What Exactly is Race Tuning?

- If you've ever been on car forums, seen listings for modified cars, or purchased upgrades for your own car, you've probably seen these words. Stage one, stage two, they should have moved on to stage three, bro. But

what

exactly

are these

tuning

stages? Does it mean I'll double my horsepower? Is it completely nonsense or is there something more? Well, today we are going to try to find out

what

those stages of adjustment really are and what they really mean. So get ready, hop aboard and let's tune into "Bumper 2 Bumper." (bright, upbeat music) Thanks to Omaze for sponsoring today's episode of "Bumper 2 Bumper." We've teamed up with Omaze once again to give away this incredible 2018 Dodge Demon and it will even come with the Demon box. (knocking on wood) Hey, hey buddy. - Stop looking at me, it's not over yet. - Doug, what's going on? - Well, I heard you like demons with cool boxes, so I thought, what the heck, maybe I'll make one.

Maybe it's a little bit like, I don't know. - Well, you know the Demon box, it comes with a set of drag tires. It has a ton of tools, it even has an ECU that allows you to run

race

gas. So is it yours? Does your box have that? - Well, since you asked, I have my pigeon, Steward, my show bird. I got a little lock of Nolan's hair, which he didn't know he had. I have my envelope full of juice. - Okay, phew! Well, maybe Doug, you should check out omaze.com/donut because they're giving away this 2018 Dodge Demon with tax and shipping included.

They will also give you $20,000 in cash. - I have already invested $15,000 in this project, that would solve many problems. - Do you know what the best part is Doug? Every donation supports Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, the same place that saved our friend James' life. - Ah OK. Oh, Steward, oh, come on, Steward. Oh, you're back. (he kisses his lips) Oh, butler. - While there is no ISO:9001 standard for stages,

tuning

companies have used these parameters to describe some real differences between modifications. but there is no standardized group for what constitutes a stage one or two modification.

So those numbers don't make sense? Well, kind of, but not entirely. Let me explain. Since the debut of the original "Gran Turismo" video game, the phrase stage to describe tuning has become common. In the game you can upgrade your car according to a series of stages. Now, this isn't a story show, so I'm not going to keep talking about "Gran Turismo," but this kind of language basically didn't exist before that game. Now, shortly after "Gran Turismo" took over our common automotive psyche, tuning companies began labeling all sorts of high-performance parts with the stage number. Were they more informative than the tuning stages in "Gran Turismo"?

Well, no, not really. Getting a stage two clutch in the late '90s was no indication of how many foot-pounds of clamping force it generated. Only it was probably stronger than the first stage clutch from the same company. At first, it was basically just a way to market these pieces. It was a way for a company to differentiate its product range by adapting a video game convention that automotive enthusiasts were familiar with. But there was no generally accepted use of terms like stage one or stage two, etc. One company's stage two widget may be less capable than another company's stage one widget, but you never knew it and you still don't know it. - Oh man. - But we'll get to that.

Stage numbers gradually evolved into a very rough guide for categorizing some improvements based on how extreme their effects are. That kind of flexible arrangement is made possible by the fundamental tuning principle that underpins this whole stage thing. The more extreme the modifications that have an effect on the air or fuel, the more it will depend on the presence of other modifications to make it work. Some upgrades, such as basic accessories, a cold air intake, or larger exhausts, will be called stage one modifications because, in many cases, they are not dependent on other upgrades. If you simply add an exhaust to a car, you probably don't need an intake to take advantage of it.

Many modern cars already have very well designed air intakes, so an aftermarket intake might simply produce a better sound and not add power. But on other cars, the intake and exhaust can work together providing some extra power when both are installed. More extreme upgrades, such as changing fuel injectors or turbos to deliver more fuel or air to your engine, are called stage two. If you add a lot more fuel and a lot more air to your engine and don't change anything else, the car will receive no benefit. In reality, it will work worse, potentially much worse.

Really extreme modifications, like a super big Honkin turbocharger, can be called stage three. If you add that upgrade and don't make many other necessary modifications, the car probably won't even run. (engine roaring) Stage three is where you're really starting to reach the limits of street drivability. There is no perfect agreement on which mods fall into which category and some people will still argue like car guys who love to argue with each other, but almost everyone can agree that a Garrett G42 turbo capable of over 1000 horsepower of strength could not be possible. be a stage one mod, whatever a stage one mod is. (bright, upbeat music) Up to this point, we've only mentioned physical modifications you can make to your car, but that's actually only half of the upgrades in progress.

The other half, and possibly the most important, is to tune your car's computer so that these modifications work harmoniously together. Hardware software. You need the software to use that fancy new hardware. An ECU tuner is a very specialized type of programmer and mega car nerd who builds and installs a custom stock chart or map. And this map tells the ECU how much fuel to send to the engine based on the current RPM and load. That is the amount of work your engine does at any given time. The upload must be based on something the computer can see.

Therefore, it is often derived from the throttle position on naturally aspirated cars and from the intake pressure on forced induction cars. And from the load, RPM, and engine displacement, the tuner can calculate how much air enters the engine across the entire rev range. Which tells them how much fuel to add to maximize combustion and therefore power at any point in that rev range. The power can be further optimized using other value tables. For example, if a car has electronically adjustable intake timing, it can be adjusted for each load point and engine speed to properly take advantage of that extra air and fuel we get from our shiny new modifications, like a bigger turbo or exhaust. greater free flow. .

