Hey Derek - Attitude Industries EFI vs PC 5

Re-read what I said before you spew off. I said MOST people...did I say YOU? NO. I also didn't get my numbers on my 'winky blinky thing' off the internet, I got them right from Derek, who BUILT IT. BIG DIFFERENCE. I just shared with others what I have, so that's not giving anyone the wrong idea. Others have given their numbers for others to try, so I guess that makes them wrong too?

Comparison between the Attitude Box and the Boondocker, or dynojot EFI controller is pretty simple it just takes an understanding of what 'LOAD' really means. Boondocker, or dynojet description of LOAD is just equivalent to throttle position. Boondocker or dynojet splits the throttle positioning into three zones and calls this the LO, MID, and HIGH LOAD positions. In realistic this is partial, mid, and full throttle. The true definition of LOAD can be easily described by these examples. You experience MORE LOAD driving up a hill versus driving on a flat. You experience MORE LOAD going through deep powder versus hard snow. Both the Attitude Box and the Boondocker or dynojet controller use RPM in their calculations. The difference is that the Attitude Box uses LOAD based technology along with RPM to make fuel modifications while the Boondocker controller uses throttle position.

The other major difference deals with visual display. The Attitude Box breaks the fuel curve down into three zones based on old carburetor tuning logic: Cruise, Acceleration, and Full Throttle. The zones correspond to color values of Green, Yellow, and Red respectively. The Attitude Box uses 8 LEDs to display 2 different things. First, the color of the LEDs tells you which zone you are currently operating in. Second, the number of LEDs will tell you the duty cycle on the engine. The Boondocker or dynojet controller uses a basic screen display with black letters. Ask yourself this question, "What is more easy?" Quick glance to see colors or quick glance to read text?

Also a simple test for you dynojet fans who love to live on the dyno is do a simple test. Your bike is usualy dyno tuned in third gear. This is trying to split the load and give you a average tune threw all the grears. If you were to have your bike perfectly tuned in third then do a 1st gear vs 5th gear dyno run and watch your AF numbers they will not over lay the same as they will with the Attitude box. This is all do to load and how we define it.

I could go on for hours here trying to make a great point and prove why to buy our product. Want a real simple answer that speaks volume. Mark Dobeck the founder of Dynojet designed this product and its basic functions many, many years ago. After 7 years away and then wanting to come back in the industrie he knew he had to build a better product. Hence the Dobeck Performance products. We have a better price point, ease of use, and I'm a rider myself.

Also the new gen 3.5 does add and subtract fuel along with accel pump options.

Thanks
Derek

Thanks Derek.

How does the AI unit detect or read "load"?
Where is is getting those inputs from?

Nicely put Derek! Thanks for the rundown on the system. I'm still keeping my 'Tude.

I'm curious about how the AI gets load as well. My guess might be reading it from the base fuel injector PWM signal itself? That's my guess based on what has been written. I'm glad to hear that at least you are trying to get a reading on load. But I'd love to know how you're doing it. If you're reading it off of the PWM signal going to the injector, how does your system differentiate between High load, cold start, or transient fuel correction? You don't want to be applying correction to the last two, but all it would see is a large PWM signal in all 3 cases. That's why it's best to determine load from the source.

Edit: so reading the tuning thread... it's done with a "delay" controlled by the green-blue, yellow-blue and red-blue settings?

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The true definition of LOAD can be easily described by these examples.

No. The true definition of load, is how much air charge is entering the engine. On a Mass Density based system, load is computed in the system by comparing the mass airflow, to the theoretical pumping volume of the enigne at the given speed. On a Speed Density system (what we have) load is computed by the Manifold Absolute Pressure sensor, measuring the pressure in the intake manifold (best), or from a look-up table based on barometric pressure and throttle position (what we have). This is why the DJ determination of load is the correct one. They're using the same input as the OEM system, then applying their correction to that.

Quote :

Also a simple test for you dynojet fans who love to live on the dyno is do a simple test. Your bike is usualy dyno tuned in third gear. This is trying to split the load and give you a average tune threw all the grears. If you were to have your bike perfectly tuned in third then do a 1st gear vs 5th gear dyno run and watch your AF numbers they will not over lay the same as they will with the Attitude box. This is all do to load and how we define it.

