because that's like all I do.

That's anything anybody cares about if you wanna go fast. Sorry, Sean.

I got some supercharged cars too that I handle. And the supercharged cars are sick. That's the one that sometimes I wish I would try because they're so consistent and it's just literally just a straight line to the top.

It's such a different world, I feel like. Because whenever I talk to people who do supercharged stuff versus turbo stuff, it's like there are two different sides of the same coin, I feel like. I don't know, because I was talking to Sean about what he's doing to his Durango, or hoping to do for next year's Power Cruise so he doesn't get gapped.

It was only a couple cars, but for the most part, it held up like a champ. And with six people, nonetheless.

Yeah, they're rolling deep. I walked up to the car at one point, I was like, damn, there's a lot of f****** people in here.

He's taking them to a temp agency. But yeah, continue. Wherever I cut you off.

So you were talking about efficiency, and that's something that my Durango was running into. So could you explain it a little bit more about that? Because that was a whole new thing that I just had learned because the tuner was like, we were figuring out the efficiency of it.

So did he give you a specific, is this out of, are you out of airflow from the supercharger?

With regards to boost pressure, so you can make 18 pounds of boost, but it's not efficient. Sometimes you want a lower number, like 10 pounds of boost, and it's more efficient.

Okay, I get what you're saying. So what that is alluding to, alluding to, at least on the turbo side, I'm not sure if superchargers have this, or at least root-style blowers. But with a turbocharger, most reputable or known companies will provide you with what's called a compressor map, which essentially, it has a bunch of axes. I can't remember how many off the top of my head, but it's pressure ratio, which is your compressor outlet pressure compared to atmospheric ratio, or atmospheric pressure, not atmosphere ratio. So atmospheric pressure over the boost pressure, so that's your pressure ratio. And then there's a shaft speed, and then there's turbo air flow. So a turbo is rated essentially of how much power it can make based on how much pounds per minute of air it can move. And with that, there's a whole plot, if you will, of how that turbo flows at different speeds. So the turbine speed, how that flows, and then versus pressure ratios. And that's how you go into sizing a turbo properly for your engine is understanding how efficient my engine is versus how much boost do I intend to run, and how much air flow do I need to make that power. And that's how you kind of determine it. And when you say you're running out of efficiency, what that generally means is that you're moving, you either have a high pressure ratio and a high shaft speed that is no longer moving air, or it's moving so little air it's deemed inefficient. So there's not any more, if you keep turning it up, you're no longer gonna see any power gains from it, all you're going to see is heat. So that's kind of the major thing is like, if you start turning a car up, and let's say, you know, if I go from 15 pounds to 20 pounds, and I jump up 150 horsepower, then I go from 20 to 25, and I gain 30 horsepower, and I see my intake air temps are shooting way up, then I know that all I'm essentially doing is making this air hotter. I'm not actually compressing it anymore. It's not actually moving any more air. The physical amount of air isn't actually any larger. It's trying, but because the way that the compressor is designed, the way that the turbo moves the air, it's not actually able... There's two different concepts, there's two different areas of the graph that you have to stay away from. One is the surge line and one is the choke line. The choke line being when you're running out of efficiency and you're just creating heat at that point. The surge line is when you're spinning the shaft so quickly that the air is becoming unattached from the blades themselves and it's disrupting and causing a surge, which is... I guess I don't have a great way to really explain that off the top.

Give it a shot. How bad is surge?

Surge is terrible. Surge is what causes turbos to explode.

Okay, so that's like 10 out of 10 scary.

Yeah, itching my nose, god damn it.

I know, dude, my mustache is making me itch my nose too.

But I'm trying to think of it. It's not like turbulence. There's a word that I'm trying to think of that it has to do with water. Like, you know when...

Overflow?

No, you know like on a boat, either guy's boat, guys? Yeah. You know when you overspin the prop and you can destroy a prop by doing this, by spinning them too fast, and then it like causes these microbubble explode. I can't think of what the word is called. Oh.

Yeah, come on, Sean, you should notice you got two boats.

Yeah, come on, you're a boat guy.

You Mopar guy.

Yeah, but essentially it's a large disruption in the airflow that is causing these huge pressure spikes and these huge pressure waves to happen. And that's what causes turbos to like to explode. And it makes a weird noise too. And you talk about anti-surge covers on turbos and that's what they're essentially trying to do is alleviate that pressure and alleviate that surge by allowing air to bypass it and not get stuck in the compressor cover. So that's essentially when you say you're running out of efficiency, at least in regards to a turbo or a super, I'm sure superchargers have a similar way of mapping that are representing it when, you know, you can keep turning the boost up, but it's not actually adding any power.

This was actually for my old Jeep build with the pro charger. That's what I was running into. So it was basically, you know, you can throw more air at it, but if the heads aren't flowing enough air, then it just creates more pressure, more pressure. And just because you make more pressure doesn't mean it's gonna force the air any faster.

Well, cause that's the thing is as pressure is the aversion to flow. So like that's a concept that's kind of goofy. Cause like when you see like, oh man, I made 30 pounds of boost. That just means that you have that much backed up waiting to go into the intake. That means that you have flown, you have flowed that much air out of the turbo or out of the supercharger that's waiting to go in. So like a tuning, I guess, like scenario that is like a very good way to validate if a change that you made actually was worthwhile without even just seeing power, like power numbers is like, let's say I have a car and tuned it and it made X number at X pound of boost. I don't change anything in that setup, but I pull the cylinder head off and I poured it and I put a bigger set of cams in. If I throw that cylinder head back on the car and go drive it on the street, if the airflow has increased, the turbocharger will have to work harder to make the same amount of boost. So let's say I have like a static, we're really going to deep dive right here.

That's the whole purpose of this.

Let's say I have a static wastegate duty cycle of 25 percent duty cycle at 30 hertz. Let's just throw random numbers out there that some people will understand. But that's the frequency of a pulse width modulated actuator that controls the wastegate. So let's say I have a static 25 percent duty cycle on my boost controller. I should expect to not see the same amount of boost with that same duty cycle because I need the turbocharger to work harder. I need to close that wastegate more to get it to make the same amount of boost because I don't have the same amount of restriction. I have more airflow through the head, therefore I need more airflow through the turbo to reach that same restriction, which in the end turn is that boost pressure. So that's like a good metric of understanding. There's a bunch of different ways with power and using a dyno aside to understand when you've made changes that are worthwhile that increase the output of an engine. If you have to add more fuel, if the injectors require more fuel to reach that same air-fuel ratio, you know that you've in some way increased the output of the engine. So there's a bunch of different metrics to understand when you're making these changes and how those affect the car.

I cannot wait to hit rewind 15 seconds when I listen to this on Spotify in my car later, because I'm going to hit minus 15 seconds five or six times and re-listen to that whole section six times.

And it's a really goofy, hard to... Even when I'm speaking it into existence, I'm like, okay, don't f*** this up, because you're going to seem like an idiot. But you have to understand that it's complicated.

