Anyone recommend a Dyno Tuner in the Japan/Kanto area?

[Hella_GTR]

Hi guys, I'm getting to the point with my BCNR33 where I need to swap out the OEM ECU with a programmable fuel management system and get the car dyno tuned.  I still haven't picked my choice of fuel management yet as I'd like to pick the tuner first.  I live in Tokyo and work in Kanagawa prefecture.  My Japanese isn't the best and I'm having a hard time finding tuning shops in my area.  I know of Top Secret, JUN, Midori, and MINES, but those are all crazy expensive.  Anyone recommend any shops?  I heard E-Next is good but not sure if they do dyno tuning.  The other problem I seem to find is MINES, JUN, and MIDORI have their own ecu's rather than using LINK, Haltech, or something open sourced.  I plan to take the car back with me to the US someday so ideally want a system that can be tuned both in Japan and in the US. 

Any recommendations would be appreciated, more so if the shop speaks some English!  Thank you.

[joshuaho96]

You should talk to DCD, he's running a Haltech Elite 2500 on his car: http://www.speedhunters.com/2018/04/project-gt-r-gets-bigger-turbos/

I will say though, my philosophy regarding tuning is different from his. I think modern MAFs make more sense for this engine and I wouldn't get ID1050x injectors, there are better options out there.

[Hella_GTR]

Hi, thanks man.  I read that article and it looks like he did the tuning at Do Luck.  On Do-Luck's site, I can't find anything relating to tuning so not sure if they still do it but I'll reach out to them and Dino.  I don't think there's many haltech tuners here.  It's also pricey piece but I know it's one of the best, if not the best. I imagine it's pricey to get a GTR tuned here.  I'll keep at it.  Thanks again!

[tsuokun]

Old topic, apologies. Did you find a place?

I am running Nistune though. Looking for a shop that could at least dyno the thing and listen for knock etc.

[Hella_GTR]

37 minutes ago, tsuokun said:

Old topic, apologies. Did you find a place?

I am running Nistune though. Looking for a shop that could at least dyno the thing and listen for knock etc.

Hi Tsuo-san, I was not able to find a tuner so I followed what Nissan Prince Tokyo guys recommend and went with the Minex VX ROM.  Honestly it runs amazing so I can't complain.   I think eventually I'll need to run a Haltech or Nistune when I move overseas though.  If you find a good tuner in Kanto area, please let me know.  Take care.

[joshuaho96]

10 hours ago, Hella_GTR said:

Hi Tsuo-san, I was not able to find a tuner so I followed what Nissan Prince Tokyo guys recommend and went with the Minex VX ROM.  Honestly it runs amazing so I can't complain.   I think eventually I'll need to run a Haltech or Nistune when I move overseas though.  If you find a good tuner in Kanto area, please let me know.  Take care.

I would be careful with the fuel for sure, 100 RON only on Mines' VX-ROM unless they've learned to be less aggressive with the ignition timing. Hopefully before the end of the year I'll have my car through CA emissions and I can start doing Haltech base map development in earnest.

[Hella_GTR]

2 hours ago, joshuaho96 said:

I would be careful with the fuel for sure, 100 RON only on Mines' VX-ROM unless they've learned to be less aggressive with the ignition timing. Hopefully before the end of the year I'll have my car through CA emissions and I can start doing Haltech base map development in earnest.

Dude yeah keep me posted on your process.  You still going at it with your upgarded turbos?  I've got R1 turbos on mine and was thinking of doing a tomei engine refresh while I'm here.  I just don't think i can pass CA compliance after that.  not even sure with just the r1 turbos    And MINES is fully aware of the gas differences from the US and Japan and can make adjustments accordingly.  Once back stateside, I'd be wanting to get it properly tuned for US gas though like what you're doing.  Can't do that with a VX ROM.

[robbo_rb180]

You don't need a dyno to tune. Go do a few runs and log them, adjust fuel and then don't be greedy with timing. Also plenty of members on here can help @Dose Pipe Sutututu

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

On 05/08/2020 at 12:53 PM, Hella_GTR said:

I plan to take the car back with me to the US someday so ideally want a system that can be tuned both in Japan and in the US. 

Haltech it is then

[Hella_GTR]

lol yes yes Haltech is the best.  I was planning to wait until I get back to the US to tune the car to the fuel I'll have available.  100 RON is nice.  Hopefully I can find something equivalent in the US.  I also totally don't trust myself to tune the car myself!  Open up a branch shop in Japan!  

[admS15]

Surely there's someone in japland that will tune an apexi power fc. People throw them out these days, buy one of them with church change, get it tuned and when you finally make it back to the US, throw it out and go haltech. Just thinking out loud.

