Abilor's Tuning Guide V1.0!6!21 2011

Abilor’s

Tooning Guide for Noobs

[email protected]

Version 1.0

Last Edited: June 21, 2011

Acknowledgments

This guide would not have been possible without the contributions, attention, and ass‐kickings from

several key people on the forums who have been doing this for far, far longer than I have. It’s critical

that I mention that any errors in this guide are entirely my own damn fault, and certainly aren’t a

reflection on these fine folks. In no particular order, the following individuals have been exceptionally

helpful in answering questions and filling me in on what little I know and am able to present to you in

this guide: Manelscout4life, PunjabiPlaya, Bnoon, IndianAryan, 08.5MS3, 08Cosmic3, Ckmazdaspeed3,

djuosnteisn, Boost_Creep, Dano, Phate, Speed3eak, and Wolly6973. Thanks also go to Volodya84,

rstokes620, anthony8488, and TurboDreams for serving as guinea pigs for the guide and providing early

feedback.

Special thanks go to Rfinkle2 and cld12pk2go for giving me an amazing amount of time, attention, and

knowledge about tuning for this platform. This is really their guide; I just did the typing.

Shameless Pug

I had a fantastic time writing this guide. I have every intention of

continuously editing it, refining it, and releasing updated versions as various

problems and new factors are brought to my attention. That said, it’s a lot of

work to write and keep up with the guide and provide assistance to everyone

on the forum, which I happily do because I enjoy it. However, should this

guide prove exceptionally useful to you, the noob, it would be helpful to me if

you were to PayPal a couple bucks of support; daddy needs a new exhaust manifold (with a Swain Tech

White Lightning coating). I accept donations at: [email protected]. If you haven’t yet donated

to the forums, you should do so first; keeping the place running is the top priority for all of us.

Thanks!

1 | P a g e Copyright © 2011. [email protected]

Table of Contents

Foreword ....................................................................................................................................................... 2

Chapter 1: The Fundamentals of Turbocharged Engines .............................................................................. 3

Chapter 2: Why Tune? .................................................................................................................................. 6

Chapter 3: Start at the Beginning ................................................................................................................. 8

Chapter 4: Calibrating your MAF ................................................................................................................ 16

Chapter 5: Closed and Open Loop Transitioning ........................................................................................ 22

Chapter 6: Fuel Targeting ............................................................................................................................ 25

Chapter 7: Upping Your Load Tables ........................................................................................................... 32

Chapter 8: Setting Your Boost Targets and Dynamics ................................................................................ 34

Chapter 9: Adjusting WGDC ........................................................................................................................ 40

Chapter 10: Odds and Ends ......................................................................................................................... 44

Chapter 11: Timing ...................................................................................................................................... 48

Chapter 12: Putting it All Together ............................................................................................................. 51

Appendix A: Tuning Acronym Glossary ....................................................................................................... 52


Foreword

So you’re a noob. Don’t feel bad; we were all there once. In fact, the quickest way to ascend to the

heights of being a solid tuner is to embrace your noobness and seek out all the information you can

possibly find about the Mazdaspeed platform. I’ll fill you in on a little secret: I don’t really know what

I’m doing. Like you, this platform was a total mystery to me, and I showed up on the boards in a haze,

wanting to go faster, but found ATR completely daunting. A friend of mine with a 1st gen Mazdaspeed 3

dove right in to using an AccessPort programmer, and watching him manipulate and visualize his tables

looked like a combination of rocket science and brain surgery. Worse, we had both paid hefty sums for

our cars, and the idea of blowing a rod through the block was constantly on our minds. That didn’t stop

us from throwing on intakes left and right, screwing around with motor mounts, or hacking through our

stock exhausts to add a CBE, but that all seems straightforward compared to poking your car’s brain

with your dirty, dirty fingers.

And you should be scared. Mazdaspeed cars are some of the best bang for the buck engineering money

can buy, hopped up econoboxes that have a lot to offer, but like most complex systems, there’s a lot

that can go wrong. You’re probably also like me and many others in that you bought an AP, looked for a

map that matched your mods, and then started just flooring it. Cobb warns you this isn’t the best of

ideas if you don’t have a total match, and unfortunately, they’re right. My tuning journey began in

earnest when I was running a Stage 1 map with a test pipe on my car, and I boost spiked up to 24psi

with increased loads (more on what that all means later). I hit the fuel cutoff to prevent boost spikes,

and my poor car bucked like I was learning to drive stick. A small, red siren went off in my head: ‘what

the fuck are you doing?’ and I knew it was time to bone up on the knowledge.

Hopefully you haven’t gotten quite that far, or any further at least, and like me you want good, clean,

sane fun that makes you laugh your ass off and be able to drive to work the next day, every day. You

tried to read the ATR help file, but ended up scratching your head. You asked for help on the forums,

and got called a noob brownie (what the fuck is a brownie anyway?), and were rejected help until you

donated. Now you are between a rock and a hard place, and all the information out there is too

technical and complex, or too basic as you are alternately spoon‐fed information and called out for

being a noob.

This guide is for you. It is not all‐encompassing, but it will help bridge the gap between sophisticated car

knowledge that the wizards sling left and right, and you, the noob. It will assume you are a pedal‐pusher

who can drive stick, and that’s it. If you don’t need the basic overview of how a turbo‐charged engine

works, then skip that section. But if you are really at a loss, you could use some fundamentals (and

review never hurts anyone). Also, you should know, this is a boost‐based tuning guide. Load‐based guys

will have to go elsewhere for that flavor of wizardry. If you don’t know the difference, you will by the

end of this doc, and probably opt for boost‐based tuning anyway.

Read on, McNoob…


Chapter 1: The Fundamentals of Turbocharged Engines

When I first learned how a turbocharged engine worked, I thought it was pure magic. I had a basic idea

of how internal combustion engines worked, but I had never even heard of superchargers or

turbochargers. I knew that some cars were faster than others, but other than that I was clueless. My

first car, a piece of shit Ford Festiva, seemed great to me since it was a hatchback that could fit

miraculous amounts of crap for a college student’s nomadic existence, and it was also a five speed

manual. I’ve loved manual transmissions ever since I learned how to drive stick at 16, and I had a real

love/hate relationship with the comparatively luxurious Volvo 850 GLT I drove after that Festiva. My

point is that manual hatchbacks are the love of my life, just like for some guys it’s Mustangs, or Vdubs,

or Bimmers.

So when I got somewhere in life, I decided I wanted my first “real” car that I bought new to be a

hatchback, even better, a hot hatch. I did a hell of a lot of research to find the best damn hot hatch that

2008 had to offer, and it was a tight race between a Vdub GTI, and the Mazdaspeed 3. I test drove both,

and while I would have been happy with the Vdub, the Mazda absolutely blew my mind (and I wasn’t

even going that fast). I went home from the dealership and absolutely dreamed about this car; I ran the

financing numbers, read all the reviews I could, and the more I read, the better the car sounded. That

summer I was earning a living teaching computer skills to inner city kids (I’m a computer guy more than

a car guy, though perhaps not anymore), and I remember trying to explain to the junior instructor why

this car was so damn fast for a hatchback.

The turbocharger is at the heart of it all. Again, assuming you know nothing, a turbocharger is an engine

part that produces forced induction. Typically, a naturally aspirated engine with no such parts begins its

combustion cycle by drawing in air through its intake manifold. This air travels from the outside,

through the air intake, past a Mass Air Flow (MAF) sensor, into the runners of the intake manifold, and

from there is split into a pathway into each respective cylinder. During this process, air will often heat

up a good bit, as the engine bay is hot and so is the engine. From the intake manifold, the engine goes

through a four‐stroke process. In step 1, an intake valve to the cylinder, or combustion chamber, opens

and allows air to be drawn into the cylinder. During this same instant, the Engine Control Unit (ECU)

performs calculations based on the mass of air drawn in, the accelerator pedal position, and other

factors we’ll explore later to determine the quantity of fuel to inject as a mist into the cylinder along

with the air. In step 2, the intake valve closes, sealing off the cylinder, and the rod pushes the piston

into the cylinder. This compresses the air and fuel mixture, and also heats it up even more because of

thermodynamics and the properties of gases under pressure – more on that later. At the position of

maximum compression, known as Top Dead Center (TDC), the spark plug ignites1 the air/fuel mixture,

which burns rapidly as an internal explosion driving the rod and piston in the opposite direction. This is

step 3 of the cycle, and the force of this ignition of gasoline and air is translated into force driving the

crankshaft, which is then routed via the transmission to the wheels. In the final step, the exhaust valve

1 This ignition doesn’t always take place at this time and position – see the section on ignition advance for further details.


opens, and as the rod and piston move into the cylinder chamber again, they drive out the burned

gasoline and air mixture into the exhaust manifold, where they are collected once again into a central

tube, the exhaust. These exhaust gases are very hot.

Turbochargers take advantage of this process in an interesting way. A turbocharger is essentially a pair

of turbines, or fans, connected via a rod. As the exhaust turbine spins, the connected compressor wheel

is forced to spin as well, building air pressure. The genius of a turbocharger is that it sits in between the

exhaust stream and the intake stream of a naturally aspirated engine. As the exhaust gases are driven

out of the engine, they pass over the exhaust‐side turbine of the turbocharger, and begin spinning the

compressor fan at a very high RPM. This creates a vacuum condition in the air intake stream in front of

the turbocharger. This vacuum draws in an order of magnitude more air (with oxygen, the primary

component of combustion other than the gasoline) from the surrounding atmosphere, and pushes it

into the intake manifold at a pressure far greater than atmospheric levels (this is known as boost). This

increased air pressure mixes with fuel just like a naturally aspirated engine, and is ignited within the

engine’s cylinders. The cylinders themselves are also under increased pressure, and upon combustion,

produce more torque and horsepower than they otherwise would have.

The primary disadvantage of this process is that it creates an enormous amount of heat. The exhaust

gases driving the turbocharger are incredibly hot, and this acts to heat up the air that comes through the

intake. Increased pressure or not, the temperature of this air would seriously harm the engine

overtime, producing knock in the cylinders. Knock, put simply, is a result of premature ignition of the air

fuel mixture in the cylinder, and this often takes place because the cylinder or the air/fuel mixture have

overheated to the point of introducing temperatures that prompt combustion independent of the spark

plug firing event.

Several things are used to combat engine heat and prevent knock. The first is the use of higher octane

gasoline meant for performance cars that tend to have higher engine compression and temperatures.

Higher octane gas ignites at a higher temperature, it’s only real benefit; it otherwise has the same

energy content. I have to explain this when I tell my wife her 120 horsepower four‐banger doesn’t need

89 or 93 octane gasoline; it’s not a “treat” for a car that doesn’t need it. The second method is

introducing an intercooler in the plumbing between the turbocharger and the intake manifold of the

vehicle. An intercooler is similar to a radiator; hot gases enter on one end and are exposed to a very

large surface area in contact with a significantly cooler ambient environment. The gases are cooled, and

re‐introduced into the throttle body and intake manifold of the engine. Intercoolers vary in their design

and efficiency (Front Mount and Top Mount intercoolers being the primary examples), but the basic idea

is the same: cool off the stream of air entering the engine that was made hot by the turbocharger in the

first place.

