- When it comes to making modifications to late model cars equipped with automatic
transmissions with electronic controls, this can be a little bit tricky.
Most instances, we might be limited to reflashing the factory transmission control
module and this can be effective to a point but it can also give us some pretty big
limitations.
We're here with Nick from MoTeC USA to find out a little bit more about MoTeC's
take on a standalone and integrated electronic transmission control module.
So Nick, for a start, let's just talk about the limitations with a factory transmission
control module and how we can go about making tuning changes to those.
Obviously it can have a big affect on the shift pattern and this becomes more
and more important as well when we start modifying a factory engine and significantly
increasing the power and torque it produces.
So where are those limitations with factory software?
- Well yeah so you don't have the ability to take full control of all the tables,
all the ignition timing, all the fuel, if you want to replace injectors,
now you've got to change your fuel injector characterisation, that's where the standalone
comes in, is you can change everything about what you're putting in the project.
All these different add ons, you can bolt on a different supercharger, you can't account
for that in the factory ECU reflash without a lot of background work behind it.
- I think it's important to mention here, with reflashing it's a technology where we
are modifying the calibration essentially, the calibration data the same way that
the factory technicians do so and it can be immensely powerful but the limiting factor
as well can be the tables or maps that have been properly defined, so basically
what we have access to, and sometimes if the tables that we need to access aren't there,
we've obviously got no way of making adjustments to them.
Now in terms of your support here, you've produced a plug and play kit
that's currently in development for the late model Ford Mustang.
So can you talk to us about what you've done there, how this system works?
- Yeah so we've gone in and actually reversed out the fact that you need to have good
pressure control, current control to actually do it on the back end,
of all the different solenoids interacting between each other, along with the torque
management of the engine controlled itself.
So we can actually go in, phase in the different phases of preparation, torque
transfer and release for the next gear, with ramp rates of pressure control
of the solenoids.
So with that you can fine tune it so if you add on more horsepower, you can
change how fast or how much pressure you will apply to those different solenoids.
- Alright so there's a couple of aspects there I just want to dig into in a little bit more
detail.
So first of all, if we've got a standard engine that's just been tuned,
so we're not taking maybe a naturally aspirated engine and adding a supercharger
or turbos, so let's just consider the stock engine.
So understandably with a stock engine we should expect the factory transmission
mapping to work but there still can be advantages in changing shift pressure,
shift times, basically sacrificing a little bit of comfort in terms of a more aggressive
shift that will make the car more responsive and faster?
Is that fair?
- Yeah absolutely, they also can actually change different shift patterns.
So we've actually been able to add in a shift pattern say three to six that you
can't achieve with the factor controller, it's not something they would normally do.
Where they take these transmissions, remove out some of the gears to make
it more robust, stronger gears and need to do a three to six shift, we can do that now
because we have a standalone control of the strategy.
- Now the other aspect is that there is a really strong requirement for interaction
between the engine controller and the transmission controller.
in regards of when a shift is being processed, the engine control module needs
to reduce the engine torque so that the transmission isn't damaged.
So you've mentioned here that if you're making massive increases to power and
torque, maybe adding the supercharger and turbocharger or that sort of
combination, this can be problematic so how does this affect, why doesn't this
work well with the factory transmission control module?
- Well you need to be able to control that now you need to bring in pressure sooner
or later and the amount of pressure but also the fact that you can control the
torque reduction.
So you do it like you would on a normal sequential, you need to remove torque
at a certain amount of time but also properly time that in with the pressure release or
pressure gain from the solenoids.
So you can have that fine control for up and down shift tuning.
- Now in a factory system, completely stock standard, how is that torque
reduction achieved by the engine controller?
- They do anything from throttle management to ignition timing management and
then ignition cuts as well.
- But again, when the torque that the engine's producing maybe double or maybe even
three times what the factory engine was ever supposed to produce, sometimes
these factory techniques or strategies for the torque reduction can not reduce
the torque enough, is that a reasonable way of putting it?
- Yeah honestly sometimes they don't even do cuts, you have emissions, things they're
trying to keep in the track, where we don't care about that when we're doing road
racing so we actually do stronger cuts, we can reduce it quicker and get a harsher
shift, we're not worried about emissions as well so we can just slide right
through as well.
- The other aspect here is that's talking about an upshift, the downshift is just as
important in terms of rev matching so how is that achieved?
- You do the blips like you would normally do for some sort of race style shifting
but you can also manage the over blip or under blip a little bit with closed loop
RPM matching and all that kind of stuff.
- Now if someone's looking for an engine swap and looking to put one of these
transmissions into, behind another engine in a complete swapped out car,
is it possible to use the MoTeC controller as a standalone or is this only
integrated with the engine control as well?
- Yeah so we've developed a standalone system, nearing completion with the actual full
solution where all we need is some sort of torque understanding from the engine
controller and then ability to possibly provide that we want to cut from them
as well and you can integrate our standalone transmission controller into some other
situation that doesn't use our ECU as well.
- Now with the modern crop of electronically controlled automatics being quite complex,
and this is obviously something that from an engine tuner's perspective, they don't
necessarily have that understanding of tuning an automatic transmission.
I guess if you get all of this wrong you could turn it into a very expensive
basket case?
- I mean I imagine you could but we've also worked on some developing of
catching it if you've started to do a chatter or adding it in if you've slipped into the
wrong gears, so there are some safeties we've tried to develop into there
to keep you, sort of to go into a neutral situation instead of completely
locking up the transmission.
But it is something you need to be careful of, when you are controlling the situation,
you're taking control fo all the solenoids, there is possibilities of being able to do
something that we haven't predicted out of the situation.
- So what's the learning curve for a tuner brand new into automatic transmission
tuning, how would you suggest they go about modifying your base calibration
which obviously should be safe and pretty effective for a stock engine,
when they're maybe adding a supercharger and doubling the engine torque.
What sort of changes are kind of necessary in the transmission programming?
- It's going to really depend on where they go with it and honestly the chassis
that it's all going into, how harsh is everything?
So we've always there for development side of things and so people can reach
out to us with specific requests, we can look at data for them and recommend changes
that we would apply to everything.
- Now these plug and play kits are still as I understand, in development,
when are they going to be available for public release?
- So we're looking for a public release of the full Mustang kit with automatic
transmission in late Q1 and then possibly the standalone transmission one, if not a little bit
before, a little bit after that.
- And if people want to find out more about these products, where can they go to?
- motec.com or milspecwiring.com and it's where they post up all the information
on 'em.
- Perfect, thanks for the chat there Nick.
- No problem.
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