So here's how the car is currently set up. Now that we have map-switching and on-the-fly switching for the FiST, Randy has set meup with three slots. The COBB v20x maps come by default with a performance and a 'pseudo-economy' (and from what I understand,trying to put a full-on economy map as a slot isn't a great idea,which is why I imagine COBB opted for a wastegate-pressure based Eco-slot) second slot. Like I said, I have three. All have flat-foot shifting enabled above 5,000RPM, and a 7,000 RPM redline.
Now that I've gone over my three slots, here is some food for thought. Paired with the traction control system (Full on TCS, Sport Mode, and Full Off / ESC Disabled), that is nine different ways I can set up the car to drive around for the day. All without so much as touching the AccessPort. That's useful technology right there. I'm not sure what parameters can be changed down the line, but I imagine there's potential here. Just imagine if one day, those of us with LSDs installed could maybe dial up or down the amount of Advanced Electronic Torque Vectoring Control (A-eTVC) based on the map? A worthy thought. I don't know if they're there yet, or if that's possible, but with Mountune now in partnership with Quaife to supply us with differentials, it will be interesting to see how matters develop on that front.
How easy is this stuff to use? Pretty easy. Hit Cruise cancel, and thentoggle set + or set -, and I can pick from my three maps. Not toohard. No need to pull over and re-flash, no need to stop the car.
From here, it's about testing out just how good this tune is, and I have an appropriate playground for the Fiesta ST, the environment I've found this car excels at: mountain pass / canyon driving. Yet, we finished up tuning as the weather in New England starts to go pear-shaped, and one of my last opportunities to tackle a favorite pass got nixed by a dismal spell of weather that wouldn't have done any justice to the car (but perhaps the driver). However, I'll still give my impressions on how the car behaves now. I'll forgo speaking about Slots 1 and 3; this is really about the full roast.
For one, I need a new engine mount. The violence of a launch at 4,000 rpm with fuel-cut launch control puts the engine practically in the driver's lap. I'm pretty sure that by now, the bushing is turned to dust. With a loud clop, you hear the back of the engine slap the firewall as the car digs out of the hole, scrabbling for grip as the RE050As struggle to put down the frankly insane (for a 1.6L turbo) amount of torque this car generates down low. With the torque target limiters removed, and the additional power and twist from the tune, even with TCS on, you're popping off the tires. A sport mode or ESC off tune means that without LC and a careful foot, you're losing a lot in the standstill to 60mph/100kph run to wheelspin. Modulate the throttle a bit once the car is underway with LC and you can see (what feels to me) like around a low 6, maybe flat 6 second 0-60. At the least, I feel like a flat six second run up to sixty is there in the car now. At this point, the limiting factor is the rubber. With LC engaged, I'm producing close to eight pounds of boost off the line, and that's just more than a 205-section with this not-so-great-compound can endure as boost pressure climbs. Throw on some better tires, and a stiffer engine mount, and things will be different. A note for a different day.
Getting started from a 4th gear roll is also something of a revelation. I've had a friend who is more experienced with Supras and other higher-performance engined cars, and even he thinks that the smoothness and relentlessness with which this car wants to go into the triple digits is addictive. The car pulls and doesn't run out of steam until near red line, as the incy-wincy turbo starts to run out of breath. But the high end power has never been the story with the FiST; it's all about that torque curve. Stock, the car feels like it has a dead-spot around 1800, and 3000rpm. No such problems here. Spool is quicker, boost earlier, and response much tighter. And something that helps you legitimately go faster in the twisties is the adjustment of the shift-assist to basically off; now all you're competing against for a quick bang down through the gears with rev-matched downshifts is the comparatively heavy dual-mass flywheel. The response on changing throttle input is more instant, more visceral, but still clinically accurate. You never feel too frenetic, like you've dialed in too many, or two few revs, and are struggling to correct before you transform the synchros into metalized powder.
The fact that there's such a slab of torque on hand, and so much smoother(and a bit earlier) than stock means you can put the car in third gear through a snaky ribbon of tarmac and never really find yourself out of place on the power-band unless you're really blitzing it out of the corner. Even as a passenger (which, I tend to do a lot with this car more than I'd like, since I share it with my fiancee, and sometimes let my best friend drive when the mood strikes), you can feel the difference in the character of the power and response. The stock power was always enough to pin you to the seat (surprisingly) but you're doing so much more of that now, and the way it does it is so undramatic, it's eerie. A lot of people characterize the FiST as 'wanting to go fast and misbehave, all of the time.' Well, I've got unfortunate news for those looking to keep points off-license: this exacerbates that quality.
Afew conclusions are in order.
So is getting custom calibration worth it, even without hard parts on the car? I'd say so. The difference vs. an over-the-shelf tune is discernible. Is the process that hard? I wouldn't say so. Working with a professional like Randy from Mountune has been a real pleasure, and I know once new parts come in for me over the winter,I'll be calling in his expertise to continue to get the maximum(safe) performance out of my car. It can be scary trusting the sensitive calibration of your car to to someone from afar, who perhaps you haven't met in person. But Randy made this process easy and stress-free, and the result has been a car given a new attitude. If you're going from completely stock ECU to a custom tune, then you will notice even more of a difference.
Get yourself an AccessPort, and get yourself a custom tune. And if you can, I recommend you get it from Randy at Mountune.