Because you're also doing it versus talking about it. Because when you know how to do it, you're just like, all right, you just kind of go into this flow state of engineering, flow state.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and there's so much that I still have to learn, too. That's why this is kind of fun for me, because it sparks conversation and it sparks interests in learning and understanding things. Because I'm still relatively new to this, and I've had some really good mentors help me out. And I've been relatively successful. I started doing this kind of semi part-time in March, just two or three nights a week. And I haven't had those. I picked Wednesdays and then either Saturday or Sunday. This weekend's a double header, so I have today and yesterday I was tuning. But I haven't had a free weekend and a free Wednesday since March. So essentially all summer, I've just been here. My free time's been a little bit stripped away from me.

But it's a fun gig, too. It's kind of like making puzzles or doing puzzles in your free time, just getting paid for it.

Yeah, right. I mean, it just allows me to learn. It allows me to meet new people and just kind of troubleshoot and understand things in a way that I would never be able to without it. Because I was doing this kind of just for friends or for fun for a number of years, and then that was only getting me so far. I was only getting so much experience. Or like a coworker would build a car, and they're like, well, I'll trade you. I'll do some work on your car, or I'll build you something. If you throw it on the dyno, I was like, okay. That only gets you so far. You kind of have to let yourself diversify and also pick what you want to be good at. I like to try everything, but I also am fully aware that there are some things I'm just not the best guy for. So there's some platforms that if somebody reached out to me, I'm just gonna flat out turn them away because I'm just not the guy. But through working here and through just meeting a lot of people in the industry, I'm able to go, I'm not your guy, but this person is.

Right, and the whole networking thing is super crucial because a lot of the shops around here, they work with each other. Even though they're competitors, they still work with each other.

They have their best interests for each other.

Right. So to keep on the topic of tuning, so we kind of covered a little bit more of the, I guess, was that more so the intake side of things?

Yeah, I mean, I guess you could say that's the induction side.

Induction, yeah, there we go. Yeah, so I guess what would be the next aspect of that that you would be looking at?

I want to talk about the actual witchcraft that you do.

The witchcraft that is tuning?

That takes place on the keyboard.

Yeah, true, the laptop side.

Yeah, the laptop side, okay. So I guess we'll start it off with the different styles of tuning, like EFI tuning and how you go about that. So there's a number of different styles of systems that are used in tuning as far as interfaces to be able to program the ECU or calibrate the ECU. The most common and generally most cost effective is flash tuning. I don't know, your Durango is probably tuned this way. I'm sure there's a dongle. I don't know if you use HP Tuners.

OBD2, HP Tuners.

HP Tuners. So HP Tuners is a popular domestic, and I think they do some foreign applications, but it's essentially a flasher that plugs into your OBD2 port and is able to upload onto the programmable memory on the OEM ECU, and you're able to make changes and then what's called apply a flash to the ECU, which is just rewriting that memory section of the ECU that controls the outputs of everything. So that's like the most common and cost-effective route is flash tuning. So BMWs, they use a flasher that's called MHD. We talked about HP Tuners. The Honda guys, they're familiar with Flash Pro. And then the most widely recognized, in my opinion, is probably the Cobb Access port. That's kind of like the king of it all because it's unique in the sense that it has a screen and you're able to see stuff, which is a super cool feature. So that's like the OEM level. You're able to flash on to the OEM ECU. Then you can get into what's called a piggyback board. So that's when you're physically adding a piece to the OEM ECU that's interrupting instead of rewriting. So this is super common for older Japanese cars. So the Hondas, they'll use what's called a Honda S300. The DSM guys, the Eclipse, Talons, Lasers, they have a DSM link. So those are common applications. They're kind of an evolution from chip tuning, if people have heard of that, which is where you have an actual EPROM chip that you pull out of the ECU and that you're flashing to every time and then putting it back in the ECU. Every time you make a change, you have to physically pull a chip out.

Sounds inefficient.

Yeah, this is called a real-time programmer. So essentially, it's a real-time chip that you can just plug into with a USB, and that's what stores all of the EPROM memory that tells the ECU what to do. And the last system that you have, which is always the least cost-effective, but generally the most expansive and the most controllable, is a standalone ECU. So that would be, like on your very, very high end, the MoTeC, ECU, that's big baller money, but you have tons of inputs and outputs and tons of control. But the more common ones that you hear of is like AEM, Haltech, Holley, Link, those are Megasquirt, those are all delve into those, and those are completely, the name alludes to it, standalone ECU, where they're completely programmable, they're not specific to any car. They have a number of features that are specific to their own applications. Sometimes they can only do a four cylinder with direct fire and sequential injection, which means you have one ignition output and one fuel injected squirt per power stroke versus batch fire and wasted spark, which is where you're doing it more than once, even if you're not on a power stroke.

Do you think it takes a little bit more, is it more difficult to work with those standalones too?

It is and it isn't. So that's the thing that we can wrap this into is like, so if you're doing a flash based system, you have to be very, careful wouldn't be the word, but you have to understand how the OEM goes about things very well. You have to understand the OEM's system. So every car is a lot different. One that I'm pretty well versed in is the Honda Civic Type R uses a different boost control strategy and a different torque management strategy than what you would normally see in a stand-alone system. And that's pretty common for OEM ECUs. They're all about torque management and keeping the driver inputs very smooth and very linear. So you have to understand how to fudge those numbers to get the results that you want and what are the parameters that you need to change to get the end result. When you're doing OEM ECU tuning, a lot of it is trickery and trying to get the OEM stuff to work with you because there's a lot of limits that are hard-coded into the ECU or that haven't been found or defined. You talk about definitions with OEM ECUs a lot, whether it means what has somebody taken, how have they taken files off of the OEM ECU? I'm trying to keep this kind of elementary, but how have they taken files off of the ECU, looked at it on a computer and made it human readable because these all come through in binary or hex or different other coding languages? Yeah, so they come through in non-human readable form, and somebody has to physically go through and go, yep, these cells in here, this does this. So OEM ECU tuning is very, very complex, and it's something that I don't do a ton of just because there's so much, you have to really be an expert in what you're doing because there's a ton of knowledge that you have to understand of how the OEMs were doing.

Yeah, and it varies platform to platform.

And it's different on everything. Even if, let's say I tuned a car on Cobb with a WRX, with a Subaru, if I tried to tune your Mark VII, I'd be completely lost. It's because it's, even though it's the same tuning platform, the interface, the UI that I'm looking at is the same, the way that you have to go about it is completely different. So the standalones are, they're more difficult in the sense they take, and I shouldn't say they're more difficult. They have their nuances because you have to set everything up. You have to tell it, you know, how large is this engine? You know, what are my objectives? You have to build it from the ground up. They give you the layout to be able to do it, but you have to figure it all out, and you have to really get it running from scratch versus like the OEM ECU, then the flash tuning stuff. Your car generally starts and runs at least kind of okay. The standalone cars, I mean, you will spend an hour just trying to get it to start idle, and that's it. Just because you have to set it, I mean, sometimes you get lucky and you set everything up perfectly the very first time, and it works. That was kind of how Tommy's Evo was with the Haltech. It just worked. There's other cars that it's taken me a couple of days, like not a couple of days, but a couple of hours to just figure out like, okay, what does it need to do? And it kind of goes with the standalones, all these different brands, they're similar and they can all do similar things, but their UI changes the biggest hurdle is like, what do they call something or how do they reference things and how do each tables, how are they linked together?

