Cobb vs UpRev

theDreamer

But Uprev does break down the entire ECU and writes there own, they do keep some of the original pieces, as those are vital. There are a lot of similarities between a computer & the ECU of a car, now they use different views on programming and assigning tasks, but when you break it down, they are not that far away from one another. Here is the most up to date news, I have been in contact with them about a few things and finally asked about an ETA date on the 370z:

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1slow370

so could uprev list the difference of how there stuff handles the fuel and ignition control, valve timing, valve lift, you know anything other than "Ooh map switching." Here's one for you how about control over the electronic throttle bodies? Tip for ya supercharger plus ETB's plus VVEL don't work. Lets talk throttles open under no load condition and the throttle controls the airflow through a roots or twin screw blower. These engines can be throttled with the valve lift maybe they are having a problem with that. I'd like something a little more informative than they are having updates and testing which can go on for ever. I don't care about the date if they would describe more. Hell I'll wait another year if it's good enough and you know I'd drive myself down there to have the software carefully explained to me because for $600, and after apparently replacing Nissan's code in the ecu, it should be able to support more control points, larger tables, at least a 2-BAR MAP sensor, ETB and VVEL control, CVTC control(I think uprev does this), Larger injectors(I think uprev does this), Bigger displacements, wideband swap, knock sensor support beyond 5,000rpm, and be able to change the display on the left gauge that's useless (oh and don't mean half @##'n it and just playing with a ten point fuel map for hours to make it work). When it can do that myself and many others will wait a year, pay double the price, buy the guys steak dinner, shut up, and be happy. So considering that they don't have the capabilities to ever pull that off I think I'm going to have to wait for the Haltech Platinum. HINT TO UPREV HERE you can still beat the customized stand-alone and piggyback companies to market if you expand your software, and it would be able to do double what the COBB can. Most people wouldn't even mind sending in the ecu to have new boards installed if it can do some of what i ask.

Denny McLain

Just purchased Cobb and after a bit of a hassle to get the program installed, (It won't work on Vista 64) finally got it going on a back-up 32 bit Vista laptop. Going through the program trying to figure it out and realizing fully it's a beta version, my initial impression is.......it really doesn't do much.

Example: The car usually runs a 200 degree water temp and my intentions are to replace the thermo with hopefully a 160 degree one and have the fans come on sooner. There are no provisions in the software to adjust onset of the fans. If you can't do something as simple as adjust the fans, cam tuning??!!

Appears to be very, very basic and not exactly what I was looking for. The AccessPort is a handy gadget, but "gadget" may be the key word. Time will tell as it's really too soon to make judgments and it's real easy to brag up something before it even works, (UpRev) but everything eventually comes out in the wash and I'm willing to give things some time.

Right now I'm going........You're kidding me, right? The big whoop de do is over this?

semtex

FWIW, thanks for being the early adopter on this one and saving the rest of us the grief. It sucks that it hasn't worked out better, but I do appreciate the warning.

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Denny McLain

Your very welcome.

More FYI....... Programming the fuel/air is also pretty tricky and not very straight forward. The fuel/air tables are pretty course with only about six rpm points so instead you recalibrate the MAF settings. Basically your tricking the computer into thinking it has less or more air going into the engine so it compensates. Reworking the MAF calibrations is complicated as you need to log the voltage and equate that into rpm.

Right now I'm thinking you do need to be a rocket scientists to program one of these things. So if the above lost ya..... you're probably never going to be sending a rocket to Mars so don't worry about it.

1slow370

target air fuel ratio is only a guide category at best. try to find the volumetric efficency maps or the MAF maps. Do you see any tables that mentions load or pressure?

I don't think I'm smarter than Uprev but maybe you should try doubting what people tell you sometimes espescially when they are trying to sell you something expensive. I wish we could get some input on here from uprev of a complete list of what can be done with it. Or maybe a trial version of the software just to go through it and see what it can do doesn't have to actually tune the car I just want to see the different tables and options it has. I have already watched all there video's about it.

Denny McLain

You're kidding right? Do you realize how many people have hooted on me for calling out the manufacturers on their claims? For only trusting independent objective empirical information from people with no financial interest?

What it amounts to is when the car was on the dyno, I saw room for improvement and basically fuel/air is the first place to start. That the Cobb does do only you really need to be knowledgeable in how basic tuning works and how their software works. It was free dyno time and the thing is not an arm n an leg. As mentioned, Handy Gadget.

Called Calvin whom does the Cobb tuning in Plano yesterday, they appear to be stand up people in every manner and so far have not made any outrageous claims to my knowledge. He and I both are completely in the dark as to why the car is pulling out timing in the midrange and told me to reset the ECU, drive the car and log what the timing is doing. If that didn't work, it was another dyno session to get a better handle on the car.