[joshuaho96]

20 hours ago, Hella_GTR said:

Dude yeah keep me posted on your process.  You still going at it with your upgarded turbos?  I've got R1 turbos on mine and was thinking of doing a tomei engine refresh while I'm here.  I just don't think i can pass CA compliance after that.  not even sure with just the r1 turbos    And MINES is fully aware of the gas differences from the US and Japan and can make adjustments accordingly.  Once back stateside, I'd be wanting to get it properly tuned for US gas though like what you're doing.  Can't do that with a VX ROM.

I have the GTIII-SS working ok on the stock ECU map, just pull the wastegate solenoid plug to run wastegate boost for now. It's clearly hitting a kind of undesirable part of the ECU map though, I've seen 19 degrees of ignition timing at WOT. Doesn't seem to knock on 91 AKI CA gas though which is good. I'm just waiting on brake rotors because the rotors are pretty badly rotted on mine and the pads are very weak, they seem glazed or something because I can't even get the car to trigger ABS. Then I need to diagnose my slightly high idle (~1050 rpm with AAC at 0% DC) and send out the fuel injectors for refurbishing and to get them characterized properly. I've noticed that the engine doesn't feel 100% when driving it around at cold start so hopefully the fuel injector cleaning helps there. Feels like the engine has inconsistent power, almost like a weak misfire. It feels perfectly fine once it warms up though. Just turbos alone won't do anything for emissions btw, neither do adjustments to the high end of the fuel/ignition tables under boost. Basically only the areas with closed loop fuel control are tested. I've seen some pretty big fireballs on throttle closure from aftermarket tunes though and that's the kind of thing that will kill your catalytic converter and any hope of passing CA emissions.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

11 hours ago, Hella_GTR said:

lol yes yes Haltech is the best

Don't say this, you'll offend many people on this forum lol.

Haltech is great for what it is, and the software UI is well thought out. It makes tuning easier (well for me) and it means less time stuffing about. Their base maps are also relatively good, meaning even less tuning time is needed for those starting from scratch.

[Hella_GTR]

4 hours ago, joshuaho96 said:

I have the GTIII-SS working ok on the stock ECU map, just pull the wastegate solenoid plug to run wastegate boost for now. It's clearly hitting a kind of undesirable part of the ECU map though, I've seen 19 degrees of ignition timing at WOT. Doesn't seem to knock on 91 AKI CA gas though which is good. I'm just waiting on brake rotors because the rotors are pretty badly rotted on mine and the pads are very weak, they seem glazed or something because I can't even get the car to trigger ABS. Then I need to diagnose my slightly high idle (~1050 rpm with AAC at 0% DC) and send out the fuel injectors for refurbishing and to get them characterized properly. I've noticed that the engine doesn't feel 100% when driving it around at cold start so hopefully the fuel injector cleaning helps there. Feels like the engine has inconsistent power, almost like a weak misfire. It feels perfectly fine once it warms up though. Just turbos alone won't do anything for emissions btw, neither do adjustments to the high end of the fuel/ignition tables under boost. Basically only the areas with closed loop fuel control are tested. I've seen some pretty big fireballs on throttle closure from aftermarket tunes though and that's the kind of thing that will kill your catalytic converter and any hope of passing CA emissions.

Wow did you already get through compliance?  Is so, that's awesome.  I was hearing it takes up to a year.  I'm glad to hear it runs ok on 91 octane with the stock tune.  I still don't know why the car couldn't pass CA compliance with a VX ROM with proper tune unless they check the ECU to see if it's been opened.  My plan was to swap out my ecu with a OEM one and hope it passes with the r1 turbos (similar to you GTIII-SS's) then put back the VX Rom ecu until I get a haltech or nistune or something of that nature to properly tune to CA 91 octane gas.  I currently don't have any fire coming out of my tailpipe.  I don't know if that would work if I went ahead with the tomei engine overhaul though.

Bummer to hear about your car troubles but I'm sure you'll learn alot along the way.  So my car also idles at about 1050rpm which Nissan says is normal.  When my car is cold it's a little twitchy but goes away quick when warmed up but not too.   I hope you get all the tweaks worked out soon.  I can't imagine how it is there without having the resources for the car like I do here.  Once you're all done it'll be so worth it.  It's such a visceral car and sounds amazing. 

[Hella_GTR]

8 hours ago, admS15 said:

Surely there's someone in japland that will tune an apexi power fc. People throw them out these days, buy one of them with church change, get it tuned and when you finally make it back to the US, throw it out and go haltech. Just thinking out loud.