So would you say it's kind of like a similar language? So like, for example, like, I don't know, like South American languages, like they share a lot of similar words, but not really.

I mean, that's a weird way to...

It's an attempt.

It's a strange way to bridge it all together, but yeah, I mean, like, they're all gonna work in a similar way. It's gonna be, you know, I'm trying to think of a good example of like something that would be goofy between different ECUs. I'm kind of drawing a blank here on that, but they're all gonna operate the same. They're all gonna have the same functions, right? They're just, it's making an air pump work. That's all an engine is, is an air pump.

Right, exactly.

But the way that you go about or like what they call things is gonna be different. Like the way you set up an AEM Infinity ECU is drastically different than how you set up a Haltech ECU. The UI is the biggest difference when it comes to standalones, at least for the tuner's aspect of like tuning the car. There is differences in like how they sample and how they're able to work their outputs and what their outputs actually are. But, or like their logging capabilities and all sorts of stuff. But the actual way that you do it on standalones, the way you tune the car and work the magic, as Sean was saying, is pretty similar from ECU to ECU. So if you're competent in one standalone ECU, generally you can move on to the next relatively easy, versus the guys that are tuning. That's why you see a lot of guys that are like, I'm XYZ best XYZ platform tuner on Cobb or on HP tuners. Because that is one that if you do have the knowledge and the understanding of that platform very well, you're gonna be better than 90% of everybody else. That's just like me, that's kind of moseying around and into different platforms. I have a harder time with those OEM ECUs just because of that because there's so much extra knowledge that's needed on the back end of things. So back to your question. Once you pick the style or your understanding of what the ECU is and how you're gonna go about it, generally what you'll start up, start doing is start up an idle tuning. And a lot of that is just getting the fueling dialed in for the different scenarios and understanding what the fuel you're using is and how it likes to idle. E85, as most people know, is notorious for being really tough to cold start. So there's some strategies you can employ to help it start in the cold. There's only so much you can do. E85 has a pretty high specific gravity like diesel. So that's part of why it has such a hard time. It has low volatility at low temp and low pressure. So that's part of why it's tough to start when it's cold. So there's a term that it's thrown around a lot. You have two different styles of tuning when it comes to fuel and the load calculation. That's either speed density or mass airflow. Mass airflow being a sensor that characterizes how much air is moving past it. And volumetric efficiency is a defined table that uses the ideal gas law to then say, this engine is x, y, z efficient, and then I use the ideal gas law in conjunction with ambient pressure and air temp to then calculate how much injection time I need or how much fuel to inject to reach my targets. So, this is, I told you.

No, I'm keeping up, don't worry.

I knew I was gonna get so lost. So, that's like the next big thing is what style of load calculation and fuel calculation you're using. Mass air flow is generally smoother, in my opinion. It's generally smoother because you're directly character, you're not, you've directly characterized exactly or approximate, I shouldn't say exactly. It's a slight approximation of exactly how much, that's a good way to put it, but a slight approximation of exactly how much air flow is, that should be a T-shirt. Of how much air flow is entering the engine. And if everything else is configured correctly, then it works and you're able to reach your air fuel ratio targets perfectly. Versus volumetric efficiency and speed density is an approximation. And it's using a calculation with various other sensors to approximate how much air is coming in to the engine. It's not an actual physical measurement of air versus a mass air flow, which is an approximation of exactly how much air is entering the engine. So mass air flow is generally smoother because of that, and it transitions a lot better. But it does become a restriction because a mass air flow sensor is calibrated to a pipe, and it has limits, and it's very easy, especially when you're making a lot of power, to overcome those air flow limits. You have to do some trickery of increasing the size of the pipes, or there's different mass air flow sensors that can read a higher range. They have a greater resolution. There's a lot more messing around when it comes to those. So the guys that are making power are generally on a speed density system, which is using what's called a VE MAP, or a Volumetric Efficiency MAP, to characterize how the air flow moves throughout the engine. And generally, the axes for that is engine RPM and manifold air pressure. If you're on a ITB car, then you would use throttle position because it's generally low or no manifold vacuum to actually reference to understand where you are throughout the engine. So when you talk about tuning, the very basics of tuning, like the very, very, very basics of tuning is either mapping out your mass air flow sensors so that reads correctly, so your fueling is on target, and that also ends up telling you where your load is for your timing tables. So dialing those fuel tables in, whether it's a mass air flow system or it's a volumetric efficiency system, the first part is dialing in the fuel and then using what's called ignition timing or ignition advance. So that's at what angle of rotation of the crank am I firing the spark plug? And the biggest thing that you're looking for there is ignition advance will dictate a large number of how much power the car makes because it's controlling when that cylinder pressure is happening in the combustion event. So there's a huge amount of tuning that goes into idle with ignition timing because you can actually, without changing airflow, you can raise or lower your idle by just changing the ignition timing because you're changing essentially the power at idle. I don't know how you could do it, but you could measure. You are making some amount of horsepower at idle. So by changing the amount of power you're making at idle is going to change how quickly the piston moves and that's going to change how quickly it's idling. So there's a huge amount of tuning that goes into idle ignition timing to get it to idle smoothly and to idle at target. And then a huge amount, obviously, at wide open and partial throttle. The biggest thing that you're looking for with ignition tuning is what fuel are you using. So we talk about anti-knock rating and knock efficiency. And that's why E85 is such a great fuel. It has a high octane number, which means it has a high resistance to knock. And knock is a phenomenon that happens inside of the cylinder where you have not, I wouldn't say incomplete combustion, but essentially combustion at the wrong time, where you're compressing, you're starting the event either so early or it's so hot that it's causing a micro explosion inside of the engine or detonation inside of the engine. It's kind of a botched way to explain it. I'm sure I'll get some s*** for that.

Pre-combustion.

Yeah, some people say pre-combustion. I don't know if that's really the best term, but it's like something that people say. But it's essentially an unwanted ignition event that's caused generally by heat. That's the best way to put it.

Yeah, you don't want knock.

You don't want knock. Knock is bad.

No Jehovah's Witnesses.

Yeah, so you generally want to use the highest octane available to you because of what that will result in is you're able to run a higher ignition advance. So the goofy thing about engines and about spark plugs is let's say I'm running 20 degrees of timing. What that means is that I'm telling the spark plug to spark 20 degrees before top dead center. The peak cylinder pressure in that flame front is not going to happen until after top dead center. So that's why timing is called timing. It's all about timing. So if I tell it to spark at 20 degrees before top dead center, the piston has to still travel up, and then that peak cylinder pressure and that flame front has to push the piston back down. So you have to have that combustion event happen as the piston is on its downward trajectory. I think the, don't quote me on this, I think the peak flame front event, so the push down of the piston, is like three degrees after top dead center. That's the most amount, if you had it happen any sooner than that, you're just hammering down on the piston, and it's just pushing down on the rod bearings. And you're just destroying things at that point. Yeah.

