How many 458 Italias with original ecu and exhaust crackles?

Hi guys
We are in the process of becoming vendors here and this particular thread caught my attention since it relates to something that I did to my own personal 458. It is a 2010 model that has since has its sw updated by Ferrari to eliminate the burbles/crackles under deceleration. Uncharacteristically, I had enough foresight to read the calibration off of the pre-updated ECU and compared it to the calibration of the post-updated ECU. Besides all the tables being located at different addresses, I did find 1 table differences that stood out:

Bottom left you will a new calibration (without burbles). Bottom right you will see an older calibration (with burbles). The shown tables are "Retard time for overrun fuel cut-off" which basically defines a delay (in seconds) in fuel cut during deceleration. The X axis represents engine temp. The Y axis is Engine Speed. And the value in the table is the time delay (sec).

You'll notice that with the newer calibration (right), as soon as engine temp reaches 90 deg C (which is full operating temp), the delay value goes to 0. Which means that the injectors shut off as soon as a deceleration state is reached. But on the older calibration (right), there is a delay of 1 second before the injectors are turned off. This extra second of fuel injection provides the burbles and pops that we all love
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Travis at FabSpeed told me repeatedly last year that they had a tuner on-staff who had the ability to re-flash the ECU on ANY YEAR Italia to produce the desired run on.

Here is a direct copy/paste of text I received from him in an email last year:

"Yes, it can easily be done on any year, any car. It's simply making the car demand a little more fuel so that a small excess is unburned - causing the popping and crackling. Very easy procedure, the Lamborghini owners are obsessed with it...but isn't that healthy for the car. But yes, we can do it to any year Italia. It dumps raw fuel so the car starts carrying on when you shift or hop off the gas pedal under acceleration. Lambo guys do it, but it can catch those cars on fire because how excessively they shoot fire. That's why we don't recommend it."

He said that they've done it for "dozens" of customers, and he was going to charge $2,295 for the re-flash. Because I was skeptical, I asked for a video of one of these "dozens" of customer cars that proved they were able to do this. We went back and forth for 3 months, while I waited for him to produce a video. I wasn't going to send a car over, or pay the money, until/unless I was able to see a video proving they were capable of doing this.

In the end, no video was ever produced. He did offer a 100% money-back guarantee if I wasn't satisfied with the "crackles and pops" produced after the ECU tune. Good in theory, but I didn't want to get into a situation where we could potentially have any disagreement about what was a "satisfactory crackle/pop," so I never proceeded with this.

I think I can speak for many when I say that we would all be willing to pay any tuner capable of producing the exact same kind of run-on produced on original-ECU 2010/2011 Italias.

But unfortunately, based on a bunch of research I've done in this area, and I know Steven B. has researched this as well, it seems entirely impossible to accomplish this.

If any tuner is actually able to accomplish this, I hope they'll step forward a produce a video proving it, as there will be a number of folks willing to pay for their services.

 

Talk about good timing - your post came just one minute before mine!

Okay, with the info you present in these tables, is it possible for tuners to recreate/duplicate this in the ECU of ANY year Italia?

 

We will soon be releasing the our Openflash Tablet for the 458 (and soon after that, the F12). with it, you will have the ability to apply any changes you want to your calibration including re-enabling exhaust crackle, remapping fuel/ignition for max power, etc,.

 

Yes, we will be doing just that. I have pretty large data base of OEM calibrations from around the world. I have identified the fuel cut delay tables in all of them. I have also identified the exhaust bypass valve controls tables that will also need to be adjusted in order to safely allow exhaust burble. The reason Ferrari nixed the burbles was because it was damaging the electronic bypass valves in the OEM exhaust. The valves would be in closed state during over-run (to meet sound regulations) but the extra exhaust mass would pummel the back of the exhaust eventually causing it to loosen and rattle over time. And strangely enough, it wasn't possible to replace just the exhaust valve. One had to purchase the entire exhau$t. With this in mind, I have re-mapped my car to keep the exhaust bypass valve open during over-run. It doesn't sound much louder than before. But it allows the burbles to come through nicely without beating up the OEM exhaust hardware.

 

This seems to be THE SOLUTION ! Happy to hear we will be rescued soon !

Tell us more please: when, how, cost ?

And how do we -at the other side of the world- do this in our ECU's ?