This is all wrong. This is the typical answer given by dyno tuners who really don't know what they are doing, and have generated a tune that isn't really working. Point blank: OEM engine management systems do not care what gear you're in. They have one load table. It works for all the gears. If there is a difference in A/F ratio in different gears, it's due to a few secondary effects. In first gear, the rise in RPM is too fast, and the commanded fuel injection is lagging behind where it needs to be. In 5th gear, the long pull time leads to heating of the engine which can lead to A/F leaning out if you're not correcting for it. A SAFE tune will work in all situations. Some dyno tuners get too close to the ragged edge in the search for more power, which is why you get reliability problems.

Now, I've played with your Demo. So now we know that you are somehow trying to measure and adjust based on load. But I don't see any RPM breakpoints. Soo.... does your system not apply different corrections at different RPMs? How is a person supposed to tune a vehicle which has had a change to it's basic volumetric efficiency at high rpm? Say you install hot cams or a tuned exhaust. You'll need MORE fuel at high RPM where the engine is pumping more air, but LESS fuel at low RPM where it's pumping less air. How does your system handle that?

On a side note, looking at your web page, I notice you're building turbo kits. I didn't realize Aerocharger was back in business. This must be the 3rd time they've started up again, they've gone in and out of bankruptcy a few times. I had an Aerocharger on my car way back in 2001. Fantastic power delivery on that thing. But eventually they all blew up. Aerocharger sold about 100 kits for the Focus back in the day, and I had the last operational unit, finally blew up in 2005 or 6. Still have it in a box somewhere, I couldn't have it rebuilt because they were out of business again at that time. I ended up just putting a Garrett on. I also see Aerocharger is now selling a turbo kit for the RZR for example, and using a 5th injector for fuel. Hopefully that works out better than it did for the Focus guys. That thing blew up a lot of engines.

Attitude industries wrote:

Boondocker or dynojet splits the throttle positioning into three zones and calls this the LO, MID, and HIGH LOAD positions. In realistic this is partial, mid, and full throttle.

Don't know where you get this from. The PCIII has 9 user programmable throttle position zones & the PCV has 10. They are right there on the map for all to see & will read out your RPM & throttle position real time on the screen. It MAY even interpolate between zones as if you have ever watched the throttle position on the PC read out real time (even with the bike off) it is a nice smooth transition, not 9 or 10 definite steps.

How does the Tude detect load when all it sees is the fire/no fire signal being sent to the injector?

R_Lefebvre: Thank you for your input with your insight into FI systems with Ford. I have no where near that quality of experience, I just read alot

Like I said this discusion can get very deep. But I will try to keep it simple and easy to read. As stated above the older PC boxes were broke down into 3 loads as is the BD box that we see in the snowmobile industry. The PC 5 is broke down even more with trying to get a more info for there tune.

The factory ECU already knows load do to all the sensors. The pulse width that is going to the injector is a simple on and off swtich but also gives out more info then just that.

First off we can get a RPM reading from when the injector fires. All boxes can determine this if they want.

Second is where the load comes in. The factory ECU can determine load by reading the rate in which the TPS is moving, and by how fast the RPM sweep is. So imagine grabbing a hand full of throttle in first gear. The TPS reads wide open and the ECU sees the RPM making a fast tac speed. This is showing very little load casue the RPM is moving so fast, and the bike can add extra fuel due to showing fast acceleration, which is a fast tac speed. Then imagine a 5th gear roll on. The TPS once again shows again wide open throttle but the bike is doing a slow RPM sweep. The ECU see's this and knows it dosent have to add very much fuel and that your lugging the motor and the bike has a heavy load. If it fueled like it did in first geat it would over fuel the bike. This is a very basic example.

So now with the example above the AI box can dertimine load by cross coutning the RPM sweep vs the rate of change of the pulse width. The ECU already knows load and we conect into to that with our patened technology. Other manufactors have to read the TPS to try and read load do to rate change since they can not copy how we do it threw our software with reading load threw pulse width, and RPM. This is also how the box the AI box changes it lights from GREEN, YELLOW, to RED. If you ride with a AI box you will see the lights turn on at diffrent RPM ranges. This is the box moving and adding fuel at diffrent loads. Also the amount of lights is the duty cycle of the injector.

I hope this gives you a basic example of how our box works. I could go into more detail but I dont think its needed, Plus I'm not a great speller or typer and it takes me awile to write a book, This could be a never ending arguement for sure. There's PC fans, and AI fans. It's just like football cheer for your team. I'd like to thank all you AI fans.


