General Supercharger Thread

The results kind of reminded me of a few Richard Holdner/Hot Rod videos (honestly don't remember the publisher exactly, but I'm pretty sure I'm in the ballpark) where they took motors of the same displacement from different manufactures and built them up step by step until they were both 'optimized' in a way, but had basically similar aftermarket parts on them. I seem to recall older straight 6 motors like the Ford 300 six compared to a chevy 292 maybe? Turned out that they made almost identical power with small differences here and there. Once flow was optimized, it was simply about displacement. Since displacement ended up virtually identical, so did the power.

I as surprised that the Magnuson bested it boost for boost - albeit by a very small percentage, but it's contrary to what I've seen in other comparisons between the two. At 900 hp levels, 2 percent power difference is 18 hp. I watched it in bits and pieces so I may have missed it, but did they mention pulley sizes and/or corresponding blower speeds and such? Just curious.

Either way, that thing makes MAD powah! I'd love to go for a rip in it. Makes me wanna drop another pulley size. Or two.

Anybody have any qualms with moving to a 3.125" pulley on the whipple??

 

I didn't delve into the comments but saw the one about Fords do well on Whipple and Chevy on Magnuson. I doubt a relation other than intake and valve/head setup...

 

Transmission Update #5....final update
The drive there sucked this morning, almost shit my pants half way through the drive while waiting for the half wit gas pumper to get back and take the nozzle out of the loaner car so I could run inside and make a few deals with the devil.
Anywho, got to the shop around 8am EST. Went for a test drive, Pat Barrett drove, which I later regretted. Nothing against him, but I would have rather driven the truck before finalizing everything and then going on my first drive as the drive home. He leaned into it pretty hard, which is fine and the truck and trans did great... but doesn't really give you a great idea of the other 99% of how you drive... not pedal to the floor. The technicians there are ok at best. Pat is the brains and I understand that you can't be everywhere and doing everything. That being said, I did watch the tech fella spend an actual 21 minutes putting on the trans skid plate, after taking 20 min to check the trans fluid level and letting too much run out leaving the trans about a quart low (we will get to that later). So yeah. OK, paid, got out the door and headed home.

About 20 miles in, CEL and reduced power. Limp mode. 5th and 6th won't go past 50 mph. NO boost. NO power. P2757. Clear it. Get on my way. Comes back 50 miles later. Same issue. No power. Cleared it. Pulled over. Cycled the key so it would give me power back. Went on my way. Was able to get another 100 miles before it happened again. Downshifting from 6 to 5 made it slip and I could redline in 5th while going 50mph because there was no engagement cause it was in limp. Very strange.

10-15 calls to level10, another 2 or so to @snivilous and we are working on figuring out what is happening. Level10 adjusted my tune by adding a x1.7 multiplier to the output shaft torque table of the motor (effectively and assumed torque input for the trans) in order to increase line pressures earlier for a better grab and have the trans tune adjusted for the power of the truck. He also added another x1.45 multiplier on top of the first 4 rows of that table (on top of the 1.7) becuase the torque comes in so early to help with engagement.

I'm home. I'm furious. I'm out a few bucks....
Level10 sends me a new tune. This time, it's only the x1.7 multiplier on the torque table. Smoother. Better. I think, ok let me add some WS in the trans first cause I know it's low from the spillage I saw in the shop from that goon, and the fact that he checked it when the truck was hot. So I waited until about an hour ago to check. Yup, about a quart low. Went for a drive... christmas lights inside... noo. That wasn't it. OK now it's time to re flash the level10 tune with the 1.7 flat table. Back to the house, flashed, on the road.... what do you know?! It's how I thought it would be when I picked it up this morning. The truck was throwing codes left and right and putting itself in limp mode because the assumed values were not accurate and were off enough to make it all crash and burn.

I write this with mixed feelings. I can say now that everything is squared away and I now have a transmission that can handle anything that I throw at it (within reason) with towing and even more power if I choose that route. I can also say that this is not how I expected the journey to be... frustrated and annoyed. Icing on the cake for me was the broken spark plug fowler that I use as a downsteam o2 sensor got knocked and is snapped so now I have to remove, re drill a fowler, re install, and get situated to get rid of my bank 2 sensor 2 code. (shows lean because duh it's getting a lot of air sucked in)... and the trans being low on fluid. Simple things. Just things that should be a nonissue when you pick your truck up.

