Some tuners use ECUFlash. Others swear by EcuTek. Mike Welch of Road Race Engineering, on the other hand, doesn’t play favorites.
While Project Evo X, our long-term 2008 Mitsubishi GSR, was in his care, Mike constantly switched between the two calibration interfaces while on the dyno. It turns out that certain functionality and datalogging can only be accessed through the EcuTek interface, while other tables are better served by ECUFlash. An ECUtek license costs real money, though, and uploading changes to the ROM takes several minutes instead of seconds. So he uses both. These are the tricks you learn when you’ve been modifying Mitsubishis since 1994.
After adjusting the calibration on the dyno until he was satisifed it was producing safe and consistent power, checking the vitals on the street and making subtle tweaks, he was done tuning Project Evo X with the Garrett GT30R turbo.
The RRE Stealth Exhaust for the EVO 8/9 occasionally gets picked on by haters for being restrictive. Threads come and go with speculation. The standard RRE Stealth cat back uses straight through perforated core resonators. These do not restrict anything. We use very mild angle mandrel bends and a large straight through Magnaflow stainless steel muffler. There are a few people out there that ask for the more restrictive louvered core resonators that would cost you a few hp depending on how much hp you are making.
Quote from: sxe_davexxx on June 22, 2009, 06:09:58 PM
The RRE stealth exhaust is overrated… Its super heavy, you’ll loose power significantly, and it is not that quiet.You should try the Cobb exhaust or the
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Quote from: Mike W on June 22, 2009, 05:54:22 PM
Would you like to prove what you are saying? I will help you.Back it up or take it back.mike@roadraceengineering.com
I will give you my cell phone number and we can work out the details of “significant” and when and how to dyno your car at no charge to you.
MiKe W
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Quote from: sxe_davexxx on June 21, 2009, 12:03:55 PM
Emailed, awaiting your reply =)
Sexy Dave was nice enough to volunteer his car and his buddies and he did the parts swapping on the dyno. He has a nice running stock turbo EVO 9 tuned by Bryan @ GST on E-85. The car us using ECU boost control. His exhaust is an RSR X-Mag. It is very loud and growly no resonators and a straight through small body muffler.
Dave brought his car by on a Saturday afternoon and we did some baseline runs.
Not bad at all, especially for how stock he has things looking under the hood. Boost was smooth with a peak of 27 psi and finishing at 20 psi at redline. The first run was a little peaky with the hp, with the car warmed up hp stabilized at 388-389 hp and ~370 ft pounds of torque.
Then Dave and friends swapped out the loud RSR exhaust for the RRE Stealth.
We went to make some pulls on the RRE system.
Again the first pull was a little choppy. But once warmed up it was making consistently higher hp pulls.
Over 400 hp now and peak torque was up too. Boost was a little choppy but not surprising considering that it was tuned for the other exhaust system. Interesting was that boost dropped off with it making more hp. Shows that the RRE exhaust actually flowed better than the RSR :-P
So here is the RSR (thin lines) vs. RRE Stealth (thick lines)
Boost, again RSR (thin lines) vs. RRE Stealth (thick lines)
And for fun the two wild card first runs of each exhaust, RSR thin lines, RRE Stealth thick lines.
Here is a video of the two dyno runs. IT just further prooves how internet sound clips are totally worthless. The little cameras we all use to make these has self adjusting/limiting microphones. You can hear the idle difference in the RSR. But at WOT they sound essentially the same. In real life the RSR was ear splitting on the dyno. The RRE was just loud.
Bryce has been tuning for a while here @ RRE. He is just now up on all the latest XML for Little Tikes, Fisher Price and Step-2 vehicles. Hit him up if you want to set up an appointment. Afternoons are out for naptime of course. Here is a video of him getting the last power out of the Cozy Coupe. The Dynapack lets him check part throttle and get the fuel trims all dialed in nicely.
At the MOD/RRE Dyno Shootout this year AMS put their drag EVO 8 on the RRE AWD Dynapack chassis dyno for a couple exhibition runs.
