Tuning the DSM ECU with DSMLink, October 21, 2005 http://www.dsmlink.

com

Tuning the DSM ECU with DSMLink

Tuning for ultimate wide-open throttle (WOT) performance is the goal of any good drag racer. Even on a road course or auto-x, WOT performance plays an important role. When you want to adjust your fuel or timing on a modern engine, your primary foe is the factory ECU. This paper is intended to provide the DSMLink community with some detailed information on the internals of how the factory ECU calculates fuel and timing at WOT. Armed with this information and the tools provided with DSMLink, you should be well on your way to a perfectly tuned DSM.

Airflow and Tables

The basis of everything in this document is airflow and tables based on airflow. Airflow directly drives injector pulsewidth at WOT and plays a huge role in determining ignition timing. For these reasons, Im devoting a whole section to the discussion of airflow. With a decent understanding of airflow and how the ECU views it, youll have a good start on understanding how fuel and timing are calculated. First, the ECU gets airflow data from the mass airflow sensor (MAS). Most people talk about and are familiar with airflow in terms of CFM or lb/min or gm/sec or some other value measured in units of time. The ECU does not operate on those units. It only cares about how much air was pushed (were turbocharged here!) into the engine during the most recent intake stroke. That value determines how much air is sitting in the cylinder, ready to be used up and its that value that will determine how much fuel will be delivered for the power stroke. You can think of this airflow in terms of air per rev of the motor. If your system is flowing, say, 300 gm/sec and your ignition is firing at 6000 RPM, then each intake stroke of the motor is getting 3 gm of air:
300 gm sec 1 min gm 60 =3 sec min 6000 rev rev

The ECU cares about and uses this value. Normally the difference between these units can be glossed over or ignored, but it does play an important role when fine-tuning and when trying to figure out why the ECU did something in particular, especially in the upper RPM band where airflow per second may look flat, but airflow per rev is actually dropping rapidly.

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Tuning the DSM ECU with DSMLink, October 21, 2005 http://www.dsmlink.com For example, lets say your system was flowing 300 gm/sec at 6000 RPM. From the formula above, you would be flowing 3 gm/rev of the motor. If your system were still flowing 300 gm/sec at 7000 RPM, then you would only be flowing 2.6 gm/rev. So even though it appears to be the same flow rate when viewed in units of time, when viewed in units of engine cycles, your flow rate is actually dropping. Injector pulsewidth will drop accordingly and, at some point (roughly 2.1 gm/rev), youll move off the peak fuel and timing curves discussed below. For now, just keep in mind that the ECU cares about airflow per rev not airflow per time.

Fuel
NOTE: The A/F ratios discussed below are theoretical values. We have seen measured and calculated values from DSMLink that do not exactly match the values estimated below. Use this guide as just thata guide. The numbers presented below will get you in the ballpark, but you still need to tune.

Believe it or not, fuel control at WOT is very simple. Fuel control at WOT is open loop, which means there is no feedback mechanism from the O2 sensor. The ECU is calculating fuel largely off the airflow data provided by the MAS. The MAS tells the ECU how much air is going into the engine, the ECU calculates how much fuel is needed to achieve a certain A/F ratio, and then activates the injectors for an appropriate amount of time to provide that fuel. Im going to assume you know what an A/F ratio is and that 14.7 is stoich and what all that means. If not, please refer elsewhere to get your primer on this subject before reading this document. One thing that may not be obvious about fuel control at WOT is the implication of closed loop long-term fuel trim (LTFT) values. Basically, the ECU strives to maintain a stoich mixture during closed loop operation. On a DSM, that control is achieved by trying to cycle the O2 sensor around 0.5 volts (stoich). The ECU learns how much adjustment is needed to the calculated fuel values to cause this cycling to occur during closed loop operation. That value is referred to as the long-term fuel trim. A LTFT significantly above or below 0% indicates that the global fuel settings for the ECU do not accurately reflect your fuel system. It could be that the injectors arent flowing properly, the global fuel setting isnt set correctly, the O2 sensor isnt working 100%, or probably a number of other things. Regardless this learned adjustment is NOT applied during open loop operation. The bottom line is that since the learned LTFT value is not applied during open loop operation, you really should strive to get your LTFT value as close to 0% as possible during idle and cruise conditions. Doing so helps to ensure that your global adjustments are accurate so that the modifications you make to the fuel settings during open loop operation have a better chance of behaving as intended. The DSMLink User Guide contains a detailed explanation of how to adjust your global settings to achieve a desirable LTFT. Now, on to how the ECU deals with fuel at WOT. The first thing the ECU does when it gets a new airflow sample is to determine how much fuel is needed to maintain a stoich Page 2 of 2
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Tuning the DSM ECU with DSMLink, October 21, 2005 http://www.dsmlink.com mixture. It does this by simply applying a factor to the airflow value. The end result is an injector pulsewidth needed to achieve stoich. During open loop operation, the ECU then applies an enrichment value to this calculated pulsewidth. The enrichment value is determined by looking at a table indexed by airflow (per rev, remember) and RPM. The factory defined a series of fuel curves, each of which is to be used at a particular airflow. The graph below shows the lowest, middle, and highest airflow fuel enrichment curves in the factory 2G DSM ECU. Refer to the 1GDSMTables.xls and 2GDSMTables.xls files for a more complete view of this data.

