Hypermiling a diesel

[slowmover]

Sounds like the program messes with the transient response.

This is my apperception of aftermarket tuners. No genuine effect on steady-state mpg, but works well for less-than-sensitive drivers in around town stop-n-go. While I admit or agree that some tuners seem to improve steady-state, one has to eliminate any and all changes from OEM to make a viable claim, first. (There are those claims from some with reasonable certification).

Thanks for the lab numbers, Dave. I remember (quite some long time ago) my initial reading in the history of science and the (seemingly) weird emphasis on accurate time-keeping as a precondition to observations, and not just those of astronomy and navigation (as a teenager, all is supposed to reveal itself instantly). Should have thought more carefully about my musical training instead, and of metronomic beat.

Time made visible.

P&G is a funny imposition on the "natural" order of things . . at first.

.

[TX_Dj]

Just for clarity, there is zero smoke in what I'm calling the "eco" or "nanny" program. It is the program I ran when I was getting 22+ solo hwy and 19 city commute.

It is *supposedly* half power of stock, but... since I cannot see what is inside the black box, I can't tell if they halved every stinkin' value of the stock program, which would seem to be probable considering how drive-ability suffers.

The Smarty, to the best of my knowledge, will not permit changes to parameters in the stock program. Since I wanted advanced timing and slightly elevated rail pressures, I cannot get that in the stock program, thus I have 3 options:

I can either go with the half power program which forces me to never be able to use more power than I should be using for eco driving, but overall drive-ability suffers.

I can go with the sw1 (+30 HP) and gain some of the drive-ability back, but gain all the detracting factors of the way Smarty's performance programs are constructed (smoke, steep changes between ranges of each of the map tables).

I can go with my full-power (~+230 HP) and dial the power down with PoD 30 (what I'm doing this week) and drive easy and gain most of the drive-ability, lose most of the smoke (no more visible smoke than stock) and gain more lower RPM ability without the engine complaining.

Or just go to stock and not gain any advance or additional pressure... as a 4th option.

All things to be considered, all of which demand some amount of experimentation to be able to quantify their effect to the goal.

[Diesel_Dave]

Okay I did some digging on the MADS Electronics website (maker of Smarty), Mads Electronics - Smarty - CaTCHER - Dodge Tuning - Home. I've worked with the SmartyJr67ME before, but if I'm right you'd be using the Smarty06.

The Smarty06 has 9 "software levels":
SW # 0 : Half power
SW # 1 : 30 Hp increase, with added timing .
SW # 2 : 60 Hp increase, no added timing.
SW # 3 : 60 Hp increase, with added timing.
SW # 4 : 90 Hp increase, no added timing.
SW # 5 : 90 Hp increase, with added timing.
SW # 6 : 160 Hp increase, no added timing.
SW # 7 : 160 Hp increase, with added timing.
SW # 8 : 210 Hp increase, no added timing.
SW # 9 : 210 Hp increase, with added timing.

I assume SW #0 is what you've been calling the "eco" or "nanny" program, and SW #9 is what you've been calling the "fun" program.

All these programs are about increasing power (not necessarily FE). There are only 2 ways you can get more power: add efficiency and/or add fuel. I don't know what exactly is in the programmer, but I'm reasonably confident these programs primarily just allow more fuel to be sent. The exception being the programs with added timing. The added timing will boost the effeciency some. I can tell you that there is NO way you can get 210 hp increase from efficiency--that's additional fuel. Efficiency will probably buy you a ~10-15% boost in power at most. My guess would be that the +30hp program is just added efficiency from added timing without additional fuel. The ECM has a fueling governor in software that limits the max fueling at any given speed. My guess is that these programs just change the max fueling. That's how you would get a 1/2 power program--just cut the fuel in half. Honestly I'm not sure what you'd use the 1/2 power program for other that maybe testing your truck out after you've made some mod and you want to do a test run without really pushing the engine. It probably doesn't help efficiency at all--all it does it limit how high up in torque you can go on the stock settings (at least that's my guess).

Bottom line is this: all these programs are designed for getting more power out of the engine. Dude, you got a turbocharged 409 cubic inch engine--you don't need more power! Granted it's fun to play around with , but if we're talking about ways to improve your mileage, you can do just fine with the stock amount of power. Or even 1/2 the stock amount of power, as you've already found out.