So this is something that I've learned about recently, about the Durango, because we run race gas in it, and it was really incredible, because we got absolutely no knock, and we were able to put more timing into it. And that was something that I learned a lot, because what is putting more time into it? And then there's also, oh, if the air intake temps get too high, your engine actually pulls timing. So there's safety features to prevent knock, because the higher the air temperature, the more likely it is to have that-

Predetonation.

Predetonation in the chamber.

Because what's happening when you have high intake temps is when you're taking up more volume. So there's, in a way, more pressure, but it's also superheating everything around it, which is allowing you to have that combustion event before it's intended. So knock generally happens when you'll feel knock is when the piston is traveling upwards, and it has a knock event. So there's a microcombustion inside the cylinder that's unintended. It's before it needs to happen, and that's when you'll have that disruption. And that really breaks a lot of stuff.

Is there an acceptable level of knock?

No, I mean, well, I mean.

Cause I'm sure it happens.

It happens, right. It's completely unavoidable.

When you put your car under extreme distress, it should not be happening at idle. It should not be happening while you're just driving. If you're full throttle, maybe a little bit of knock, but when we were at Power Cruise, we'd be going down the quarter mile, and I'd be looking at, we were data logging, and I could see the knock sensor, and it was staying at zero the entire time, and that's exactly what you want.

And there is some weird things with knock control and knock sensors. A knock sensor is essentially just a microphone, so it's trying to pick up these high frequency noises that are these high frequency micro explosions inside the cylinder. And so, you can get false knock. Like E85, for the most part, is really knock prone. It takes a lot to get E85 to knock. In a lot of cars, you'll actually essentially get to the point where you're over-timing the car before you actually reach knock. If you have a really good setup that's efficient and not having issues, E85 can get you, or you have a really high ethanol content, E85 can get you really, really, really far in that department. But you have also these weird transitions. If your engine is particularly noisy, let's say you have pistons and rods in it and a bunch of other stuff, and it's solid mounts, you can pick up a lot of noise on the knock sensors that are going to trip that false knock stuff. So that's where the dyno really comes into play, especially when you're using fuels that you know are relatively knock-prone, and you can kind of figure out what level of smoke level of sensitivity the knock sensor has to operate in before it starts to pick up noise versus actual knock. And there's other devices that you can use in conjunction with that to actually be able to listen to the engine while you're tuning it on the dyno.

It's like a stethoscope.

It literally is a stethoscope that you're able to listen and go, you know, a lot of these OEM ECUs, you have varying level of control of sensitivity, obviously standalones, you can do anything you want. And so you can spend a lot of time characterizing, like this RPM, I know the engine is very quiet, so I can run really high sensitivity, but I know at this RPM, the engine is incredibly noisy and the valve tray makes a lot of noise, DI injectors make a lot of noise, DI fuel pumps make a lot of noise. So I know like up here, everything's revving, it's buzzing, and I'm not hearing any knock in the headphones, because it's really distinguishable. I would say, God, what is their names? These guys that are in Australia. I'm gonna forget.

Mighty Car Mods?

No, but I think they've worked with them. Those are the only Australians that I know. They do like tuning training courses. It's like not EFIU, it's the other one. If you go on YouTube and you look up what does knock sound like, there's a really good video from an Australian guy that I'm missing the name of right now, but he does a really good video of giving you an audible representation of what knock sounds like and how you can employ strategies to understand how your car sounds under knock, and that way you can characterize it in your knock control to be able to essentially have those safeties on and not pick up noise. So you're not leaving power off the table because you're able to actually understand where it's likely to knock and where it's not, but you're also not sacrificing safety in the engine because you're being reckless and just turning the ball. So there's a decent amount that goes into that and that you can pick up, but like I said, you can have knock events that happen at partial throttle or like in transitional throttle that generally aren't that big of a deal, but if you're wide open throttle and it's consistently in the same, because I mean, every once in a while, even on good fuel, it's not uncommon that you might pick up a knock event here or there, but if it's a consistent knock event at the same RPM or the same load, that's a problem. That's a distinguished problem and that's going to be a prolonged problem that you have to then change something to resolve that. Otherwise, you're going to have a catastrophic engine failure. So there's no way around it. I mean, there is no like, oh yeah, every time I get on my car at 6,000 RPM, I see the knock counter go up a couple of points. That will only last so long before the engine will explode. That's not like, yeah, it's fine. It will eventually lead to, not to scare people into like, oh my God, the other day I was beaten on my car and I got a couple of knock counts on my logger or whatever. That might happen. But if it's consistently, every time I drive it or every time I get into this load range, I just see that counter go up, that's bad. That's gonna lead to something very, very bad.

Yeah, like you're losing a rod, maybe a hole in your block.

Yeah, I mean, piston, easily, rod. I mean, because you're thinking about, knock is essentially, it's a disruption, it's an unintended combustion event. So it's pushing down on the piston when it's not wanting, generally when it's traveling up to top that center, if it's traveling up and you're pushing it down, that's a recipe for disaster. And it also, it's a micro explosion, so it'll leave what's called, what's referred to as like ping marks. So it looks like if you dropped like a lead BB inside of a cylinder, because it's a little explosion that's happening instead of a large flame front that propagates progressively, it's just a big, like when you throw those little poppet things at the ground on 4th of July. It's like that, but like inside of your engine. You can imagine why that wouldn't be a good thing.

Yeah, I can imagine it. Man, I'm just trying to digest all that. I seriously can't wait to listen to that.

He's like super new to tuning. He doesn't really, you know, he hasn't tuned a lot of cars. I think this is your first car that you've owned that's tuned.

Yeah, and it's not like I got an education on it. I mean, the only time I got to even look at like my car hooked up to a laptop was when I was leaking oil last year. And then, you know, it was like, what the hell is going on? And, you know, so yeah, it was just weird. Cause like, yeah, it was a waste of time.

A lot of the stuff that I've learned is because I've just been picking it up from Bryce. Cause he's like, look at this, you know, look at this. And I'm like, I don't know what I'm looking at, dude. You sent me a picture of like 10 graphs and bars. I don't know what any of these numbers mean. And then he's like, okay, well, here's like, you know, the important ones. And I've, you know, picked up a lot since then.

And you guys are so like, I've noticed this with tuners in general, at least all the ones that I've met in the community, which is a fair amount now. You guys are also super willing to teach people.

Yeah, or like, just give the best about like, I would be hesitant to call myself like a teacher, but if somebody comes up to me and asks me about something that I feel as if I could answer a question to, I mean, that's basically like, if you ask me a question on this podcast, I'm gonna tell you straight up, like, I just don't know the answer, because otherwise, I mean, that just looks bad for everybody.