There's PLENTY of Power FC's here.  I just didn't go that route as the Tokyo Prince folks and Nismo recommended to stick with the MINES VX ROM.  I know plenty of cars running well on it though, even if old technology but so is the original ECU.  I'm not sure if there's many Power FC tuners in the US but that'd be cool.  Wish there was like a system universally used lol. 

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

7 hours ago, joshuaho96 said:

I've seen some pretty big fireballs on throttle closure from aftermarket tunes

Classic PowerFC.

If you know what you're doing, you can stop that happening with modern ECUs, just not with a PowerFC lol

[joshuaho96]

4 hours ago, Hella_GTR said:

Wow did you already get through compliance?  Is so, that's awesome.  I was hearing it takes up to a year.  I'm glad to hear it runs ok on 91 octane with the stock tune.  I still don't know why the car couldn't pass CA compliance with a VX ROM with proper tune unless they check the ECU to see if it's been opened.  My plan was to swap out my ecu with a OEM one and hope it passes with the r1 turbos (similar to you GTIII-SS's) then put back the VX Rom ecu until I get a haltech or nistune or something of that nature to properly tune to CA 91 octane gas.  I currently don't have any fire coming out of my tailpipe.  I don't know if that would work if I went ahead with the tomei engine overhaul though.

Bummer to hear about your car troubles but I'm sure you'll learn alot along the way.  So my car also idles at about 1050rpm which Nissan says is normal.  When my car is cold it's a little twitchy but goes away quick when warmed up but not too.   I hope you get all the tweaks worked out soon.  I can't imagine how it is there without having the resources for the car like I do here.  Once you're all done it'll be so worth it.  It's such a visceral car and sounds amazing. 

The issue with changing the ECU map is if the tuner isn't 100% on top of things. You have to make sure everything is really optimized properly end to end. Cranking pulsewidth, cold + warm start enrichment, how rapidly you taper the initial cold start enrichment as the wall film builds and the engine no longer needs a comically rich AFR to idle stably, transient fuel control, all of it matters for the FTP-75 drive cycle. You can get away with just changing the fuel + ignition timing tables on the stock ECU for the most part and not have any issues on stock injectors + MAF, the problem is that most people and tuners don't just stop there. Changing injectors/MAFs on the Nissan ECU natively is a pretty big deal, it's not like a standalone ECU where everything is in real units like grams per cylinder or grams per second and you can just drop in a new MAF calibration curve with no other knock-on effects. It's likely that Nissan internally had that for their powertrain calibration engineers but to optimize for efficient use of memory/CPU cycles they simplify it down to something that doesn't allow for easy development. I know a guy who struggled with his Nistune map for a while, AFRs weren't really under control so it ran rich more often than not. Stuff like that will be an instant fail. Nistune has added some functions to make things easier these days but it's still not a simple table where you type in the flow rate data and the software does all the magic for you.

I'm pretty confident that there's an issue on my end, reading out the consult port shows that the AAC is trying to drop the idle by going to 0% duty cycle but can't do it. If I slip the clutch it will start opening it up and can achieve 950 rpm if I don't cause too much chaos by adjusting the clutch pedal position/adding throttle.

I'm still not actually at the point where my car is ready to be put on the dyno for testing. I'm also concerned about the paint protection film I applied potentially causing a failure of the evaporative emissions test, when I leave it in an enclosed garage I can smell the PPF when I walk in, it's a distinct acetone/nail polish smell. From what I've seen if you show up with any issues for G&K to resolve they're likely to hold on to your car for 6 months and then tell you to fix it yourself anyways when they find an issue blocking them from going further on the emissions testing, so it's better to make 100% sure there's absolutely nothing wrong with the car before you leave it with them.

[Hella_GTR]

6 minutes ago, joshuaho96 said:

The issue with changing the ECU map is if the tuner isn't 100% on top of things. You have to make sure everything is really optimized properly end to end. Cranking pulsewidth, cold + warm start enrichment, how rapidly you taper the initial cold start enrichment as the wall film builds and the engine no longer needs a comically rich AFR to idle stably, transient fuel control, all of it matters for the FTP-75 drive cycle. You can get away with just changing the fuel + ignition timing tables on the stock ECU for the most part and not have any issues on stock injectors + MAF, the problem is that most people and tuners don't just stop there. Changing injectors/MAFs on the Nissan ECU natively is a pretty big deal, it's not like a standalone ECU where everything is in real units like grams per cylinder or grams per second and you can just drop in a new MAF calibration curve with no other knock-on effects. It's likely that Nissan internally had that for their powertrain calibration engineers but to optimize for efficient use of memory/CPU cycles they simplify it down to something that doesn't allow for easy development. I know a guy who struggled with his Nistune map for a while, AFRs weren't really under control so it ran rich more often than not. Stuff like that will be an instant fail. Nistune has added some functions to make things easier these days but it's still not a simple table where you type in the flow rate data and the software does all the magic for you.