They had previously run 1130 whp on a Mustang dyno limited by wheel spin. Martin Musial from AMS did a couple warm up runs at low (37 psi) boost and only hit 900 whp :-/ Then with it all ready to go and a rev limit set at a low 9,500 rpm he did a full pull. Here is a video from it:
The external wastegate blows straight down. In the video you can see everyone running and jumping from the molten asphalt blast debris. The car blew a crater in the parking lot running 1180 whp at 770 ft lbs of torque!
The dyno chart at low boost and high boost:
And for a little perspective… here is the 1180 hp run laid up against a nice running Cosworth 2.2 with a GT35R turbo:
Suddenly 600 whp looks… well kind of sad. For really sad here is 1180 vs a stock EVO:
To find out just how much power Project Evo, our Long-Term 2008 Evo GSR, currently generates, we went to someone who knows these cars.
To find out just how much power Project Evo, our Long-Term 2008 Evo GSR, currently generates, we went to someone who knows these cars.
Road Race Engineering has been working on Evos since before they were sold in the USA. And they’ve been building, racing, tuning, modifying and repairing 4G63s since 1994. You could say they know a thing or two hundred about how to make Mitsubishis go fast.
In Road Race Engineering’s huge 6,000 square foot facility in Santa Fe Springs, CA, they got to work. Project Evo’s wheels came off and the four Dynapack hub dynos were carefully bolted on.
Then we fired the engine, warmed it up to operating temperature by “driving” at light load and did a few pulls.
Now, before we go any further, it’s important to remember that not all dynos are created equal. Comparing results from different dynos is a fruitless and deceptive exercise. Even if you test the same car on two different dynos on the same day, the results can be all over the map.
In fact, we’ve already done that exercise with a GT-R.
Since you just clicked that link and re-read the test, you know only to compare results from Road Race Engineering’s Dynapack dyno to other runs made on that dyno. A dyno is a tuning tool, not a manhood-measuring device. Focus on the gains rather than the absolute numbers.
Whew, okay. Back to Project Evo’s baselining exercise.
We did four or five pulls and the peak numbers were about 320 lb-ft and 325 horsepower. I say “about” because the run-to-run variation floated a few hp or lb-ft higher or lower than these values. I’ll post a representative dyno chart once my latptop starts cooperating.
Mike Welch, owner of Road Race Engineering, says that bone-stock Evo Xs typically generate about 250 horsepower on this dyno.
Factor in your favorite guesstimate for drivetrain loss based on all of this and we can see that we’re roughly 65 horsepower shy of our power goal for Project Evo.
So, now what? With a decent complement of bolt-ons, the next logical step is cams. We talked with our friends at Cosworth in Torrance and they handed us a set of Cosworth MX1 cams, which Road Race Engineering graciously volunteered to install and re-tune for.
More to come.
Jason Kavanagh, Engineering Editor @ 15,851 miles.*
Got a cool license plate in the e-mail today. Thanks Rick!
Here is the note that came along with it:
Hello, my name is Rick S’ I have had this plate for about 2 1/2 years and have had a RRE licence plate from since I bought my first DSM. I got first licence plate frame when I bought upper intercooler pipe back in 2001 just after I picked up a Black 90 GSX. I loved that car, but I always had a thing for the least appreciated of the triplets the Laser. A friend of the family had a Red 92 Laser RS AWD, with 72,868 on the odometer in 03, they were going to trade in for a new lease car. For a few extra bucks I offered them more then the $2,000 dollar trade in they were about to take on it, and I drove away with a car that once debadged of it’s “TURBO INTERCOOLED” and “ALL WHEEL DRIVE” stickers no one would have a clue about what it’s potential. It’s gone through 2 engines, 3 trannys, and a couple of turbo setups; but I will never part with this car. This is kind of a long winded message just to get a picture of my licence plate, but you guys were there for these cars in the beginning. Even though these cars continue to get up there in age I know this company with always be there, if not for this car, but for cars following in it’s steps.