When are you starting your course?

I wouldn't do that. But, you know, it is really cool to be able to explain something to people, especially if you're trying some different strategy, or if you're like, oh, I'm trying to have boost come in like this, or like, you know, I wanted to shoot flames, so I'm doing this, or something like that.

You want to get into why that's bad for people? Why is having a flame map or being able to shoot flames a bad thing?

We need this for the highlight, so...

You just ruined the highlight.

No, we need this. You know, the burble tune, the flame tune, you know? How bad are these for your car?

I mean, essentially, you're putting the engine in a position where it's... Like, tuning at its core, like, the best way to explain tuning is getting your engine to run as efficiently as possible. And flame tunes and burble tunes are intentionally creating a situation or a scenario where your engine is running undesirably. So, like, a flame tune is essentially, you're trying to move all of the fuel and heat out of the cylinder into the exhaust. So you're retarding the timing, so that means that you're telling the spark event to happen after top dead center. So when the exhaust valves are open, so you're telling that flame front to move, instead of it to propagate and push the piston down, it's gonna kinda push the piston out, and then the rest of it's gonna leave out of the exhaust valve. And you're trying to move all that exhaust energy into the exhaust and out with the flames. The burble tunes, I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't really understand what's going on there. I've never set up a car for burbles. I know it's kind of the same scenario as a flame map, which is just adding a ton of fuel and then retarding the timing a bunch. Never set up a burble map, and if somebody asks me to, I'm just gonna say, well, I don't really understand why you want that, and I'm not going to do it. So that's about it. The flames, I'll get a little, sometimes I'll have a little bit of fun with, especially with the drift cars. I think it's cool.

It's showy.

It is showy. The drag cars generally don't need any help shooting flames. When they hit the rev limiter, they hit it hard and they'll shoot flames pretty easily.

When we were at Texas 2K, when you see the Porsches were the most notorious for this, and I guess some of the Vipers did it too. I guess any turbo car does it, but the Porsches were the coolest because it was sounding like a bomb going off every shift.

It's because they have such a short exhaust. It's so easy to move all that energy out into a visible form because it doesn't have to travel that far.

Yeah, well, it has a lot of bends too, to get to where it needs to.

But it's still relatively compact. I mean, think about like a Mustang. That's relatively long. Yeah, all the way. And if it's got a full exhaust, it's gotta go the length of the car to come out and then still have enough energy to ignite and have a flame.

Arguably the longest thing Mustang drivers have. Um. I couldn't pop it off.

Send this to all your Mustang friends.

Yeah, we gotta get Mike back on here. We gotta see what kind of s*** talk he's gonna bring to the table. But by the way, what are you looking at time-wise before we continue?

I just checked the time. We're still pretty good. We still got probably, my customer will be here at 11, so.

Yeah, cause you're doing a little bit of tuning on. Are you allowed to disclose what you're tuning today?

Yeah, no, this is no big deal. Today is a turbo E36. I think it's an M50 car. There's a couple different engines in that E36 family that the inline-six family that people use. I think this car is on a Megasquirt, so it's a MS3 Pro, E85. I'm not sure what size the turbo is. I'm not sure what size the injector is. This is a car that, so there's generally two scenarios that I'll run into is somebody that's fresh-built, and they need a startup map, they need help getting everything running, or the car's been running for a while or previously tuned, and it just needs to be retuned. Either the setup's changed and the car will run an idle and drive, but it's not optimized, or they were just able to set it up themselves. So this is one that was, I'm not sure if it was previously tuned, or if this guy was just able to set it up on his own. But I'll get more info when he comes in, but you learn a lot in the first five seconds when you either pull the map off the car or talk to them and just figure out, hey, what's going on. On my page on Facebook, if you message me, it'll have a short blurb of what kind of car do you drive, what are the mods, what fuel, what is notable about this, what should I know, and then our weekends or weeknights preferred. Yeah, so today's a drift car, so there might be some flames involved, we'll see. But it's an E36 with a turbo on it. It's supposed to make 450 horsepower, which is, today's challenge is gonna be keeping the rods in it, essentially, is gonna be. That's today's mission, and the way that you achieve that is like we talked about earlier, is bringing in the power towards the end. Because if you bring it in soon, you're just, the piston speed is so slow that you're hammering down on it so much that the likelihood that it's gonna bend, like the momentum, I guess, is the best way to put it. The momentum and the inertia is so slow that if you're like really hammering down on it, you're making a ton of power, that's just, you just blow stuff up. But like, I mean, think of, what are those things? A merry-go-round, I think, is what I'm thinking. Those kids, the things at the park where you're like, you sit on it and then you spin it really fast and you throw up.

Oh, like the teacup?

Yeah, yeah, so it's really hard to spin that at first, or not really hard, but it's tougher to spin that if you got a friend on there, you're trying to make throw up. The first throw is tough because the inertia is low. It's not already moving. But once it starts moving, you're slapping it with your hand and you're just keeping it going at that point.

Or even like the train wheels, like when you try to get them going.

Yeah, yeah. So eventually, you're just keeping the momentum up. But at first, it's really tough to get it going. So the same logic kind of applies with an engine. If you're trying to make a ton of power, but the engine is moving relatively slow and you're pushing down on it super hard, that's what blasts the rod out the side of it. But if it's already at a high engine speed, you have a high piston speed, essentially the flame front's just slapping the piston down. It's only touching it for such a short time. It's not going to break something.

So that's something that my tuner, or I guess my mechanic, Bryce, was telling me, hey, do not launch the Durango unless you're power breaking it just because you want to put load on the system. Yeah, and that's how you lose a drive shaft.

Yeah, that's mostly for the drive train. You're putting load onto it because shock is like the killer of a drive train. And so if you take something that's not moving and then you tell it to move in a split second, that's just gonna break.

Yeah, because there's slag. There's a little bit of slag, a little bit of play, and then all of a sudden you just crank it. The torque is, it's either gonna twist it, it's gonna break it, something's gonna go bye-bye, and then you're not gonna be very happy. And that same with power breaking. I'm getting the revs up from idle, like 800 RPM up to like 2000 RPM.

You're moving stuff around, you got shock here.

It's already got that momentum. It's ready to get pounded.

Is that gonna be part of the highlight? Sean's saying it's ready to get pounded.

That woke me up. I kind of fell asleep for a second there. I was like, I'm ready to get pounded. I'm like, Jesus, Sean. I also do want to touch, I actually put on my Instagram, I sourced some questions as well. We can kind of get into it. I didn't get too many just because I put it at midnight last night. But nonetheless.

Should you say who asked the question too? Shout them out?

Yeah, I'll shout them out a little bit. So for example, Five Speed Soar. So that's Tyler who we had on episode 36. So his direct question is, is it really as simple as a base map and then letting the autotune auto learn? Because I've heard about auto learn a little bit.