That's relatively modern custom ECU tuning, but back in the day, back in the days of "Gran Turismo," creating a fuel map wasn't as easy as adjusting color values ​​on your laptop. The ECUs used read-only memory chips, so the fuel map was permanently recorded on a chip and the values ​​could not be altered directly. The tuner had to create a fuel map in binary with just a bunch of values ​​expressed as zeros and ones, so that the ECU would tell the fuel injectors to stay open and then spray just the right amount of fuel. And they had to do that for every load and RPM combination in that table, usually a couple hundred values.

They then burn that table into a custom ROM chip that would be soldered to the original ECU, replacing the original chip. This is where the term chipping comes from. An alternative to this was to simply replace the entire stock ECU with a standalone ECU. And when you do a complete ECU swap, not only do you have to program the fuel map, you also have to manually add programming for anything else the ECU needs to control. Even now, with graphical interfaces and flashable ECUs, custom ECU tuning takes a lot of time and a lot of specialized knowledge and also requires a dyno, so it's expensive.

Believe me, we spent a lot of time tuning those 350Zs in "HiLow" and it wasn't cheap or successful. (bright, happy music) So let's set up a hypothetical example. Imagine I have a car, we will call it Donut Jerwagen or Jerwagen or Jerwagen. The Donut Jerwagen. - Jerwagen. - Jerwagen, the Donut Jerwagen. (laughs) Now, this front-engine, rear-wheel drive thing is completely fictitious, but who knows, maybe Audi will pull it off. I don't know, Audi, if you see this video, if you want to build my car, contact me. It's now a 2.0L turbocharged inline four-cylinder engine that makes 200 horsepower and 200 pound-feet of torque.

Now the original parts are already pretty good and since it's well designed like most modern cars, if you start ripping out and replacing other parts you're probably going to start making the car a lot worse. But we Donut engineers work very hard to make sure everything works as a total system. That means if you want to upgrade the Jerwagen, you'll have to start thinking about parts packages. And that's

exactly

what aftermarket tuning companies do when they introduce tuning stages. And there is one aftermarket tuner known to be the best for the Jerwagen, the Jobes Performance Induction Super System.

We've got our boy Job on board. So what is Jobes' first stage update for the Jerwagen? Well, simple, update the ECU to change the boost limit and add a new fuel map to take advantage of all that extra air being pumped into the engine. It's very easy and now you have 230 horsepower and 250 pound-feet of torque. Therefore, Jobes stage one ECU tuning follows the rough standard for stage one upgrade. You don't need to make any other modifications to the car to make a profit. So what would be the second stage of the Jerwagen? Well, we're a bunch of lucky ducklings because Jobes developed a stage two ECU tune and now it comes with a slightly more complicated recipe.

The ECU tune was written for Jerwagen with a larger turbo, larger fuel pressure regulators, and larger fuel injectors to get enough fuel to use that air. So let's go ahead and replace those parts with non-original parts that were also developed by a job. This damn guy just does it all. A larger turbo, a more efficient air intake, a higher-flowing exhaust and can't forget the high-capacity squirters and we're ready to make 300 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque with our tune of stage two. And of course some people will never be satisfied. And Job knows this, so he does a stage three tune for an even bigger turbo, but this also requires a bigger fuel pump, a bigger intercooler, different camshafts, stronger valve springs, a bigger clutch. strong and recommends reinforcing the bottom end of the motor to handle all that extra force.

That's the crank, the cranks, the band journals, the band calves, all that fun stuff. For the third stage tune-up to be worth it, we have to strengthen our entire engine. But now we're making over 500 horsepower and 550 pound-feet of torque, so who are we? At this point, you should have figured out what's going on with this stage business. Each stage is a recipe for performance. Tuning companies know that there are certain cars like the Jerwagen, that many people are modifying and tuning in a similar way. Essentially, these individual tuners discovered that there were some basic recipes for making more power that just worked, but as always, the ECU needs the right program for everything to work together.

We're now making over 500 horsepower and 550 pound-feet of torque. Audi or whoever, whatever the manufacturer, I'm sure we'll get phone calls and knocks on our door to build this car. And one last piece of context to help show you why stage numbers don't make sense is to look at these two examples of some Supra 2JZ stages from suprastore.com. Now Powerhouse Racing, they sell a stage four kit for the 2J with a turbo, headers, downpipe, a new air filter, all with the claim that it will make 520 rear wheel horsepower. Or you can get this kit for the same 2J with similar parts that will make 525 rear wheel horsepower and is a stage one kit.

Zack, what the hell? So what is the conclusion of all this? Well, if it were me, I would look at each individual company's stages and then compare them to another company's and try to get an idea of ​​how comparable they are. Because if you try to compare the two on face valuesimply using stage numbers, they are meaningless. Then you must do your due diligence. Look at what parts come in each package and see how it fits your application. So you don't need to brag to your friends that you have to get through stage six admission. We all want to improve our cars and have fun driving them.

We don't need this peacock around. Thank you all so much for watching this episode of "Bumper 2 Bumper". We'll be back next week for another fire episode. In the meantime, follow us here at Donut on Instagram at @donutmedia. Follow me @jeremiahburton. Thank you all so much for watching, please like, click subscribe, we will continue to publish content in 2021. We have a lot of good things coming. So we appreciate you staying with us. Until next week, goodbye for now.