There are other tricks for sure that allow you to cool off air before it enters the engine; tuners will pay

close attention to their BAT’s (Boost Air Temperatures) to make sure those tricks are working. Cooler

BAT’s reduce knock, create more horsepower (because cooler air has a higher oxygen content, and thus

burns more powerfully), and also reduce Exhaust Gas Temperatures (EGT’s) to a limited degree, which is

better for the turbocharger system itself. A turbocharger works very well so long as it is within its


efficiency range; when it creates too much air pressure, it heats up dramatically beyond its operating

limits, which is not only bad for engine safety and performance, but can also warp the connecting rod of

the turbines among other scary problems.

So there you have it. To review, turbochargers pressurize air prior to entering the engine, creating a

system of forced induction. This pressurized air mixes with an also increased mix of fuel, and combusts

with more power in a pressurized cylinder, creating dramatically higher horsepower and torque than a

naturally aspirated engine. The limits of the system are the heat produced as a byproduct of the

process, which can cause pre‐ignition of the fuel mixture and cause engine parts to fail prematurely.

The rest is just details…


Chapter 2: Why Tune?

Tuning is a labor of love. It’s risky. It’s tedious. It can be maddeningly frustrating. So why do it?

For one thing, it helps if you have the kind of personality that can’t leave well enough alone and likes to

fuck with things. I came to tuning from an extreme PC overclocking environment, so producing huge

amounts of power out of a conventional platform, and then dealing with the heat and ensuing risk it

presents to components was nothing new to me. That said, there’s a big difference between a $350

quad‐core chip and a $26,000 car (with financing to boot). You have to balance the risk with sanity, and

when things to start to go bad, it’s important to have already set limits for yourself and not to panic.

The WORST thing that can happen is that you can blow the engine, but the fact that you’re reading this

already suggests you have the proper mix of balls, fear, and ambition; welcome!

The Mazdaspeed 3/6 ECU is a marvelous little device, as are all the engine sensors that connect to it. It

is a quick, robust, and highly malleable unit that hot rodders and tuners only a decade ago would have

loved to get their hands on. It has a variety of safeguards in place that can prevent you from ripping a

hole in your block, so long as you pay attention to its signals. For an experienced tuner, high BAT’s, lean

AFR’s, and knock retard are like screams of agony the engine is producing, and you will need to become

sensitized to this feedback. I strongly encourage you to get an OBD‐II monitoring computer like a

Dashhawk (or similar, since it was discontinued), or at the very least monitor knock retard on your AP in

real time for a good length of time to make sure your tune is solid.

But again, why are we putting ourselves through all this? In a word: performance. The Mazdaspeed 3/6

has a revolutionary engine for such a modest car, and the fact that it is turbocharged out of the box

makes it ripe, low‐hanging fruit for tuners. The engineers at Mazda made a stout little engine paired

with an equally stout transmission, and coupled it with a Direct Injection/Spark Ignition (DISI) fuel

injection system that even the current muscle cars don’t have2. DISI is traditionally difficult to set up

and work with, and often regarded as finicky by EFI tuners in the past (others may claim otherwise, but

that’s the rep the author has come across). It pays enormous dividends in fuel economy, performance,

and all‐around precision, however, and when paired with forced induction, it’s a winner.

That said the trend amongst car companies, perhaps fairly deserved, is to assume that the average car

consumer is both drunk and mentally retarded. For this reason, the stock configuration, or tune, of

most vehicles is very conservative, and assumes that maintenance will be done sporadically,

infrequently, and performed by individuals known as ‘dealership’ mechanics who are also drunk and

mentally retarded. Mazda engineers, along with other automotive manufacturers, have to account for

this when they release an ECU tune on their hardware platform into the wild, and the result is a very

safe, boring vehicle compared to what it could be.

2 As of this writing, it is rumored that Ford may include direct injection in its 5.0 liter Coyote engines as the next big step up for what this author feels is the current muscle car king.


What are these limitations? Well for one, the engineers try to eliminate all noise, vibration, and

harshness (NVH) in the cabin so wives, girlfriends, and female co‐workers don’t freak out about the

feeling of the air conditioning turning on when you have a set of stiff motor mounts; they are frightened

by all that stiffness, and the vibrations get them worked up. So the Japanese throw on these flaccid

mounts that are prone to engine lash, a phenomenon wherein power is applied in a spirited fashion, and

the engine moves around in the engine bay rather than put power down into the road where it belongs.

Fueling is also very limited; the engineers assume that you will mistakenly fill up with 87 octane gas

occasionally at a Mom and Pop shop while you go get more Beast or PBR to keep yourself in a state of

constant inebriation. For this reason, they program the ECU to shoot more gasoline into the engine than

is needed for a good, clean burn. Not all that gasoline is used, of course, and the leftover droplets glom

onto the walls of the cylinders and throughout the manifolds, where they can form deposits and sludge

over time. This is known as running rich, and the reason engineers choose to do this is that it cools the

cylinder walls, thus preventing knock; sludge is better than knock, they figure, though both are deadly

given enough time.

A variety of other limitations are present for economic reasons. Remember, it’s a hopped up economy

car; the attractive price is due in part to a few corners being cut. If you want quality parts out of the

box, go buy an Audi or some shit. But with a little extra cash, a set of hand tools, and a Friday night in

the driveway, you can remove many of these restrictions, most of which have to do with airflow.

Mazdaspeed vehicles, like many other cars, come with restrictive air intakes (they look like huge, ugly,

black plastic boxes), poorly flowing manifolds (compared to performance manifolds), and restrictive

exhausts which are bogged down with catalytic converters that adhere to strict emissions regulations,

even if your state isn’t that strict (god knows Louisiana isn’t). Freeing up your engine’s “breathing” will

work wonders for both fuel economy and performance, and is usually one of the first mods done.

The myriad of possible hardware modifications is beyond the scope of this guide; consult the forums for

further advice on that topic. I will assume, however, that you likely have an upgraded air intake, either

an SRI or a CAI; possibly a test pipe; and possibly an upgraded intercooler, in addition to a variety of

other hop‐ups such as mounts, short‐shifters, colder plugs, turbo timers, gauges, etc. If you don’t have

any of that stuff, that’s fine too, though you will find that the more you get serious about squeezing

every last bit of performance out of your car, the more you will start to accumulate that stuff.

Returning again to ‘Why tune?’ you will find that in order to reap the most benefits out of any hardware

modifications, you will need to adjust certain parameters on the ECU. Some mods will actually require

that you adjust the ECU programming in order to operate safely. Optimizing your ECU programming

through the tuning process will make both you and your motor happy; you will undo the assumption

that you are an ignorant, drunken hillbilly, and in return, your rather vanilla new vehicle will transform

into a badass hot hatch that blows off the line past poseur ricers and muscle cars alike. The trade‐off is

that like a woman that gives you special attention the way you like it, she is a little more high‐

maintenance than the other girls; you’ll get used to each other’s needs.


Chapter 3: Start at the Beginning

The beginning. Nothing is more daunting that starting from scratch. You’re not sure where to go, but

you know you need to get there. This section of the guide will help you establish a baseline for your

vehicle, and also verify that everything is currently in proper working order. I’m a firm believer in

keeping tuning as safe as possible given what’s been invested (or will be) in these cars, so it’s important

to do a reality check before getting into the thick of things.

The first question you need to ask yourself is: Is my car running properly right now? You are probably

thinking yes, but how can you be sure? Just because your car isn’t spewing oil or coolant all over the

place, or bucking when it hits cutoffs does not necessarily mean that everything is just right. The only

way to really know for sure, aside from a courageous inspection of your car’s physical layout where you

go out of your way to look for problems, is through logging.

Logging is something you will need to get very accustomed to, and lucky for you, the AP is one of the

best loggers out there. Before you even think about kicking your tune into high gear, you need to set up

your AP to log the following parameters at a minimum:

Knock Retard

Boost

Boost Air Temperatures

Accelerator Pedal Position

Throttle Position

Long Term Fuel Trims

Short Term Fuel Trims

RPM

MAF Airflow (in g/s)

Actual AFR

Calculated Load

Direct Injection Fuel Pressure

Spark Advance

Wastegate Duty

Older AP’s will only be able to grab the above parameters at about one or two a second, which is

enough to get started. If you have a newer AP, those log faster, so you should be to grab three or four

data points a second. Obviously more data is better, but if you have an older model, don’t despair. As

far as actually setting up the AP, you can look at their documentation on the matter; it’s pretty

straightforward. If you’re already good with cell phone settings, it really shouldn’t be a big deal. While

you’re setting up your AP, it would be wise to get the latest firmware for the device, the latest versions

of the Off The Shelf (OTS) pre‐made maps, and also be sure you have a copy of the latest version of

Access Tune Racer; e‐mail Travis in the Cobb forums if you are having trouble locating these files.


Once you configure your logging parameters, you can go ahead and start to produce some logs. On your

own, you should practice creating voluminous logs and inspecting all the different outputs produced.

This is your car talking to you, and you need to learn to listen. If you have children, or you are used to

working with them, it’s similar to an infant or toddler making basic verbalizations, from which you will

have to interpret hunger, thirst, boredom, anger, or dirty diapers. Learning these signals will serve you

well.

A few words on creating logs. ATR outputs logs in a .CSV format, or as data elements separated by

commas in a large text file. Microsoft Excel is very good at opening and interpreting these files.

Chances are you will be using Excel to view and format your logs. If you do not have access to Excel, you

could try using Open Office as an editor, which will also more than likely work just fine (never done it

myself).

The logs you create will be very large in their raw form. Folks on the forum don’t need to see your

entire log. There are only two kinds of logs we want to see, and only one we really care about: MAF

logs, and WOT logs. MAF logs and how to record them will be in the next section of this document.

WOT logs are created when you push the pedal to the floor, and see what the car has to offer when it is

at Wide Open Throttle. The above parameters will be recorded, and the log will tell us how your car

responds under this maximum stress and loading.

There is a particular way to do WOT logs. You should find a nice, quiet road that is free from police

presence; a radar detector is of assistance here. Make sure that your car is warmed up (has been

running for at least ten minutes), and that the road is nice and level; avoid curves. Get her up to speed,

and settle into third or fourth gear. From there, you want to FLOOR IT from 2500 RPM to 6500 RPM. In

third gear, this will move from a speed of about 30 mph to 80 mph in approximately 6 – 8 seconds,

depending on your mods; plan accordingly in choosing your location. A fourth gear WOT, which is

preferable but harder to do often in my opinion, should take you from 40 mph to about 100 mph in

about 7 – 9 seconds, again depending on your mods.

Assuming you have configured your AP to record all the necessary parameters for adjusting your tune,

and you’ve found a good spot to take several WOT logs, we should now take a look at an example of a

data log and what the various parameters mean. Take a look at the formatted excel log below from one

of my WOT runs; your logs should look similar:


Fig. 1: Sample WOT log

Let’s break down what we’re looking at here. First of all, your column headers might be in a different

order than mine, so don’t freak out if your logs are a little different. The basic elements are all the

same. Beginning with the first column, you are seeing the elapsed time of the WOT run out to

hundredths of a second. This time element is very handy; if you are performing your WOT runs in a

consistent manner, you will be able to gauge your progress by how quickly you move through the 2500 ‐

6500 RPM range. For example, when I began my tune, it took me about 7.5 seconds. By the end, I had

it down to about 6 seconds. That 1.5 seconds I shaved off is the proof in the pudding that my tune

added some serious grunt to the car. The captured data points can vary depending on how many

elements you are logging, and what version of the AP you have. Older versions may only log 1 or 2 data

points per second, as mentioned previously.

