Customer Reviews

How to Tune and Modify Engine Management Systems (Motorbooks Workshop)

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have a few books from the "Motorbooks Workshop" series and I am happy with all of them - in fact I'm kicking around the idea of building a library of them for myself, as they are all instant reference books full of valuable information. I could waste a weekend away just thumbing through them.

THIS BOOK is one of the best automotive "how-to" books I have ever read. Let me tell you why. I have been shying away from stand alone engine management in my search for power-adders on my cars. One of my cars is a mk2 Supra with a tired 5MGE engine and I've been wondering how long it will be before I have to do something about it. There aren't a lot of aftermarket companies out there who work with this engine. Do I rebuild the 5M with stock parts, new gaskets, and maybe a mild port and polish? This would save me the trouble of worrying about engine management, and it would be cheap(er). Or do I swap in the turbo 3.0 inline six 7MGTE from the later mk3? If I do this, I'll need to source a complete wiring harness, and what if the wires are cut, and then I can't figure out how to get it running? Or do I go crazy and swap a twin turbo 2JZGTE from a mk4? Same problem there. Or do I try something completely different and modify the 5M with independent throttle bodies, or build a grassroots centrifugal supercharger system for it? Or better yet, custom fab a subframe and shove an LS1 under the hood? I'm not worried about the fabrication, I'm worried about the wiring! Now it's not just a matter of finding a parts car with an intact wiring harness... I need to build an engine management system and that stuff is... well, scary. I don't know where to start, and I'm not ready to lay down the coin for some TEC III or Megasquirt Whatever thing if I don't know what I'm trying to buy. And the various forums I subscribe to can't offer me enough hands-on information to make an educated decision. I'm not going to pay $2000 for something just `cause everybody likes the cold air intakes made by the same company.

Behold! From behind a curtain Jeff Hartman steps forward with this book. Chapter 1, starting on page 14 outlines the basics of my system in a clear and concise manner. Step 1: Get fuel to the engine compartment. Step 2: Build an intake manifold and throttle. Step 3: Figure out a way to meter fuel. Step 4: Turning the injectors on and off. Step 5: Telling the computer what's going on in the engine. Step 6: Startup. Step 7: Naming the system and making it smart. Step 8: How did we do? Step 9: Revisionist designs.

Each step is explained in simple and effective detail. Yes, I had grasped these concepts conceptually before owning this book, but it is very nice to have them laid before me so neatly. There is good data in these first few pages. For instance, did you know that injectors should be designed around an 80% duty cycle? Also, most injectors cannot provide accurate flow below a threshold of 1.3 milliseconds open time. Jeff told me so. Perhaps this is in my copy of the Bosch Automotive Handbook, but Jeff's book has prettier pictures.

Jeff also told me that an air/fuel mixture of 12.2 is optimum, which I had heard before. But Jeff told me *why*. Nobody has done that before. After explaining most of these basics, Chapter 2 is a breakdown of the functions of an ECU. Jeff doesn't just devote a sentence to the ECU, more than a page of tiny text is devoted to description of components of a simple ECU. He then explains the advantage of calibrated engine management over mechanical fuel injection - his goal is to teach you how to be able to drive your car on the track *and* the street, without the necessity of keeping the revs up and dreading every stoplight.

Occasionally Hot Rod Magazine will have a column on "term of the month" or something like that. I like Hot Rod a lot. It's a good magazine that gets right down to the nuts and bolts of automotive enthusiasm. In these short technical columns, they will explain "volumetric efficiency" or some other complicated term. That stuff is all here, in much more detail. There are even *equations*. Who doesn't like equations?

Chapter 3 is dedicated to sensors. Eleven dense pages of information on sensors. Jeff explains the function of every sensor in detail, including MAF, O2, crank position, throttle position, temperature sensors (for air, gas, and oil), torque and pressure sensors... you get it. Jeff isn't short-changing us. It's all here. I was flipping through Chapter 3 and stopped at a familiar picture. "Hey," I thought. "That looks just like my MAF for my Volkswagen VR6." Yep, it's a Bosch design, and Jeff knows all about it.

Chapter 4: Actuator Systems. Jeff tells us all about the control of electronic fuel injectors - how they are built, equations for flow rates, and a huge chart of fuel injector specs from practically every Bosch, Nippon Denso, Lucas, or AC Delco injector on the market. Jeff doesn't care if you like American cars, German cars, Japanese cars, British cars, Italian cars, or whatever. He just likes cars. Me too. That's why I am in love with this book.

With most of the fundamentals out of the way, Chapter 5 jumps right into "Hot Rodding EFI Engines." The first page has a picture of a supercharged LT1, and the second page of the chapter has a picture of a Porsche 968 turbo. Buy copies of Corky Bell's forced induction books in addition to Jeff's book, and you'll know all you need to know. In this chapter, he talks about the stuff we all like to talk about. Supercharging, turbocharging, nitrous, big lopy cams, different intake manifolds, exhaust, fuel delivery components, all that. He even devotes a little time to hot rodding Chevy's TPI and Ford's MPI.