The max airflow curve is used at anything over roughly 2.1 gm/rev. Lets take an example to better understand how to read this graph. Lets assume youre running well over 2.1 gm/rev so that we know the ECU is using the max airflow fuel enrichment curve. At 5000 RPM, that means the ECU is going to richen the stoich mixture by 55%. That means instead of running 14.7:1 A/F at 5000 RPM, youll be closer to 9.5:1.
14.7 1.55 = 9.5

Lets say you really want to run 11:1 at 5000 RPM. Given the information from this graph, that means youll want to lean out the fuel mixture by 14% at 5000 RPM:
9 .5 1 = 0.14 = 14% 11

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Tuning the DSM ECU with DSMLink, October 21, 2005 http://www.dsmlink.com By plugging 14% into the DSMLink fuel dialog box at 5000 RPM, you can expect to run roughly 11:1 A/F ratio at 5000 RPM. Of course, thats clearly not a guaranteed value. This assumes your fuel pressure is being maintained and that your MAF is not hacked in any way and all the usual stuff. The ECU will calculate how much fuel it thinks will produce an 11:1 A/F ratio, but it can do nothing to validate that at WOT. Notice that the 4500, 5500, and 6000 RPM points have the same enrichment value in the factory open loop fuel table as the 5000 RPM point we just covered (roughly 55%). The 6500 and 7000 RPM points are close enough that we should just lump them in as well. That implies that the same 14% adjustment via DSMLink at those points will result in roughly the same A/F ratio. However, the 2500 4000 RPM points are configured with a lower enrichment (higher A/F ratio). At those points, the factory fuel curves are defined for about 48% enrichment, resulting in a 9.9:1 A/F ratio (again, assuming youre running over 2.1 gm/rev at those points). So if you wanted to target 11:1 A/F at those points, you would only need to enter 10%. The next logical step would be to define a table to list out all adjustments required to maintain a particular A/F ratio from 2500-8000 RPM. A/F 2500-4000 rpm 4500-6000 rpm 6500-8000 rpm -1% -5% -6% 10.00 -5% -10% -11% 10.50 -10% -14% -15% 11.00 -14% -18% -19% 11.50 -17% -21% -22% 12.00
Table 1: DSMLink fuel adjustments

It' worth mentioning that the ECU may not be entirely accurate in its determination of s how much air is actually entering the engine, whether because the MAS is not entirely accurate or the ECU' internal calibration curve for the MAS is not accurate. Therefore, s some of the values in the enrichment table may adjust for this and may not represent the actual mixture.

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Tuning the DSM ECU with DSMLink, October 21, 2005 http://www.dsmlink.com

Timing
Ignition timing is even easier than fuel. There are only a couple little rules to keep in mind and a single graph to look at. The same airflow/RPM scheme is used to index into the timing tables as is used to index into the fuel tables. The graph below shows the lowest, middle, and highest airflow timing curves in the factory 2G DSM ECU. Refer to the 1GDSMTables.xls and 2GDSMTables.xls files for a more complete view of this data.

If you add a degree of advance via DSMLink, youll get a degree in the final timing calculation. So if you add 2 degrees at 6000 RPM, youll get 17 degrees of base advance instead of the 15 degrees defined by the max-airflow timing curve. There are only a couple subtle adjustments made to the timing value retrieved from this table. The following lists these adjustments to keep in mind. Coolant temps below 206F get full timing Coolant temps above 224F lose two degrees of advance Coolant temps between those two lose only one degree Intake temps above 84F or below 34F lose one degree

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