- Slot 1: Performance, normal boost levels for my programming. No launch control. Boost target is nominally 20.5psi with a taper to ~13.5psi by redline, but with the climate here being what it is, I've been seeing higher peak boost. As it is with these things, +/- 1-1.5psi margin.
- Slot 2: Performance, normal boost as above. The difference here is the addition of a 4,000 rpm fuel-cut launch control, which is producing somewhere in the range of nearly 8psi of boost from a standstill. 7K RPM redline, FFS as before.
- Slot 3: Cruise, low-boost map, no launch control. Basically a puttering around, grocery-getting map for less power, which will come in handy in low-grip, inclement situations. I don't need all the boost, all of the time.
Now that I've gone over my three slots, here is some food for thought. Paired with the traction control system (Full on TCS, Sport Mode, and Full Off / ESC Disabled), that is nine different ways I can set up the car to drive around for the day. All without so much as touching the AccessPort. That's useful technology right there. I'm not sure what parameters can be changed down the line, but I imagine there's potential here. Just imagine if one day, those of us with LSDs installed could maybe dial up or down the amount of Advanced Electronic Torque Vectoring Control (A-eTVC) based on the map? A worthy thought. I don't know if they're there yet, or if that's possible, but with Mountune now in partnership with Quaife to supply us with differentials, it will be interesting to see how matters develop on that front.
How easy is this stuff to use? Pretty easy. Hit Cruise cancel, and thentoggle set + or set -, and I can pick from my three maps. Not toohard. No need to pull over and re-flash, no need to stop the car.
From here, it's about testing out just how good this tune is, and I have an appropriate playground for the Fiesta ST, the environment I've found this car excels at: mountain pass / canyon driving. Yet, we finished up tuning as the weather in New England starts to go pear-shaped, and one of my last opportunities to tackle a favorite pass got nixed by a dismal spell of weather that wouldn't have done any justice to the car (but perhaps the driver). However, I'll still give my impressions on how the car behaves now. I'll forgo speaking about Slots 1 and 3; this is really about the full roast.
For one, I need a new engine mount. The violence of a launch at 4,000 rpm with fuel-cut launch control puts the engine practically in the driver's lap. I'm pretty sure that by now, the bushing is turned to dust. With a loud clop, you hear the back of the engine slap the firewall as the car digs out of the hole, scrabbling for grip as the RE050As struggle to put down the frankly insane (for a 1.6L turbo) amount of torque this car generates down low. With the torque target limiters removed, and the additional power and twist from the tune, even with TCS on, you're popping off the tires. A sport mode or ESC off tune means that without LC and a careful foot, you're losing a lot in the standstill to 60mph/100kph run to wheelspin. Modulate the throttle a bit once the car is underway with LC and you can see (what feels to me) like around a low 6, maybe flat 6 second 0-60. At the least, I feel like a flat six second run up to sixty is there in the car now. At this point, the limiting factor is the rubber. With LC engaged, I'm producing close to eight pounds of boost off the line, and that's just more than a 205-section with this not-so-great-compound can endure as boost pressure climbs. Throw on some better tires, and a stiffer engine mount, and things will be different. A note for a different day.
Getting started from a 4th gear roll is also something of a revelation. I've had a friend who is more experienced with Supras and other higher-performance engined cars, and even he thinks that the smoothness and relentlessness with which this car wants to go into the triple digits is addictive. The car pulls and doesn't run out of steam until near red line, as the incy-wincy turbo starts to run out of breath. But the high end power has never been the story with the FiST; it's all about that torque curve. Stock, the car feels like it has a dead-spot around 1800, and 3000rpm. No such problems here. Spool is quicker, boost earlier, and response much tighter. And something that helps you legitimately go faster in the twisties is the adjustment of the shift-assist to basically off; now all you're competing against for a quick bang down through the gears with rev-matched downshifts is the comparatively heavy dual-mass flywheel. The response on changing throttle input is more instant, more visceral, but still clinically accurate. You never feel too frenetic, like you've dialed in too many, or two few revs, and are struggling to correct before you transform the synchros into metalized powder.
The fact that there's such a slab of torque on hand, and so much smoother(and a bit earlier) than stock means you can put the car in third gear through a snaky ribbon of tarmac and never really find yourself out of place on the power-band unless you're really blitzing it out of the corner. Even as a passenger (which, I tend to do a lot with this car more than I'd like, since I share it with my fiancee, and sometimes let my best friend drive when the mood strikes), you can feel the difference in the character of the power and response. The stock power was always enough to pin you to the seat (surprisingly) but you're doing so much more of that now, and the way it does it is so undramatic, it's eerie. A lot of people characterize the FiST as 'wanting to go fast and misbehave, all of the time.' Well, I've got unfortunate news for those looking to keep points off-license: this exacerbates that quality.
Afew conclusions are in order.
So is getting custom calibration worth it, even without hard parts on the car? I'd say so. The difference vs. an over-the-shelf tune is discernible. Is the process that hard? I wouldn't say so. Working with a professional like Randy from Mountune has been a real pleasure, and I know once new parts come in for me over the winter,I'll be calling in his expertise to continue to get the maximum(safe) performance out of my car. It can be scary trusting the sensitive calibration of your car to to someone from afar, who perhaps you haven't met in person. But Randy made this process easy and stress-free, and the result has been a car given a new attitude. If you're going from completely stock ECU to a custom tune, then you will notice even more of a difference.
Get yourself an AccessPort, and get yourself a custom tune. And if you can, I recommend you get it from Randy at Mountune.
