Logging...

B8 S4
#1

I was reading the meth thread re infinkc’s car and had some questions about logging on VAG.

For my former BMW cars, we were lucky to have one 335 guy who made a free website that is awesome. It’s called http://datazap.me/ and it allows you to create a free account, upload logs and it graphs everything and you can scale and manipulate the graph etc. Then you just hyperlink the post and everyone can review your data with this great presentation tool. It only works in certain formats at the moment but I can check with the owner and see if he’d be interested in working with VAG COM logs. It’s become very popular as the N54/N55 guys log like they use punctuation.

Here is an older link to the introduction of the tool and you can see from the comments people are all over it: http://www.bimmerboost.com/showthread.php?44246-Introducing-Datazap-my-free-interactive-data-log-viewing-and-storage-service&highlight=datazap

If there’s something like this for VAG you guys already use, please let me know. I’m going to pick up VAG COM soon and start logging my stock engine before I mod in the spring. I’m likely to use some form of meth/water injection as it worked great on my 335. On that platform it’s logged to death and people could easily see how much power and additional boost you could run, which nozzles, cc/min etc to use at what power level.

#2

Lots of dragstrip fearing people love logs. It’s funny.

The B5 S4 world is obsessed with logs and made up measuring sticks. Google B5 S4 FATS for a good laugh.

Sharing information on parameters is nice, but then what? Once you see guys using logs to compare car to car as a performance substitute, you will know the B8 S4 has jumped the shark. For now, the guys are more interested in quarter mile times and PBOX data. Much better in my opinion.

logracingftl

#3

xpost to the thread that failed http://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php/474796-B8-S4-log-thread-Post-your-VCDS-logs-here

#4

Ironically, Saki probably has logged more cars than just about any other audi enthusiast that isn’t employed by a performance shop.

Logging is like dynos, they have a purpose and use, but can just as easily be manipulated or used inappropriately. But they can be useful while going from one mod to the next or tinkering around to see a general trend. However they are only truly comparable to your car only. Comparing car to car can be a bit dangerous.

Primetime could probably help you on which parameters to log on the B8 and decipher the output.

#5

The thread infinkc linked has good information on how to log a B8. I believe there is a replica of it here somewhere.

Apparently lots of the blocks were changed as the B8 S4 progressed through various ECU types so the locations may not work for everyone.

As for my history of logging, I always log someone’s car to see how healthy it is, whenever I get a chance. I do so in a pretty controlled fashion on the same road for everyone. That makes the results somewhat comparable. It’s always funny to see people comparing logs done on different roads (which alone destroys the integrity of the results) and using time through RPMs to see who is ‘fastest’…meanwhile one guy is being honest and logging on a flat road and the other guy is logging on the way down an on-ramp to ‘prove’ how great his tune is and battle some skeptics. I say just go and get a timeslip if you want to say how fast you are.

Of course logging parameters to get an understanding of what a tuner is doing is important to a certain degree, or to diagnose what may be wrong with a car. That’s unfortunately not where logging goes on most platforms…it usually becomes a dick measurement.

To be honest, the reason that logging thread ‘failed’ is because people are measuring their B8 S4s at the dragstrip. We have a fairly healthy quarter mile list here, and there are more B8 S4 times on it than any other platform, including the B67 which has been out for 10 years, and the vaunted B5 which has been out for 15. The B8 S4 is a very effective acceleration weapon, and the owners don’t fear the dragstrip as much as say the B5 owners no do, or the RWD BMW guys might (they’re usually chock full of excuses about why logging or 60-130 is ‘better’ than the de facto standard acceleration test, the 1/4 mile)

#6

Re FATS that’s definitely a waste of time IMO as well. Akin to comparing dyno charts or vbox/pbox times to say which car or tune is more competitive. But ZFG about FATS etc. That’s the past, it got it’s start on other forums and I don’t think many here are going to let happen as that seems to be why AR was started in the first place.

My feeling is once we have the logs and start discussing where various tune’s strengths and weaknesses are in a public forum, it tends to force more involvement from the tuners. We give feedback on things that maybe don’t work like limp mode scenarios, throttle closure events, timing drops etc and the tuner will typically respond because they don’t want to look like they have the inferior product or support. The net result is as the feedback loop that does exist currently as PMs, emails and phone calls gets more out in the open, tuners have both more data and a reason to fix it, so the time in the loop to fix things gets shorter. That’s how a platform improves.