In the next column, you see the Accelerator Pedal Position, or APP. Note that this is VERY different from

the Throttle Position, TP. APP should shoot up to the 99.06 value during a WOT run, indicating that I’ve

got the pedal mashed to the floor. With TP however, and we may as well discuss it now, you see that

the engine throttle is only at 76.44 for most of the WOT run. This is somewhat mysterious, and can vary

based on factors like elevation and other things (look to forums for more info), but the important thing

to take away for now is that we want to tune for the engine’s TP, not for APP. Just note what it is, and

file it away for later; we’ll be talking about it.

Next up is one of the more critical values, the Air/Fuel Ratio, or AFR. Remember in the turbocharger

basics section where I discussed that air is being drawn into the engine, along with a misted injection of

gasoline? This little number quantifies that amount in a very precise way. Now is a good time to

introduce the concept of a stoichiometric mixture. With respect to gasoline and air, their stoichiometric

ratio by weight is 14.7 units of air to 1 unit of gasoline. This value is sometimes expressed as 1 lambda,


or 1 λ, which is more convenient than constantly writing “14.7:1” all the time. The significant thing

about this ratio is that it is the perfect mix for combustion wherein all the oxygen in the air and all the

gasoline are combusted. For richer AFR’s, there is gasoline leftover (which has a cooling effect, as

mentioned), and for leaner AFR’s, there is oxygen leftover that could have been burned.

Here’s what you really need to know about AFR’s: you generally want to see them in a range from 14.7

at idle, down to about 11.8 at WOT. Sitting in between there is great. A few important caveats are in

order here though. First, these cars run much lower than 11.8 at WOT on the stock tune; they are

notoriously “pig rich.” The quick accumulation of soot in the tailpipe is indicative of this. If I recall

correctly, the stock WOT AFR is something like 10.8. This richness protects you in the event of problems

or failures though, so don’t stop reading this guide, set your commanded AFR to 11.8, and drive off;

there’s more to it than that. Setting an aggressive AFR means you will always need to get quality gas

from reputable chains (no Mom’n’Pop), and you will have to be very vigilant about monitoring for knock.

Now, if you look at my log, you will see something interesting. First of all, I am commanding an AFR of

11.8, meaning I told the ECU to shoot for 11.8, but to compensate if there are any problems. For most

of the run I’m close to target (11.76), but now is the time to introduce you to another column: knock

retard (KR). In cells H10 – H12, a little bit of knock was occurring during the WOT run. Here’s another

parameter you need to keep in mind: KR values of less than 2 are not considered “dangerous.” They

should bother you, and you should try to prevent them, but don’t lose your mind about it. In my log, the

KR is .35, nothing to freak about, but you’ll notice that AFR drops to 11.32. What happened here? The

ECU detected that knock was occurring, and richened the stream of gas. The extra gas cooled and

stabilized the compression in the cylinders, and the KR went away. This is a relationship we will

continue to explore throughout this guide.

Remaining introductory for the moment though, here’s another big column: boost. This one is the

moneymaker, the quantification of how much pressure your turbocharger is creating, just cramming air

into the intake manifold. Boost is a huge topic, and all the various possibilities regarding creating and

holding it are beyond the scope of this document. Suffice it to say, however, a smooth, constant boost

curve is better than a sporadic one. For setting up your basic tune, you are going to want to use this

column to confirm whether or not you are hitting your boost targets, and if your boost curve is smooth.

Boost “spikes” are something to be avoided; these occur when you are targeting, say, 19psi of boost,

and upon initial spool up of the turbocharger you hit 22psi. 22psi might feel awesome when you first

start your WOT, but spiking to that too early on, especially if you are on the stock turbo (the K04), is a

recipe for issues down the line. Smooth, clean, and precise is how you want to roll.

Another value of the boost column, aside from being at the heart of the tuning process, is that if you just

can’t seem to get your boost dialed in, or hit a boost target that is very reasonable, it can indicate a

larger issue with your car’s plumbing. Boost leaks can and do occur. When I installed my TMIC, for

example, over time the stock hose was rubbing on the TMIC inlet in a way that created a small hole. The

hole in the hose expanded over time, and I lost power in a very gradual way. A few weeks later, I

noticed the issue, and installed some StreetUnit boost tubes. The pickup in power was amazing; had I


been logging I would have noticed right away. That’s the advantage to logging, and why you should

create some logs to get a baseline before you do any major modifications.

The next column is Boost Air Temperatures, or BAT’s. Reflect again that heat is our enemy here, causing

knock and other issues. Nothing is worse than having the deck stacked against you on the heat front.

Here in Louisiana, we hit upper 90’s from June through September every day, with plenty of heat in

front of and behind that season. Texas, Southern California, and other Gulf Shore states have similar

temps, but even Maine will get a few days at those highs. BAT’s are driven up during hot weather, as

already heated air gets compressed by the turbocharger, and is cooled less efficiently by the intercooler

because of the high ambient temperatures. The BAT is the temperature of air physically entering the

intake manifold and the cylinders. High BAT’s will give weaker combustion because the heated air is less

dense, and therefore has less oxygen. Worse, they will also drive up the Exhaust Gas Temperatures

(EGTs), which makes the turbo even less efficient. Worst of all, too much heat causes knock, or early

detonation of the air/fuel mixture, risking the engine. Generally, a BAT of less than 125F or so is

acceptable for performance. Higher than that is usually a result of “heat soak” of the intercooler

(driving helps alleviate this with airflow, or an FMIC), and there’s no such thing is too low of a BAT,

assuming the car is functioning properly; we’ll talk more about this later when we cover methanol

injection.

The next column is the calculated engine load. This is a little trickier to connect with, since the load

number is somewhat abstract; it doesn’t easily lend itself to a correlation with units in mph, psi, or

voltage. It does represent the power output of the engine, however, and is indicative of higher orders of

engine output. A few concepts are worth discussing here. First of all, for boost‐based tuning, we are

attempting to set, hit, and hold a particular boost target in order to make more power. Load‐based

tuning, on the other hand, sets a particular load target to hit and hold. What’s the difference? Well,

when we set a boost target, the ECU will adjust the car’s outputs to hit the target, meaning you will see

load and a few other parameters vary in order to meet the target. Load‐based tuning holds the load

constant while varying factors like boost. Which is better? Well, that’s like asking if cake or pie is better,

everybody feels a little differently. Each has their advantages and disadvantages.

Boost‐based tuning does appear to be significantly easier to produce a solid tune. Its Achilles Heel is

that during colder months, the engine load can go up significantly, and in some cases, produce a few

problems. A boost‐based tune that runs great in July may run like shit in January, especially if you live in

places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, or Ontario. You will need to monitor your logs closely when

the temperatures plunge. Generally, you will see peak loads a little north of 2 in summer months, and

this will taper. In winter, it may go as high as 2.8 or 3.0; this is ok with proper mods, but seek more

advice in forums. Load‐based tuning, as a comparison, won’t vary as much seasonally, but can create

boost spikes to meet load targets. This is fine when you have placed safeguards in place, but for noobs,

it’s a little trickier than boost‐based tunes. I have dealt with boost‐based tuning exclusively, but if you

feel you want to try load‐based tuning down the road, there are certainly plenty of folks on the forums

who’ve done it successfully and would be happy to help (if you have donated to the boards, of course,

and ceased to be a brownie).


Looking at my log, you can see I hit a peak load of 2.23, which then tapers down significantly. This was

in the upper 70’s; in the upper 90’s, my loads peak at about 2.1 or so. In January, it will likely be 2.5.

What I would recommend taking away from this is that when you perform your baseline logs, see what

kinds of loads you are hitting. As you tune, the proof that you are making more power will show up as

increased engine loads. This is good, but only up to a point; you don’t want to overload the car. I can’t

give you a magic number, like say, over 3.2 will break shit; you will need to keep an eye on things

yourself.

Fuel pressure is the next column. This will show you the awesomeness of the DISI fueling system in

action. A word on fuel pumps. The stock fuel pump is pretty good, and is the same high‐pressure pump

in some turbocharged Audi and VW applications. That said, it falls prey to the econobox condition of

being good enough for the car as it’s packaged to the public, but for beefed up performance, it can start

to fail over time. This log looks pretty good, with fuel pressure well north of 1600 psi. That’s a lot of

pressure, but it’s needed because the gasoline is injected directly into the cylinder as a fine mist; the

surface area of that mist is what allows for rapid, precise combustion and cooling on the cylinder walls.

Without this high pressure, the engine will not perform as well, possibly knocking. As you tune and

upgrade your car, you will want to watch and be sure your fuel pressures do not drop below 1200psi; if

they do, you are playing with fire. You will want to consider upgrading your fuel pump, either buying a

new one outright (about $1,000, minus a core return refund of about $350), or buying new pump

internals offered by KMD or Autotech (about $350). Stage 1 guys with intakes may not need to worry

about this, but anyone with a test pipe or a downpipe should strongly consider upgrading their pump.

It’s worth it in piece of mind alone.

A note on Genpu’s: Genpu’s (gen 2’s) have a radically different ECU fueling logic from the Gen 1’s. IT has

been noted by the Cobb team that if fuel pressure ever drops below 1600 psi, then the ECU will

immediately increase the Injector Pulse Width of the fuel injectors, drastically reducing pressure. It

would be as if an EMT found you bleeding, so he cut open your femoral artery to help you. For this

reason, Genpu folks who want aggressive tunes MUST upgrade their fuel pump. Fuck your life.

We went over knock retard, so let’s look at the LTFT column. There’s something interesting going on

here in this log. First of all, let’s discuss how the computer performs fueling tasks. In the exhaust

stream of your car there are two oxygen sensors. These sensors are designed to operate in the extreme

temperature of the exhaust stream, and are constantly sampling how much oxygen is present post‐

combustion. Oxygen that is present, and how much, is used to calculate the AFR present in the

cylinders. There’s a catch here though; these readings are only performed during closed loop

operations, where the ECU has access to data from the Mass Air Flow sensor (MAF) as well as the

oxygen sensors. Closed loop operation is the kind of driving you do around town, cruising on the

highway, and in the parking lot. The ECU is constantly monitoring data, and making adjustments to how

much fuel it is injecting to hit a targeted AFR. The LTFT is a series of average corrections the ECU makes

over time based on the Short Term Fuel Trims (STFTs). STFT’s are more immediate adjustments (see

that column as well). LTFT’s can thus be used to demonstrate how well calibrated your MAF is (see next

section), and what corrections are being made.


That said, closed loop operation gives way to open loop operation when the car is at WOT. Open loop

operations rely on the MAF voltage sensor reading and the open loop fueling tables to command a

particular AFR. The commanded AFR and the actual AFR are not necessarily the same, so this is again

something you will want to inspect in your logs to make sure that you are able to set an AFR target and

hit it, really hit it. If you are commanding 11.8, and hitting 11.36, you are off; 11.76 would be spot on.

Returning to LTFT, you can see where your car made the closed loop to open loop transition by when the

LTFT changes from a certain value to ‐0.16 as a constant trim. In my case, this is the transition in cells

I17 and I18 from 2.18 to ‐0.16. If we reference the calculated load column, we see that I was at a load of

1.96 halfway through the WOT log before I transitioned; this is undesirable. You want to transition into

open loop at the beginning of the run; the next sections will show you how to this.

