Can I plug in the DFI and harness into my car and start the motor with the DFI untuned, just with its base tables? Problem is, to get the DFI tuned, I have to get the car to the shop, but to get to the shop, I have to drive the car. Even if I can't drive the car with the untuned DFI, Can I at least start the motor to make sure I have all my connections secure, no fuel leaks, etc...It'd be embarresing If I get the car to the shop and the shop can't start the car due to something stupid that I overlooked. Thanks for any responses.
BTW, the motor is a modded LT1...Ported heads, LPE219 cam, 58mm TB, Hooker LTs, Ported intake. ~425 HP flywheel.
If you don't have the Calmap software to monitor what's going on, or at the very least a home-made O2 gage, I wouldn't recommend it. You certainly wouldn't want to burn something up by being too lean.
If you have the Calmap software, all you have to do is follow the manual (or the manual on www.cruzinperformance.com) to get your base calibration going. Then your on your way to do it yourself. The hardest part will be doing the idle and IAC settings. I found that having someone help so you can do the settings with the car in drive seemed to work the best for me.
[This message has been edited by RCR (edited November 06, 2001).]
Calmap has a utility that will construct an approximate fuel map base on your estimates of fuel pressure, injector size, hp, torque, and their rpm's. Basically you just honestly answer the prompts and let it do all the work. That should be good enough to start up and run although it won't be optimal. Running closed loop with an O2 sensor from just off idle is a good idea as well (I think you set this up with the 'Low CL' and 'High CL' parameters in the 'Global' menu under 'Configure ECU'). The computer will then attempt to compensate for errors in your guesses that might have your fuel map too rich (caused by overestimating your power/torque and/or underestimating their rpm's) or lean (the reverse) based on the O2 sensor signals.
Anyway, you're probably still in for a few rounds of road testing even after going to the shop. Been there, done that, and I'm still tinkering with the calibrations a little to improve some aspects of overall driveability. Just out of curiosity, are you going to one of Accel's EMIC's?
Norm
------------------
1979 Malibu w/some cornering tweaks and a few other interesting things
I'm getting it Dyno tuned at a place that does All sorts of LT1 work on cars. I'm unsure if they're one of Accell's EMIC's, but the guy that does the programming was trained through one of Accell's classes for DFI, so I don't really know.