I'm pretty confident that there's an issue on my end, reading out the consult port shows that the AAC is trying to drop the idle by going to 0% duty cycle but can't do it. If I slip the clutch it will start opening it up and can achieve 950 rpm if I don't cause too much chaos by adjusting the clutch pedal position/adding throttle.

I'm still not actually at the point where my car is ready to be put on the dyno for testing. I'm also concerned about the paint protection film I applied potentially causing a failure of the evaporative emissions test, when I leave it in an enclosed garage I can smell the PPF when I walk in, it's a distinct acetone/nail polish smell. From what I've seen if you show up with any issues for G&K to resolve they're likely to hold on to your car for 6 months and then tell you to fix it yourself anyways when they find an issue blocking them from going further on the emissions testing, so it's better to make 100% sure there's absolutely nothing wrong with the car before you leave it with them.

Hi Josh, wow dealing with G&K sounds not pleasant at all.  I never understood how they have a monopoly on the system.  Hopefully the nail polish smell will go away soon but it's good you did a body coating.  I did the echelon nano-fil coating here but i think most places are behind the times here as I haven't see many places do ceramic coating.  Anyway, I did not push my car as I don't have the fuel system to do so, so I only run 1 bar and use the OEM injectors, MAF's and fuel pump.  I do not plan to go over 400hp anytime soon.  Maybe mine will pass as-is.  6 months down time for nothing doesn't sound fun...   I was having some idling issues with my car which Nissan determined to be my AAC so I had it replaced at Nissan and it ran a lot smoother after that.  Not a cheap component though.   May want to do it though in case they ever stop making that part.  Thanks for dropping knowledge on me with fuel maps and tuning and the FTP-75.

[joshuaho96]

1 hour ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Classic PowerFC.

If you know what you're doing, you can stop that happening with modern ECUs, just not with a PowerFC lol

I haven't been able to actually run the Haltech on a live engine yet so I don't really know if this makes any sense, but is there a more sensible way to do transient fueling instead of the enrich amount table being purely TPS-based? That seems like a very brittle solution compared to stuff like MAP prediction/X-Tau in Adaptronic's ECUs. Not sure if the non-linearity in the MAP signal correlates with actual non-linearity in transient fueling though, I get the impression the answer is maybe not. I saw that the axis selection allows for the enrich table to be MAF load vs TPS-derivative, I'm just not sure if that actually makes any sense.

17 minutes ago, Hella_GTR said:

Hi Josh, wow dealing with G&K sounds not pleasant at all.  I never understood how they have a monopoly on the system.  Hopefully the nail polish smell will go away soon but it's good you did a body coating.  I did the echelon nano-fil coating here but i think most places are behind the times here as I haven't see many places do ceramic coating.  Anyway, I did not push my car as I don't have the fuel system to do so, so I only run 1 bar and use the OEM injectors, MAF's and fuel pump.  I do not plan to go over 400hp anytime soon.  Maybe mine will pass as-is.  6 months down time for nothing doesn't sound fun...   I was having some idling issues with my car which Nissan determined to be my AAC so I had it replaced at Nissan and it ran a lot smoother after that.  Not a cheap component though.   May want to do it though in case they ever stop making that part.  Thanks for dropping knowledge on me with fuel maps and tuning and the FTP-75.

I learned recently that G&K is actually not a monopoly, the one other CA certified grey market emissions lab is J.K. Technologies in Baltimore, Maryland on the other side of the country. I have no idea why they're the only other one, but at some point in the past there was also NCDL which I believe worked with Canepa to get some 959s CA legal back in the day, but for whatever reason their certification lapsed and they can't do that work anymore. But yes, they're generally pretty unpleasant to work with and you need to be on guard with them. Document your car thoroughly before you drop it off, make sure the car is prepped as much as possible to reduce the time it spends there to the absolute minimum, document the car once you pick it up, etc. Personally I want to try and see if I can just send them the parts they need to modify for emissions compliance, then do the R&R with a mechanic of my choice to reduce risk further.

The coating is actually a pretty thick film of thermoplastic urethane to try and prevent rock chips from destroying Garage Yoshida's work respraying the car. I suspect the adhesives and whatever they put on the TPU to keep it from yellowing is what's causing the smell.

You may pass as-is, kind of hard to say at the moment. I would log the O2 voltage via consult and see if the engine is staying stoich where it matters, that will be a pretty important signal as to whether things will be ok or not.