MAF voltage is not something you will be looking at very often, but as a point of reference, the MAF

sensor is actually a little piece of wire that sits in the intake stream. This wire follows a very specific

physical law governing how well electricity is conducted under heat. The wire is heated up, and as the

air passes over it, the cooling effect allows a higher voltage rating to be achieved (more conduction of

electrons) with the same constant input. From this voltage, the ECU can very precisely gauge how much

air is entering the engine, as seen in the next column, Mass Airflow measured in grams per second (g/s).

Mass airflow is a good thing; the higher the number, the deeper the engine is breathing, and the more

power is being made. For a stage 1 tune, hitting 230 is pretty good. For stage 2, hitting 280 is pretty

good. I hit 300 once, it was great, but higher temps will kill this off. Again, you should note your log’s

breathing deeper and making more power.

RPM is the engine’s revolutions per minute, how fast the crankshaft is turning because of cylinder

combustion. It’s a useful reference for your tables, since you will be commanding certain values at

certain ranges of the RPM. For now, just be aware it exists, and that it should be increasing in a smooth

linear fashion.

We discussed STFTs, so let’s move on to ignition advance, a tricky one. Recall earlier my discussion of

Top Dead Center, the position where a cylinder is under a state of maximum compression of its air/fuel

mixture, and the spark plug ignites the mixture. That’s actually a very simple way of putting it. In

reality, the flame front is the leading edge of the combustion of the air/fuel mixture. As the RPM’s of

the engine increases, it becomes desirable to ignite and produce this flame front in advance of the rod

and piston’s position relative to the crankshaft. The best position for achieving torque is actually about

fifteen degrees past top dead center; this little bit of leverage is very “torque‐ey” as force is applied to

the crankshaft, but takes maximum advantage of the four‐stroke cycle. At higher speeds, we want to

advance the timing of our sparkplug ignition to achieve this sweet spot of leverage on the crankshaft.

Luckily, your ECU will do most of this calculation for you. Advanced tuners will increase their maximum

timing thresholds, which will allow the ECU to create more ignition advance to make more power. A

word of caution however: ignition timing, improperly calibrated, puts your engine at serious risk! Most

noobs should leave this section alone, and simply verify that their ignition curve is a smooth, linear

progression of values. In my log, it’s a smooth, stable increase in advancing the flame front to make

safe, increased power. Yours should be too. Ignition timing is a black art; leave it be for now.


We discussed Throttle Position already, and speed is self‐explanatory (if it’s not, put this guide down and

let your daddy do the tuning), so let’s tackle the final column, the Waste Gate Duty Cycle. This is an

interesting one, and a spot that a lot of noobs are simply not aware of. We covered the basics of a

turbocharger, but this is a piece of significant detail. I want you to imagine you are standing next to a

waterfall, and that you have a bucket with a bottom that is hinged. You have in your hand a piece of

rope; when you pull on the rope, it closes the bottom of the bucket, and when you let go of the rope,

the bucket’s bottom opens back up. Also connected to your bucket is a pipeline that channels water

back into your camping area or farm or whatever (it’s an analogy, go with it). As you stand there, you

leave your bucket in the waterfall such that while you are relaxed, the water from the waterfall just

flows right through it. When your bro back at the camp site yells to you, “Now dude!” you pull the rope,

and the waterfall fills the bucket quickly, channeling the water back to your bro at the other end. While

your bro is enjoying that rush of water, your arms start to get damn tired since the waterfall is making a

lot of pressure; eventually, you have to let go, or your arms will fail, and possibly break.

A wastegate is like that bucket, and you are the solenoid that controls the door at the bottom of the

bucket. The waterfall is your car’s exhaust stream, and your bro is the ECU; the campsite is the intake

manifold. The wastegate sits in the car’s exhaust stream, and when the ECU yells, “Now dude!” it sends

current through the solenoid (known as the duty cycle), which closes the port on the wastegate. When

that happens, the exhaust (waterfall) doesn’t flow effortlessly through the wastegate (bucket), but

instead is diverted to spool up the turbocharger to create boost. Like you, however, the wastegate can

only take so much stress before it fails or breaks.

This column shows you how much the wastegate is closed as a percentage, and thus how hard it is

working to build boost. This value will increase at higher RPM’s, showing you how much the wastegate

has to close to match the boost target. You don’t want to be in a situation where the wastegate value is

at 99% for a long time. This is like your buddy enjoying all that water back at the campsite while your

arms are breaking; fuck him3. You should try and tune such that your wastegate rises fairly linearly, and

doesn’t go much higher than 85%. That’s comfortable optimization with the long term picture in mind,

especially for those of you who are tuning your daily driver.

Another note on Genpu’s: I do my tuning mostly on Gen 1 Speed 3’s. I’ve been told by rfinkle2 and

others with the Genpu platform that the WGDC on these vehicles tends to run higher than the Gen 1

cars. If you are running a Genpu, and you are seeing high WGDC in your logs, there’s probably less

reason to fret than if you have Gen 1. For both generations, you will know if your WGDC is really maxed

out because those BAT’s will start to really shoot up. In my opinion, however, it’s already too late if you

are seeing that; you are risking your wastegate and should back off. Smart people say I worry too much,

but those people also tend to have two or three cars they screw around with. I don’t.

Now go make some logs, groom them, and post them up there for folks to look at and help you study.

3 Though maybe your friend isn’t a total douche if he does this to you: http://www.mazdaspeedforums.org/forum/f9/fear‐not‐100‐wgdc‐83000/


Chapter 4: Calibrating your MAF

Okay, you’ve made it this far. By now you should understand the basics of a turbocharged engine, you

should have made several logs to gauge your setup, and you’ve installed Access Tune Racer, or ATR.

This will be your first tuning exercise, and it will take some time, which is good; you’ll have a chance to

study.

Calibrating your MAF is somewhat tedious and time‐consuming, but it is vital that it be done correctly,

especially if you have done any type of intake modifications. The MAF comes pretty well‐calibrated

from the factory, so I wouldn’t expect a stock vehicle to need it, but even then you might benefit from

going through this exercise. The reason it is critical is because down the road, when you are

commanding leaner AFR’s in open loop, these commands need to be spot on. The ECU is smart, but it

can only do as well as its sensors and if they are feeding it good information. Calibrating your MAF will

make the ECU’s commands for air and fuel targeting safe within the first order of magnitude, and highly

performing in the second.

To begin with, you may as well examine your LTFT’s to see how much work you have to do. The way I

like to do this informally is to turn on my AP and live monitor the LTFT section. Then just drive to get

some groceries, or whatever shit you like to do on a Saturday. Now is a good time to take the wife,

girlfriend, or kids, as you won’t be hitting it hard, but you do want to go through plenty of city traffic and

don’t be afraid to drive right up that onramp. While all this is going on, your AP will let you know the

lowest and highest thresholds of LTFT. If you’re like most people who show up on the boards needing

help, you’ve probably already flashed a stage 1 map, and now your LTFT’s will be in the range of ‐15/15,

or even a touch worse.

Cobb recommends that you calibrate your MAF to be within ‐8/8. From now on, I will refer to this as an

absolute value (an expression of magnitude independent of being positive or negative), or abs(8).

Personally, I think that even abs(8) is rather imprecise for a good tune. I try to be within abs(2) at all

times, though weather, A/C, and simple entropy can thwart you. You should definitely tune the

calibration to within abs(4) across the entire MAF range if you want to feel successful about this

exercise, in my opinion.

Ok, as for the actual calibration, this is the technique as far as the driving. Take her out to a nice quiet

road far away from muggles4 (non‐performance drivers), and set your AP to live monitor your Mass

Airflow in grams/second while logging. At idle, this value should be at around 3. Get into 2nd gear going

rather slow, about 2,000 RPM. What you need to do now is increase your acceleration smoothly and

slowly through the whole power band while you watch the g/s readout. You want to hit numbers

through the whole spectrum, from 5 all the way up to around 130 g/s. It will take some practice to get

this right; it will be the slowest way you ever get close to redline. Do this three times, and you will have

captured your data.

4 Aside from the Harry Potter reference, this is also what geo‐cachers call regular folks; it kind of caught on with me.


It ought to look something like this:

Long Term FT (%)

MAF Voltage (V)

Mass Airflow (g/s)

‐4.06 1.3 3.51

‐4.06 1.31 3.51

‐4.06 1.27 3.66

‐4.06 1.23 3.26

‐4.06 1.23 2.98

‐4.06 1.54 3.02

‐4.06 1.23 4.06

‐4.06 1.3 2.94

‐4.06 1.3 3.7

‐4.06 1.29 3.75

‐4.06 1.3 3.42

‐4.06 1.3 3.51

‐4.06 1.3 3.56

‐4.06 1.32 3.51

‐0.16 1.54 3.96

‐0.16 1.67 6.35

‐0.16 1.71 7.89

‐0.16 1.7 8.79

‐0.16 1.79 8.45

‐0.16 1.81 10.57

‐0.16 1.85 11.07

‐0.16 1.95 11.8

‐0.16 2.01 13.53

‐0.16 2.11 14.89

‐0.16 2.09 17.6

‐0.16 2.1 17.22

‐0.16 2.07 17.45

‐0.16 2.07 17.15

‐0.16 2.08 16.67

‐0.16 2.07 17.22

‐0.16 2.08 17

‐0.16 2.1 16.93

‐0.16 2.19 17.37

‐0.16 2.24 20.54

‐0.16 2.24 21.87

‐0.16 2.23 22.88

‐0.16 2.25 22.68

‐0.16 2.25 23.28


‐0.16 2.24 23.08

‐0.16 2.24 22.48

‐0.16 2.27 23.28

‐0.16 2.3 24.97

‐0.16 2.31 22.48

‐0.16 2.41 24.97

1.4 2.41 28.9

1.4 2.49 28.7

1.4 2.52 31.98

1.4 2.51 33.31

1.4 2.6 32.87

1.4 2.62 36.79

1.4 2.64 38

1.4 2.69 37.75

1.4 2.8 41.29

1.4 2.77 45.89

1.4 2.8 45.61

1.4 2.83 48.12

1.4 2.87 49.82

1.4 2.9 53

1.4 3.04 54.78

1.4 3.11 69.84

1.4 3.28 82.87

1.4 3.29 94.8

1.4 3.3 96.19

1.4 3.36 96.65

1.4 3.42 101.34

1.4 3.47 108.08

1.4 3.48 114.06

1.4 3.51 114.58

1.4 3.54 116.11

1.4 3.55 120.81

1.4 3.49 121.86

1.4 3.51 115.6

1.4 3.73 118.7

1.4 3.74 143.55

1.4 3.99 143.55

1.4 4.04 160.89

1.4 2.85 185.55

1.4 2.08 167.69

Table 1: Sample MAF log


You’ll notice right away that I cleaned up the workbook, and omitted all the other values except for

LTFT, Mass Airflow, and MAF voltage. You don’t need to do this, or if you do want to be hyper‐anal, you

really don’t need MAF voltage either. In any case, you can see in this run that I gradually and linearly

increased my Mass Airflow along a smooth spectrum of values. You will also notice that I highlighted

two sections. These are breakpoint range adjustments, and you will want to tattoo the following

schema onto your brain:

Mass Airflow Breakpoint Ranges

0 – 5.7 g/s 5.7 – 18 g/s 18 ‐ 30 g/s 30 – 77 g/s 77 – max g/s

Table 2: Mass Airflow Breakpoint Ranges

So here’s how this works. Those breakpoints represent zones in which the ECU tends to break up it’s

learning of LTFT patterns. You want to look for solid blocks of trim adjustments that the ECU has made

within those ranges. With my log above, you can see that the ECU has an LTFT adjustment of ‐4.06

within the first range of 0 – 5.7 g/s. What does this mean? It means that over time, the LTFT is pulling

4.06% of the fuel out of the injection stream in order to hit its targeted AFR. Similarly, it is adding 1.4%

more fuel (1.4, the green block) in the roughly 30 – 77 and 77 and beyond ranges. When you first are

starting out on this calibration, you will likely see a wide distribution of values in each of the 5 ranges.

