how often do you log or montior?
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I log every new tank as soon as I can, just to ensure I have good gas. Once I've checked the datalog and see that everything is good, I put the AP away until the next tank. Since I work from home a good bit, I tend to not have to do this all that often. I'm on an OTS tune.
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Absolutely live lot every time I drive. I monitor boost, af learning, and feedback knock. My tuner said if you want your car to last always keep an eye on feedback knock. You'll get hits once and a while which is just noise but if you're doing a pull and you start seeing it pull more and more timing you know it's knocking and to stop. Could be the difference between completely destroying your motor or saving it
ive noticed on live monitoring that i hit -1.4 feedback knock once in a while i was told it was normal....i have yet to log and look at my stage1 ots. but everything seems normal when i monitor it live. would that be enough?
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I'll get -1.4 hits sometimes during a pull and sometimes just cruising. I've even had as high as -2.8 just taking off and driving not even during a pull. But my injectors are also at 98% which is not good at all so I know that's my problem. And to answer your question, no. A data log monitors way more than live logging. Do some research and figure out what needs to be logged and then do a log. Right now you really have no idea what's going on with that ots tune
Re: Re: how often do you log or montior?
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would i trust the ots map more then the stock tune. im on all stock 91 tune running 93 oct just to be safe.
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^^^^this.
As other have said, live monitoring is a good thing, but doesn't give you the full picture. I live monitor frequently, but actually log once per tank.
1.4 FBK on an OTS is not abnormal, but you need to look at the logs to make sure it is random and clears up quickly. If you are seeing a pattern, that may be a sign to dig deeper.
My OTS stage 1 had a fair amount of repeatable cruising knock. I could make it happen.
I opted for an etune to get the cruise logs cleaned up. I also found through that process, that the BP I had been fueling at had inconsistent gas. I changed to a different BP and my logs really cleared up.
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Re: Re: how often do you log or montior?
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I pull a log every few days. If I see something live (my drives are choppy, 5 to 20/30 minutes each, 3 to 8 times a day so I see mins with enough frequency to have a good feel for what is happening). I've logged every trip before, just don't see the need to do it consistently. I can watch live monitoring well enough to get a feel for frequency. That said, Cobb needs to put an SD slot in the AP and allow for always on logging (amongst other things)
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It's not realistic for a lot of people that daily drive to log their cars even weekly. Monitoring is still a good way of getting advance notice that something could be wrong. I always pay attention to the monitor see the odd -1.4 FBK when puttering around at low RPM and usually when I am at a green light where I see I can get a good run I will reset the monitors and do a hard log-like pull and if there's 0.00 FBK I'm satisfied. I do most logging anytime I change a tune or the season is changing but once I feel comfortable that things are okay I don't spend too much time overanalyzing as it kind of takes some fun out of the car if you are always thinking about it. Not saying it's never a good idea to log but it's just not something I feel worth being done weekly.
Generally if you have been running the same tune for a long time and the logs have been consistently good what's to be overly worried about unless you are filling up at lots of different gas stations and varying octane ratings? I fill up almost exclusively at the same gas station and I find things are pretty consistent and as long as I don't see abnormal knock activity I'm not terribly worried.
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Awhile back, I was live monitoring once and didn't even know I was suffering from a significant amount of small knock counts. I saw the peak count under the gauge while I was driving and assumed it was occasionally knocking because I couldn't see the numbers on the FKL counter changing (because I was too focused on driving the car). But I felt timing being pulled once and thought that something was amiss. Fortunately, I was also datalogging...I checked the logs when I got home and there were knock events all over the place (small but a lot more than normal). I'd have never known if I hadn't been logging or had the urge to even log. IMO, this is what gets people into engine trouble later...they become to complacent and dependent upon live monitoring.
From my understanding of gas stations, most of them aren't consistent with the quality of gas. You might get good gas for months, then get a random bad batch. If you haven't experienced that yet, you're lucky...eventually, it'll happen. I also believe that not all protunes are rock-solid...there have been plenty of guys that have spent tons of time and money on parts and tuning that ended up with blown engines.
Also, I never said for anyone to log weekly (each Scoobie owner will have their own interpretation of what is excessive), but monitoring every tank of gas (a 10-15 minute log should be enough) shouldn't be difficult...that's 10-15 minutes of logging during a 7 day period. Some people take dumps that are longer than that...that's really not a large amount of time.
No matter how you cut it or what your personal life entails, live monitoring is never going to be a viable replacement for datalogging, unless you've 200% trust in your tuner (and you'll never know your tuner is doing a good job unless you check, and that requires datalogging). Each of us have different priorities and wants and needs, but IMO, if you can't log and check them occasionally, it might be better to stay on the stock tune or ensure your tuner has taken every single factor into account, but even then, tuners aren't created equal...some are better than others about giving you the most bang for your buck.
I believe people are blowing engines because they're becoming too dependent upon the live monitoring features of the AP. I've lost count of the times someone opens a post saying that they're seeing knock but will only post a picture of the AP's gauges as supporting data (and you have to grill them to log).
Apologies for responding with a diary, but it's all relevant.
If we never saw "bad" values in min and max then no need to log then. The problem is that we do see values that make them seem normal and miss the difference between an occasional peak and a whole slew of them Still, you did notice something amiss without a log review and would have known to start logging then.
For me logging at every fill is less than every other day, actually if I want my gauge to stay above 1/4 tank its almost every day! I fill up in the morning (cause gas is cheap in NJ), and I don't review my logs till over half the tank is gone. Hmmm. I'll should consider filling up, logging, and reviewing in the evening - though I normally fill 3 mi from home - probably not long enough to log new fuel. Have to think about this.
How do you view your logs? I reorganize my data columns in Excel and conditionally format boost, A/F throttle pos, timing ect on a color scale. Two color only for good and bad for Knock, FKL, AF1 . . .
It's been time consuming. I need to get this into script form. I does allow me to scan an hour commute and spot trouble areas though.
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I open the .csv, freeze the top row, then scroll from top to bottom, looking at the FKL and FBK columns and checking their values. If there is knock, I look to see if I'm in boost or not. I rarely see knock, so I'll scrutinize any values I see in those fields. If either is happening during boost, I begin to get worried and I'll do further logging. That's only happened once, and the values were higher than I was used to seeing. I think I had bad gas...I was also running the AC for the first time while logging, which probably placed a load on the engine; was also seeing the knock in top gear -- wasn't lugging, though. I pushed a more conservative OTS tune to the ECU (I'm still using that tune now)...there was little to no knock afterward.
I also look at the wastegate column when looking for pulls (it's easier than scanning through the boost column). I focus on FKL and FBK columns when doing that.
I'm not looking at AF# values when doing these checks. I just look for knock. An AFR gage is far more reliable (and less cryptic) than looking at the AF columns (I'll eventually get a AFR gauge, once I put on my aftermarket DP).
I'm doing this knowing that I'm looking at these logs with a very basic understanding of what to look for. For now, the "knock is bad" phrase is stuck in my head and that will suffice as I continue to learn about what to look for in the logs. Hell, I sometimes look at data streams on Linux/Unix machines and can interpret much of the raw network traffic -- without using Wireshark...if I can do that, I can learn how to read AP datalogs.
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