[fkemmerer]

Originally Posted by NC427

Fred,

first of all: Thanks a lot for those informations! They are highly apprpeciated!

1) Tires: My car is on Avons and although I have not had chances to test the Goodyear´s I would expect them to perform quite well

2) My major aim is to have a traction control installed that helps me to overcome critical situations but which is not trying (able) to replace the driver - I do understand from what you wrote that the FAST could be an option in this respect.

3) Car´s set-up / allignment: Fully agree to your point! Have seen too many car´s with impressive motors, breath-taking HP´s and no Cent invested in proper allignment / set-up - The fact that results where fairly poor is not really amazing to anyone starting from the right end (and that should be the contact area car/asphalt) I guess.

4) Fred, how would you rate the FAST stystem in regard to user friendlyness once it comes down to tuning and not being anything close to an FI expert? Having read your build thread very carefully I am sort of afraid that I might never come close to your FI expertise and then be ending up with an unsatisfying result.........

regards
Carsten

Hi Carsten,

All your points make sense. I'd especially stress the importance of proper chassis setup and tires. The chassis setup step is "skipped" by many folks when this is often a source of many handling and other related problems.

I've worked with FAST XFI, Bigstuff GEN3, and Motec engine management systems. I think that FAST is probably one of the simpliest to use. Bigstuff is similar but a bit more capable in a few areas (boost and nitrous management for example). Motec is the most sofisticated (and most complex of all) and has its own, rather steep leaning curve on top of the FAST and Bigstuff systems. Motec is one of the most powerful systems on the market today in terms of features and flexibility though - its also probably the system of choice for high end tuner cars (I saw a Honda VTEC equiped FWD car with twin turbos and a Motec enegine managment system make over 700 hp in one of the EFI classes that I took ).

The most important thing you'll need to get good results with any of these systems is a basic understanding of fuel and timing management systems as they relate to how an engine performs in vairous operating conditions. You'll also need a basic understanding of how to tune an engine as well as access to the proper equiment to get the job done right. There are some pretty good books out there on these topics. I addition, I can recommend the training provided by EFI unverisity [I've taken three of their courses now - the Accelerated Certificantion Program (ACP), Advanced Tuning Concepts (EFI-102) and their online Variable Cam Timing Tuning Course]. These programs are not cheep biut they do provide (along with a thorough reading on three of the best books on the topic) a solid mix of the Fuel and Timing Systems therory that you need to be a good tuner plus enough hands on tuning and dyno experience to be ready to take on a real project and do it well.

A good (and less $$) alternative to all of this training is have a professional tuner do the basic tune on your car and do some of the fine tuning like the traction control and final drivability adjustments yourself with some oversight and help from your tuner. I think that working with an experience tuner coupled with reading of the books mentioned below and a little time learning to use the software for your engine management system with your car should get you where you want to be without creating a situation where you will hurt you engine or harm its performance. The key here is to pick a good tuner and spend the money on a proper dyno facility to get the initial tune done right. It is also very important that "Hardware" system on the car be done right and be completely reliable. This includes a well engineered fuel system, electrical system, and proper sensor installation so that your engine management system is getting good information and realy creating the fuel and timing environment in your engine that your tuning program is trying to generate. I would say that problems in the "Hardware" designed and execution accounts for a good bit of the "problems" that folks experience with EFI systems.

At this point you are probably thinking - can I really do this? Here would be my suggestion. First, call COMP cams and order their FAST XFI tuning DVD and watch it. This will give you a feel of how the software works and a bit of information on the tuning process. Don't worry if you don't understand everything the first time you watch the DVD. Also get the three books listed below, read them and see if the concepts and the tuning process seem understandable to you. If they do, then I recommend that you find an experienced tuner or engine builder to work with you on your first EFI project. This is how I got started. I did not take any formal training beyond reading the books until I did my second car. I did do all of the "hardware" on my first car and I followed the advise of my engine builder (who is an EFI and supercharger expert) to the tee. My engine builder dyno tuned my motor in his shop on an engine dyno which got me a solid tune that was close for the car. I did all of the fuel system, electrical work, sensor installation as part of putting the motor and drivetrain in the car. When we ran into the inevitable drivability issues that are pretty common (an engine dyno can never simulate all of the transient conditions that you'll encourter when actually driving your car), my engine builder worked with me to solve the problems and taught me quite a bit through the process. Once you do a car this way, you can decide if you really want to make the investment in training and possibly equipment to really do the complete tuning process on your own. Also note that most systems including FAST XFI can be tuned over the internet. I used this approach on my blown and injected SBC with my engine builder on the phone and making adjustments on the car with me watching and then driving the car and collecting measurements with the system to see if the tuning changes had the desired effect - pretty cool!

I will also say that both of my EFI projects (a supercharged and injected 383 stroker in an early vette and the stack injected 482 FE in my cobra) are both pretty difficult tuning exercises. I belive that I could probably have put an OK tune on a more straight forward engine combination by driving the car and following a systematic tuning process as outlined the books which follow. The one area where you absolutely MUST use a dyno is for WOT tuning. There is no safe way to do this properly on the street. Even if you think it might be OK to take the safety risk and do this tuning on the street, you cannot get the tune right without being able to hold close to a static load at high engine speeds. The only way to do this part of the tune accurately is on a load bearing dyno.

The EFI tuning books that I like are:

Building & Tuning High-Performance Electronic Fuel Injection by Ben Strader
Engine Management: Advanced Tuning by Greg Banish
Designing and Tuning High-Performance Fuel Injection Systems by Greg Banish

All of these books are available on Amazon in paperback for at a reasonable cost.

If you want to really get into the theory of Fuel Systems, Timining and overall engine tuning I would recommend the following (but this is a more difficult read - an engineer's text for sure and not really necessary to get good results with EFI):

Four-Stroke Performance Tuning 3rd ed: A practical guide - A. Bell

This book will teach you how to select parts for an engine combination that will really unlock power that you would not think was there. A read of this book and some time spend with a really good wave-action desktop engine simulation program can teach you a tremendous amount about how a performance engine really works and how to pick parts and tune it to get the most possible performance out of a given combination. This is a great way to figure out an engine combination from scratch before you buy a single part. I am considering a blown and injected hemi project (with EFI of course) for a possible future street rod project and have probably built and tested 50 combinations in the dyno simulation and learned a ton about what will and will not work on the street with a combination like this). BTW, the computer dyno I am using predicts the HP and Torque output of the two engines that I've build using EFI to within about 10% of the test results on an engine dyno when fed the accurate information on the specific combinations that these engines are built with.

I hope that this helps you. I cannot say enough positives about the performance, drivability, and flexibility of a well executed EFI system. This approach allows us to make what would be almost unstreetable combinations perform great with excellent driveability, great street manners and gobs of power when you call for it. There is a learning cureve to doing EFI right for sure but it is not rocket science. If you work with poeple who have some experience, do you homework, and invest a little time in learning some of the basic fuel systems and timing theory about engines, you will get good results. Also, as the performance industry makes variable cam timing systems and other high-tech performance tools more availble to the performance aftermarket, the advantages of EFI will on continue to become greater.

I hope that this helps you,

- Fred