Yeah, so auto learn is a terrible feature that should have never been introduced. That's a hot take, and I'm being aggressive on purpose. The function of autotune is essentially taking, so closed loop control is a generic term that we use in tuning a lot. But closed loop control just means that essentially you have input, actual, and then desired. And it's a loop, or then I guess there's a fourth, that's correction. So it's a constant loop of it's going, I want this, so I'm gonna tell it to do this, it does this, I want it to do this, change it, so then it does what I want. And it's a feedback loop is the best way to put it. So closed loop air fuel control is what auto tune is in a higher level. You know what, if you're familiar with the term of like short term and long term fuel terms. So that means like, if the O2 sensor is seeing that I want to run at this load, I want the car to run at 14, seven air fuel ratio. But let's say for an OEM standpoint, this is generally to correct when you have issues with the car. But let's say the car for whatever reason, any various reason, the car's running at 13, five air fuel ratio. Okay, I need to pull 5% fuel out of this. And that is described as a short term fuel term. So that's a short term correction based on feedback from the O2 sensor to pull it back to whatever ratio you're targeting. So it's taking the actual, calculating the error and then making a correction to reach your desired. And so what AutoTune is, is it's taking that feedback from your O2 sensor and it's characterizing it into a table that then you can just hit a button and say apply. And then it applies that to your fuel map. Because essentially it's like trying to get you to, if your car is untuned and you haven't characterized the fuel map, it's trying to like, you drive the car, the closed loop keeps it in check. It keeps everything where it's supposed to be. So it's not dangerous. Even though like it's way off. So you could be like 20% off, but because it has O2 feedback, it's able to make a correction quickly enough that it actually works. And some systems can do that at like idle and partial throttle, but they can't do it at wide open. Some systems are quick enough and advanced enough they can do it at all times. So the autotune just takes basically every time it makes a change or it has a feedback correction, it characterizes that into a map that you can apply to your fuel map. A lot of times what will happen with relying on closed loop control or relying on an autotune feature is one, you'll get a super jagged fuel map that ends up driving like s*** eventually.

Yeah, just completely inefficient.

Right, and it will mask issues too. That's a big thing. So if you have a fuel pump or a fuel system that's either underperforming, under specced, it'll mask that issue, or sometimes it can actually lead you in that direction because everything should kind of look smooth in a fuel map. When you look at a fuel map, that's a VE map, it's a characterization of how the fuel is gonna be delivered essentially. It should be smooth, and it'll represent how the engine is making power, because the more or less power you're making, the more or less fuel you're making. So it should be a smooth... Engines make power, for the most part, they make power smoothly. So it should be a smooth progressive line that should actually mimic the torque and the power curve of your engine. And you'll end up with these huge mountains and valleys. And then you'll, if like, let's say, your wide open throttle needs a ton of extra fuel, generally that's indicative of like, you have either a fuel pump that's not keeping up, fuel pressure issue, you have under-spect fuel injectors or something like that. So sometimes it's helpful because it'll like, let's say I have a car show up that's like, yeah, I've been beating this on this thing with the auto-tune on it. I'm like, okay, great. But I open it up and I'm like, okay, all the part throttle, it looks like the Rocky Mountains. But then I look at the wide open throttle, I'm like, whoa, like these cells are way far away from everything else. I know that like, okay, there's a fuel injection issue. So yeah, no, it's not as simple as throwing on the auto-tune. The auto-tune is basically good for, you know, if your tuner, generally if I have a standalone car, that's what auto-tune is generally used on. If I have somebody that's gonna drive the car to me, I'll have them send me some data logs, and then we'll do some revisions. And then once it's like running good enough, you just drive it to me. If you don't have a tuner that's willing to do that, or you can't do that for whatever reason, it's good to get you to where you need to go, but it shouldn't be used for anything other than that.

I'm sorry.

So it's basically like, don't get on it, just drive to me so we can get you where we need to go.

You should use it once to get to where you need to go, and then that's it, never use it again. A closed loop control is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but closed loop shouldn't be used until the engine is tuned because what it'll do is if there's changes in the air, or an engine will run differently every day, slightly, it'll make up for those errors. So generally, you don't want more than, 5% plus or minus is considered pretty good when you have closed loop control enabled. When it's f***** up and you're just relying on it and the engine's not tuned, you'll see 20, 30. Holley comes default with 50% on the auto-tune. It's ridiculous.

So that makes sense then in an area such as Minnesota where we have summer in the afternoons and winter in the mornings then? So that's kind of where it makes sense?

Yeah, exactly. And there's some correction that's based on intake temp and cool temp, but there's just always differences. And if you drive somewhere and the barometric pressure is different, that changes a lot of stuff too.

So if we rally from here to Colorado.

Yeah, exactly. So is that what you guys are doing?

No. We're not going to Colorado, we're going to Chicago, but we have rallied in the past over from Minnesota to Colorado, and it's like a lot of the cars are just like, you can feel the power just going down as you go further.

That's a part of the lack of atmospheric pressure, but also the closed loop control helps keep the car and check when those changes happen. Yeah, the whole auto tune thing, or like Holley's really bad about it, would be like, oh, this car, this tunes itself. All it does is change the fuel map so the car runs right. It doesn't change anything with ignition timing. It doesn't control boost. I mean, there is closed loop control for boost. There's not any closed loop control for ignition timing, but there's not control. But so there's kind of a system, but all it does is put a giant ugly bandaid on your fuel map. It's kind of terrible. And it sucks that companies market that. People genuinely have no other reason to believe otherwise. They're like, oh, man, I could just plug this ECU in and tell it what it is, and then that's it. I don't have to pay somebody a bunch of money to tune it. It's kind of a, not a scummy way, but ethically, it's not the best thing to be like, yep, this tunes itself, because it doesn't. It just doesn't.

Is it why so many people might have bad tunes? Do you think people say like, oh, I can tune your car, and then they just hit the auto tune?

I mean, I think that definitely does happen. I try to be, because I don't see myself as like the world's best tuner. No, but I'm just saying. I'm sure there is people out there that are like, yep, I'm just gonna let the O2 feedback just take care of everything. I mean, I'm definitely sure that does for sure happen.

Is there a way to kind of like figure out who you should be like going to get tuned by? Because I feel like a tune makes a difference for your vehicle.

I mean, yes and no. Like we talked about earlier, if you are using like an OEM ECU, like in your case, finding somebody that's really familiar with a Durango Hellcat or finding somebody that's really familiar.

The guy that tunes my Durango, he tunes the world's fastest Durango. So he's very familiar with the platform. He does it with the same HP tuners. So, you know, it works. And versus like I could just go to, you know, some like somebody else. I mean, like I could go to you, but you know, you don't know.

I would be just as lost as you. Yeah, so that's a really good point, is like understanding who in this community, like who is, yeah, who's going fast and who's having success, right? That's super crucial when it comes to the OEM ECUs, is who's familiar with this platform? Who's the guy that's like, I want to do R&D on this platform. I want to understand. I want to push this platform. And that's a big thing with the platforms that are kind of unloved, that, you know, it's a really niche community. Like the stinger is one that comes to mind. I don't know anything about those cars. I got a guy that I just died over his car for him a couple of times. He's a friend of the shop. I think stingers are cool. I mean, the GTs are cool.