So what now? Well, first you should check all three of your logs (you did make three, right?) and see if

the trends are consistent. If so, you should settle on the LTFT adjustment block within most of one of

the above ranges as what you need to calibrate. What I mean is that for my 0 – 5.7 g/s range above, the

ECU is pulling 4.06% of the fuel for the majority of the range, therefore I want to calibrate my MAF to

pull 4.06% of the fuel from that range all the time, so my ECU won’t have to adjust for it on the fly (not

as much, anyway. To do this, I will need to do some math first. I want to calculate the adjustment

based on the following formula:

MAF Calibration = (100 +/‐ LTFT Adjustment) / 100

In this case, it would be 100 – 0.0406, which is 0.9594.

Great! Now what?

Now you open ATR, and make your first tuning adjustment. Load your map, and go to this set of tables:


When you’re in there, you should see something like this:

There are two values in here, MAF voltage, which is read only (you can’t change it), and the Mass

Airflow. Remember I told you that your MAF sensor is a hot little bit of wire that produces more voltage

as air passes over it? Well this table dictates the precision of those voltages with respect to the air flow.

If the ECU is being forced to add or remove fuel from the stream, it’s because something is wonky in this

table. You’re going to fix it, right now.

Using your mouse, highlight the top and bottom rows of the table, like Excel, from 0 to the 5.7

breakpoint in the Mass Airflow row in the bottom; holding down the SHIFT key while you select will

help. It should look something like this when you are done, and the whole 0 – 5.7 range will be selected:

Now, hit the <M> key (to multiply), and you will get this lovely little dialog box:

It will default to 0 when you open it; I entered the correction. What this will do when you hit OK is hard

code the corrective factor into the ECU’s tables, so the computer won’t need to adjust anymore as much

on the fly. You now want to follow this same procedure for all your ranges.


I feel compelled to remind you yet again that the reason we are doing this is so that our MAF voltages

that are commanding fuel injection are as accurate as they can be when the car enters open loop, and

MAF readings become critically important for dialing in AFR. Since we will later be moving into an

aggressively lean AFR (which makes more power), locking down your MAF now will keep this process

safe.

So now what? You’ve adjusted for all your ranges (adding fuel, BTW, like the 1.14 range in the log would

have been an entry of 1.014 in the ATR dialog box), and saved them to the table. Now you have to copy

ALL the values in the MAF Table A, and paste them into MAF Table B. Why are there two tables? No

idea. Some have speculated one or the other is accessed based on temperatures, or loads, or open or

closed loop; I don’t know personally. Just do it. Both tables copied? Good; now flash the map.

Congratulations; you are now tuning.

Now that the map is flashed, guess what? You get to drive like a little old granny for the next 50 – 100

miles. You should do a lot of city driving, and a lot of going through the gears. This will give the ECU

time to react to and adjust for your new values, and it will need to settle down into a whole new range

of LTFT’s across the whole MAF spectrum. Try not to dwell on the LTFT’s as this process unfolds; just

breathe deep and look out the window a lot, and try to remember all the new tuning knowledge you

have now. Once the miles are done, you get to do the whole thing over again. Seriously.

Remember, to successfully complete this exercise, you should be within abs(4) throughout the whole

LTFT range; bonus points if you can get within abs(2) like good old Abilor can…

But while you are waiting, you can read the next sections. Oh, and now is a good time to turn on boost‐

based tuning; see chapter 10.

Turn the page…


Chapter 5: Closed and Open Loop Transitioning

Ok, this section will take advantage of all the hard work you did in that MAF calibration section. Now

that your MAF is calibrated, we can command fuel targets with confidence. Before we can do that

though, we have to get your car transitioning to an open loop fueling state rather than staying in a

closed loop state for too long. The procedure is actually fairly simple. Go ahead and open up ATR, and

find the closed loop tables section, seen here:

Fig. 3: ATR Closed Loop Tables

When you’re in that section, the first thing we’re going to do is undo more of the Japanese engineering

assumptions that Americans are yahoo retards. We’re going to tell the ECU that it should be a damn

sight quicker about switching from closed loop to open loop when it’s supposed to. This is known as the

Exit Delay, and as you can see, we are about to poke it. When you click on Exit Delay Table A, you will

see the following on your OTS map:

Go ahead and click the cell; it will highlight. You are now going to issue a command for direct entry by

hitting the <E> key. When you do, it should look like this:

You can see that I have entered a value of 15. This is half the previous delay (in milliseconds, I believe),

and when I click OK, the table will now look like:


Good deal, total win. You will find that working in ATR follows much of this process, so remember that

<E> key to directly edit a cell value.

Moving on, the Exit Delay B and C tables both need to be updated. They will both have a default value

of 80; you again want to halve them, this time to 40. Go ahead and make those updates, I’ll wait.

Done? Good. You should feel faster already, that just added 10 HP. Just kidding, if only. But it is part of

the picture. The next thing we need to do is actually tell the ECU to transition earlier than it normally

would have. This is achieved with a rather mysterious table, the Closed Loop ‐ Max Load D table, seen

here:

Fig 4.: Closed Loop Max Load D Table

Click on that puppy, and you’ll see the following:

What’s happening here? Well, the ECU is making on the fly adjustments based on this table of when to

leave closed loop and enter open loop as a function of the engine RPM and loading. For a lower RPM,

like 2500, the engine won’t enter open loop and command an AFR target from the open loop fueling

tables (which we’ll look at next) unless the engine load is 1.85 or higher. We are going to poke this, and

make it go to open loop for lower engine loads.

The value I like for this, and this is based on Dano’s excellent early research in boost‐based tuning, is to

enter open loop for loads of 1.25 or higher. It might be tempting to enter open loop at lower loads, but

this can affect regular, daily performance in unsettling ways. 1.25 is a good breakpoint where you

usually mean business, and want to command your tuned AFR’s to accelerate at partial or wide open

throttle. You also want to stick with the values lower than 1.25 in the higher RPM’s; you definitely want

to be in open loop up there. You should adjust the table to look like the following:

Again, you will be using the cell editor command, <E>.


Point of trivia: why the Max Load D table? “Should I change the other tables?” you might be asking

yourself. Like I said, I don’t know everything, but my understanding is that better tuners than I

discovered this through trial and error, or perhaps some kind of industry insider pointed it out. For now,

you and I both benefit from knowing this is proper table for this kind of work, and we’ll leave the other

ones alone.

Right, that’s it for this section. Go you. Now we can worry about fueling targets.


Chapter 6: Fuel Targeting

Fuel targeting is some wild shit. What we want to do now is take advantage of your open loop

transitions and command a badass AFR to do our bidding while in open loop. We will be making some

sweeping, aggressive changes here. Let me remind before we begin here, however, that if you are

skipping around sections in this guide, then you should only try this shit if you’ve already adjusted your

MAF. If you haven’t, and you try this out, you may command leaner targets than you mean, which will

knock like an evil monkey with cymbals (you young pups probably don’t remember Monkey Shines, cool

flick). You might also equally likely command richer AFR targets, which is less serious, but you will take a

loss to performance.

So, what’s a good AFR? Personally, I like 11.8. I discovered on the boards that it’s a solid target for

aggressive performance with minimal risk. Some dudes like to rock in the twelves, but that’s a bit out

there for noobs. I’ve confirmed through some independent tuning research that even numbers as high

as 13 aren’t out of the box for some platforms, but 11.8 is considered “safe” territory through trial and

error on our own boards.

So should you command 11.8? Fuck no. Start out easy with 11.4, and make sure that you can hit that

before you go apeshit. Here’s how you do it. Go to the fueling tables section, seen here:

Fig. 6: ATR Fuel Tables

Go ahead and open that first one, it’s pretty easy, the Fuel CL Commanded EQ (base) table. It should

look like this for an OTS stage 1 map:


Now we’re getting into some tricky shit. If this table doesn’t intimidate you a bit, you’re crazy; that

said, the process is actually pretty simple once someone sheds some light on it for you. What’s going on

here is that the ECU is commanding an AFR based on two variables, RPM and engine load. Say you’re

cruising down the highway; that’s about 2.5K in 6th gear, and a load of about 0.25. We can see if we look

this up in the table that the commanded AFR should be about 14.68 (close to stoichiometric,

remember). Let’s say some big rig is cramping you in the lane, so you give it some gas to accelerate.

The load will shoot up to say, 1.25, and you will go to 3k pretty quick. Again, looking this up, the

commanded AFR would be 14.122. By the way, the ECU doesn’t just jump through these tables

discreetly. It performs millions of calculations based on real‐time sensor parameters every second, and

transitions between cell to cell in the tables in a smooth fashion that takes into account methods like


normal mean vectors and variance to get from A to B. ECU based fuel injection is a miracle, show some

respect.

Anyway, you can see that closed loop is pretty conservative. Let’s compare it to the Fuel OL/Part

Throttle Commanded EQ (No Knock) table:

For this one, let’s assume you are racing your bro from work at a stoplight on the way to tacos for lunch.

You can’t go balls out since there’s traffic, but you are hitting pretty good loads at higher RPMs. For

example, you are accelerating respectfully, producing an engine load of 1.5, and you aren’t shifting until

past 5K. The AFR target for that range would be 10.305; pretty damn rich compared to the performance

value of 11.8. Your friend gets the taco and the girl, and you are forever alone.

So let’s change your fate. There are ten fueling tables, and you are going to change them all.

First, settle down for a moment and consider the quality of gasoline you are purchasing. If you are

buying Mom and Pop gas, which I qualify as any gas not from Shell, Exxon, Chevron, or BP (I’m an elitist

when it comes to my fossil fuel fix), now is the time to dig for pennies in the couch and consider dusting

off the resume: you need to buy quality fuel. Also, you definitely want to be getting 93 octane if you


can. If you can only find 91 within 20 miles of your house (fuck your life), you will have to dial back, run

octane booster, or strongly consider spraying some methanol.

For now I will assume you are running high quality gas. Even so, there are still various things that could

wrong here. Despite your good data regarding your MAF, there could still be some inconsistencies. It

could be hot as hell out, which will promote knock. You haven’t gone WOT with your MAF cal, who

knows? My point is that you are going to want to target 11.4 first, and see if you can hit it and hold it.

Let’s turn our attention to the first table, Fuel CL Commanded EQ (base).