Also for the statement about how we could sell such a simplistic unit. If you saw the software and complex mapping we do I think youd understand more. Its all about the end user. If its so simple anybody can use it then they will use it. People get scared to use things they cant understand. Also Computers and everything keep getting more complex but they work on making them so anybody can use them making them less complex and easier to use. If you'd like a more complex system you can by our software program and go crazy but why do that when we already did all the homework.

Well the ECU can't rely soley on reading rate of change as the ECU is what is initiating the rate of change in the first place. It takes the facts from its 3 main men (the 3 main senors I mentioned) & simply looks those values up in a hard coded chart that gives the output for those conditions. Now, some models may examine rate of change as an after the fact, further refinement, of the base injector time like it does with its secondary men (enigne & air temp sensors, etc) but the basic required fueling has to come from basic facts--the direct reading of the sensors as I mentioned before.

Anywho. The PC basically piggy backs this system & looks up values in a table in a similar manner & in doing so has all the scenerios of load covered.

My question is: How do you/does the Attitude cover all the bases of load? The way I read it I have:

Cruise fuel adjustment
Acceleration fuel adjustment
Full throttle fuel adjustment
Full throttle RPM switchpoint

http://www.aftermarketproducts.com/instructions/EFI-ArcticM6-8Turbo.pdf

Maybe the WR model has a different setup but my questions are exactly the same.

All acceleration is not created equal (& what about deceleration where is the adjustment for that). Sometimes you accelerate slow somtimes you accelerate fast. Acceleration from 3000 RPM to 5000 RPM is not alaways in need of the same adjustment as acceleration from 9000 RPM to 11000 RPM; let alone the rate of change the rider is initialting it. Which scenerio is the 1 adjustment number adjusting? They need to be different. What if one rate of acceleration needs a large adjustment & another rate needs a small adjustment? In some cases the stock ECU map may be lean, in some cases it may be rich--how do you diferentiate & account for each at all RPM & load conditions--with only 1 number guiding all instances? If your new unit can lean the mixture how does it do so without programming in a negative number & affecting a large section or all of the map? How will it ever lean the map without programming a negative number?

I'm not going to wade in on the theory here as there are already enough people spouting on about it. I've programmed control systems for multi-million dollar pieces of rotating equipment including A/F ratio and load control and have a pretty good idea how all this works. The biggest issue in this for us is the feedback from the system to the user. If we all had easy and convenient access to a dyno, or an O2 sensor on the bike, then we would have an idea where we are at and could diddle with any of the controllers on the market to get it right. Unfortunately, we don't. Maybe someone should make an O2 sensor/display unit that is cheap enough that we'll all buy when we buy our controllers.

When I bought the AI unit last year it was because I felt the bike was lean and a little motorcycle doesn't warrant my time in re-inventing the wheel. Sometimes I think I should have gone with a PC and paid the $$$$ for the dyno tune as I still don't have the bike running at it's best. I think I'm likely rich in many spots. This brings me to the following quote:

Attitude industries wrote:

...
This is also how the box the AI box changes it lights from GREEN, YELLOW, to RED. If you ride with a AI box you will see the lights turn on at diffrent RPM ranges. This is the box moving and adding fuel at diffrent loads. Also the amount of lights is the duty cycle of the injector.
...

Does this mean that if I had the unit mounted where I could see it I would be able to tell at what throttle position it was changing from one range to another? That would help a person tune it. The instructions with it were not very useful.

ZED wrote:

Does this mean that if I had the unit mounted where I could see it I would be able to tell at what throttle position it was changing from one range to another? That would help a person tune it. The instructions with it were not very useful.

I would like to know that too. I have mine mounted under my seat so I have no idea what's going on.

You got instructions?

Has anyone with a AI unit done any dyno testing or tuning?
Are there any dyno charts that show the power/torque curves both with and without the AI unit installed?

You know, come to think of it, I haven't come across anyone with the AI who has done just that (on all 3 boards). The instructions I got came straight from Derek because when I opened the box, there weren't any.

Quote :

R_Lefebvre: Thank you for your input with your insight into FI systems with Ford. I have no where near that quality of experience, I just read alot

It's not just Ford, pretty much all fuel injection systems operate in the same way. Why? Well, because there really is only one way to do this properly. At least for the basics as I've described. Things get much more complex from here.

