Originally Posted by
Jimmy ny
I think 500-600 is a fair price for a piggyback. What I don’t understand is they want 700-800. And they don’t want to explain how it’s working and how it s making power.
APR always explained their ECU tunes. I don’t believe they will have anything anytime soon.
I wish a brand name company would come out with something.
All piggybacks work in a similar manner, just with varying levels of complexity. The safeguards built into new ECU's along with the fact that everything is electronically controlled also make them fairly safe, even if they were to fail. You can definitely get power from them as well (as evidenced by some members results), it just won't ever be the same kind of result as re-writing the tables that control the ECU (that then control fuel, timing, and boost)
Virtually every new car in the US since roughly '08 has a factory wideband O2 sensor, pair that with electronically controlled boost and fueling via the ECU, and you've got a circuit you can manipulate to produce more power.
The simplest type of piggyback is literally a resistor box that alters the voltage signal from the factory boost sensors to trick the ECU into thinking the turbo is not putting out enough boost, so the ECU compensates by adding more. Since it's also getting real-time readings based on the spent exhaust gas via the wideband sensor, it can correct fuel based on the
real values seen there, which means the amount of fuel ends up matching the actually produced boost, not the tricked lower amount. Add a plug to the factory fuel sensor and you can tweak this even further.
The limitation to the above, is that it's only capable of adding small adjustments (a few extra lbs of boost), because the factory fueling tables are only built to compensate so far based on altitude correction on an otherwise stock car.
Taking it a step further, you could introduce your own micro-controller in place of the resistors, which would allow you to put your own UI on top of it, and "customize" the values for boost and fuel by adjusting the values the micro-controller is receiving from the sensors. You're still not actually changing anything in the ECU, but you've got a friendly interface to adjust the state of your "tune".
Going a step even
further (and I believe this is what the guys over at Burger are doing with the JB4 but I'm totally guessing), not only could your micro-controller receive the signals from the factory sensors and add impedance to reduce them so that the ECU compensates...but you could also be listening for the signals coming BACK from the ECU to those sensors, alter them even
further, and send that signal on to the actual sensors. This allows an even greater range of "configuration" (more maximum boost/fuel), without ever actually modifying the ECU or the tables within. It's also pretty freggin' complicated to develop and make reliable, and probably where the cost comes from.
None of that is the same as a real tune that needs none of the above and simply rewrites the tables that control boost, fuel, timing, and a host of other things, with different ranges altogether. It could be years before that's even available though, because our bastard ECU is a tricky fella.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
My YouTube Car Channel:
Bookmarks