430 Scuderia vs Base Tuning

The 430 Scud runs entirely different Bosch software version than the Base F430's. It runs Ion sensing, titanium con rods, different higher compression pistons, the full works. From an emissions point of view they are both very conservatively mapped to match expectations of regulators so if both are tuned both will gain significant hp, especially with sports cats and header cats removed. Its possible to do full elimination of cat efficiency sensing in the firmware these days with 100% guarantee of no CEL with Swiss Army Knife tool I developed. What are you trying to do?

 

What kind of gains can be achieved Trev?

 

Aren't such gains primarily due to the freer breathing of the engine? It seems like tuning a modern N/A car typically doesn't yield that much. I'd be curious to see dynos of stock vs. sport cats/headers vs. sport cats/headers plus a tune.

 

Its probably safe to say we've tuned more F430's than probably anyone in the world. Base/Scud/Challenge cars all gain substainally from just our ECU Flash. To answer the original question, plugging in Scud parameters to a base wont yield much, the factory Scud calibrations are conservative just like the base and challenge cars.

To give you an example, the latest test we did on a F430 challenge. I'll attach a chart below.

Green is completely stock challenge
Blue is stock ecu tune, but with capristo headers, decat, challenge exhaust
Pink is full capristo exhaust with our ECU Flash 93 Octane
Red is full capristo exhaust with our ECU Flash 100 Octane

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I experienced biggest gains with header decats and/or sport cats and dialing in a big more aggressive fuel and timing.

There are a huge number of factors which need to be considered when entering into this, do it with your eyes wide open. I would firstly ensure your car is operating fully as Ferrari intended and that means getting it back to factory performance spec before attempting to do any mods. Firstly get a baseline pull to see where your starting from (if possible) and check overall health against what it should have came with from the factory. This will identify any potential dangerous issues which could make things much worse at a higher state of tune.

I am always amazed about the number of 360's for example which have poor performance and go unnoticed by their owners. This often happens after being serviced at both dealers and aftermarket alike, often this is due to lazy cam timing (but still often within permitted tolerances) as well as over time as components degrade. Dialing in the cams perfectly will dramatically improve power before you've even done a thing to the maps. Tuned or not its critical to get cam timing and balance between banks as close as possible if you want to make the best power gains and have the smoothest engine possible for high rpms.

Next you need to ensure all your stock power is there so often on a 10+ year old car I recommend doing a major service on service items like coil packs and spark plugs and o2 sensors. This alone can make your car feel very different, engine revs smoother and power gains can then be realized.

On the 360's for instance I observed that a standard car that's had an aftermarket freer flowing sports exhaust fitted actually performs worse with flat spots in several places in the rev range. If the car came from factory with a stock exhaust you maps aren't tuned for a free flowing unit. The maps are quite different on a factory sports exhaust equipped car vs a standard exhaust. On the F430 its essentially a sports exhaust fitted as stock so then tend to suffer much less in this regard but its worth mentioning nonetheless.

I would also consider doing sports cats and catless headers (in geographical regions which allow such activities). I noticed the European tuning maps are tuned for higher octane fuel and less back pressure than stock US ones for example. If anyone is interested I can show details of this. Its also very interesting to show differences between factory tuned engine maps and even Challenge race cars maps over stock maps.

The things I've been doing lately that make a night and day difference is modifying the algorithms by patching the code itself, not just editing the maps. With this approach for example i've been able to make an 'instantaneous' torque patch. This eliminates the effect of aliasing on the digital throttle pedal torque requests so you get much quicker access to the torque than Bosch engineers intended. This makes it far better to control but its unlikely that the traction control systems will be able to react fast enough (hence why the restricted it in the first place!) but the drivability and performance is vastly improved over even highest state of tune maps.

You can see from the lamfa table shown a lot of the air/fuel ratio's are in the best for emissions range.
As a good rule of thumb, here's the conversion factor for the graph shown ;

AFR/Lamda limit (rule of thumb) Conversion
6.0:1 AFR - Rich Burn Limit (engine fully warm) 0.41
9.0:1 AFR - Black Smoke / Low Power 0.61
11.5:1 AFR - Best Rich Torque at Wide Open Throttle 0.78
12.2:1 AFR - Safe Best Power at Wide Open Throttle 0.85
13.3:1 AFR - Lean Best Torque 0.90
14.7:1 AFR - Stoichiometric AFR (Stoich) 1.00
15.5:1 AFR - Lean Cruise, part throttle 1.05
16.2:1 AFR - Usual Best Economy 1.10
18.0-22.0:1 AFR - Carbureted Lean Burn Limit 1.22-1.50
22.0+ AFR - EEC / EFI Lean Burn Limit 1.50+


Trev
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Do you have a dyno graph showing Base/Scud/Challenge vs ECU-tuned Base/Scud/Challenge without other mods? I'd love to see evidence that supports your claim that "Base/Scud/Challenge cars all gain substantially from just our ECU Flash."

