Circuit Motorsports Tuned Stock BRZ: +17whp & +12wtq

[Tico]

So I'm in Lima, Peru. My GT86's only performance mod so far is the AEM Electronically Tuned Intake (plus wheels, tires and minor brake upgrades). I use 97 or 98 octane gas down here. Does it make sense for me to buy a stage 1 or stage 2 Ecutek tune kit and bring it down here? How could that work? I'm clueless as to whether it can be done remotely or in conjunction with a local tuner. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Circuit Motorsports]

Originally Posted by Tico

So I'm in Lima, Peru. My GT86's only performance mod so far is the AEM Electronically Tuned Intake (plus wheels, tires and minor brake upgrades). I use 97 or 98 octane gas down here. Does it make sense for me to buy a stage 1 or stage 2 Ecutek tune kit and bring it down here? How could that work? I'm clueless as to whether it can be done remotely or in conjunction with a local tuner. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Yup, we can do an e-tune for you. Basically we would send you the Ecutek programming kit with the cable, and we would tune your car remotely.

We would custom tune your car for the fuel you use (97 or 98 octane) and to take advantage of any other mods you have, such as your intake.

We would walk you through all the steps involved and make it as easy as possible! Basically all you need to do is flash our maps, take logs, and send them back to us until we are finished with your tune

[atledreier]

It's very simple, and you learn more about how your car works. Recommended! :-)

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

[Circuit Motorsports]

Originally Posted by atledreier

It's very simple, and you learn more about how your car works. Recommended! :-)

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

Thanks Atle!

[mike_ekim1024]

Originally Posted by atledreier

It's very simple, and you learn more about how your car works. Recommended! :-)

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

My tune with Circuit MS is almost done.. it def feels more alive, pulls a bit harder and helps remove the torque dip. Does it feel like a turbo? Not quite.. unless going downhill in second at WOT . But it feels the way it should.

[Circuit Motorsports]

Originally Posted by mike_ekim1024

My tune with Circuit MS is almost done.. it def feels more alive, pulls a bit harder and helps remove the torque dip. Does it feel like a turbo? Not quite.. unless going downhill in second at WOT . But it feels the way it should.

Thanks for the feedback sir

[R.S-HawK]

Curious as to how many miles people have put into their tunes.

FRS is my daily driver and one of my largest concern when it comes to a tune is long term reliability.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[atledreier]

Mine is also a daily driver, which was the main reason for getting this tune. That torquedip was killing me. Seeing as several FI builds are several thousand miles in already I'd have no reason to believe a little better timing and cam trickery would harm my engine any more than my stock trackdays do anyway.... This car seems to be built to last.

[FA20Club.com]

Great selection. Doesnt matter whom you choose just glad you did get a tune in the end.

[Victor Draken]

Question: during datalogging are you guys able to see the difference between two different brand of 100ron fuel? If yes how many whp can yield a better fuel?

I'm so curious about this all fuel octane things.
We have no e85 in europe so trying to get the best out of what we have here.

[FA20Club.com]

there are values you can monitor to see how well the tune adapts to your octane on a specific fuel in your area, yes

[Circuit Motorsports]

Originally Posted by Victor Draken

Question: during datalogging are you guys able to see the difference between two different brand of 100ron fuel? If yes how many whp can yield a better fuel?

I'm so curious about this all fuel octane things.
We have no e85 in europe so trying to get the best out of what we have here.

Hey Victor, different brands of the same octane level fuel have different additives added to their fuel. They may be the same advertised octane level, but the additives can affect how the engine reacts to it. Those different additives can have the same affect as fuel with a lower octane level.

When data logging, there are parameters you can log and review that would indicate if the tune was too aggressive for the fuel being used. I have seen differences in the data logs when switching to a different brand of fuel of the same octane level. This is one of the reasons we leave a margin in our tunes -- to accommodate for differences in fuel "quality". Sometimes even that is not enough and requires adjustments to the tune, or requires the owner to avoid certain brands/stations.

- Bob

[atledreier]

Allow me to demonstrate the difference fuel can make, even with the same octane rating:
The following are snips from the conversations I'm having with Bob over at Circuit Motorsports:

Oh HELL yeah! :-D

Rev 4 is amazing! I have no idea what changed from yesterday, but this tune is VERY nice. <...> Midrange with part throttle is incredible. I forgot all about logging interesting things and just enjoyed the heck out of the tune, car and roads I was on. I love how I don't have to drive around the torquedip anymore, just mash the throttle at any revs and it just goes. 3-5k is the place to be now when driving spiritedly, that growl and the absense of torquedip just makes you wanna drive the thing forever!

What threw us for a loop here was that for the previous logs I was running Shell V-Power 98 fuel, and for this I had a tank of Statoil 98RON.

Ok, drive rev5 some more. It feels great on part throttle. I think that's what threw me a little. The part throttle up to somewhere like 80-90% it feels incredible, but as soon as I go WOT (open loop?) it feels like it's holding back or bogging down a little. It is clearly noticeable and reproducible. I'll log it as soon as I can, hopefully during lunch in a few hours. I didn't notice this with rev4, but I haven't flashed it back to check.

Bob's reaction to the revision 5 logs. He didn't know I had switched fuel, and I didn't conenct the dots for another few revisions, so we had quite a setback:

Atle, I’ve attached rev6! I see what was happening in the prior rev5 – I was asking for a little too much timing down low and it forced the ECU to pull timing, making the upper range week. I’ve reduced the low end timing a little to keep the engine happy with no knock.

So, at around revision 8 or so I started to connect the dots...

One thing struck me, though. At rev 5 (the revision where I progress stagnated a little) I switched to another brand of fuel. Still 98RON, but went from Shell V-power to Statoil, our local state oil company. I forgot to tell you this as I figured decent quality 98 is decent quality 98. Could that be an impact at all? My next tank will be V-power again, so I guess we'll see then. I rememeber Rev5 saw a little knock in the midrange, could that be related?

And we then go back to rev4 status, V-power fuel and work from there. Currently just flashed rev 12 with is a very slight variation of Rev11:

Ok, finally got to try Rev11, and it feels GREAT! Pulls strong and pretty even for the FA20 (it's lumpy at best). Very happy bunny now!

So, I know it can be hard to notice in normal conditions, but my engine is DEFINETLY happier with V-power 98 than the Statoil 98 fuels. To the point where I now have a safe fuel map I can use if there's no V-Power available.

Another thing I've been VERY happy with is the way we can tune the cool features like AutoBlip. I now have near perfect rev-matching when downshifting. Might have to fine-tune the AutoBlip when spring comes and I can do a trackday or two again, but for spirited driving the blip is perfect. The default AutoBlip setting is pretty much useless for anything but making a little exhaust noise. :-)

I'll write a proper review tomorrow when I've dynoed Rev12.

[Victor Draken]

Well... Thanks for the exhaustive explanation!!

I'll try the two Ron100 fuel ( shell vpower and eni super +) I have around here when it'll be the time of tuning my orange beauty and see what works better.