This is the basic, closed loop table. I want to be hitting my 11.4 target all the time, even running around

town, since it will be an overall pick up in performance with the added bonus of fuel economy;


remember I told you that these cars run pig rich out of the box. To target my new AFR, I use my good

friend, the <E> button to edit the cell at 1.25 load, and 2500 RPM. Recall that we commanded the

vehicle to enter open loop at 1.25 and greater; so why change it here? Like I said, the big advantage

here is fuel economy, and also consistency across all the fuel maps, which may have marginal benefits to

ECU LTFT’s. It’s what I was taught to do, so I’m just passing it on. Anyway, edit the cell from its OTS

value to 1.25. Now you can hit <CTRL‐C> to copy that cell, and use <CTRL‐V> to paste it in the cell

beneath it. Go on down the rows, and then go ahead and select the whole portion of the column that

needs adjusting (under 1.25); <CTRL‐C> that sucker. Then go to the top of each of the next columns in

the 1.25 spot, hit <CTRL‐V>, and move on down the line until the table looks like the one above.

Okay, next. Open up the Fuel Commanded EQ Max Enrichment Allowed table:

The purpose of this table is to serve as the panic button of sorts for the ECU, meaning if the engine is

knocking, or there are other issues, whatever, then this is the maximum floor the ECU will enrich the

fuel stream. A general rule of thumb here is that you want this value which might be used to quell

knock about 0.5 lower than your targeted AFR. So 11.4 – 0.5 gives us 10.9; go ahead and update those

tables now. Let me offer a word of caution though. Later on down the road, if you do go with a leaner

AFR, the maximum AFR value I would set here is 11.0. As I said, if the ECU senses engine distress, you

want to give it the tools it needs to save itself and you.

The next table you should open is Fuel OL Commanded EQ (Throttle Closed). For this one, the actual

editing is quite straightforward. Select the entire range of your first table where you set the 11.4 AFR,

and <CTRL‐C> it. Then just go to 1.25 load, 2500RPM, and <CTRL‐V>. Easy. This table, for information

purposes however, is the fuel targeting for when the vehicle has transitioned to open loop, but the

throttle is closed. Again, we are editing this one because we want to be consistent with our targeting,

and make sure the ECU is hitting that AFR at all times in the specified range. I think it could be overkill,

but again, I pass along what I was taught with the affirmation that it did wonders for me increasing

performance and fuel economy.

Next table is Fuel OL Commanded EQ. You will start to notice a theme here. This table is larger, holding

more RPM values, but the principle is still the same. Select the 1.25 load, 2500 RPM cell and roll out

those 11.4 values across the board. Once complete, you can copy and paste the values into the three OL

Partial Throttle tables that follow them. I’ve included the first of these four tables as a reference.


Ok, almost done, and these next three are quite easy in comparison, but where the money is made: the

open loop, wide open throttle tables. Open the first one, the knock table.

Again, the theory here is that this is the value that the ECU will resort to if it senses knock. It should be

0.5 lower than your targeted AFR. For this table, however, when and if you increase your targeted AFR

to 11.8, you can increase its values to 11.3.

Now, finally, you can command your OL/WOT AFR, like so:


Copy the A values into the No Knock B table, and you are done.

Once that’s all locked and loaded, your OL/CL transitions will work in concert with your fueling targets to

aggressively fuel your car under loads, also offering greater fuel economy. You should still go through

the rest of the guide and set your base of commands for boost targeting, the waste gate duty cycle, so

forth and so on, but as you are creating logs with those values, you will want to watch your actual AFR

like a hawk and compare it to these commanded AFR tables. Those values should be within 0.1 (one‐

tenth) of each other to be considered proper targeting. For example, if I command 11.8, and hit 11.76,

that’s spot on; 11.91 is .11 away, not terrible, but disconcerting. If the commanded and actual AFRs do

drift, it could be because the ECU is quelling minor knock (cross‐reference with KR), or because your

MAF calibration is drifting. Check for those conditions.

If all looks well in logs, you can jump up to 11.8, or even 11.9 for optimal tuning; watch for KR!


Chapter 7: Upping Your Load Tables

This one has a little bit of controversy to it. You’ll recall that I was discussing the differences between

boost‐based tuning and load‐based tuning. As a quick review, load‐based tunes will set a load target to

hit, and factors like boost will vary to hit those targets. Obviously this is more effective if the load

targets are higher than stock values typically become. Boost‐based tuning doesn’t follow this

methodology, instead varying load to meet and hold a boost‐target. That said, if we performing boost‐

based tuning, we still want to make sure that our loads are not capped by the values of stock or OTS

maps. For example, I may hit a load of 2.3 when I push 20 psi of boost at 3,000 RPMs, but if my load

tables reference a maximum of 1.8, that could hurt me as for as the performance kick I want to see.

For this reason, we want adjust our loading tables even on a boost‐tune. The controversy is that it

seems that not all models of Mazdaspeed 3 and 6 across the years and generations seem to use these

tables. For me personally, my performance increased dramatically when I upped my load tables. For

others, they seem to have no effect. I don’t follow this debate much, to be honest, so you can go to the

forums to research this issue more (which you should do for all issues you are interested in).

For now, I’ll show you how to up the tables; it won’t hurt you even if your ECU doesn’t end up using

them.

Open the load tables in ATR:

Fig. 8: ATR Load Tables


There’s a lot going on in these tables, much of it beyond the scope of this humble guide. For now, you

are going to want to adjust the loading for all six gears, but only for the normal BAT tables! Leave the

High BAT tables alone; if you up loads there, and your TMIC/FMIC is failing and your engine is running

hot, the upped load in these sections could cause huge knock, the kind that spears the block with a rod.

Open the first table for first gear, and set it as per the following:

What we’re doing here is telling the ECU that in first gear, if we hit 2,500 RPM, it’s cool to stack the load

a high as 2.12. For those values over 3,000 RPM, 2.3 is the ceiling. The ECU/engine may not hit those

values, but it knows that it’s cool if it does. Perform the same procedure on the other five Norm BAT

load tables, and you will have completed this adjustment.


Chapter 8: Setting Your Boost Targets and Dynamics

Okay, for many of you, this is why you are reading this guide; moar boost! It’s an exciting set of tables,

but you are once again going to need to do a reality check when deciding exactly how much boost to

push here. You are going to encounter a lot of opinions on this topic; some die‐hards are going to tell

you 21 psi is fine all day long on the stock K04, while more timid tuners will tell you to stay at 17 psi even

on 93 octane. I’m somewhere in the middle; I love boost, but I also love driving to work every day. From

that point of view, I will recommend that you follow Cobb’s general advice for your tuning goals,

represented in the table below:

Stage of Map Mods Octane Peak Boost

1 Stock 91 17.5 1 Stock 93 18 1 Intake 91 18 1 Intake 93 18.5 1 Intake, FMIC 91 17.5 1 Intake, FMIC 93 18 2 DP + CBE 91 19 2 DP + CBE 93 20 2 Intake, DP + CBE 91 19 2 Intake, DP + CBE 93 20 2 Intake, DP + CBE,

TMIC/FMIC 91 19

2 Intake, DP + CBE, TMIC/FMIC

93 20

Table X: Cobb Boost Targets

These are general guidelines; your mileage may vary. It is incumbent upon you to research your make

and model, your mods, and your gasoline supply to determine a sane number. The tuning rule of thumb

is to start lower then you want to be, and work your way up through logging. It’s generally a good idea

to have a conservative tune dialed in for situations in which you have a hardware issue, or you are

travelling and doubt the quality of the gas you have access to. There’s nothing wrong with getting a grip

on the tuning process and your car while hitting 2 psi under your final boost destination.

Now that I sound like your dad, here’s how to tear it up. Open the boost tables, located here:


Fig. 9: ATR Boost Tables

The first table we’ll look at is the boost targeting table itself, which will look like this:

You can see in my case that this is some pretty aggressive stage 2 targeting; please don’t just copy and

paste this if all you have is an intake. A couple things are worth explaining here.


First of all, recall that I mentioned that there is a big difference between APP and TP. These tables

reference TP, and you should have already looked in your logs to confirm that when your APP is near

100%, your TP will likely be around 75. It is for this reason that we think of the 75 throttle position line

as your maximum boost point. It is on this line that you want to set your boost targets, and then clone

them for all the lines underneath. You also don’t want to go balls out until 3,000 RPM in my opinion,

and even then it’s good to be a little conservative. For now, what I would do is set your maximum target

at 3,500. Let’s practice on a stage 1 OTS table like this one:

This is a stage 1 with SF 93 octane map. Note first of all that it doesn’t follow the 75% rule I just

introduced you to. I will target 18 at 3.5K, and move down the line tapering to 16.5 psi at redline to be

conservative. I will then clone the lines underneath. It will look like this:


Next you want to worry about the lower cells. You want to spool up the turbo quickly, but not like a

brick dropping. 17.5 at 3K makes sense, and then probably about 12 at 2.5K. The adjustment will look

like so:

Great. Now, in my opinion, those boost values for the lower portion of the RPM are too high. For lower

RPM’s, the 2.3L DISI engine these cars come with produce huge torque down low, and I personally am in

the camp that believes you don’t want to load too low. You should refrain from going WOT under 3K,

though some very smart guys say this may be a little paranoid. In either case, you should interpolate

these values down with ATR’s built in smoothing function. What you ‘ll do is highlight the cells from

75/1000RPM over to 75/2500, and all the rows below. From there, <RIGHT‐CLICK>, and you will get the

following menu:

Select Horizontal, and you will get the following:


Pretty cool, huh? That interpolation function gives you good, smooth values between cells, though

choose wisely when and where to use it. It makes sense to use it here though.

Now you could leave this table here for now, and you’d probably have a great time. I will tell you about

one more thing however, and this is purely personal territory. I like a nice, stiff pedal; when I go partial

throttle, I like the car to go berserk. Now, I could go into the throttle tables and adjust accordingly, but I

prefer to work my setup here in the boost tables. You can see on my map, that on the 62.5 line I target

a peak boost of 13.18, and I also mimic 75% throttle in the 68.5 line. This gives me a very stiff pedal that

may not be for everyone, but for me I absolutely love it. You could do the same with your targeting, just

use that vertical interpolation to smooth the targets into the line above.

Okay, that’s the gist of boost tables. But they’re not the most important tables! You’ll actually see that

the WGDC in the next section makes or breaks your tune, but there’s one more thing we need to while

we’re looking at these boost tables. Open up the Boost Dynamics table; it will look like this:

The purpose of this table is to allow the ECU to make adjustments to the WGDC on the flow if it meets

or exceeds boost targets. It’s a very helpful table, but it’s not something you want to rely on. For the

purpose of dialing in your boost targets, I recommend zeroing out the boost increases section of the

table, like this:


This will protect you from overboosting while the ECU compensates for a low boost situation, but still

allow the ECU to pull boost in overboosting situations. Now you can be accurate and honest with

yourself about hitting your boost targets, and not rely on fudging it a bit.

I will leave you a final word that there is a blending of art and science to all this. You will want to set

aggressive targets to get the most out of your mods, but anything higher than 20psi on the KO4 turbo is

generally outside the efficiency range. Be realistic with setting your targets, and pay attention to how

the car performs. Your qualitative interpretations matter as much as the quantitative data from the log.

You are now ready to move on to the most important table of all: the wastegate duty cycle.

Good luck.


Chapter 9: Adjusting WGDC

The wastegate duty cycle is where the rubber meets the road. Recall my metaphor with the waterfall,

the bucket, and the campsite. This portion of the ECU tables is what you will use to control how hard

and for how long you pull on the string to your bucket, or rather, the duty cycle of current you will inject

into the solenoid controlling the wastegate actuator, which in turn builds boost within the physical

system of the exhaust stream, turbocharger, intercooler, and intake manifold.

