Halltech

There is a lot of talk about tuning, which I have been doing now for almost 10 years. I have worked closely with many tuners, sharing files and none of my tunes have ever been locked. Since I have tuned no less than 500 LS7s since 2006, and was the first to tune an LS7, my tunes have been seen and I'm sure copied or cloned by many.

I believe in this idea. I have from the beginning, since the consumer is the beneficiary of cooperation between tuners. Since many tuners do not share this philosophy, I will not mention names, but I have seen practically every tuner's work that is tuning today, with a few exceptions. Even those that lock their files.

My background is building computers for a small computer company back in the 90s and working in the memory chip industry as the tech support manager for a large memory company. I have worked with Ken Kelly of Carputing in finding GM safety protocol software after having some of this information revealed to me in early 2002. An example is the Cat Overtemp Protection circuit.

Our 2002 Z06 would dyno at 350 RWHP on its first pull and 333 on the second back in the day. Air fuel ratio would go from 12.1:1 all the way down to 10:1. Once Ken and I found that circuit, he put a check box in the LS1Edit to turn it off (of course just on the dyno)

Tuning required or no tuning required.

There are two types of tuning. Both are considered tampering with the stock programming, so GM could void your powertrain warranty if they wanted to.

First type is simple MAF recal. Depending on the intake design, long term fuel trims, which are engaged during the closed loop circuit from O2 sensors to the PCM, add fuel or delete fuel where the MAF sensor has miscalculated the air mass. Adding fuel will put LTFTS in the + side average, deleting fuel will put the LTFT averages in the negative column. GM has most of their intakes dialed in where LTFTs averages run -2 to +2% most of the time. Some MAF sensors are better than others, there are variations in their accuracy, which is why the O2 sensors are in the loop. They trim the fuel perfectly during closed loop.

If an intake is say +10 to +15% off stock, most good tuners would recommend reflashing the MAF tables to bring the trims down to zero.

Lean codes will pop a CEL if you hit +25% for more than 2 seconds, twice. There are many reasons for lean codes, but the most common is a vacuum leak. Second most common is turbulence at the MAF from opening up airflow directly to the filter.

Rich codes will pop a CEL if you hit -25% for more than 2 seconds.
These codes are serious, since they are rare and can indicate a leaking injector. That can lead to petro-lock.

Throttle position dictated: Closed loop is engaged under 48% throttle position on the LS7. Open loop (other than startup) is 49% TP and up. The MAP sensor gets into the picture as well. Throttle closed during decel is open loop PE to avoid popping.

The Second type is power tuning. 99% of all tunes that I have seen, change only the open loop PE/RPM commanded fuel enrichment cycle to lean out the LS7 from its super rich 11.5:1 factory a/f ratio to somewhere between 12.2:1 to 12.6:1, depending on the tuners peak timing and fuel octane available. Fan is normally set to come on sooner, top speed limiter changed, torque management modified, COTP turned off, and many other minor changes. Timing is many times set too high by tuners, which causes the knock sensors to pull the timing back anyway.

I change other aspects of the closed loop tuning to promote better fuel mileage and throttle response. I have not seen these areas modified, until recently.

Some might think that I have copied other tuners. In 2005, I purchased a used Z06 and tuned it for testing at the Donaldson Filter company. Their selected DynoJet. I had the very first copy of LS7Edit as it was called back then.

The comparison here was stock tune originally at LG Motorsports prior to my purchasing the car, and my tuning only. Stock filter was back in the car for the final two dynos. I set the air fuel ratio to 13:6:1 on 92 Octane. Since this was my car, I ran it lean to see what we could glean from getting close to stoichiometric (14:1 for E10). The dyno speaks for itself:

Bone stock Z06 vs. Jim Hall tuning:



PS. I do not tune this lean when tuning customer's cars, but one customer back in 2006 asked me to do so, and ran 10.79@132 mph with no other mods except our Killer Bee and my tuning and DRs.

Poor-sha

Great stuff Jim, have you ever considered writing a book on the topic?

Halltech

I might just put everything I know on the forum.

I am semi-retiring the first of the month to get some health issues taken care of and then back to work a couple days a week to oversee Halltech.

Same good folks here to handle everything, but 13 years has been really fun. I have two new guys, Matt and Ian that will run everything while I am gone for a while. 7 years of no health insurance is pretty scary, but 0blama is much scarier.

I started the business in Huntington Beach, CA back in 1998 with an idea and turned it into a pretty good small business. No vacations in 13 years, so I guess it is time to hang up my saddle.

BearZ06

Wishing you the best in getting your health issues resolved quickly. Thanks for all the good info and products you provide us and don't be a stranger to the forum!

Lethal Racing

Nice post Jim. Thanks for the info. I also believe in tune sharing and have absolutely 0 issues sharing them or even discussing my ideas on them. As a company we do lock tunes, which is frowned upon, but We don't lock them so other tuners don't see them. We lock them so we know it was us who last tuned the car. At ANYtime the customer or their NEW Tuner can call me for the unlock code since I don't lock it to the cable, I use my own specific code so that no matter which software you use you will be able to unlock my tunes. We also use this for the warranty that we give customers after our work is done. If you call us for the unlock code you can have it, but we now know the car has been changed. I believe this fair and a way to keep everyone happy.