It sounds like the AI attempts to diffentiate load based on the fuel injector PWM. I guess that's a start, but without being able to make adjustments across the RPM range, it's just way too crude for me. You could easily get into the situation where you need to add fuel at higher RPM's, and you're drowning it at the low end. Such as... with a turbo. It's also pretty incredible these things don't even come with instructions.

Heck, for the price, I'm not even that happy with the Power Commander. $680 with the LCD display is a lot, for what it is. Not even a full ECU allowing total control, but just a piggyback tuner.

Doesen't a PCV with AutoTune solve all these issues by providing data for applying corrections to keep air/fuel ratios at the apprpriate levels for the varying condtions?

(Of course it taks some use and "programming" to get to this end state).

BigBird wrote:

Doesen't a PCV with AutoTune solve all these issues by providing data for applying corrections to keep air/fuel ratios at the apprpriate levels for the varying condtions?

(Of course it taks some use and "programming" to get to this end state).

It should as it would be basically what is done on the dyno for map creatiion but I don't know that Dynojet has all the bugs worked out of that system yet (just reading from internet posts). It spendy too & you need to add in the O2 sensor for the exhaust. As stated a PC still does not control EVERYTHING controlled by the ECU (& no one else does either).

For me thats beyond the bang for your buck tipping point (especially on a 250cc dual sport bike). For 300 shipped to my door & prgrammed with 2 year warranty it is all I was/am looking for (not so much different than anyone else here & their bang/buck tipping point; all I was looking for was acknowledgement there was a difference).

I have a Motec PLM wideband O2 sensor already that I could use, but I just have no idea how I could install it on the bike. It's half the size of the exhaust pipe!

Does the PC allow a user to do their own tuning? Do you need the extra LCD display?

Can we move on to the "how to clean your chain" thread now ?

BTW: I'd prefer Mary Kay on me than mud any day.

SheWolf wrote:

I'd rather just get on and ride the fucking thing.

...but I do like the way SW thinks.

R_Lefebvre wrote:

I have a Motec PLM wideband O2 sensor already that I could use, but I just have no idea how I could install it on the bike. It's half the size of the exhaust pipe!

Does the PC allow a user to do their own tuning? Do you need the extra LCD display?

Yes you can do your own tuning, no you do not need the display. You tune on a computer with the free software Dynojet has on their website. Download the software (for the PC V, it works on 2008 WRs fine I have one) & all the free dynojet maps (for the PC V) & take a look around, you can examine the software & existing maps before you commit to anything. The manual is there too but it is awful sparse compared to what it used to be. My full PCIII manual is 90 pages long, my PCV manual is 4 pages long but there is now a HELP tab at the top like any Windows program.

After you hit "Open Map" & select one click on the fuel >>table in the tree to see it.

The software will look VERY basic at first. Some menus can't be accessed until a Power Commander is attached. Don't fear, go into the help & look around & it will show you how to make it come alive---in fact I just found you can add a pressure axis to the PC map!! If you connect a pressure sensor & configure it you can have a full 3D power commander map If you run the bike while connected to a computer you can watch the readout of RPM, throttle position etc real time on the screen.

HELP>>MAP TOOLS>>CONFIGURE PRESSURE TABLE AXIS

Also check out

HELP>>POWER COMMANDER TOOLS MENU

The WR doesn't even get all the features the big bikes get like individual cylinder maps for multi cylinder bikes & ignition control maps. You can tweak the map for each gear & store 2 different maps & switch maps while riding on the fly if you connect a handlebar switch.

The PCV does have a 0-5V input that allows you to hook whatever sensor you want to it & do further correction.

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The WR doesn't even get all the features the big bikes get like individual cylinder maps for multi cylinder bikes & ignition control maps

that's cos it only has one cylinder!

stumo wrote:

Quote :

The WR doesn't even get all the features the big bikes get like individual cylinder maps for multi cylinder bikes & ignition control maps

that's cos it only has one cylinder!

Gee, thanks for pointing that out. Any other revelations you can share Sherlock? They don't discount the cost even though it does not have those other features.

Derek, did you do any dyno testing to "prove" your AI units improve HP and torque across the rev range of the wr?

Do you have the charts? Can you post the results if you have them?

Stock vs WR with an AI unit?

Just discovered that you can get a small Megasquirt system for the bike called a Microsquirt. About $400, full control, throw the OEM ECU in the trash. That's the way to go for me when the time comes.