Happy to have the truck back. Gonna be a lean christmas in the dragon household... LEAN LEAN LEAN

Closing thoughts / notes.
-I would actually recommend level10 having said all of this. Trans is great. Pat is great. Customer service was great. Simple little detail caused quite a bit of headache and planted a lot of doubt after spending a lot of money to have it right.
-I would 100% send the truck there vs sending the trans there. Too much that you can't know unless you drive the truck. Unless you're very very local and it's not a headache to pull the trans again and bring back if there are any issues.
-Expect more time that they say. Not their fault, but delays happen. They say 3 day turn on trans work alone. 5 days if they have to pull and install. I'd expect no less that 2 weeks to make sure all is ironed out
-Cost was more than I was anticipating, but not hateful

EDIT- Not bashing Level10 here. Just sharing my experience and thoughts.

 

I watched it. I'll say that I loved seeing their infatuation with the owner because he actually drove it. And then the side bar about the best videos on the interwebs, then the constant pauses as they worked through things. The last thing that made me watch it for all 27 minutes was when they showed the amount of play in the pulley after removal and their absolute disgust over it. I also couldn't get over the fact they were running 20psi, 850-900hp, at 12.5 AFR.

 

I get shit happens, but this sucks. Sorry to hear you had to spend a day triaging your new transmission. Glad it is sorted out, but def not what I was expecting to read about. Not after they kept it longer due to other gremlins.

Fingers crossed you have a lifetime of service out of it.

 

Agree. Not the way I had imagined it. But sometimes shit does in fact happen. On the bright side: after working on the tuning kinks... the thing rips. Seems like more power everywhere now that it's holding in all gears. TC locks up nicely. Spins through into 3 now. Need the speedmaster even more now! @Mdl

 

That's great! It's a nice smiley feeling when it just goes.

 

man i would have turned around the very first time it began

 

Man...didn't see this. Glad you got it worked out.
That's a difference between level10 and IPT. IPT doesn't tune for the new transmission. For most it works but have tried to help some that have had the p2757 codes. Trying to talk people into hpt after spending money for a rebuild is tough.

 

Sure is lol. I’m glad he messed with the table, now that it’s all squared away at least. It all worked out. So nice to be able to beat on the truck and it just rips

 

hopefully the problem stays solved

 

Well, my truck did great this weekend in 40* weather. Damn it loves cold temps. I do have to double check but it seemed to me like at those lower temps it was doing around 10.5 AFR. Now that I am back to 65-70* temps it a bit richer. I have to double check that though. Still have some more data logging to do and get it done tuned regardless. Also, I know cruise control is a gas hog, but I also did some experiments. Filled up and ran down to 1/2 tank on CC set at 70mph. Did around 15mpg. Filled up and ran the same speed with me controlling it. Ran it down to around 1/2 tank and did 18.5mpg. Also monitored my trans temp and at 40* it was around 140*, pinned open. Truck did great and added another 1300 miles to the SC.

 

@snivilous is great at working up the torque tables. Sometimes it just takes a few tunes to finetune it.

 

I can't take any credit here, all the tuning figuring was from Pat at Level 10. Carn Dog doesn't have access to the line pressure values in his tune and playing with the trans torque table apparently allows for some working of tricks around that. I'm still not sure why these changes were exactly needed, but I'd like to play with the tweaks on my own truck to see if I noticed a difference. I wonder if those changes are worthwhile on a truck with access to the shift pressures too? Are they useful on a stock transmission? Are they useful if the MAF airload values are normal (Carns are tweaked to play fueling tricks)? Lots of questions to try and reverse engineer.

 

I was thinking of @Ponderosa_Pine and @Wynnded since they had their transmission rebuilds but no tuning. Maybe playing around with the values a bit.
I increased my trans torque values but nothing like @carn_dogg.

 

post from slownstock on the hp forum:

"You can increase Base Line Pressure ("Transmission -> Shift Pressures -> General") for the gears you want to firm up/decrease shift time. Make conservative changes, say 5% or less at a time, focus on the higher throttle positions (say 30-40% TPS or above), blend it into the lower TPS cells, and leave the maximum values alone (which should match PCS Line Max, and should also be left alone).

You can try to work with torque management ("Transmission -> Torque Management"), emphasizing higher torque and RPM areas. Try to reduce 5-10% at a time to get a little firmer shift, and make these changes separately from pressure changes. Again, don't go too far here, just enough to firm up the shifts to your liking; whiz bang shifts might feel quick, but often aren't (and are sometimes actually slower). Part of what makes the transmissions you reference shift so well is well-tuned torque management.