As far as quantifying the required amounts, it’s time to introduce you to Dano’s Law5. Dano, one of the

premiere tuners on the forum, discovered through trial and error and observation of his logs that WGDC

commands generally follow this relationship:

Actual WGDC = (Commanded WGDC * 2) + 10

Basically, whatever you command, will double and add ten more in the logs. This is a useful relationship

for charting the course of your individual system. In my own logs, I have noticed that Dano’s Law holds

true in a proportional sense, but does not necessarily pan out exactly. Nonetheless, it’s a good rule of

thumb.

Now that we’ve discussed some theory, let’s talk about what we’re going to be doing here. First of all,

as usual, safety is our priority. I have found time and again, both personally and from a number logs

posted on the forum, that the WGDC OTS values are often way too high, and will cause boost spikes.

This is especially true if you have a test pipe or down pipe, and you are screwing around with a stage 1

map. Considering those maps are targeting only 13 psi of boost at 75 TP, and people are hitting 18 – 20,

it’s way too high. The WGDC values are causing this, and no matter what your personal experience is,

my advice to you is start with a safe bet and set your initial WGDC values quite low. What’s quite low?

Well, let’s take a look. Here are the stage 1 WGDC values for the SF 93 map:

5 http://www.mazdaspeedforums.org/forum/f533/danos‐boost‐tuning‐101‐cool‐stuff‐68239/


Those are the OTS values. Basically, from 500 – 2250 RPM for all throttle positions above cruising, the

WGDC will open up to 50%. If you follow Dano’s Law, you find that for lower RPM’s this is a commanded

WGDC of 110%, basically OPEN WIDE. Now realistically, this doesn’t happen in lower RPMs, or we’d all

be boosting uncontrollably just scooting around town (that would be kind of cool though). If you keep

looking however, at say 3500 RPM, it’s a commanded WGDC of 28.3, which according to Dano’s Law,

would turn out to be 66.6. Huh. That doesn’t seem too bad, right.

Well, look at my current stage 2 map that hits 20.5 psi at 3500 reliably:


18 commanded. 18. Which should be 46 according to Dano’s law. 66 > 46 by a longshot. This is

exactly why I spiked like a beast, hit the boost cutoff, and smacked my head on the windshield. Now,

your car may be different; if there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that we all have unique layouts, even

from stock to stock. One man’s wastegate may be trigger happy like mine is, whereas another’s needs

some serious spurs to kick it into gear. You will need to check your own logs to see what flavor yours is.

To start the process though, I recommend you begin by zeroing out the 0.00 through 18.75 columns as I

have done here, leave those 40.00s the way you see them, and leave the 50.00s alone. Next, set ALL

your 2000 – 7000 columns for 25 TP and under at a value of 20, like so:

This will serve as your base orientation as you tease out your WGDC. You should find initially that this is

slow as hell, and won’t leave you that impressed. GOOD. You will want to produce three WOT logs with

these values, and from there the process gets somewhat tricky; I will try to explain as clearly as I can.

What you’ll want to do is look at the boost you hit in the logs for a particular RPM, cross‐reference the

target for that RPM, and see what the delta (difference) is. If it’s over, you lower WGDC for that area. If

it’s under, you will up WGDC for that area. It’s important here to also bear in mind, however, that the

area of RPM that boost is entering will have an effect on it. For example, if you hit 18 at 3000, and 16.5

at 3500, you should see a 3300 value that is akin to 17.2 or so. That 17.2 is a midway transition. If your

target is 18 for 3000 – 4000, you want to go to work in the 3500 RPM WGDC. Sometimes, however, it

won’t be so clear cut, especially if you have an older AP. You may have a reading at 4200, 4600, and

5100, and they are 18, 16.1, and 16.9. Worse, you have different targets for each cell.

You will find, given this phenomenon, that there is some trial and error to discovering your exact WGDC

fit for your specific setup. I find that four or five iterations usually does the trick. Dano’s Law will guide


you to some extent, but there are other tricks as well. One which I am aware of is to calculate how far

you off from your target as a percentage, so for example, if the target is 18 and you’re hitting 16.5,

that’s (16.5/18)*100, or 91.6%. You need another 8.4% to hit, so if your WGDC was 26, you’d multiply

by 1.084 to get 28.2.

That’s one method, and I encourage you to try what works for you. With regards to my own personal

setup, I have found a rule of thumb that a jump of approximately 4 – 5 to a particular WGDC gives me

about 1 psi for the 2500 – 5000 band, and 5 – 6 gets me 1 psi in the higher bands, 5500 – 7000. This

may or may not work for you, but you will need to find out yourself through trial and error.

A few other caveats before you embark on your experiments. Again, if you see in your logs that WGDC

is absolutely maxed out, your BAT’s start going up, you are getting knock, and you are not hitting your

targets, then you are seriously stressing the turbocharger system and need to back the hell off.

Hopefully you are cautious enough with how you’re proceeding that it never comes to that kind of

agony for your engine. For more moderate problems, such as minor knock that is consistent, you may

need to back off the BT and the WGDC for that particular area, or pull timing, or spray meth. As far as

timing, we’ll discuss a bit of that later.

Other than that, have fun; this will be the heart of the tune for you. Locking this portion down is the

final exam of this basic course.


Chapter 10: Odds and Ends

These are some miscellaneous tips that don’t deserve a chapter in their own right, but they are still

rather important in my view. In a test of your willingness to be thorough and read this entire guide, I’ve

left this first one for this section. It’s very simple, but very critical: you need to actually enable boost

based tuning for your map. To do this, open the Edit > Advanced Parameters section of your map in

ATR, and seek out this menu:

Check that box on the bottom. Without it, your tuning efforts will all be for naught.

Another big one, some people will have trouble with units if they don’t tell ATR to switch over to

conventional units. Go ahead and make sure this guy is toggled:


Next, for you folks with a fuel pump upgrade, you’re going to want to take advantage of it by

commanding a slightly higher pressure. To do this, open the HPFP Control Tables.

For all values of 1669.6, you want to command 1800. It will look like this:


Do this for Max A, and Max B, and then open the next three tables. Here, you want to up the

commanded pressure for loads greater than 1.5, like so:

Copy your results for the A, B, and C tables. Leave the bottom table alone.

These last two are optional. First, I like to lower the temperate of the coolant that prompts the radiator

to turn on. Find the Radiator tables, locate the first table, and change it like so:

Those values, in fact, are in Celsius; this is a known bug in ATR. For version 1.08, anyway, this works.

Last up, you may want to consider upping your idle speeds for higher temperatures. This slight

adjustment will apparently prevent your turbo from smoking in warmer weather, though Bnoon’s Bolt is

widely regarded as equally effective, if not more so. I personally have a Bnoon Bolt, with no issues,

though I didn’t have any before anyway. If you choose to do this, you can do so here:


Basically, you extend the idle for temps of 140 across the board; do this for the 850 value as well. Some

folks go as high as 900; I didn’t since I wasn’t having problems already.


Chapter 11: Timing

I’m not going to say much here. I don’t want to give you ideas. What I will tell you is that if you don’t

have a DP, stick with Stage 1 OTS ignition tables. If you do, stick with Stage 2 OTS ignition tables.

IF you are getting small bits of KR, less than 1, consistently in a certain RPM range, and you cannot get

rid of it despite backing off targets, getting better gas, possibly considering advanced cooling solutions

like TMIC/FMIC/Meth, you have the option of pulling timing for that RPM range to see if it does the

trick. As a brief example, let’s imagine that for my current map I had some consistent knock in the 3500

and 4000 RPM ranges. I would open the ignition tables found here:

Head to the High Throttle/Open Loop (No Knock), and examine the following:


You’ll need to also get a sense of the load that’s occurring when your KR is occurring. If it is indeed

reliable, this should be a consistent pattern. Let’s suppose for the moment that my KR is occurring at

loads of roughly 1.5 and 1.56. What I would do is highlight the intersecting ranges of those loads, and

3500 – 4000 RPM, and use the <‐> key (minus key) to lower timing half a degree. This will require five

taps of the <‐> key, and will result in the following:


Copy your adjustments from this table into the High Throttle/OL (Knocking) table as well.

The next thing I would do is log, and see if that does the trick. If it doesn’t, try another half a degree,

and if that doesn’t work, you should re‐evaluate once again if this is a matter of bad gas, aggressive

targeting, or higher ambient BAT’s than usual. DON’T just lower timing in this area 2 or 3 degrees and

just hope for the best. If it’s that bad, log on to the forums and ask for help. Usually there’s a

reasonable issue that people can help you tease out.


Chapter 12: Putting it All Together

Wow; there’s a lot to this. I didn’t even know until I tried to write it all down. Hopefully this guide

proves useful to you in understanding the basic tuning steps for your car with Cobb ATR. It is, alas, only

a beginner’s guide. For each and every section, and more above and beyond that, there is a treasure

trove of deeper expertise and insight, along with speculation and debate. Having read this guide, you

will now have a definitive literacy that you did not before in understanding tuning discussions on the

forums, and hopefully a solid tune to boot.

Some final words of caution. GO SLOW. I regard tuning as a hobby, and a natural progression for the

driveway mechanic who has really enjoyed moving through the various stages of bolt‐on power adders.

For each and every bolt‐on, it’s a joy to have it register on the butt dyno. Conventional tuning wisdom

dictates, however, and I’ve found this to be true of overclocking PCs as well, you don’t want to change a

lot of things at once. Stick to one thing at a time, and try to isolate each and every effect that small

changes have on the overall picture. This is better trial and error technique that will help prevent zoom,

zoom, BOOM, but it also gives you a chance to stretch out and savor the experience each little change

does for you, which is more fun.

I said it before, but I’ll say it again, because believe it or not, y’all just don’t listen: PAY ATTENTION TO

YOUR LOGS. This means you will have to take logs, and by the way, don’t just log, tune, and forget

about it. Just like changing your oil, plugs, and other fluids at regular intervals, you should log once a

month as a maintenance routine to make sure your tune isn’t drifting due to wear, weather, or other

factors.

Ok, enough scolding. Go have fun.


Appendix A: Tuning Acronym Glossary

AFR – Air Fuel Ratio. The mixture of fuel and air entering the engine cylinders and being combusted.

Calculated by a sensor which examines exhaust gas for oxygen content, AFR is measured in lambda,

which is the same for all fuels. 1 Lambda = 14.7:1 AFR with petrol/gasoline. 1 Lambda represents

different air to fuel ratios with different fuels, and is more consistent regardless of your gasoline/ethanol

mixture.

ALT ‐ Absolute Load Targets. Table only seen in gen1 version of ATR.

AP ‐ Access Port, Cobb's handheld ECU programmer for multiple makes and models of vehicles.

APP – Absolute Pedal Position. AP maps will allow you to adjust this value in relation to TP, called "APP

translation"

ATR ‐ Access Tune Racer, Cobb's beta tuning software given out free to folks who buy a Cobb AP

(contact Travis on the Cobb forums if you haven't got your copy)

BAT ‐ Boost Air Temperature. The temperature of the air entering the engine at the IM; an upgraded

TMIC or FMIC can bring these temperatures down, which is a VERY good thing, especially if you are

upping your boost targets above stock values.

BCS ‐ Boost Control Solenoid. In addition to EBCS aka boost control solenoid (see WGDC)

BD – Boost Dynamics. The increments by which the ECU will adjust the WGDC in order to meet specified

boost targets.

