Now that I have a bit more knowledge of the tuning process and the various parameters, I got to thinking about Stage 2 protunes and the resulting before/after dyno plots. The following is my concern:
Often times during protune sessions, the Cobb OTS Stage 2 "baseline" dyno plot is arrived at shortly after an ECU reset. Now, with an ECU reset, the Cobb Stage 2 base maps are coded in such a way that the Dynamic Advance Multplier starts off at .5 and learns its way up to 1.0 with some driving time. So chances are, those baseline plots of the Cobb OTS Stage 2 map reflect a low DAM of .5 and hence conservative timing advance. So when the protuner steps in and makes their mapping adjustments, one of the changes they often make is to set this value to 1.0 right away. So the resulting "after" dyno plot will most likely reflect a DAM of 1.0 and hence maximum timing advance. So my belief is that often times the "before/after" dyno plot of your Cobb Stage 2 base map vs. your new protuned map is not an apples to apples comparison. The Cobb OTS Stage 2 base map dyno was likely "handicapped" by the DAM reverting back to .5 after the ECU reset, not allowing the Cobb map to run at it's full potential after driving time. So in summary, I bet that a lot of the Cobb OTS Stage 2 "baseline" plots out there are understated and therefore the protuned gains exaggerated.
Please note that I'm not knocking the value of a protune in any way, just simply pointing out that it is very easy to exaggerate the gains over a Cobb OTS base map coded with a default DAM of .5.
Often times during protune sessions, the Cobb OTS Stage 2 "baseline" dyno plot is arrived at shortly after an ECU reset. Now, with an ECU reset, the Cobb Stage 2 base maps are coded in such a way that the Dynamic Advance Multplier starts off at .5 and learns its way up to 1.0 with some driving time. So chances are, those baseline plots of the Cobb OTS Stage 2 map reflect a low DAM of .5 and hence conservative timing advance. So when the protuner steps in and makes their mapping adjustments, one of the changes they often make is to set this value to 1.0 right away. So the resulting "after" dyno plot will most likely reflect a DAM of 1.0 and hence maximum timing advance. So my belief is that often times the "before/after" dyno plot of your Cobb Stage 2 base map vs. your new protuned map is not an apples to apples comparison. The Cobb OTS Stage 2 base map dyno was likely "handicapped" by the DAM reverting back to .5 after the ECU reset, not allowing the Cobb map to run at it's full potential after driving time. So in summary, I bet that a lot of the Cobb OTS Stage 2 "baseline" plots out there are understated and therefore the protuned gains exaggerated.
Please note that I'm not knocking the value of a protune in any way, just simply pointing out that it is very easy to exaggerate the gains over a Cobb OTS base map coded with a default DAM of .5.