A good example using the N54 BMW stuff is the 6AT auto trans cars had/have a problem with timing drops after upshifts. A lot of people claimed it didn’t exist because you can’t really feel it in acceleration so it wasn’t an issue until several people started logging it and beating up the tuners over it. Eventually Cobb, Burger and others acknowledged it and tried all sorts of things to fix it with mixed success.

The point was they would have never even knew it existed if it wasn’t for customers logging and bitching about it on a public forum.

#7

Yeah, that already happens with the B8 S4. There’s about 5 guys on here that browbeat the tuners when there’s something wrong.

Most interesting was a comparison between APR, GIAC and REVO parameters. You need to go read that…pretty wild.

Here somewhere. TSIVAS can help.

#8

Boost, Once you get the cable let me know and I’ll help in anyway that I can… As others said the field #'s change year to year and revision to revision but the names are usually the same… It’s easy to figure out if you take the time and get some help, the TTRS fields are nothing like the S4, obviously so I had to figure that out but got help from some good TTRS owners as that is what these forums are about IMO… There are some good guys here that understand the tool well on the B8 cars, like Tsivas and Jspazz… I have shared pretty much all my logs with them and vice versa and it’s really neat to see how the different tunes work from a timing, boost, iat, etc standpoint… I try to log at the strip all the time just so I can compare delta’s in 1/4 passes to what is going on… Does it tell the whole story, no of course not but it helps…

I also agree it’s a great tool for giving the tuners feedback and I have sent APR many logs especially prior to v2 when I had some beta tunes to help improve the bypass issues… Jeff and Pete recently did the same with GIAC and based on the logs and 60-130 times they improved the tune… However, I’ll wait until I see some 1/4 times before I get too excited for them… Gonna be a fun spring ;D

#9

I agree that some guys seem to have private conversations with the tuners and so on but I think it’s more healthy to put in the open for others to comment on as I said. It’s easy to miss things and crowdsourcing more eyes on it here can’t hurt.

I do recall seeing something a while back maybe on AZ about APR/GIAC/REVO params but if anyone has a link to it, I’d really like to see it. IIRC, REVO had really high timing on their 93 tune with a lot of timing drops, essentially like a high octane map.

#10

Thanks for the offer PT. I will take you up on it once I start pulling some logs. I have a BT (hex can IIRC) cable from my BMWs that I heard was modeled after VAG COM/VCDS which I’m going to try with the VC software. If it doesn’t work, I’ll probably just buy the VC cable from ross-tech.

I downloaded the VCDS 12.12.0 now and took a quick look at the user guide. It looks like we can log a maximum of 12 elements simultaneously at a sample rate that could be as high as 30 samples per second. This is probably good enough once the problem cylinders are known.

#11

Boost, Not a problem… Yes you can log up to 12 values, the less you log the higher sample rate for that field obviously… You’ll need to make sure you check “turbo” mode and the “group by” box for the highest sampling rate… It should be defaulted IMO but it’s not and it can be easy to forget… It’s really simple to use once you play with it a few times and it sounds like you already have experience logging so you’ll pick it up very quick…

#12

Perfect, thanks PT!

#13

The log thread was made to compare the parameters of the different tuners, since there was a lot of talk that some tuners were going a little soft and others too hard on the motor. I didn’t put any more effort in it after I had GIAC logs, but FWIW I’m always interested in seeing new ones like W/M injection and e85, just for curiosity.

You can hit me up for help as well anytime boost. I think my email is on here, if not I can PM it (or prime or Tsivas can)

J

#14

Thanks. You guys rock!

I’ve been a little busy but I hope to try out my hex-can cable and vcds this weekend.

#15

If you’re logging just your own car I whipped up an app that does just that. Its still probably a bit buggy and you can only see your own logs for now, but give it a shot.

http://audilogs.com

Let me know when you break something so I can fix it lol. I put it together in a couple hours so I haven’t done much testing with b8 output … but I don’t see how it could be much different.

I mainly meant it as a way to compare between your own logs so sharing was pretty far down my ToDo list.

#16

Awesome awesome fucking shit there bud! Major karma to ya. Keep the progress coming!

#17

dude, you rock! I’ll give it a try tonight!

#18

Wow amazing, i uploaded my log i did the other day. When i do try to chart using RPM, i get this error showing up and not all the graphs are populated. Is there an option to overlay previous logs, or is it only to view one log at a time?

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/thiv2453/public_html/audilogs.com/DataAnalyzer.php on line 132

#19

that works extremely well for B67 logs.

We traditionallly log things like

  1. timing request vs. RPM
  2. timing pulled vs. RPM
  3. RPMs (delta) vs. time (see how quickly you’re gaining RPMs)
  4. MAF vs RPM

etc.

#20