BOV – Blow Off Valve. Vents excess boost pressure to the atmosphere (VTA)

BPV – Bypass Valve. Recirculates excess boost pressure through the system.

Brownie – A freeloader who hasn’t made a modest donation to the forums for the vast amount of

experience, expertise, and abuse it has to offer.

BSD ‐ Balance Shaft Delete. Removal of the shaft in the engine fighting the NVH of naturally unbalanced

four cylinder engines.

BT – Boost Targets. Your map’s boost targets across the RPM range. Also can mean Big Turbo, and

upgraded turbo (see K04)

BTDC ‐ Before Top Dead Center. A relative position of an engine's crankshaft used for calibrations.

CAN ‐ Controller Area Network. Communication protocol used by automotive manufacturers to

communicate data between computer modules within a vehicle. Includes ABS computer, ECU/PCM,

radio/climate controls, instrument cluster, etc.


CAT – Catalytic Converter. Transforms hydrocarbons into more inert states that are better for the

environment. Typically referenced using lowercase letters, ex. "I deleted my second cat."

CBE – Cat‐Back Exhaust. An exhaust that reduces pressure by placing CAT’s further away from the

engine, reducing pressure.

CC ‐ Combustion Chamber. This is where the magic happens: fuel and air are compressed by the piston

in the cylinder, ignited by the spark plug, and combustion pushes the piston back down the cylinder

imparting force to the crankshaft. Too much pressure in the cylinder over time can pop your fuel injector

seals; seek help on this forum for assistance with the fix.

CDFP – Cam Driven Fuel Pump. Seen on Gen 1 and Gen 2 Mazdaspeed 3’s. Interchangeable with HPFP.

CEL ‐ Check Engine Light. The yellow light on the instrument cluster that alerts you to an ECU self‐

diagnosis of an issue; the "code" for the issue can be pulled by a Dashhawk or AP, and researched here

on the forums for resolution.

CL – Closed Loop. A state in which the ECU relies on oxygen sensors and CL fuel tables to calculate AFR.

This is actually a state in which the ECU makes corrections to the requested Injector duty cycle to

achieve AFR/Lambda requested in a table in ATR. In "OL", open loop, the ecu still calculates AFR but

does not make corrections to injector duty cycle.See ‘OL’.

CS ‐ Corksport. An aftermarket parts company.

CPE – Custom Performance Engineering, a company that makes mods.

DBW ‐ Drive By Wire. Substitution of traditional human interface elements with electromechanical

actuators; in our case, usually refers to the electronic manipulation of the throttle plate given the input

of the accelerator pedal.

DH ‐ DashHawk ‐ virtual gauge unit that plugs into OBD‐II port and reads both generic and Mazda‐

specific PIDs.

DISI – Direct Injection Spark Ignition. The fancy engine found on Mazdaspeed 3/6, it injects fuel directly

into the cylinders, which has a cooling effect, aiding combustion.

DO ‐ Devil's Own. A Methanol/Water spraying kit company. Nozzle sizes go "DOX" for X gallons per hour

sprayed.

DP – Downpipe. The pipe coming straight off the exhaust manifold and leading to the CBE. Upgraded

DP’s are less restrictive due to placing a high flowing CAT in the exhaust stream, reducing back pressure

and allowing the turbo to spool faster. Some downpipes have no cats, some downpipes have one in the

stock location. They are less restrictive because they use one which allows exhaust gases to pass

through it with less resistance. Resistance causes back pressure and slows the spool of the turbo, which

increases low end torque but ultimately decreases peak output. The stock turbo in the ms3 spools so


quickly that having some resistance in the exhaust stream is desirable as it prevents uncontrollable

boost spikes.

EBCS ‐ Electronic Boost Control Solenoid. The device which, when subjected to the WGDC, physically

closes the wastegate to build boost.

ECU – Engine Control Unit. The computer that makes realtime adjustments to your engine’s

performance as dictated by the AP map you are running.

EGR ‐ Exhaust Gas Recirculation.

Exhaust_gas_recirculation Exhaust_gas_recirculation

EGT ‐ Exhaust Gas Temp. If it's too hot, there could be problems.

EWG ‐ External Waste Gate. A wastegate that is located independent of the turbo.

FMIC – Front Mount Intercooler. A radiator type unit, but in reverse, that cools air driven by exhaust

pressure from the turbo, which heats the air up; cooler air combusts better, so it’s necessary to cool it

before entering the turbo intake. FMIC’s are located in front of the car’s radiator, and are not as

susceptible to “heat soak”. An FMIC bleeds off some of the heat caused by pressurization of air by the

turbo (the air entering the cylinders), not exhaust pressure (the air exiting the cylinders). "Heat Soak"

refers to the tendency of the Intercooler to become hot itself, and therefore loose effectiveness as a

heat dissipation device. This effect is exacerbated by engine bay temperature ‐ the tendency of heat to

rise means that there will be a higher concentration of heat at the top of the engine bay, where a TMIC

(top mounted intercooler) is located.

FTW ‐ For The Win.

FWIW ‐ For what it's worth.

g/s ‐ Grams per Second. see MAF

“Genpu” – a Gen 2 Mazdaspeed 3

HPFP – High Pressure Fuel Pump, seen on Gen 1 3’s.

IAT ‐ Intake Air Temperature. The temperature of the air passing through the MAF; not nearly as critical

as BAT. Comparing Intake Air Temperature to Boosted Air Temperature can be used to determine the

cooling efficiency of the Intercooler, be it a TMIC or FMIC. Also, a lower IAT will result in lower BATs

under normal operation, but variances in IAT seem to have less of an effect than similar variances in

BAT.

IIRC ‐ If I Recall Correctly

IM ‐ Intake Manifold. The network of piping that allows air from a single intake to enter four separate

cylinders. The smoother the airflow, the better.


ITV22's ‐ Iridium plugs (Denso) 1 step (heat range) colder than stock.

IWG ‐ Internal Wastegate. A wastegate physically located within the turbo.

K04 – The stock turbo on a Mazdaspeed 3/6. Some claim it's way too small for our engines and generally

prone to fail.

KR – Knock Retard. The degree to which the ECU is reducing engine timing to prevent detonation. Values

over 2, especially at WOT, indicate a serious problem – BACK OFF TP. It is important as well to know the

causes of Knock (detonation), which you can discern via KR in an engine that is mechanically sound. Lean

AFRs, hot BATs, advanced timing, all cause KR. Ideally, at WOT (wide open throttle), there will be no KR,

although KR of less than 1 is acceptable if not seen consistently in a particular area of the rev band

during WOT.

LTFT ‐ Long Term Fuel Trim. The average value the ECU is using to adjust fuel injection to reach target

AFR's. Will fluctuate while ECU is being "trained" after first 50 ‐ 100 miles of being reset.

MAF – Mass Air Flow sensor. The reader that senses the air flowing into the engine; the ECU uses it’s

realtime values to make critical calculations regarding how much fuel to inject into the engine. The

ECU's calculations change depending on learned long term fuel trims (LTFT) in closed loop operation.

These fuel trims are expressed as a percentage error between requested AFR/Lambda and observed

AFR/Lamba. +2% means 2% more air is coming in than expected (and requires 2% more fuel to achieve

requested AFR/Lambda), and ‐2% is just the opposite.

MAP ‐ Manifold Absolute Pressure. Measured at the intake manifold post intercooler (same sensor as

BAT). This is the 'boost PSI' that is read by a DH or AP.

MBC ‐ Manual Boost Controller. A device which the driver can operate to control boost levels from

inside the cockpit.

MBT ‐ Minimum Timing for Best Torque.

NVH ‐ Noise, Vibration, and Harshness.

OBD‐II ‐ On‐Board Diagnostics protocol II. Definied by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)

document J1979. The required standard PID protocol for all cars sold in the US after 1996. On‐board

diagnostics ‐ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

OCC ‐ Oil Catch Can. An additional reservoir in the oil circulation of the engine that prevents

contaminants from entering the IM.

OEM – Original Equipment Manufacturer. An OEM part is a stock part.

OTS ‐ Off The Shelf. Cobb's pre‐made maps that be flashed onto the ECU.


OL – Open Loop. A state in which the ECU is relying on the MAF and OL fuel tables to calculate AFR. For

this reason, it is vital you perform a MAF calibration prior to conducting aggressive tuning. In open loop,

the ECU injects fuel according to how much air it believes is entering the engine, and does not correct

for differences in requested and observed AFR/Lambda

PCV ‐ Positive crankcase ventilation. http://www.aa1car.com/library/pcv.htm

PID ‐ Parameter Identification. Term used for a signal input to the PCM/ECU, a value calculated by the

PCM/ECU, or a system staus flag. Many are defined by the OBD‐II protocol, and some are manufacturer‐

specific. OBD‐II PIDs ‐ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

PNP ‐ Plug and Play. A device that can be used immediately and easily after installation.

PSI – Pounds per Square Inch. A pressure measurement.

RP ‐ Race Pipe. A portion of an exhaust with the cat deleted.

RPM – Revolutions Per Minute. The rotating speed of the engine crankshaft.

SRI ‐ Short Ram Intake.

STFT ‐ Short Term Fuel Trim. The real‐time value of adjustments made by ECU to reach targeted AFR.

STFU Noob ‐ Shut the Fuck Up, Noob

SU – StreetUnit, a company that makes mods.

TB ‐ Throttle Body. The part of the air intake system that controls the amount of air flowing into the

engine.

TDC ‐ Top Dead Center. A position of the engine's crankshaft used to calibrate timing.

TIH ‐ Turbo Inlet Hose. Either stock or upgraded, this pipe is the second half of an intake that leads

directly to the turbo turbine.

TIP – Turbo Inlet Pipe. Either stock or upgraded, this pipe is the second half of an intake that leads

directly to the turbo turbine. On cars which use a larger than stock turbo (BT or Big Turbo), the intake

and the TIP are one piece.

TMIC – Top Mount Intercooler. A radiator type unit, but in reverse, that cools air driven by exhaust

pressure from the turbo, which heats the air up; cooler air combusts better, so it’s necessary to cool it

before entering the turbo intake. TMIC’s are located on top of the engine; larger TMIC’s are more

efficient and can be used to help increase boost, but are still prone to “heat soak”. See FMIC.

TP – Throttle Position. The position of the throttle on the engine applied by the ECU; the driver does not

control this value, only APP. Throttle position refers to the position of the throttle plate, the maximum


observed value of which is ~76%. The ECU controls TP based on APP and WOT targets (fueling, boost,

load).

TP ‐ Test Pipe. A portion of the exhaust with a cat deleted.

TRL ‐ Throttle Request Load. A commanded parameter in ATR for engine loading as a function of both

gear and RPM

VE ‐ Volumetric Efficiency.

VTA – Vents to Atmosphere.

VVT ‐ Variable Valve Timing, more specifically for Mazdaspeeds ‐ intake valve advance

WGA ‐ Waste Gate Actuator. Deploys the Wastegate.

WGDC – Waste Gate Duty Cycle. The values that operate the wastegate’s closing percentage; the higher

the percentage, the more the wastegate is closed, and the more boost is built and crammed into the

intake manifold for more power.

WMI ‐ Water Meth Injection. A method of spraying a coolant into the engine cylinders to improve

compression and reduce KR.

WOT – Wide Open Throttle. Otherwise known as “Lead Foot”

Abilor's Tuning Guide V1.0!6!21 2011

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