There's lots of bad advice out there for transmissions - deleting torque management, scaling the entire pressure table an arbitrary amount, cranking up max pressures, etc. - the reality is the OEMs don't leave lots "on the table", and it's difficult to gauge the net mechanical effect of our tuning changes (a firmer shift may decrease clutch wear, but increase shock loads, more line pressure may increase temps from additional friction or it may decrease from reduced slip, etc.). The name of the game is conservative changes, making iterations, and not straying too far from the baseline - without good reason, I wouldn't go beyond 10-15% additional pressure or 20-25% less torque management."

 

Thanks for this info- Guess it'll be interesting to not send the truck there lol.

 

I settled on a 15% increase for airload with the 95mm TB and a mid value trans torque increase of 5% with only a few tables.
Interesting how each company views the parameters set by Toyota.
IPT doesn't want to mess with Toyota values. If @carn_dogg goes to a stock value would be a test if already done.
Edit. I double checked my tune and I had already removed my increase on trans table back to the TRD SC one.

 

I'm still digesting ignition efficiency tables for shifting...

 

My understanding is that this is incorrect. Going out on a limb here but from what I've learned from level10, the torque management is going to be the entire brains of the transmission/engine cohesion. You can build a trans to be perfect and bulletproof and hd tc and this and that, but if you're banging gears and not pulling timing, you're going to burn the clutches up and be out 7k fast. There is likely some real science/math to the torque table that toyota released for TRD blower. I'm unsure of what that tables looks like in HP Tuners. Keep in mind, these torque management tables we refer to, are all in reference to HP Tuners. Different tuning software may call it something else and/or have a different method of controlling the timing for shifting. In any event, the tune needs to know to pull timing to allow for a shift so it's smooth and doesn't wreck the trans. If you leave the torque management alone and increase line pressure, you're just leaving the timing alone and forcing a harder shift by more pressure. This just leads to a rougher shift and you're not easing up on the trans. Trans takes a beating (the one you likely now feel while driving because now you have a rougher shift). The goal of the torque management table modification is that it allows the system to do it's job. Pull timing. Quick smooth shift. Trans is happy. ECU is happy. Driver is happy. I can tell you that now that the codes and bs are gone, the truck drives very smooth. Shifts are clean and concise. No delay on shifts. It just goes into the next gear and you only know it because the RPMS just dropped and you're still rippin down the road.

Pat at Level10 ran the stock TRD table on my truck prior to upping the values to the combo that did not work. The TRD table resulted in slipping and hard shifts under hard hard driving/acceleration. He was testing it under full everything, so there's no light throttle action happening here. The new table of 70% increase in all positive values (don't touch 0 or neg values) worked to keep the ECU happy that the expectations are now logical and also allow for smooth shifting and no codes. That being said, I just got off the phone with Pat at Level10 and he's still working on a revised table. He doesn't think it's pulling enough timing at lower TPS with the load being high with the smaller pulley and torque building up so quickly. He floated around the idea of changing everything to 90% increase (from TRD, not on top of my 70% increase). He's going to run some calculations over the next day or two... and get his engineer to go through how Toyota logic works on torque management and use that to apply it to how HP Tuners does. He will be at a show with the owner of HP Tuners in a couple weeks and is going to go through how HP Tuners developed their torque management table and how the ECU logic comes into play with it. This should give us a better understanding of how to edit this table for better trans tune and power/torque management.

I'll be driving around 60 miles today so should get a good chance to see how the truck does with the 70% increase on the torque table. No issues on my trial run last night. MTF

 

Re: trans tune

when Peitz tuned my truck for the 80mm pulley, he also said he installed the HPT Tundra Trans tune.

it must be a thing.

and no, I have no idea what it did.

 

Do you have your tune? Can you access the table, take a screenshot, and post? Curious to see what they did. Your trans is stock?

 

stock trans? yes.

access the table? way beyond my pay grade.


I'm tempted to email him for the details....but would probably freak him out.

I just remember him asking me if I wanted him to "do the Trans too"? he said it would help it live longer with the new HP gains.

it kinda felt like he had access to a Toyota tune via some mystical HPT database. I'm just guessing on this.

 

Do you have your tune file?
If so, can you send? If you want you can send to my email and I’ll open and post the torque table. Would be great to have that data

I just PM’d you my email.

 

look here....you are giving me too much credit.

I have no idea how to access the tune.

I am the epitomy of an end user.

if y'all were in Houston, I would certainly let you access the truck.

 

There need some clarification here: what Dave and Carn Dog are referring to are separate things.

Some (maybe most) tunes do NOT have access to line pressure and torque management adjustments, and Carn Dog is one of those.

The TRD Tune adjusts line pressure (and a little torque management) and is the tables Dave is talking about.