Chapter 6: Recalibrating Factory ECUs. This is the black magic I wanted to know about. Bam! Right away Jeff has a table of cars and available recalibration systems for those cars. It's not just the basic cars either. The list includes Honda, BMW, Buick, Ford, Chevy, VW, Nissan, Porsche, Toyota, Mazda, and Mitsubishi. Pick an engine, and Jeff knows about it. Audi 1.8T? Grand National turbo V6? Ford 5.0 or 4.6? It's in there. Then he shows how he removed a chip from a Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4 and learned to crack it. And look! A list of websites for hacking software. Jeff, you are the man. You have brightened my life.

I am writing too much. And I'm only a quarter into the book. He tells us more about piggy back computers, stand alone systems (AEM, DTA, Autronic, APEXi, Accel - an incredibly comprehensive list of stand alone manufacturers and their kit specifications -prices too!!), swapping factory engine management systems, converting engines to EFI, common installation and startup problems, building intake manifolds (with equations!), EMS tuning on the dyno and troubleshooting (and the best tools to do it), and emissions and OBD systems.

The last ~1/3 of the book is detailed descriptions of installations on a bunch of project cars (including a triple turbo Jaguar, a Lotus, a turbo Honda CRX, a twin-charged Toyota V6, a Golf 1.8T, and a '55 Chevy with a twin turbo small block). The project car sections are neat, but Jeff, I doubt that Golf 1.8T made 335 rear-wheel horsepower. But I'd believe you if you said "335 front-wheel horsepower." That's pretty much the only error I found.

If you are into cars, and you are building a car of your own with a semi-exotic forced induction or naturally aspirated engine, get ahold of this book. It's the best I've seen.

The author has done a fantastic job explaining the engine management computers boxes in your car. As someone that enjoys engine tuning cars and working on forced induction systems, the book was a wealth of knowledge. There wasn't a single page that wasn't packed with great information. I can't say enough good things about the book, Jeff (author) shows his depth of knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject on every page. He explains the components one at a time and in depth and how they interrelate with each other as well issues he has had and how he resolved them. He also lists the issues he has had with his project cars and how he fixed them. I'm going to refer to this book and take notes from the project cars he detailed in the book to better understand the issues and performance techniques with my own projects. 5 STARS ...

Let me start off by saying that this is an honest-to-goodness good book. Of the hundred or so that I own about engines this one ranks in my top ten no doubt. If you are considering buying this book and your reading the other reviews, especially the negative ones, know that a book cant teach you how to tune cars, only experience. But before you go trying to tune you need to know whats in this book. You need to know the systems and setups before you go trying to change things for the better or else you'll just make very expensive mistakes.
As far as actually using the tuning systems on the market today printing specifics would be pointless-there are too many and they change daily so you wont find much of that here. If you want to know how to use the management you bought, read the manual-thats why its there. Also, you need to know how the engine your trying to tune is setup. Pay close attention to things like injector size or how the ignition systems reads - and find out exactly how the engine is assembled and with what components. Theres a huge difference between sleeves and a block guard in a B-series honda,or between aftermarket and stock rods and you have to tune accordingly. Those are things you need to know before you ever crank the engine. Also, Save yourself the trouble and buy a real wideband oxygen sensor. A gauge reading your stock narrowband is no good.

If you really want to get into tuning cars, read up first. Read product manuals (many are available from the manufacturer on their webpage for free) and read this book. The next step is experience-tune your own car and blow it up a few times, or go to school-there are now traveling schools that teach you how to dyno tune the right way. Either way, learn as much as you can before you try or you'll be blowing things up left and right. Tuning is a tough business and if you want to play you need to know your stuff inside and out.

I think this book will make a great reference. Beware that the type face is tiny and if compared to a book in a more regular font size it would be about 800 pages. Teaches you the basics on each of the components and how to make calculations but does not show you how to actually make the changes. I thought the last half of the book called Project Cars was going to actually go through a tune process on each and that you would learn from example...that is, until I actually got into them. They were just like descriptions of their project cars. I want a step by step of tuning a car. I know that there are a wide range of different EFI systems with tons of different software for doing the tune but the author should have spent a chapter or two of showing an actual tune, what changes were made to what tables and why the changes were made in between pulls. There was none of this. This being the case, I am now looking for another book that has what I am looking for. This one will be going on the shelf as a reference for possibly calculating fuel requirements for a fantasy motor or something. If you want a history lesson on EFI and some 101 on EFI components, this would be the book. If you expect to be able to tune a car, ANY car after reading this book, find a different book.

For those looking for a user manual on how to tune a car... well this isnt it. But if you are looking for something that will give you the basis for understanding WHY you are doing certain things... THIS IS THE BOOK.

