great white
Well-Known Member
As some of you know, I've recently started tuning my 98 6.5 with RTOBDII (tunercatsII) from Moates.
It was not an inexpensive propostion.
It works really well, but I've been longing for real time tuning.
IOW, you install and emulator in your PCM and your laptop can make changes on the fly to the program. This saves immeasureable time tuning and it also allows you to see what a change to one parameter does right away rather than a whole flash for one item.
Problem is, no one makes an emulator for a 6.5
Or do they?
Here's the skinny on what I've been "collaborating" on:
The OBDII pcm's use a 32 leg PLCC format flash chip. That is, it's a square chip and it has legs on all four sides.
Moates sells an "ostrich 2.0" emulator and by coincidence, our chip is one of the target supported chips. Problem is, it's meant for a DIP format chip. IOW, a rectangular chip with a row of legs down each side.
The other problem is there's no 6.5 OBDII software to support the Ostrich 2.0
So here's what I have on the go after talking to Craig ove at moates .net.
Tunercat I supports the Ostrich 2.0 natively. He's going to contact TC and see if Ostrich 2.0 support can be added to RTOBDII. If that happens, all that will need to be done is build a header to adapt the PLCC surface mount to a DIP ribbon cable to use an Ostrich with tunercatII and our PCM. That's where I come in and fab up a prototype.
I've suggested to Craig that a package selling for around 6-800 bucks might be well recieved by the community if this works. I haven't received a response on that suggestion, so no news there yet.
I think it would be well worth the price to tune your own PCM in real time instead of paying 500 bucks for each flash most guys seem to ask. Of course, you also gain the knowledge (or inexperience) of the tuner for that 500 bucks. You'd be one your own with a real time tuner on a 6.5, at least until enough guys get some experience with it.
It's a long road with lots of land mines along the way, but it may happen.
Fingers crossed...
It was not an inexpensive propostion.
It works really well, but I've been longing for real time tuning.
IOW, you install and emulator in your PCM and your laptop can make changes on the fly to the program. This saves immeasureable time tuning and it also allows you to see what a change to one parameter does right away rather than a whole flash for one item.
Problem is, no one makes an emulator for a 6.5
Or do they?
Here's the skinny on what I've been "collaborating" on:
The OBDII pcm's use a 32 leg PLCC format flash chip. That is, it's a square chip and it has legs on all four sides.
Moates sells an "ostrich 2.0" emulator and by coincidence, our chip is one of the target supported chips. Problem is, it's meant for a DIP format chip. IOW, a rectangular chip with a row of legs down each side.
The other problem is there's no 6.5 OBDII software to support the Ostrich 2.0
So here's what I have on the go after talking to Craig ove at moates .net.
Tunercat I supports the Ostrich 2.0 natively. He's going to contact TC and see if Ostrich 2.0 support can be added to RTOBDII. If that happens, all that will need to be done is build a header to adapt the PLCC surface mount to a DIP ribbon cable to use an Ostrich with tunercatII and our PCM. That's where I come in and fab up a prototype.
I've suggested to Craig that a package selling for around 6-800 bucks might be well recieved by the community if this works. I haven't received a response on that suggestion, so no news there yet.
I think it would be well worth the price to tune your own PCM in real time instead of paying 500 bucks for each flash most guys seem to ask. Of course, you also gain the knowledge (or inexperience) of the tuner for that 500 bucks. You'd be one your own with a real time tuner on a 6.5, at least until enough guys get some experience with it.
It's a long road with lots of land mines along the way, but it may happen.
Fingers crossed...