 

The stock maps for a US spec car are designed for low octane fuel that is commonly available in the US.

Mapping for higher octane
If you assume higher octane pump gas you can advance ignition timing maps and make it more aggressive (editing KFZW/KFZW2, etc) without detonation occurring and thus pick up extra power based on improved octane alone. Its why many tuners are doing swichable maps now so you can also do flex or dual fuels like Ethanol.

Sports cats and headerless cats
Then there are strict emissions standards that Bosch have to adhere too. There is so much emissions stuff going on too that if you make the mixtures too rich to pickup more power (or you decat) your likely to cause cat efficiency issues too and trigger a CEL. By de-catting the headers and going with free flowing sports cats (or a delete) you must disable cat efficiency checking altogether or re-calibrate it then you can pickup a lot of torque, power and throttle response one one foul swoop.

I assume that when Steve mentions a full capristo and decat with challenge exhaust he's also disabling cat efficiency or tweaking it too otherwise you'll get CEL illuminations if you try this yourself, so while the maps may not be tweaked its not 100% stock firmware but no maps are changed. Most tuners do this with codeword configurations, my SAK tool solution is a bit different, its 100% guaranteed to never trigger as it intelligently patches the code so the cat efficiency checking code is never even executed, it will never trigger, its 100% removed from the firmware.

Best torque LAMFA maps
The ignition coil is triggered to fire the spark plug and thus ignite the air to fuel ratio mixture (see LAMFA map). Talking about AFRs, it itself is mapped for 'Best Emissions' over a large proportion of the stock maps and here you can map for different things, either better overall horsepower, better torque or better emissions. If you look at the picture I posted of a 430 Scud's LAMFA you'll see all the green (stoich air fuel ratio) is very much mapped for best emissions for a lot of it. Compare that to the 430 Challenge and its a very different picture. If i get time I'll post that as a comparison, suffice to say there isn't an area in it mapped for best emissions

We haven't even discussed other emissions stuff like EGR, etc. so yes its entirely possible to gain 50+ hp on a NA Ferrari F430 even without dyno graphs, etc....

 

Yeah, I'd still like to see proof. I always ask for it whenever a service provider makes claims of "tune-only" gains on this site, but they never respond. I think that says a lot.

 

Sorry for the delayed response I was at sema and then at Daytona running cars over the weekend and wasn’t subscribed to the thread. We’ve done many tune only f430’s.

here is a dyno chart of before and after. Only mods were a tune. 93 octane.

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If you have specific questions I’m happy to answer them. You can always email me, if you’re after a very detailed response I’m always up for a phone conversation as well, it’s often easier than typing out a long essay.

 

Exactly as I'd expect to see. Adjust for the octane, getting a bit closer on the timing and refine the AFR's.

As a basic starting point doing the cats with a remap make the biggest difference to peak gain's. Least not forget the added benefit of improved responsiveness.
I've been playing with the ME torque aliasing code lately and there are significant gains in feel to be had by adjusting those artificially imposed torque limits too.

Due to my work on digital dash I will be offering a full analysis tool to anyone who's interested. I've been developing automatic patching code for the Bosch firmware so I can read/write in real time at super high performance. Way faster than the stock software allows. I'm linking that up to a tablet so you can real time edit any maps without having to reflash (* this ones only for the expert tuners with access to a dyno) but also can log several hundred parameters from a choice of several thousand and that's just on 360's for example. This will be absolutely invaluable for diagnostics as you can imagine...

@ Steve... How was Sema? Did you see the B is for Build creation ?

 

Hey Mase, thanks for posting the dyno (I just got on the site for the first time in several days). The gains look solid across the rpm range, which is a pleasant surprise for me. Have you guys done a "software tune only" on a scud? Have a dyno for that as well?

 

Very impressive gains for just a octane change. In California you get 91, in oklahoma it’s 90, here in Georgia we get 93.
What octane is the factory map set too?

 

It was very busy, its been a few years since I've been, and No I did not see their build.

I will have to look through my files. The last couple scuds I have done have had exhaust modifications

Factory mapping is typically setup for 91 octane (which is like 95 RON over in europe). Cars running 91 octane with our ecu flash still will yield huge gains.

 

Would love to see this if you can find it.

 

So is the tune a custom tune for each car or your own modified baseline tune with tweets done on it? Is it user reversible back and forth for emissions or if one gets a bad tank of gas or drives to an area that has lower octane than the 93 octane I get locally?

 

I will look for you.

 

We use what modifications (if any) combined with what fuel octane you're running, any specific requests you have (for example pretty much 100% of the 458 clients want the throttle desensitized) and construct a custom tune based on those parameters. It can be reversed back to stock at any time, we back up each set of ECUs of the full content.