My impression is the ECU are strange birds to deal with for everyone.

Anyway.....This is what the Cobb currently does:

Fuel Tables
• Intake Calibration
o MAF A and B
• Base Fuel Schedule Modifier (Beta)
• Fuel Multiplier
• Injector Latency A and B
• Injector Latency Multiplier and Offset
• Injector Scalar A and B
• Primary Fuel (8 points)

Ignition Tables
• Ignition Hi Det
• Knock overlay Hi Det
• Knock overlay primary A and B
• Primary Ignition A and B
Limits
• Rev Limit - Fuel Cut (2)
• Rev Limit Throttle
• Rev Limit -Limp Home
• Speed limit A-C
• Speed Limit Hysteresis

Misc Tables
• Idle Table A-E

Throttle Tables
• Throttle 1-8

To be candid about half of it is Greek to me and I'm going to take the car/software to a couple of buddies whom tune full time for help.

Denny McLain

As a FYI.......

Corky Bell did a Turbo Supra for me that used a Haltech system that I was quite happy with. By pure happenstance, one of the Haltech engineers was friends with the dyno shop whom sponsored me. They asked me if they could use one of my cars as the test mule to development a new engine management system which they felt would improve overall performance.

Wasn't privy to the actual hardware or software development and that doesn't matter as I wouldn't know what I was looking at anyway, but did spend every single dyno testing session with them. The short of the story is after abusing my car for a month on the dyno, driving the streets of Dallas under different load conditions and numerous tweaks.......The car did not make a single hp more than the stock ECU when tuned with OBDII LT1.edit software.

NIZMOZ

That just means they need a better tuner. UPREV can do it on the Z, Technosquare, and Cobb as well. It can happen.

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1slow370

I know a few guys with FI around here putting down good numbers (400-600) on their 350's and when their UTEC's broke they went Haltec and all of them were quite happy with it. Hell those things have built in two step rev limiters and no hiccups with the rest of the car. When they get tired of tuning equipment that doesn't get the job done they go to haltech. These reflash utilities are only good for mild N/A builds and while you can screw around with tables for weeks to run mild boost, in the end you end up getting something else.

westpak

you are comparing apples and oranges, the Utec is not the best for boosted cars, I would pick Osiris over a Utec for any application on a 350Z, NA or boosted. We have done some boosted 350Z's including an HR with Osiris and they run perfect.

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Denny McLain

Not sure if you got the point.

LT1.edit is a tuning program for LTx motor F-bodies and Corvettes that tweaks the stock ECU. In this case it was a 97 SS Camaro with extensive modifications. The stock ECU was originally tuned at Dynotech using the LT1.edit and even with engineering tuning support from Haltech, they could not improve on the stock computers ability to control the engine and produce horsepower. Bob Norwood at that time used the same dyno and popped in for a couple of sessions.

Norwood Autocraft, Inc. - Dallas, TX/Fast Cars

Think you'd be very hard pressed to find a better tuner.

Guessing a dozen dyno sessions at least looking for the holy grail. One night alone we started about midnight and stopped about 5:30 am going through two tanks of gas driving the hwys' around Dallas at different load levels to fine tweak the tune.

Not saying anything bad at all about Haltech except that the stock ECU on certain cars can be very hard to improve upon. Not a slam dunk by any means and I seem to recall the factory has a few engineers themselves with pretty deep pockets for R&D.

FricFrac

I don't get it. First you're saying the hardware is essentially an ASIC then you says its a microcontroller.... and the box has a signal generator... and the processor is mearly a large IC. What is that suppose to mean? That's the most vauge statment in the entire thread. Then after saying the logic is locked you end off by saying they should expand the software. You have enough knowlegde to be dangerous and fool some casual bystanders but not enough for me to even remotely think you know what you are talking about. You might know something about programing but you are clueless about the hardware. Just saying in case someone reads that drivel and trys to make sense of it.

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1slow370

First off cut me some slack the only time i can get on here is after 12 hours of work at 3am which leads to me confusing myself sometimes. I'll try to be clearer sorry.

What I mean by saying that the hardware on these things is simpler than a computer is that instead of having a BIOS running the hardware and an OS performing various tasks, your ecm only has one level of system. So it can't run say Mac OsX, Linux, and Windows on the same computer like you can with a PC. There is no OS, just the code stored on the Eprom chip.

Because the system in an ecu is so simple, you can't simply "replace it with your own software."