Sure.

I think they're cool. It's an interesting car. It has a purpose.

I've heard that it's a pain in the a** car to work on. Yeah, I'm sure it's a Twitter movie set.

Yeah. But, you know, you have to be familiar with your platform. There's always at least a couple of guys that on the, when you're talking about flash shooting, it's more so about who is on the cutting edge and who understands it. So going to your community, there might not be somebody local, and that gets tricky, but finding somebody, I'd say the most important part with that is going to your community and finding somebody that is understanding your platform to the best of your abilities. Yeah.

In this instance, Bryce knew exactly who to work with, which is super helpful. Because you kind of want to find somebody that's plugged into the community. Exactly. I'm kind of known as the guy who knows a guy that probably knows a guy.

Right.

So it's like knowing somebody that can get you taken care of and not just go to a shop that's going to keep doing bad stuff to Jeeps.

Yeah. So when it comes to standalone tuning and standalone ECUs, the thing you want to do there is when you're picking an ECU is, okay, so let's say I live in this town, this community, and there's XYZ tuners here. What platforms, the best thing you can do for yourself if you are thinking about buying a standalone ECU for your car is go to your tuner or who you want to tune your car and say, what do you recommend or what do you think will best suit my application? They might even not give you a specific ECU. They're like, buy a Haltech, or buy a FuelTech, or buy a Holley. The Holley is like a no-brainer for the GM LS guys. Everybody's coming to Holley, but a lot of the Japanese cars, you have plethora of options to pick from, and the best thing you can do is ask the person that you want to tune your car what they recommend, because that's going to end up with the best results. For the most part, I'll tune any standalone ECU that comes my way if it's a project that suits me. Right now, I consider myself a private calibrator, which means you can't just call a number and somebody picks up the phone, and then you schedule an appointment, that's it. We have a conversation. I kind of get a feeling for who you are, and then we kind of set things up. And so I've taken on projects that I'm unfamiliar with because I think it's a cool project, and I want to do that learning experience. But if somebody came to me and they're like, what ECU should I use? I wouldn't tell them, like, oh, let's use this obscure ECU I've never used before. Unless you have to. Always go into the person that you want to tune your car and ask them, like, what are you good at? Or like, what do you think will best fit me and tell me what direction I go? That's going to lead you to the highest level of success and the least amount of headaches.

That makes sense.

It's just being vocal and either asking your community, like, who should I go to? That's very important, I think, with the OEM level and the FlashBase tuning. If you're looking at standalone ECUs for a really crazy build, then you're going to go to your tuner and ask, what do you think is going to best suit me? What do you think is going to lead us both to success?

I have to bring up this question. This is the funniest question. You guys are going to love this. Question is, how do I get better shift times with my CVT transmission?

You take it out.

That was just so worth sharing, just to giggle at that. But, so there's-

Was that a serious question, or?

It was just, it was just-

There's no way.

It literally has the laughing emoji right next to it.

I love to see it.

Yeah, I'm just crying, but, so can you actually even tune a CVT?

Yeah, with weights.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you can.

I have a Honda Ruckus. It's a little scooter, 49cc motor. It uses a CVT transmission, and what that is, is basically just a belt, and there's a bell housing, I guess you could kind of call it. And when you get the RPMs up, it doesn't shift. It's an automatic, and it basically gears by the way that it's spinning, and the weights force themselves out, and then they compress on that belt, making it have to spin further. So that's what CVT is.

Constant velocity transmission.

Yeah. Let's give one last question in here, and then we could probably do our usual three. I know you did our usual three last time. I just want to see for the sake of consistency, if you can.

It was so hard for me last time.

Well, it should be easier then.

Yeah. So one last question. This could be a very long answer, I'm sure, as well, but I know you've got to get cooking on that tune here soon. But the question was like, why are manufacturers making it near impossible to tune these things, particularly relating to Ford? I know you don't do Ford, but do you see it getting, to rephrase that question, do you see it getting harder to tune cars in the future?

I mean, it's like kind of that cat-and-mouse game. And like the thing about it is, it's like, I don't know how much of it is motivated. Like obviously, a lot of it's motivated by emissions compliance. You know, manufacturers don't want to see their customers breaking the law. Even like in tuning this, like it's that's such a gray area that I'm going to try to avoid. But I'm saying breaking the law. But what you got to think about is, as technology advances, the level of encryption and the level of security that they're able to employ only gets better. So it's kind of like, are they passively or are they just happens? Like, are they actually intending to make it harder? Or is it just a passive result of like them just making everything better?

Well, you got like GM who are selling unlocked PCMs for their CA's.

Yeah, like for like a motorsports application, like they understand that.

So in that instance, if you see more companies adopting that model, it would actually maybe even be easier.

Yeah, it would be because, you know, when I was trying to, when I first started getting the Durango modified, the first thing you have to do is get the PCM unlocked.

Yeah, you got to send it out and have it...

My, Bryce, my mechanic, he had a guy, I think he sent the PCM out to him. The Durango had no PCM for like a month. It was just sitting in my garage. And I was like, okay, like my wife is gonna find out pretty soon here. And he's like, oh, well, I sent it out to him. And then I can't remember if he got arrested or he got shot and he was in the hospital. Something happened to him. And that's why it took so long to get my PCM back.

But you got it back.

And then I got it back. But he had to find a different guy to unlock it. So it was, you know, like, kind of, you know, it would have been better if like Dodge had a product that I could have just bought off the shelf.

Yeah. And there's various levels of like why they would make it harder. Like one, emissions compliance. Obviously, like we had the Volkswagen debacle, the DCGAY.

No, what debacle? We don't talk about that.

Yeah. So there's emissions compliance. There's, you know, they're trying to prevent people from reverse engineering it and stealing proprietary information off of the ECUs. I guess I don't have a really concrete great answer for why they make it so hard to kind of carry on your story. I know when the Supras, the Mark V Supras were getting locked down and like the G80M3s, the only ways to get those unlocked, there was like one guy that was like in Russia that you had to send your ECU to.

See, that's what I mean.

Like, cause he's the only person that had the bench unlock tool. So, you know, I couldn't give a great answer as to why they are making it so difficult. I imagine it's a number of reasons, like I kind of talked about, is like emissions compliance is a huge thing cause they're just cracking down on everybody.

So it could be-

And reverse engineering is probably, I would say the two bigger reasons. You know, it's like asking Apple why you can't do anything with your phone, or why it took 10 years before you could have a picture as a background on your phone.

Right, so it's a multi-pronged-

Even though you could do it with a jailbreak, you know, like when they came out, but it wasn't a feature for 10 years. We don't know why they do it. They just do it.

So it could be any number of reasons or all the reasons together, or none of them. So just a multi-pronged approach there. All right, Sean.

