No clue what im doing. k24a swap

K-Series Programmable ECU Calibration updates / downloads
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Whoda
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 6:36 pm

No clue what im doing. k24a swap

Post by Whoda »

So i recently bought a 2003 Acura RSX Type S.

Now that im starting to explore the car i want to fix some of the things the person before me never did, such as his ECU tune. When we were talking about the car he had said the tune was perfect all of these things that he up sold on the car. When accessing the ECU via my laptop and downloading his base map off of it i noticed nothing was done to it except the launch control. Im slowly trying to get the hang of the tuning aspect of this but i dont want to mess anything up before i even get started.

So what i was wondering is if there is someone who can help me tune my fuel ratios and what not and maybe help me understand how to use Kmanager a little better.

Things done to the car:
Jdm k24a swap
LSD 6 speed trans
k tune 4-2-1 headers no cat
short ram intake
255 fuel pump
Ecky
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:35 am

Re: No clue what im doing. k24a swap

Post by Ecky »

I'm far from an expert, really just starting myself. I have my fuel maps pretty darn close though. Here's what I did:

Under low speed cam, set all cam angles the same - let's say 20 degrees as your first one. Start your car, connect your laptop, save your kal, upload your kal to your ECU, start recording (red button at the top). I leave my laptop open in the passenger seat so I can glance at it very occasionally but state laws will vary on whether this is legal or not. Remember, be safe! This can be distracted driving. Do not do anything illegal or unsafe.

Now you have your laptop connected and data logging. Before driving away, on the "tables" window, switch to low speed fuel and the cam angle you're tuning for.

At the top middle of the window are four small buttons. If you hover over them, you'll see they are 1) "display normal table values", 2) "display lambda values", 3) "display fuel adjustment values", 4) "display target lambda". I like to change the view to #3 fuel adjustment values (shortcut shift+F5). Your tables should all be white and empty.

As you start driving, k manager will begin to populate these cells with the short term fuel trim. Let's say you're cruising at 3000rpm on the highway at low load, and the ECU has to compensate for fuel by subtracting 10% (-10% short term fuel trim). As it collects more samples, it will fill the cells you're driving in (RPM + load) and show that it needed a fuel adjustment of -10% in that cell - in other words, that the cell is 10% too rich. Drive around for a while, varying load and RPM, until you fill in most of the cells with a lot of samples.

Park your car and make changes to the fuel tables. If a cell says "-10%" you can right click on the cell, click "adjust" and set the percentage adjustment to "-10", then click ok. If you were to switch over to "display normal table values" button you would see the number in the cell would be 10% lower. Do this for all of the cells that have data in them. Save, then upload, then go driving again, rinse and repeat. Over time your fuel trims will approach zero, meaning no deviation from the fuel tables needs to be made to get the requested air fuel ratio.

I find that it's really hard to get trims all the way to zero. Mine might be high or low 1-2% more or less day to day, and tend to read a bit lean when the car is cold, meaning (I think) I need to do some temperature compensation.

You may notice that the graph off to the side of the fuel tables does not have smooth lines in it at first, but as your map gets closer to accurate, it should smooth out and most of the lines will be roughly the same shape.

Others may chime in with different methods. I'm still a novice at tuning.

Happy to share my kal with you if it helps. I too have a K24A with the stock header and intake, but even small changes in intake and exhaust can and will cause your engine fuel maps to be different from mine.
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