Its largely based on explaining the history, progression, and improvements to engine management systems. Then breaks down in pretty good details what different factors or settings change in the engine, how to tune for them, and what the side effects could be.

There is lots of theory, and lots of info here. For those just getting into the black art of engine management, or even just engine work in general, this book is a great base to build off of. With this book, and Max Boost from Corky Bell, you really should be on solid ground when diving into a forced induction setup, or dealing with Nitrous since theres lots of the book which talkes about Nitrous injection.

One thing this book also does, is clearly caution a reader from just playing with engine management. It explains how touchy some of these settings are, and how easy it is to destroy an engine from mis management.

This books title is really misleading. Of the 266 pages of "content". The only pages that REALLY deal with tuning are pages 122-152. That's right...only 30 pages on topic.

The first 87 pages are "background" on engine data/sensors and how ECU/sensors work. The last 90 pages are "project" cars write ups. The project pages are more about how to build an engine/system rather than how to TUNE aftermarket ECU's. The rest of the book is "filler" data on the specs/capabilities of the various aftermarket/grey market ECU's with the author giving no opinion, or experience as to which one works best for what application. The author even goes COMPLETELY off topic in attempting to teach you how to design/build/modify an intake manifold in 6 pages (few diagrams or illustrations). He also wastes 6 pages on engine swaps, without discussing the merits or techical details involved or even the legalities of such swaps. He does cover the legality of swaps/modification in another chapter, but doesn't clearly state what is, and what is not allowed by law. Only restates the law/text.

For those REALLY interested in learning about engines, tuning, fabrication/modifcation, this is not the book. It's fluff. Which is guess is why it is $20, not $100+ like the real automotive texts.

I have to say that this book is arguably worth reading ONCE, but it does not offer much in the way of practical advice. It basically beats you over the head with how things work; although, some of the information provided in this book I felt was a bit questionable. For example, the author talks about how 11:1 Air Fuel Ratio will give the fastest flame front speed, but he doesn't explain why or provide sources other than that it's supposedly been captured on a special camera. I've been unable to find ANYONE else that claims 11:1 AFR gives the fastest flame front speed, so I would take some of the numbers given in this book with a grain of salt.

When I said this book hits you over the head, it really does just that. Several parts of the book were repeated literally I'd say about 6 times. It got so bad that I felt the author was just copying and pasting to pad the information and it made me feel like he wasn't really that concerned with writing a quality book. The description given by another reviewer on this site who wrote that the book is full of fluff and that the title of the book is a little misleading is fairly spot on. It felt more like I was reading a bad information pamphlet about how engines are ideally supposed to work instead of a book on E.M. tuning. It doesn't help that the word count on the pages is fairly high with small print and the book is fairly thick. Your dedication will be tested to make it all the way through to the end of this one; I did though and it didn't get any better.

After reading this book, I read "the other Engine Management" book that Amazon has here by Mr. Banish and I have to say that I was utterly amazed by its quality after having read this one first. Aside from a small snippet of information here and there that you have to dig out of this book, it feels like it was overall a waste of time after I read the other one.

I was disappointed in this book for a couple of reasons. One is that it wanders from the title topic regularly with many pages spent on fabricating intake manifolds and highlighting project cars. This is all interesting but will not help me tune my EFI system. The book would be less than half it's size if the author stuck to the stated subject. The other is the amount of repetition. It appears the book was written with the assumption the reader would skip around (and I can see why they would) but I tend to read cover-to-cover. Also, although the content on basic engine fuel and spark requirements is informative, there is no coherent tuning strategy presented. There is an abundance of information on aftermarket controllers which may be very useful if the reader is looking for this type of information. Overall, I cannot recommend this book for someone wanting to actually be able to tune their EFI system using it's contents.

This has been money well spent,I am happy I got it and everyone who cant leave their car alone should own it. Not for the faint hearted or old fashioned fuel injection systems.

Update Jan 6th 2010--- I got the two engine management tuning books by greg banish yesterday and within a few chapters knew who had written the bible of EFI tuning. Sorry Jeff hartman but greg banish is THE MAN.

I bought this book on a whim as I am in the planning stages for developing an EMS for a 1974 MGB with a cross-flow head. Hartman gives an excellent overview of modern EMS with examples of TBI and MPI (Throttle Body and Multi-Point Injection, respectively). He gives specifics regarding fueling requirements, intake and exhaust considerations, and even basic tuning steps (along with a useful troubleshooting guide.) The only disappointments in this superb book were the slightly glossed over math (which he at least provided to give rough calculations, which was better than many books) and the total lack of any discussion on the MegaSquirt/UltraMegaSquirt EFI/EMS projects, which are the right in the heart of this books purpose. These minor problems did not detract from the overall readability and usefulness of this book. Highly recommended for the car head who is into tweaking their machines, or someone who would like a good primer on how a modern EMS works.