Shawn

erikszr1

Wishing you the best of luck Jim. Get well and feel better. Thank you for all you have done for us, its very much appreciated!

dovervold

Jim great write up on a very diverse subject. I love my new MB103, the car runs so nice, and pulls hard all the way to WOT! Question: I live in Minneapolis, if I wanted to get one of those famous Halltech tunes on my 2007 Z, could I drive the car to you? And what could I expect for HP/TQ? Car is stock with your CAI and cat back Borla with X pipe?

And best of luck with the doctors!

Halltech

Nope. Not necessary. Our emailTUNE® SCT X3 hand held allows you to upload and send your stock sul file to me for tuning without leaving home. I has a place for 3 custom tunes. One is included in the pricing.

http://www.halltechsystems.com/product_p/emtx3.htm

VETTE RN835

Hope things work out well Jim...

DRLC5

Jim your threads are truely great reading/learning material. I love my New KB. I will be ordering the mail order hand held tuner in the next week or two. Any specials for forum members? also are these hand held tuners in stock? I see some of the other tuners are taking weeks or even months to ship out the tuner. Thanks and wishing you good luck with your health.

Halltech

Thank you sir. Glad you are enjoying our products.

Z06Ronald

Definitely a thread to remember, thanks for the write up!
Above all, best wishes in your personal life, Jim!

achilds

As a fellow cancer survivor myself, I wish you the best with your health problems whatever they are now. Go out and take care of yourself and then enjoy your retirement! Thanks for all your support over the years.

Halltech

Thanks. I'll likely post more tuning secrets here so that most owners can make informed decisions on their tune or not to tune.

Jim

JMB

Jim, thanks for sharing, great info. Maybe you could put a sticky either here or in the tuning forum with screen shots that tell us which values and which tabs require tweaking (I realize that every situation is different, however if we could just see the "tuned example" that you shared above to understand which field needs to be changed since I realize that you charge money today to perform the discrete tuning)......I too still have an LS1_Edit and find that it was a breeze to use compared to the LS7 software today based on the complexity of the ECM.

P.S. Good luck with your health situation

CliffyDeuce

Thanks for all you've shared with us on the forum, and best of luck to you!

LT5 John

Hi Jim, thanks for the great write up...I like your honesty, and expertise...All the luck in the world to you...

Mr. Gizmo

Please keep your opinions to yourself, but since you opened the floor, I will have to say dealing with hospitals and my elderly parents health issues and certain billing practices, hospitals and doctors aren't hurting for money. IF What you profess above is based upon your experience from a non-for profit hospital, then what I am saying may not be the case.

if you work in a hospital for profit, what you say is repeating a bunch of BS propaganda put out by greedy hospital administrators trying to make bonus or Hospital holding companies like Columbia HCA trying to make their executives rich. And they are playing on the emotions of the true care-givers in hospitals(the nurses) taking advantage of them too by spreading their propaganda. They care about making money, and will do so at the cost of working the system or working patients that have money with questionable practices. (a personal example was being charged $250 for a plastic container to place a tissue specimen in that you could buy at a tupperware party for $3.) After dealing with these hospitals regarding my parents, it appears they make crap up out of the clear blue and charge you for it.

See this link

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews...medicare-fraud

And the quote within:

The giant hospital chain Columbia/HCA paid $1.7 billion in fines and pled guilty to more than a dozen felonies related to bribing doctors to help it tap Medicare funds and exaggerating the amount of care delivered to Medicare patients.... And a study of ten states uncovered $27 million in Medicare payments to dead patients.

tim414

Hey man.....your treading a VERY sensitive subject here.

I can tell you that when a guy starts a small business and the thought of pricing health insurance into the household/business budgets, many , many times it is NOT affordable. It is EXTREMELY expensive for individuals NOT in a group plan.....small business owners are considered individual plans and cost of plan is also indexed by zip code AND a guys AGE....

Best to lay off this subject IMHO. I know back when I had started my own consulting business the above was the case I found. I kept a job so that I could keep health insurance that created a situation for me that impeded my success with the company. It came to a risk managment situation....risk everything (home, cars etc) in hopes that business enviroment would support/provide the contract opportunities needed to be a viable business both in the short and long term.

With health care, there are many, many variables including federal politics and changes in healthcare rules and medicare which in a large way dictate cost of insurance.

Anyway....I would leave this subject be....and offer support for Jim's well being rather than chastize him for not having health insurance.....until you have been in a position to start a small business (it does NOT sound like you have or you would not have stated what you did-it sounds like to me anyway, that you have a "very narrow" sight of the larger perspective), please keep it to yourself......Thanks bud....
Tim

add: best of luck to you Jim.....that prostate cancer can be really nasty stuff for a guy....reminds me to go get a PSA done....btw, I believe that there are new guide lines pertaining to PSA levels....I heard that awhile back and forgot to look into it....anyway, good luck man....

cyber gray

Jim the best of luck to you and yours, and thanks for all the help over the years.

Regards Wil