SilverBullet_RENAMED

I just got done resetting my ECU for 2.5 hrs. And drove the car about 5-10 miles of hard driving. The car has completely woken up. I can't believe I missed this power. I added a sub box, so the weight I thought made a difference, but obviously it wasn't it. Damn this upsets me. The car now again pulls hard. And you can defintely tell when vtec kicks in now. I couldn't tell anymore it was really quiet. Maybe vtec stopped kicking in?

Anyways, all I know I think I found the problem. But I wish I knew what caused it. The car hauls ass again. Sorry about not having a good dyno guys.

EricL

If your VSA light was on -- yes, there is a limp home mode.

As for having some exhaust leaks, you may have been running your WOT mixture off and you loose the "extraction" of stale gases by not having an air-tight fit between the exhaust headers and the exhaust ports. It makes a LARGE difference. In my 4-banger with headers, a crack in one of the pipes (near the flange) would make the car feel like a parachute was deployed off the rear...

IMO, you were NOT in "official limp mode."

SilverBullet_RENAMED

Hmmm....your explanation makes sense. No VSA light. But a noticeable loss in power was gained back after resetting it. Weird.

peiqinglong

you know what I noticed...when you first start up the car and just do normal driving, the car feels weak. But after a few minutes of WOT and more agressive pushing, the car starts really picking up better. It's like the car has to be "woken up" as you said. Like if I drive normal, I can barely hear a peep out of my dragers regardless of rpm, but then after driving agressive for awhile, my dragers constantly roar throughout.

JRock

guys....

the ECU constantly learns and adjusts the car's parameters to your driving style. If you drive it hard for a time it will adjust itself to be more ready for hard driving. If you grandma drive it the car gets into a grandma mode. It really does. It's noticeable at least to those of us who've tested it out and proven it to ourselves and the purpose of it is to probably to help longevity of the drivetrain and increase the gas mileage when you drive it gently. When you are hard driving it changes a bit to aid that style of driving. I don't know WHAT it does, I just know that it adjusts to your driving style. Probably adjusts timing and changes the trans shift points a bit are my guess, because I notice after hard driving the car wants to hold gears longer and seems to react more quickly to my foot touching the gas pedal.

ELITE TYPE S

after installing the headers and resetting the ecu the car was amazing...now after 3 weeks the car seems to be in limp mode...maybe im used to the extra power gonna reset ecu tonight and see how it feels tomorrow

EricL

Welcome to the world of perception....

1. Get into a fast car and put some carbs on it (so it can't learn anything).

2. Go as fast as you can until you get bored.

The car now feels slower (try driving at 80-100 MPH on the freeway and let me know how 40 MPH feels after an hour or so).

3. Now jump into a POS slow-mobile.

4. Now get back into your car that was feeling "limp" and it feels like superman again.


The same effect is going on with the engine’s computer -- as noted -- and it is trying to adapt (to what extent has not been verified to my own satisfaction).. Without some form of instrumentation, human perception and machine heuristics are working in a manner that is very difficult to "nail down." Try driving the car like a maniac for a while and you get used to the speed and it feels slower. So, I may notice a slight pickup from driving the car harder after driving like "grandma", but without instrumentation to verify the experience, it is very hard to verify what is "machine adaptation" and what is "human perception" (cognitive behavior). So, in one case, human perception would seem to support the view that constant use of acceleration has a numbing effect

If someone would like to verify this behavior, it might be possible to use the newer Gtech Competition and drive like grandma and then hit a "known" stretch of road and make three runs. Then, on the same day, with same temps and conditions, drive like a bloody maniac and repeat the runs.

Wires

Yup... It's like buying $200 worth of stereo interconnects and bragging to your friends "how much better it sounds" when in reality, an A/B test would have proved that you couldn't tell the difference....

Actually, what he was feeling was the human perception thingy. 9/10 you don't drive your car really hard (unless you do some mod). Then it seems like it made a huge difference. In reality, the buzz from the mod wore off, so you started driving normal, and stopped abusing the car. You then reset the ECU, and bag the snot out of it, and it's magically more powerful.

Been there, done that, but a Gtech or timeslips really tell the story.......

JRock

Well that might have been what he was talking about but it's not what I was talking about.

What I am saying is after driving it like a grandma for a while, if you go to step on it to race someone or whatever, it will be somewhat lagged in responsiveness and if just trying to accelerate from a stop a little more aggressively than grandma (just a little more than) it will still shift sooner into higher gears and will have to downshift to get to the power level needed to accelerate to meet your pedal level.

The opposite is how, if you've been driving it aggressively and whatever, you will notice when you take it down a notch the car still wants to hold shifts longer because of the adjusted shiftpoints from WOT runs holding gears longer. So when you go back to grandma driivng after having some fun you should notice the car isn't shifting up to the next gear quite as quickly because it expects you to want to wind it out a bit.

This has nothing to do with perception and everything to do with how the car's computer changes a few things based on your driving style. This is why some people think it might be possible to see a better time at the track if you were driving it more aggressively on the way there because the car is expecting to be pushed, not expecting to be babied and has slightly adjusted itself for that.


Btw, when I say aggressively, clearly I don't mean like "Aggressive Driving" that the cops talk about. I mean running through the gears harder than normal... more WOT, more SportShift, etc.

blackmagiCL_S

JRock...you are so right. I get stuck in stop-and-go traffic many mornings on the way to work. Even after the traffic jam breaks free, the CL-S feels really bogged down...seems even with the sport shift it isn't so peppy. I pull into the same place to get my caffiene fix every morning once I get off the highway and after I start the car up and drive in light traffic the car totally zips. The ECU definitely learns the driving style.

Nashua_Night_Hawk

Forget the D5 slap it in SS down shift to 2-3 and you would be flying slap that right bitch to the ground

nate'sCLS

thats what I call a " flip mode "

Zapata

I know what everybody is saying and i know the ECU us "supposed" to learn etc., etc., but I had similar issues with the headers and loss of power, running lean etc., Of course like EricL said without actually data it's difficult to say what exactly is going on in the car. However, it's just as shortsited to say it's all in our heads.

Wires

Keep in mind temperature and humidity have a huge impact on performance. Cold, dry days give better performance than hot, wet ones. So part of it could be outside stimuli as well.

EricL

The transmission has "grade logic" and it will adjust to changing conditions by definition.