Street Tuning vs Dyno Tuning

[britishturbo]

OK so another thread went off topic and headed down this road, so I figured lets start a new clean thread talking about dyno tuning vs street tuning.

It's my experience and opinion that street tuning is better than dyno tuning alone for a car that will be driven on the street.
But... if I have the choice I will street tune and then dyno tune to see where I am at.

A dyno does not simulate certain physical attributes that driving on the streets do. Some of these are aero loading and coasting.

The other side of the argument then is remote tuning vs physical tuning.
I've been tuning for myself and others now for over 10 years... both in person on peoples vehicles and via remote using logs and config from the cars.
I have been pretty successful with both methods, but... remote tuning is never ever going to be as quick as when you can tune the car in person. There will always be more revisions and it will always take longer than when the tuner can drive the car and "feel" exactly what is happening with the car.

What do others think about this subject?
Let's keep this clean though please I think this is a very good topic of conversation

[bobkatkat]

Thanks for moving this topic to a new thread.

I think you are right where street tuning with dyno tuning would give you the best over all tune. There are so many other factors that come into play. Inertia dynos vs Loaded dynos? Flat road street logging vs loaded long grade logging? Tuning at your specific elevation? No one would turn down access to a dyno if it was available to them, and on the other hand I highly doubt that those tuning on a dyno don't tweak through runs on the street.

[Tony@EPL]

As far as dyno vs street tune... Both have their pros and cons. You cannot say one is 100% superior to the other.

Dyno tuning and road testing will always be superior to road tuning alone. In my opinion this is a fact. How many cars have you load tuned on a dyno? How many on a the street? Just trying to get a frame of reference from where your comments on the subject stem from?

I know many many tuners who have dynos and they will always tell you that there are things that an inertial dyno just cannot simulate or show. Aero loading is one, yes they try to simulate that, but it's not the same. The other thing is areas on your map that you just don't see on a dyno... long coasting down a hill that sort of thing.
I always prefer to street tune and then dyno tune after that id I'm going to dyno tune at all.

I agree with your statement on inertial dyno's. They have limitations that require BOTH on dyno and street tuning to properly calibrate the

A modern load dyno is capable of applying virtually any load the operator would like... including loads that are less then vehicle weight in coast down testing. That being said in addition to load being applied on the wheels during the pull, a mustang dyno REQUIRES a horse power @ 50mph figure as well as a vehicle weight before starting a test. BOTH together are used to calculate drag. This is how time and time again FATS are with in 1 tenth dyno to street.

[britishturbo]

Dyno tuning and road testing will always be superior to road tuning alone. In my opinion this is a fact. How many cars have you load tuned on a dyno? How many on a the street? Just trying to get a frame of reference from where your comments on the subject stem from?




I agree with your statement on inertial dyno's. They have limitations that require BOTH on dyno and street tuning to properly calibrate the

A modern load dyno is capable of applying virtually any load the operator would like... including loads that are less then vehicle weight in coast down testing. That being said in addition to load being applied on the wheels during the pull, a mustang dyno REQUIRES a horse power @ 50mph figure as well as a vehicle weight before starting a test. BOTH together are used to calculate drag. This is how time and time again FATS are with in 1 tenth dyno to street.

I've only tuned on a dyno a few times, and they were inertial dynos not load based dynos... so I'm sure my opinion is a little swayed because of that. :-)
I would love to get more experience on dynos though especially load dynos.

[B5Ballin]

Dyno tuning and road testing will always be superior to road tuning alone. In my opinion this is a fact. How many cars have you load tuned on a dyno? How many on a the street? Just trying to get a frame of reference from where your comments on the subject stem from?




I agree with your statement on inertial dyno's. They have limitations that require BOTH on dyno and street tuning to properly calibrate the

A modern load dyno is capable of applying virtually any load the operator would like... including loads that are less then vehicle weight in coast down testing. That being said in addition to load being applied on the wheels during the pull, a mustang dyno REQUIRES a horse power @ 50mph figure as well as a vehicle weight before starting a test. BOTH together are used to calculate drag. This is how time and time again FATS are with in 1 tenth dyno to street.

I agree 100%. I had tuned loads of cars on the street and once I had the ability to tune on the dyno I would never go back. It is fantastic that everytime you do a pull in whatever gear you may be in, the load is the same as the previous runs. 98% of the time you are not logging pulls on the same stretch of road time and time again to dial a car in.

Tuning a load based ECU or any ECU for that matter on the dyno is FAR superior to street tuning. Does that mean you cannot get a car dialed in well on the street? No, it just may take longer to accomplish the same thing you accomplished on the dyno in half the time.

There is also the fact that people think that more timing automatically means more power. You may keep adding timing and not get any knock retard and your power will suffer. The only way to see this is on a dyno.

[Mikse]

Tony: On a dyno tuning do you look at some spesific data "live" and tune it during dyno session or do you log the dyno pull and analyse that and make the changes? I have your remote tune which I'm pleased but would there be anything to gain if I'd go to local dyno to do some pulls? The problem usually is on dynos here the IAT's go sky high :(

But then again where is the fun of tuning if you don't have to go to public road to do 4-5th gear pulls all the way up to a redline

[Meow]

Dyno tuning is great and has its benifits,

Safe conditions (60-130 on the street is not exactly safe)
Consistency (Repeated pulls, same load, same conditions)
Direct feedback of changes (You can directly see in hp and tq what the changes in the tune made for the powerband)
TQ and HP information (see where peak torque is and keep the stock block safe by keeping peak boost and timing away from there)
Much quicker to get a tune sorted (flash, pull, check, changes, flash, pull check, all within a short period of time. emailing logs back and forth takes time and can be a hassle)


But it has its flaws,

It does not test for many conditions. Road testing/logging is necessary to get all the possible loading conditions tested. I have seen subarus that were dyno tuned with no knock (correction factors), these cars put up great numbers for the turbos and ran awesome times at the track, then on the street they would pull timing all over the place, knocking left and right. These cars ended up popping motors with broken ringlands because of detonation. They did not trust that the knock that was seen on the logs, they thought it was not really going to matter. A month later when they were pulling their motor they thought otherwise. Now I know this is a third hand experience, and I would take this as a limited experience of what dyno tuning only can do. I am a big proponent of logging cars, the more logs, the better, so logging and testing on the street after a dyno tune is a no brainer to me.

I personally would love to dyno tune a car. I would take my car down to EPL if it wasn't so fricken far away. They tuned my friends 911TT and friends k04 car and they RIP, much faster and strong tune than I currently have. Doing a dyno tune near here (middle of michigan) is expensive, and very hard to do. The closest awd dyno is opening up this spring and it will be an hour away, the next closest one is 2.5 hours away. To get the amount of time on a dyno I would want would be very expensive. I am going to try to get some dyno time soon though... I prefer street tuning now because its cheap, easy, and effective. I really thing safety becomes a large issue over 500hp cars, when cars start becoming unsafe to drive that fast on the street at full throttle for repeated and extended times.