 

Well if you are the real deal, and able to pull this off, I can virtually guarantee you'll have a number of very excited customers from this board - myself being one of them!

Thanks very much for this info. Please keep us posted. When do you plan on making this available to customers? How much will it cost?

 

Also, would you mind telling us a little more about yourself? Your background? Tuning experience?

Thank you very much.

 

If we have your particular calibration in our database, you won't have to send your ECUs to us. We mail our OpenFlash Tablet (OFT) to you, you plug it into your diagnostics port, read some calibration info and then email it to us. Then we send you a tune file that makes the requested changes, you upload it to the OFT, plug it into your diagnostic port and flash both your ECUs. Each ECU takes 10 minutes to program (20 minutes total). If, for some unlikely reason, we don't have your calibration in our database, we would need to get our hands on your ECU in order to read it off the chip. Then we return the ECUs to you. Going forward from there, all the flashing is done at home with the OFT. This gives you the ability to try any number of tune files as well as to revert back to stock calibration when necessary (dealership visits, emissions testing, etc,.). The OFT is also able to log data, view data, read codes, etc,. This makes it possible for us to custom tune your vehicle remotely.

That's great to hear. We have been in this business since 1999 and have focused primarily on ECU tuning/tuning tools for pretty much that entire time. We have been reviewed by various magazines (Autoweek, Car&Driver, Road and Track, Edmunds, The Inside Line etc,.) as well as a few video reviews from Everyday Driver, Winding Road Mag, etc,). There are close to 10,000 Openflash Tablets on the market right now between all the platforms we currently support (GT86, MX5, BMW, Porsche 997/987, Fiat, Ducati and KTM). I purchased a 458 last year for my own personal use and absolutely fell in love with it. All the development has been done on my own car since it's something I would have done regardless. It was only until recently that we decided to move forward with the Ferrari 458 version of the OFT commercially. Conceptually it is identical to the OFT we sell for all our other supported vehicles.

The cost for the 458 OFT has yet to be determined but we expect it to be a bit lower priced that other bench flashing options. We are looking at an introductory price of approx $1500. Before finalizing price, it would be useful to gauge interest of this product. I have been living on the dyno for the past few weeks getting our off-the-shelf (OTS) calibrations ready for public consumption. So in summary, the 458 OFT will provide the use to easily and safely flash their car at home through the car's diagnostic port (under steering wheel). Unless we don't have your calibration in our database, there is no need to ship your ECUs to us. This means no down time and not hassle of uninstalling/re-installing the ECUs. The OFT will hold 5 tune OTS files as well as your stock OEM tune. We will have a guideline explaining which OTS tune is recommended for which level of modification (i.e., stock, with exhaust, with cat bypasses and headers, etc.

We will also offer a Custom E-Tuning service (Custom E-Tuning - OpenFlash PerformanceOpenFlash Performance) that allows us to optimize the tune remotely by using the OFTs data logging feature. This will involve the customer recording one or two 3rd gear full throttle runs (2000 to 9300rpm) and then emailing us the datalog file for review. The data log will show channels such as ignition advance, AFR, fuel trims, throttle opening, temps, calculated torque. nominal torque, intake air temp, etc,. With this data, we can review and revise the tune for maximum performance and safety.

We have been doing all this for years on other cars. So nothing is new to us. We look forward to extended our services to Ferrari 458 owners

Best Regards,
Shiv Pathak
CEO
OpenFlash Performance Inc.
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Here is some additional viewing material on our Openflash Tablet:

https://youtu.be/2bhnMYvn5S4

https://youtu.be/n4dq4mXFHDA

https://youtu.be/VSXuRatBZDw

https://youtu.be/KV-Y1I-IcX8

 

Can this be done on any year or only the 2010/11? Can it also be applied to spiders and Speciale?

 

It will work with any year, any variant (Speciale, SA, Spider, etc,). All 458s use the same Bosch MED9.6.1 ECU. Makes no difference to the process.

 

Now that's a home run!

 

Thanks for that. That made the hair on the back of my neck stand up for sure. Now I"m not sure if mine has been flashed. I do have those burbles but I don't know if its to that extent. Anyone know the campaign number that would have flashed the exhaust ECU's? I have the service records with four different campaigns on them.

 

Cue Lola......

 

Shiv, to confirm, do you really think you can make a 2014 or 2015 458 Italia sound like these videos?

