NOTE: This isn't meant to sway people who want a max effort set with launch control and race at the drag strip for max times, etc. I don't care what "insert Facebook star in hero DA name here" ran with his Ecutek tune. It's well known that Ecutek has access to significantly more tables currently over HPT as well as launch control. I'm not interested in the critiquing of my results from A) those who don't tune, and B) those who haven't tuned a VR30 with HPT. This is for the DIY who wants to gain good power and responsiveness and control their own tune and enjoy playing and learning instead of paying crazy prices for locked tunes and having to pay extra for minor changes and things that cost the tuner nothing (like adding launch control).
READ IT AGAIN-
NOTE: This isn't meant to sway people who want a max effort set with launch control and race at the drag strip for max times, etc. I don't care what "insert Facebook star in hero DA name here" ran with his Ecutek tune. It's well known that Ecutek has access to significantly more tables currently over HPT as well as launch control. I'm not interested in the critiquing of my results from A) those who don't tune, and B) those who haven't tuned a VR30 with HPT. This is for the DIY who wants to gain good power and responsiveness and control their own tune and enjoy playing and learning instead of paying crazy prices for locked tunes and having to pay extra for minor changes and things that cost the tuner nothing (like adding launch control).
Think of HP Tuner's as the red pill.
Now that the JB4 is sold, it's time to start the HP Tuner's tutorial/learning thread. Hopefully others will go this route and help me learn too! If you don't know about HP Tuners, they've been around a long time. They're big in the domestic/diesel world and added support for the VR30 motor. I owe a big thanks to
@[email protected] for supporting, and continuing to support me, in resolving issues that are either self inflected by me, or issues with features that they continue to work on and improve as needed. As far as pricing, you can pick up a a new HP Tuners MPVI2 tuner for $300 brand new. This gives you the ability to flash your car as well as logging. They come up used on forums as well. To license your VIN requires purchasing 6 credits, which are $50 per credit. This means you are out the door for a total of $600 to be able to flash your own car, log, clear codes, etc. This is about half the cost of a standard Ecutek tune, possibly less depending on who/what you do.
When you do a read or write on your car, I suggest removing the fan relay under the hood in the driver side fuse box as Infiniti in their infinite (get it?
) wisdom decided to run both fans during a read (which can take 10 minutes or more) or a flash (5 min) which can kill the battery. Here is a thread on the HPT forum for some of the basics (not all of which apply to the VR30):
This guide offers useful hints and suggestions for tuning Nissan and Infiniti vehicles. Its aim is to explain the functionality of Nissan/Infiniti-specific parameters rather than be a full tuning guide. Airflow Parameters Characteristic Coefficients...
forum.hptuners.com
When you open the VCM editor to view and modify a tune, you'll see something like this, where you can navigate through the tabs that cover all of the turbo/boost/airflow tables, fueling tables, spark tables, throttle, etc.
In the airflow tab, you'll see various tables and sub-tabs to modify boost control.
You'll want to focus on max map pressure/max map pressure 2, desired boost/desired boost link, Boost limit base1/2, boost correction high load and low load tables, and the proportional, integral, derivative boost feedback tables. Max map and max boost tables are what they sound like. You can specify when you want boost cut to kick in by RPM. Max map takes into account atmospheric pressure (~14.7 psi) which is why the values are higher. Stock values shown below:
Here's what the boost curve looks like on a non-RS and how they use separate load tables to reach the lower boost level compared with an RS:
Factory PID control tables for closed loop boost correction. Note that POSITIVE error is UNDER BOOST and negative error is OVER BOOST. I fought with this until my thinking was corrected. So from the factory, proportional boost adjustment is essentially uniform for over/under boost, but Integral and Derivative Gain is only handled for under boost, not over boost.
Here are some additional tables that are the default wastegate position (which varies from 0mm (fully closed) to 8mm (fully open)), wastegate position during shifting (THIS IS A FACTORY TABLE IN A 21 MODEL YEAR THAT HPT IS ADDING TO PRE-21 YEARS!!!
), as well as the turbo compressor speed on a non-RS that is based on airflow vs. RPM. For all the JB4 haters, THIS is why having a non-RS doesn't mean you're going to blow your turbos if you turn up the boost. The table is based on airflow, not measured boost. So the car DOES know how fast the turbos are spinning for a given airflow.
