Tune development

VersaTuner for Mazda SkyActiv Diesel powered vehicles
samuel
Posts: 6
Joined: May 14th, 2020, 5:23 am

Re: Tune development

Post by samuel »

Hello,

Is it possible to use MK tune on Gen1 (CX-5)?

Best Regards,
Samo
dmalovic
Posts: 4
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 5:11 am

Re: Tune development

Post by dmalovic »

At 214000km (M6 Wagon, 2014, MTX 150HP) I finally had EGR flow problems, and I knew I needed intake cleaning. No other interventions on the car, washers never changed, and it ran perfectly. Camshaft and oil screen inspected, no clogging or wear?!

The service cleaned everything, sent me the before and after pics. And they put the latest ECU software on. After the service, the car lost most of the power, no DTC, all vacuum lines OK. Only noticed frequent regens and oil overheating on long uphills, at full throttle, as the car would slow down and not pull up the hill.

Long story short, the service replaced my injectors with a set of used ones (offer no warranty, will not tell me what mileage injectors have), but even at stock 150hp (M6 Wagon, 2014) the car drives like a rocket. I write this as some others might have the same problem. I think the service damaged my injectors, but I cannot prove it. :(

My question for you guys is, what tune to go to. Used 1.08 before and was OK with it, but did not test others. Now in this thread I see that people recommend the stock 175HP upgrade, or the beta 2.04. It's mid 2022, what tune do you guys use? What do you recommend.
mituc
VersaTuner guru
Posts: 1324
Joined: December 17th, 2011, 2:47 pm
Location: Iasi/Romania

Re: Tune development

Post by mituc »

Do not put any tune on it until you fix it.
You should take a few logs though and see what changes.
2008 Cosmic Blue Mazda 3MPS
Built engine + WMI + GTX3071 gen2, ~509BHP @34PSI
2008 Icy Blue Mazda CX7
Stock engine and exhaust (YES!!), JBR3" + GTX2867 gen2 + Autotech HPFP, self-tuned to 330-ish BHP
dmalovic
Posts: 4
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 5:11 am

Re: Tune development

Post by dmalovic »

mituc wrote: July 25th, 2022, 2:29 am Do not put any tune on it until you fix it.
You should take a few logs though and see what changes.
The replacement used injectors seem to have fixed everything. The car drives like crazy compared to before. So now the question is how to further improve it ;). All joking aside, some people claim the tunes help the engine run better and cleaner, optimizing for power rather than emissions. I ascribed my 220k km without any problems to being tuned, but it may just be a coincidence.

Anyhow, any recommendation of a tune would be greatly appreciated.

Domi
Gavin601
Posts: 7
Joined: April 19th, 2022, 5:25 pm

Re: Tune development

Post by Gavin601 »

I'm on base 1.06 since I'm located in tropical country with no winters, hot, humid all year round. It works a treat, just today was 36C and cruising highway 120kmh no hesitation to just get up and go to 140 150. I however am running Odula oversized intercooler
Gavin601
Posts: 7
Joined: April 19th, 2022, 5:25 pm

Re: Tune development

Post by Gavin601 »

dmalovic wrote: July 24th, 2022, 10:41 pm At 214000km (M6 Wagon, 2014, MTX 150HP) I finally had EGR flow problems, and I knew I needed intake cleaning. No other interventions on the car, washers never changed, and it ran perfectly. Camshaft and oil screen inspected, no clogging or wear?!

The service cleaned everything, sent me the before and after pics. And they put the latest ECU software on. After the service, the car lost most of the power, no DTC, all vacuum lines OK. Only noticed frequent regens and oil overheating on long uphills, at full throttle, as the car would slow down and not pull up the hill.

Long story short, the service replaced my injectors with a set of used ones (offer no warranty, will not tell me what mileage injectors have), but even at stock 150hp (M6 Wagon, 2014) the car drives like a rocket. I write this as some others might have the same problem. I think the service damaged my injectors, but I cannot prove it. :(

My question for you guys is, what tune to go to. Used 1.08 before and was OK with it, but did not test others. Now in this thread I see that people recommend the stock 175HP upgrade, or the beta 2.04. It's mid 2022, what tune do you guys use? What do you recommend.
Our experience in Malaysia where we have the 175HP in the CX5 and Mazda 6, there are 2 drivers in our loose community of WhatsApp owners, lolz, both drive like they are from the Taxi movie. Either pedal to the floor or idling, nothing in between unless you count in the legendary traffic jams.

The cx5 changes oil every 5000km, the Mazda 6 10,000km according to recommended official dealer. The cx5 has not had a single problem, the Mazda 6 has gone though waste gate pin = new turbo and injector seals. Thus the general consensus is half the oil change intervals and things should be better for reliability
seals,
.p4nzer
Posts: 5
Joined: September 28th, 2021, 8:50 pm

Re: Tune development

Post by .p4nzer »

mk_ wrote: May 3rd, 2022, 12:13 am This is the latest version of my tune. I do daily drive it, but still didn't have a chance to test it in really high temps. It feels good and there is a noticeable power increase.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vNlE7n ... sp=sharing
This link doesn't work anymore, sadly. Would it be possible to have your tune? Pleaseeee ;)

How is it going on your car?

