AutoSpeed: Where do you see the major developments in the next five years in the area of programmable engine management? For example, do you see major advances in ignition settings through knock sensing, or perhaps do you see the self-mapping of air/fuel becoming more dominant? Where do you see the industry going in terms of its product development?
Ken Douglas: Well I think some of those things definitely. Knock (detection) is one of the things that can quite easily be totally and absolutely snake oil. Knock sounds simple but is very, very difficult. A lot of road cars obviously have knock sensors on them and the motor manufacturers are able to spend a lot of time and a lot of money moving the knock sensor around to the optimum position, characterising a sensor in that location for knock on that engine in that state of tune. But even then most of them typically run knock (sensed ignition) trimming only up to a certain rpm and a certain load. In a race or performance application it is very, very difficult to have knock (sensing) that you can truly rely on.
If you had an engine that never worked at full throttle, that never had piston slap, that had very nice mild camshafts with no cam noise or cam clatter and only ran up to 4000 rpm, then under those circumstances knock (detection) would be great. But in reality when an engine's operating at its limit, this current technology of sensors finds it difficult to discriminate between ambient engine noise and true knock. It's probably inconvenient if the spark's retarded when it shouldn't be; it's very expensive if it's not when it should be! People need to be able to have some confidence in the system and it needs to perform that function. There are developments going on in that subject, and that's clearly an area for future development.
Tuning and ease of tuning - we've made a lot of steps in that area. But the simpler that you can make the interface and the easier that you can do the tuning - including putting some artificial intelligence into the programming process - then the better it will be. There needs to be developments in that area as well.
The other area is that systems need to become slightly more generic. We've always had multi-function outputs and things tend not to be hard-coded - Pin Seventeen is not always the throttle position sensor, for example - it's whatever you tell it it is. As the complexity of road car systems increases - and it will, clearly - then that adaptability is going to become more and more important. They would be the key areas - aside from that, you just try to optimise whatever areas you can.
AutoSpeed: In terms of standard factory engines running things like infinitely variable camshaft timing (BMW on both inlet and exhaust cams), changeover intake manifolds, and sequential turbochargers on other types of engines, do you perceive a requirement to increase the complexity of available mapping? For example, so that camshaft timing can be mapped - as opposed to just advanced or retarded - but mapped according to load and rpm.
Ken Douglas: We have perceived a need to do that and we have already done that! We have been doing some work with our BMW racing customers on that exact topic, and yes, it's an area that opens up a whole lot of possibilities for the user. It's one of the things that if you had to build a single unit that had every single capability as a hard-coded pin, it would have 200 pins and no one could afford it. To make each input and output as programmable and assignable as possible - that's where the future is. One of the things that I was saying before about the ability to upgrade software (means that) with our existing units, customers in Belgium and Germany came to us because they had been running BMWs and winning national championships with them. In fact one won the Spa 24 Hour race outright with our system on it. New BMW; new system; new opportunity. So we altered the code on our existing unit and emailed over the new code. They put it in and off we go.
AutoSpeed: For road cars, do you perceive that the mapping of camshaft timing - where it is infinitely variable - would highly benefit a modified road car, or do you perceive that as the icing on the cake and not really one of the fundamentals that you would be looking at like injector mapping and ignition timing mapping.
Ken Douglas: If the hardware exists in the standard car to do it, then by all means it should be optimised. From a very simple system with a two-position cam to an infinitely variable it's another opportunity. As we both know, we don't find fifty horsepower falling out of the trees - you tend to find it in small increments that add up to fifty horsepower ; this is one of those areas.
AutoSpeed: Some of the current MoTeC systems integrate traction control. Are there any other driveline or drivetrain control systems that you generally control? For example, I don't think that ABS is ever controlled by the engine management systems that you develop, or four wheel drive torque splits, or anything of that sort. Have there been customers that require that, or have you looked at developing those sorts of attributes if they haven't already been done?
Ken Douglas: ABS is something that we would never, ever get involved with, and we recommend very strongly against (modifying it). It's a primary safety part of the car and if the customer - or someone else - makes a mistake, that's not good; but if someone's brakes aren't there, that's very bad. We absolutely forbid people from integrating systems in with primary safety componentry - and that's anything to do with an ABS system - the sensors, the actuators, the brakes, anything. So, no we wouldn't. Drivetrain controls - yes, we have had customers who do use the ECU for adjustable torque split and those sort of things.
One of the things about the MoTeC system is that - and I know it sounds as though I'm harping on the point - it is extremely flexible and you can almost walk up to a customer and say "here's the MoTeC range of systems, here's your solution, now - what's your problem?" In a lot of cases it's almost me needing to explain to people the opportunities that exist with the system - and then providing them with the tools to do it.
AutoSpeed: Are those tools sufficient to run a modern four or five speed automatic transmission, in addition to running the engine?
Ken Douglas: Yes, it would depend on how the solenoids are controlled and what method of communication is used. As you're aware, there's various communication protocols. We may run a device through a CAN link, we may run it through a data stream, we may run it by directly driving the solenoids - whatever. So, yes we can do it. We tend not to get too many requests for that - but could we do it? Yes we could.
AutoSpeed: Typically, how long would it take to map a MoTeC system on a road car using a chassis dyno?
Ken Douglas: You could do the whole thing - start to finish - in twenty minutes. It's very simple, once the initial set-up is done - you've got the ignition timing set - and everything else, then just running it up through the various load points using a what we call Quick Lambda to set the mixture strength at each point, and then going back and just optimising ignition at each point. It can be done very quickly. The biggest limitation really is the car on the dyno - the cooling system.
If the thing gets hot, you're sitting there for ten minutes waiting for it to cool down and then you go again. But to do an entire fuel map of itself, if the dyno was up to it, you could do it in five or ten minutes, easily. Ignition - a little bit longer, but not much longer.
That's the dyno side of it, but there's always the road tuning afterwards to tidy up the transients, the idle, the off-throttle and all of those aspects. As you'd be aware, it's very difficult to get dynos that will run at higher road speeds with very light load, so it's very difficult to tidy them up so they're part of the road exercise. Then the customer can choose whether he wants to use a closed loop, self-tuning function (which is) on-going, or just rely on the base map that has been put in there.
AutoSpeed: How long would the road tuning aspect of that take?
Ken Douglas: Some of them it's very easy; some of them it's a little bit more difficult. A lot tends to depend on the aggressiveness of the camshafts. Some things that have very mild, docile cams tend to be very easy to map and - just from experience - you can put in numbers that you think will be pretty right and verify them on the road. Some of the other ones that have very peaky cams and therefore quite sudden changes in volumetric efficiency over very small rpm ranges can take longer. Also you are trying to make something drive smoothly and nicely that should never be able to be driven smoothly and nicely.
www.motec.com.au
AutoSpeed Interview: MoTeC's Ken Douglas - Part 1