All right, so if you haven't listened to the show before, we like to ask our guests these simple questions. What would you choose for your daily track car, show car? And I can't even remember what you chose last time, but like you said, you had a hard time.

But do you remember? I had an unlimited budget.

I do remember. I remember.

Has anything changed since.

No, my three picks were a twin turbo R8 for the... So what were the options? The show car, daily driver, and a track car, right? The daily driver was the R8, track car was a Honda Civic Type R, and the show car was a GMC Cyclone. I think I'd stick with that. Yeah? I think I would still stick with that.

You sure? You're confident?

No, not at all. But I'm so weird with cars, I don't know. I don't like, I've always owned, I owned a lot of Hondas, now I've been buying BMWs, but I have zero brand allegiance at all. Even though I've been buying the same brands, it's more so like, I get into something, and I'm like, well, this is really cool, this is really cool, but there's, at no point am I like, I wouldn't own XYZ.

Yeah, there's so many amazing platforms, and I see that with like Porsche having the flat six, like that's an amazing engine, and it would be super cool for like a GT3 that revs out to 9,000. Just to drive it, just to own it, like how amazing would that be? And same with like a S2000, just all these different engines, all these different configurations, you can't just, it's impossible to say like, this is my one car.

Yeah, I think the worst thing you can do for yourself is be like, yeah, I only like this brand, and I'm gonna stick to it. That's like, that's the worst thing.

Yeah, I'm only ever gonna drive LS's, or I'm only ever gonna drive a Hemi.

I think you have way more opportunity to have fun and diversify yourself if you just keep an open mind. Like I said, I would drive anything. I just happen to keep buying the same brands right now. But at no point, like right now, I have to say I've owned more motorcycles than I have cars. And right now I'm on like a trade negotiation with somebody to trade my Husqvarna Supermoto for a Harley. Never was like, yeah, I want to buy a Harley. It was just like, well, I wanted to get something different, something that my wife and I could ride. And somebody offered me a trade and plus some cash. And I was like, I would not own this, but it also wouldn't be my, I wouldn't go out looking for it. It's like the best thing you can do is like, just be open to literally anything. And you'll end up finding things that you, like I bought my first, my first 335, and I was like, whoa, like I love, I don't know if you have the same feeling when it comes to BMWs. I don't think I've been in a car yet that I feel more like homey and like a better driving experience at night than a BMW. I don't know what it is. It's like the ambient lighting for me, something about it.

That orange glow.

That glow, I don't know what it is. There's something.

Some people hate it.

Really? I think it's like the best thing about BMWs is driving.

I like the amber lights.

Yeah, it's just like, there's something about the glow of the dash that's just like any other car I've driven, like the BMW that just suits me. And I would have never discovered that if I wouldn't have just randomly bought a 335 for my wife to have as an in-between car. That was the only reason I bought it, was it was a good deal and she could drive it because it was auto and it was an in-between car. I was like, I don't know, I'd drive this. And then I got hooked on BMWs.

Yeah, that is like such a mood I can get with, you know, like the lo-fi music in the background, you're just driving in the night, you got the lights, you know, passing by. That's a mood. Yeah.

And on that note, thank you. This is a pretty awesome episode. I'm really glad that we got to do this like whole tuning special. I don't know what we would call it.

Let's call it part one, because there's definitely much more we could talk about.

And we could source even more from, you know, like from TikTok or my Instagram, we could always source more questions, but so, so much to learn. I can't wait to like listen back on this one, because like this is how you get, like the more you learn, the more in-depth conversations you can have, which is super cool, because like understanding your cars and everybody else's cars is just, it's more fun.

Yeah, and like, it's gonna be so tough for me to listen back to this. I'm gonna be like, oh man, we glazed over this, or I totally forgot to talk about this. It's my biggest, like, I like doing this. I like, I'm way too talkative of a person, but I also like beat myself up and like, oh, I should have said this, or I forgot this, or whatever.

That's why you can do this multiple times.

Yeah, I'm just gonna keep bothering you.

Yeah.

We can have like a regular show. You can have a spinoff, you know?

Yeah, yep.

Like a tech, a tech spinoff.

Our update with Kyle on the newest tuning trend.

You don't have to do me specifically, but you could do like another, like a short form of something else too, you know? The best thing you can do for a business is just make it bigger. So if you have more than one podcast, that just spreads out opportunity.

Oh my God, Harris has already spread so thin.

I have a lot of different things I'm trying to do. I actually wouldn't mind doing like a podcast management or like being like a producer for someone. And I'm trying to do that, but we'll see what happens there. I'm just having so much fun doing this. So it's super cool.

That's sort of, so I was playing poker last night till like two in the morning, and the guy that I was sitting next to, he asked me, oh, so you have a podcast? And I'm like, oh, geez, now I gotta talk about the podcast. And he's like, oh, so you're doing it for the ad revenue. I'm like, honestly, I just have a lot of fun doing this every week. I look forward to this. This is amazing. And seeing the growth is really awesome too. So it is a lot of fun.

Yeah, the way I explain it to people is like, if I go back to get a normal job, great, but if I can make a living doing this, talking to cool people, learning about stuff like this, and then educating hundreds, potentially thousands of people on tuning, for example, I mean, that's just a win. So yeah, it's all about good fun. But where can people find you?

You can find me if you're interested in tuning with me.

Right here.

Right here, well, you physically here. But if you want to hit me up on Facebook, facebook.com/lurktuning, L-U-R-K tuning.com, not.com, just slash lurktuning. Otherwise, I'm on Instagram as LyleKurkin, or you can hit me up on my normal Facebook if you just want to be friends and see pictures of my kid at Kyle Larkin. Otherwise, that's pretty much, if you mosey across my TikTok, it's literally just for s*** posting and talking s***. So I would just ignore that if I were you.

All right, Sean.

All right, everybody, you can follow me on Instagram at 1mnmopar.

Perfect, so you can see his lack of Durango and 1M content. But you can watch us do stuff on the rally. I'm really excited for the car community rally. It's gonna be a good crowd. I think you're still able to sign up. I don't know, look into it. I don't know, all that fun stuff. Otherwise, make sure you are signing up for the newsletter on the website. So every Monday, I drop the Minnoxide newsletter, which is basically free wallpapers. At some point, I'll do a giveaway and just a podcast update. So just cool stuff, minnoxide.com.

You gonna do some merch?

I'm working on it. So I'm actually actively working on, so I'm doing an update or a refresh on my brand and my, you know, just a lot of different things because I want to make it more merch friendly. Because my thing is, I don't want to push merch for the sake of pushing merch. I want people to just randomly stumble upon my website.

You want them to want it. You want them to have an appeal.

I want you to want my merch. I don't want to be the guy that's selling it. I want to make some merch that's so fricking cool that you actually want it. And until then, I will not be happy.

I appreciate that.

The same thing applies with Jocko. So get these Jockos. You can get Tempsan off his co-monoxide. If anybody made it this far, thank you for watching. Thank you, Kyle. Thank you, Sean, for existing in the short term. See you next time.