PS: I was curious to see the way you configured the tune, but it's not needed anymore.
.p4nzer
Posts: 5
Joined: September 28th, 2021, 8:50 pm

Re: Tune development

Post by .p4nzer »

So, after studying a bit and completing a diesel tuning course I decided to build my own tune.

My goals were:
- keep maximum torque the same as the 175 hp Mazda tune (420 Nm), to not overstress the internals and the infamous injector seals;
- keep driveability at low RPMs the same as stock, to not impact fuel economy and smoothness of the car;
- reach 200-210 hp range with smooth transition and extracting such extra power from higher ranges.. basically getting the power only when I want power;
- control exhaust gas temperatures (pre-turbo) and avoid turbo oscillations;
- keep the tune as stock as possible, meaning not re-writing entire tables for the sake of doing it.. Mazda already mapped required injection quantities, timings, pulse width, boost and more for way more torque/power than the engine delivers. So I wanted to use as much as possible their tables. Also, I'm an amateur tuner with no experience, so the less I change, the better.

To do so, I basically only changed injection limits above 2000 rpms and accelerator mapping on the higher end, as Mazda already mapped everything already. The increases are gradual, very small at the beginning and proportionally bigger as the rpms go up, to create a gentle slope across all the range.

Here's a comparison between stock fuel scaling vs mine (I'm a data analyst so I created some fancy plots):
Image

I made the fuel rail pressure go up steeper, to reach maximum value of 197 MPa around 700 rpms before the stock tune. The reason is to speed-up fuel injection which has a positive impact (albeit small in this case) over EGTs. I was also planning to slightly advance the injection timings for the same reason, but after calculating them I noticed they are already quite advanced on the top-end range and any touch up would have been very tiny, so no need to bother.

Also the boost has been adjusted only for the second hi-end turbo, in the 3000-4000 range. The increase in boost pressure is quite small. The reason? In the 2000-3000 range there's not much changing in my tune, so we can work with stock boost. Then, lambda above 4000 rpms is not really a problem (I get 4-5% O2 concentration on hi-end WOT operations) and requesting more boost on that range is (in my humble opinion of super amateur tuner) the main reason why we are seeing the oscillations. You can see below Engine rpms, MAP and Wastegate Solenoid DC of stock tune and my tune:
Image

Image

In comparison, this is the VersaTuner’s 1.08:
Image

The feeling for now is very good and the data logging showed no problems (I collected a long autobahn session and a short city one with quick bursts of acceleration). I didn't have the car dynoed yet but I will go in the next months. Just as reference, in the 4500-4600 range the amount of fuel getting into the cylinder is around 19-20% more than stock, so I expect the power to be between 200 and 210 hp (flywheel power). It's not dissimilar from the quantities pushed by 1.08, but in the middle range is way more progressive and less brutal (hence less powerful also).

On the autobahn, EGT limits (790 degrees) are reached after around 30-40 seconds of full throttle operations, which resulted in that specific session in 220 km/h speed on my Mazda 3. The ECU successfully reduces the injected quantities and stabilizes the temperature but it’s better to not spend too much time in that range (also, if you are not on a autobahn, it's unlikely you could do it anyway.. but while towing, it would be a completely different thing).

Temperature here ranges from 2 to 7 Celsius, so it's quite fresh. I will check how the tune works in summer, for sure EGT limits will be reached much sooner.

For keeping everything under check I created my own dashboard with OBD Fusion and a BT OBD2 adapter, I can only recommend that if you tune your car and if you spend some time on it the results are pretty cool:
Image

I can only thank VersaTuner guys to have made such a great tool ;)
It has been a great journey so far!
Last edited by .p4nzer on March 20th, 2023, 12:24 am, edited 4 times in total.
dmalovic
Posts: 4
Joined: April 3rd, 2017, 5:11 am

Re: Tune development

Post by dmalovic »

Would you be willing to share that tune with us? And great work, BTW. Wish there was more done for the diesel platform.

Also, have you heard of the latest Mazda PCM firmware which supposedly at least for Mazda requires a different coding interface? Mazda dealership told me they could not flash mine, as they don't have the required interface?
.p4nzer
Posts: 5
Joined: September 28th, 2021, 8:50 pm

Re: Tune development

Post by .p4nzer »

Thanks. Let’s say that I’m happy to help the people here (many shared precious information) but I would not post it online open to everyone.

The problem is that my car is a 3 and you have a 6, I cannot just give you the file. Just send me a PM and let’s see what I can do.

On the second point, I don’t know anything. I hope I will still able to reflash my car after my next scheduled maintenance..
Post Reply