The hardware in the box limits what you can do because often times there are separate chips in the ecu that do specific jobs that cannot be re-flashed so you actually can only change some of the code and have to live with what nissan put on the rest. Also the individual components on the boards limit what can be done. If you have a narrow band O2 sensor that is putting out extremely low voltages around a volt at most, and it sends that voltage to an analog to digital freq. gen. so that the data can be processed by the chip, you can't hook up a 5 volt wideband and expect to be able to program the chip to accept it. You'll just end up burning out the parts of the board that process the signal from the sensor.

As far as MAP and MAF sensors go I only have experience with the commonly used GM ones. MAP sensors come in two flavors analog and square wave. If Nissan uses square wave sensors, you would have to reprogram that whole area of the code on the ecu and any area that uses it, to accept a different frequency range used by a larger sensor, unless they all use the same frequency range in which case you could treat them like analog sensors. Analog sensors commonly used by GM are all 5volts and work on less voltage=less pressure, so a 1BAR map would have the table set to read vacuum in the low voltages and atmospheric at 5 volts. For a 2BAR MAP you would be squeezing 15 more PSI into the same 5 volts so when the ecu see's 5 volts It would normally think you were at atmospheric when you actually have pressure. With analog sensors you put greater values in all the tables that reference it to trick it into working. So on a VE table when it's at say -7 psi you would actually be putting in a value somewhere near 90% efficiency instead of the 50% it would normally have because the pressure is greater. But when you do this you are changing the accuracy of the ecu because on a table that has only like 15 values on it's axis you are now only using 7 to cover the pressure range that previously had all 15 slots. On the other hand, if the car uses a square wave sensor there may be another controller inside the ecu that takes that frequency and changes it into another frequency for processing so if you switch out sensors and are now using a larger range, the ecu won't be able to handle sensor frequencies beyond what the first converter can handle, and you won't be able to re-flash that chip to change it's range of frequencies so it will never be able to accept boost. All of this maters if you want to get rid of troublesome, restrictive and delicate MAF sensors and run speed density to avoid going super rich when the blow off opens.

You run into issues like that with every sensor and every part on the car, so in order for a company like uprev to write the code in the ecu to do different things than it normally does you can't just tell it to do it with software. You have to completely tear apart the whole car, figure out exactly what happens between each and every sensor and the ecu, and figure out at that point what can and can't be done. The only people with that kind of R&D time into making a reflash is NISSAN. They designed it so they know exactly what it can and can't do, and fat chance of them ever telling anyone anything. That is why certain companies focus on certain makes of car and why re-flashes cost so damn much. You have to invest a huge amount of time into figuring out even the smallest parts of the code in the ecu, so it makes sense to focus on cars that use similar codes so you save R&D time. Uprev won't be able to do most of things I stated because of the limitations of the hardware and the COLOSSAL amount of time it would take to figure it all out without having Nissan's design information. Now if someone from NISSAN could graciously violate their NDA and leak the design information of the ecu and it's code I have no doubt that Uprev would be able to do wonderous new things. Since it takes a huge amount of time, in 5 years from now there will be some wicked stuff for us, just like there is for the 03-06 350z, unless everyone with a 370 wants to blow cash like they own a GTR.

This is why standalones and piggybacks sell. The companies that make them design them to be able to support whatever components they want and the hard part for them is getting it to work with other controllers found elsewhere on the vehicle like the ABS and dash. So the farther you want to vary your setup from stock, the farther you need to modify the ecu. Is a standalone the best option for every one? Hell no, but if your going to be doing FI and want to be as safe as possible and be able to account for every little thing the engine does without just putting a bigger number in the table to half @$$ it, a stand alone is your best option right now. Sure you can get re-flash utilities to work boost applications, just not as well as a proper standalone could. They probably will both make the same peak power because you can just screw with the re-flash until the advance and the fuel are where they need to be at that one point in time, but for efficiency, reliability, and driveability it won't match the standalone unless it can do most of the things i asked for. I'm not trying to bash re-flashing it works wonders for some setups but not for all. Know that before you buy.

Edit: I think this ones a less confusing post so I might delete my last one unless I get lazy.

Edit: Oh and for the record UTEC's are total garbage that shows that not all piggybacks are created equal.

Denny McLain

Just now really getting into the capabilities and the primary fuel table may be OK for my current needs anyway.

The rpm points are

2800
3200
4000
5200
6000
6400
7000
7200

Not sure what the logic here is as it's one hell of a gap (maybe that where you tweak the MAF settings) between 4000 rpm and 5200 rpm but my car is a tad rich above 6000 rpm and there are quite a few tables above that range. At low rpm it's running 12.8 but above 6000, it's in the 12.3 to 12.5 range. Being conservative and not really knowing what to expect, I took out 1% fuel in that range and will log it to see what happens.

So far......A OK. Handy Gadget.