Carn Dog does not have access to those tables, so when he says modifying torque management that is different than how the TRD tune goes about it (or how someone with access to those tables traditionally would go about it). This is also different than ignition efficiency that as we understand it adjusts the timing change during the shift.

Because Carn Dogs tune does not have access to the line pressure or torque management tables, the guy on Level 10 modified the OPTIMUM TRANS TORQUE table. In stock form, even the TRD tune does NOT touch this table. This is NOT the engine torque table either. I'm not aware of anyone that modifies this table normally.

According to Level 10, modifying this table adjusts all the other transmission parameters because the transmission now knows how much torque there is so it ramps up line pressure differently and changes the ignition retard of the shift. They think (and seems evidenced by Carn Dog) that that table trickles down into a lot of transmission logic to make the trans happy. However, this is a different approach than the TRD Tune (but the TRD approach flat out doesn't work on a lot of tunes since not all tunes have access to the tables the TRD tune uses).

I'll post some pictures later of what I'm talking about.

 

Some pictures to go with the above post just so we're all on the same page. This is a tune with full access to the tables, and in green you can see the tables I've changed. These changes in green are what the TRD tune changes. On the right are a couple of the tables and showing the difference from a stock (non-TRD) tune.



And here is the Torque Management tab (I think 2-3 and 3-4 are additional adjustments I made that the TRD tune doesn't do, but 1-2 is TRD changes and shown on the right).




Now let's look at Carn Dogs tune and what tables he has access to, and this is often--maybe even more common--the case in tunes I see (and the guys that's true for you know since I told you we don't have transmission tuning control).



As you can see, the entire tabs for Shift Pressure and Torque Management flat out don't exist. You couldn't modify those tables if you wanted to.

In the Helidave/SlowNStock post, everything above is what is being referred to. In 99% of cases if someone sends me a tune that does NOT have access to those tabs, there's nothing I can do about it and they get the short end of the stick. You can still modify shift and torque converter lock up timing, but that's it. If someone DOES have access to those tables, and if they want it, I apply all the TRD transmission values, plus can then modify shift and converter timing, and then if they want to go "spicier" there's additional tweaks to the line pressure and torque management I might do.


Now what is Level 10 talking about.




This is not the Optimum Torque table, this is not the Airload table---this table is NOT modified in the TRD tune. You can see Level 10 DRASTICALLY increased the values in that table. This is the ONLY table he touched. If he opened a tune that had access to shift pressures and torque management directly I wonder if he would tweak those tables too or only use this table.

From our conversation, my understanding (of what he said) is changing this table brings on line pressure faster, the ignition cut for the shift is timed better, etc. HP Tuners is vague at best for what does what, and no doubt lots of functions even the "full access tunes" will still be lacking, so while it's not clear how this table influences the transmission (since HPT won't/can't explain it) it obviously made a huge difference for Carn Dog.

The change of the trans torque table can apply to ANY tune. The TRD changes CANNOT. Can/should they be combined when needed? Should these changes be applied to every tune that doesn't have shift pressure control? Should it be applied to only those tunes and not the ones with shift pressure control? I don't know.

As we get more and more powerful setups these tables about engine or trans torque seem to become more important. As always, I do not claim to be a tuner so maybe I'm just naive about it. But my basis for changes is looking at what others have done and comparing things and trying to reverse engineer the logic behind it. Optimum Engine Torque I don't modify because some TRD tunes don't modify it. Optimum Trans Torque I don't modify because I've never seen any tune modify it. Shift Pressures I do modify when someone wants and within the realms of what TRD or tweaks that people like ViktorG or SlowNStock proved out. This opens up a lot of possibilities now that Carn Dog ended up being a test case in this group (albeit unintentionally). Hopefully this helps others, but I'm wary of when it should be applied, or maybe there really is no downside to telling the engine/transmission they have more torque, I've just never looked at doing that since TRD didn't think it was worth doing, but we are also working around the confines of HP Tuners which doesn't make it any more clear what does what or how.

 

do you know why the trd tune reduces line pressure from stock? seems backwards, unless im misunderstanding it, which is entirely possible

 

The tune file is likely what your tuner provided to you. If he did not. You can ask for it. Don’t see why he wouldn’t give it to you considering it’s for your truck. Just ask for the ‘tune file’ and it’ll an attachment in an email. That can be imported into the editor application on anyone’s computer with hp tuners to see the tune and adjustments made. It may show what he did or didn’t do to whatever trans options were available

 

I don't know, maybe the TCC Offset being increased so much cancels out the line pressure being lower and that makes it smoother everywhere? Maybe it's a combination of the two values? Just hypothesizing...