Okay, so then how can you use the programmer to give you FE? That would be in what Smarty calls the "optional parameters". Here's the User Guide (see section 5): http://madselectronics.com/downloadf...6UserGuide.pdf
You can get yourself some FE mostly with advanced timing and perhaps a little more with some increased rail pressure. If I were you, for best FE I would stick with the stock program (Torque=1), then see what you can do with advanced timing and/or increased rail pressure. I would try stepping it up and seeing how it goes. Maybe try level 2 timing first. If all is well try level 2 timing and level 2 rail pressure. If that's still good maybe 3 timing, 2 rail pressure, etc. You can continue to use the "fun" program as-is, but that's my suggestion for the "eco" program.

Hope that helps...

[Diesel_Dave]

Originally Posted by slowmover

Sounds like the program messes with the transient response.

This is my apperception of aftermarket tuners. No genuine effect on steady-state mpg, but works well for less-than-sensitive drivers in around town stop-n-go. While I admit or agree that some tuners seem to improve steady-state, one has to eliminate any and all changes from OEM to make a viable claim, first. (There are those claims from some with reasonable certification).

Thanks for the lab numbers, Dave. I remember (quite some long time ago) my initial reading in the history of science and the (seemingly) weird emphasis on accurate time-keeping as a precondition to observations, and not just those of astronomy and navigation (as a teenager, all is supposed to reveal itself instantly). Should have thought more carefully about my musical training instead, and of metronomic beat.

Time made visible.

P&G is a funny imposition on the "natural" order of things . . at first.

.

It took me a little while to get the hang of P&G too. It will seem a little wierd until you get the hang of it, but after you've done it a while it will become almost second nature.

And you're right about accurate time measurement. If that kind of thing interests you I would highly recommend Longitude. It's a book that A&E later made a movie out of. It's about the guy in the 1700's that made the British the first super-accurate watches they could take on ships so that they could tell their longitude. Latitude is fairly straightforward to tell from the date and the length of the daylight but longitude is completely relative. To know longitude you need to know the solar time where you are, as well as the time at a reference location (that's why you need the accurate timepiece--every minute of error = 17 miles at the equator). In those days most stationary clocks were only accurate to 10-15 minutes a day. This guy spent his whole life working on this and eventually made a watch that traveled from England to the Carribean and back. When they brought it back over almost 3 months later it was less than 2 minutes off. Funny thing is the guy was a carpenter--not an educated scientist. The scientists never would give the guy the credit. Like I said, it's a fascinating story, yet it explains many things--like why longitude 0 is in Greenwich England, why the British Navy conquered much of the world in the 1700's (they could navigate so much better), and why it's still the Naval Observatory that gives out the official time.

[TX_Dj]

Dave,

I appreciate the help... but you've not told me anything that I didn't already know.

This has gone past a bit of a hijack of the thread, and for that I apologize.

Smarty reprograms tables, but leaves limiters in place. It appears from documented reverse-engineering of these tunes that the guys who wrote the tunes don't know what they're doing - they command HUGE spikes in the tables, many times beyond what the limiter is set to, in an apparent attempt to fool the ECM (which fails).

Yes, Revo sw0 is what I call the "eco/nanny". It reduces fueling across the board, while keeping timing advanced very high, even at low RPM/load. This, and its throttle response are the only "drive around the problem" issues. Other than that, it acts as a crutch to dissuade me from commanding bulk torque (which as you accurately indicate, can be done readily even on a completely stock truck). With stock, I can and do pull up to 1300F EGT and 30+ psi boost. With sw0, one is hard pressed to pull more than 800F EGT, and you have to really mean it if you want to have it. Even then, it's still less power overall than stock.

My objective, regardless of stock/under-tuned/over-tuned is to find a happy medium that works well for my wants and desires, and that will take experimentation for my specific use case. I invite anyone to say what they will about use of a tuner in the pursuit of FE, but my previous best on stock was 17 city and 20 solo hwy. On sw0, it was 19 city and 22 hwy. A recent test suggests that driven identically, TNT-R sw7 @ 30 PoD may net slightly more than sw0, and the next couple weeks puttering around with the same setting in town should give some indication further.

As part of the experiment, I'll gladly go back to 100% stock and exercise as much discipline as I can muster with an unrestricted program and compare numbers as best as possible. Obviously it won't be apples/apples, but should be close enough.

Anyhow, sorry about the hijack, didn't mean for this thread to turn all about me and my truck.