Honda K Pro Tuning

I have never tuned a K Series with K Pro but have always been intrigued by the application. from what I understand there are high cam profile and low cam profile fuel and timing maps for multiple different cam angles. I am wondering the best way to go about tuning one of these without spending a year on the dyno.

I managed to get a full tune in within a few hours on one - obviously there is a bit of common sense involved where you can save time at the time, but from memory (I haven't tuned lots of K's so I may be hazy with the specifics about the software)

- I zerod the cam angle maps for on and off VTEC, and set VTEC to 9000rpm (some rpm which aren't hit)

- Set "change all tables" - the option which updates ALL angle fuel/ignition maps when you adjust the numbers in the current one

- Did a full tune on the 0deg map optimizing fuel and ignition

- Set VTEC to around 4000rpm and did the same for the high cam on 0deg

- Turned off "update all tables"

- Set target cam to 10deg, and did a few quick adjustments to timing and fuel (they should be fairly minimal) to get everything optimal

- Repeat the same for 20, 30, 40, 50 on and off VTEC. For me these took very little time as particularly the timing maps needed minimal change in most cases and not huge fuelling changes. For the most part changing the numbers for all load zones for a given rpm range was sufficient

- This is where things get complicated and depend a bit on how good your dyno software is, and how much adjustment you can cope with at the time. If I were doing it again with a Dynapack (which allows overlaying 6 runs) and it was a stock head setup I found a lot of the "best parts" were +/- 30deg so I'd be inclined to do a bunch of runs relative to 30deg, first with VTEC off at 26, 28, 30, 32, 34 and 36 degrees and then looking at how the different curves react between them. If the 26 run ends up being way better then 28, or 36 ends up way better than 34 then you may have to broaden the search... if 28 to 30 has a reasonable gain, but 30-32 has no gain then the odds are reasonable that "29" may be the peak. All common sense stuff

- Set all the rpm zones to match the angles which the highest torque points were reached

- Set VTEC on at 4000rpm again

- Do the same angle business for 4000+

- Do a run with VTEC set to 9000 then a run with VTEC set to 4000

- Set VTEC point to roughly where the torque intersects - maybe do any little tidy ups you find necessary

Then I went and set all the transient areas based off my own preferences of how I like a car to drive... remember you can influence throttle response, fuel economy, engine noise etc with the cam angles and I often tune that kind of thing based off how the car is used. You can have the car "cruise" nice and quietly/economically but having the cam timing set not at peak torque in the lighter load areas and it can feel nice and smooth, but ramp it up to peak at full load. Also bare in mind there is latency/lag for going from "current" to "target" angles so smooth transitions help. I am clearly OCD with this kind of thing but I also take into account the zones the car goes through when changing gear...

You can do it much quicker by taking relative shortcuts but I figure do it once, do it right. I've got pretty decent results out of pretty basic setups using this process and they drive really nicely.

Thanks for your thorough write up. I wasn't aware that all maps could be changed at once. That will certainly speed up the process.

Based on what you have said, any reason not to start with the cam advance locked to 30 instead of 0?

Not really, I was ultimately more playing out a general guide to the process I followed. Again I've not done many and the last one was some time ago so it'd be a bit hazy and no doubt results may vary, others (or you) may come up with better ways and I'm interested to hear what people have... but I've had good results so I figured worth adding input.

Same subject, goog reading also.

https://www.hpacademy.com/forum/practical-dyno-tuning/show/variable-timing-cam-tuning

Thanks, I didn't see that before.