 

2 words
pricing power

 

Short answer: Yes
Long answer: To get the exhaust crackles as loud as you hear in the video, I suspect you'll need race cats/cat bypass pipes and possibly an exhaust. I can get my car to combust on the over-run by adjusting the tables I described earlier. But with the OEM cats, headers and exhaust in the way, the crackles are far more muted. They sound more like burbles and muffled pops. I will be installing headers and cat bypass pipes next week and will show a before/after video of the sound.

As for newer model year vehicles, it shouldn't matter as the mechanism for inducing that noise is identical to that of early cars. Hardware is unchanged as well. So there is no factor that I'm aware of that could possibly get in the way.

The process to induce exhaust crackles/burbles is very straight forward and quite simple. We have been doing it with Miatas, GT86s and Porsches for years. All you need to do is delay the decel triggered fuel cut and target a lambda on the rich side of 1.00. Then you can adjust the loudness of the crackle by retarding ignition advance during this decel conditions. The less advance, the louder the crackle will be.

In the Bosch MED 9.6.1 software, you are limited to a maximum fuel cut delay of 2.55 seconds (raw value of 0xFF or 255). This is still much longer than any delay I've seen on the much sought after early calibrations.

The other changes I've made to my calibration is a remapping of the Throttle table for Race/CST/CSZ OFF modes. It was much too aggressive for my tastes. Made it difficult to drive smoothly at low speed. I mapped it similar to the throttle settings you get in Rain and Sport mode but with the advantage of having higher traction control thresholds. Looking at various calibrations released over the years, I can see that Ferrari has tweaked this table from time to time as well. No doubt they felt it could be improved upon. As much as we would like, our driving isn't centered around the test track at Fiorano.

Other changes involved remapping the ignition advance tables (under load) and revising the lambda request and component protection tables. These two changes alone picked up nearly 15hp on the dyno (on 91oct fuel). It's a real gem of an engine to tune. Unlike the naturally aspired high output engines from Porsche that seem to be pushed to their limits with OEM calibration, the 458 engine is much more consistent run-to-run which is in line with my conclusion that they are less aggressively tuned from the factory.

 

I remember my first time in 458 a 2011 and it had the backfires, was great.

 

obviously you cant have the dealer to any future updates once its rolled back right?

 

By "rolled back" do you mean tuned with our OpenFlash Tablet? If so, it's probably best to ask the dealership to not update the ECU. But if they do, you can unmarry the OFT from your car and re-install it again. IF we have the new updated calibration in our database, we simply email you a new file (based upon the new calibration) to upload that will restore the crackle and/or any other tuner change you wanted. If it's not yet in our database, you would have to mail your ECUs to us so we can read out the file and go from there. So yes, it's easiest to ask your dealership not to update your ECU once you have everything you want.

 

When do you think it will be available to buy?

 

Before we launch the 458 OFT, I'd like to finish the calibration once the headers and test pipes are installed in our car next week. That way we can preload each OFT with several tunes the customers can pick from depending on their modifications (or lack thereof). So I think we are looking at 2 weeks before we officially launch. If anyone is local to us (SF Bay Area) and is interested, please PM me

I'll be starting a new thread dedicated to the OpenFlash Tablet soon. I'll be posting dyno results, pics, videos and other product info specific to the 458 platform.

 

Personally, I would not make any changes to critical performance tables unless it's done on a dyno in real time. Every 458 is different and each requires a unique tune. However, VERY conservative (barely noticeable) changes are probably safe but then what's the point? The factory code/tabes tend to be concervative for reliability. Not the kind of reliability we typically think of but those that ensure your engine won't hurt itself if you accidentally get some bad gas (low octane) for example.

As it pertains to this post (pops and burbles) , the deceleration fuel, decel ignition and cam timing tables are pretty safe to change unless someone goes crazy and all that slow burning fuel damages your ex valves or cats.

Bases on my experience, Ferrari coded dozens of different SW versions for security reasons as the tuning tables are essentially unchanged. That means the vast majority of 458 customers will need to remove and send out the physical ECUs. These various SW versions are like GOLD to the tuner as once they have them they have a competitive advantage over every other tuner since they can now offer many more OBD2 port solutions which is much cheaper for the tuner and more desirable to the user.

I was going to offer FREE re-flashes to restore the pops etc in exchange for the use of a customer's physical ECUs when I didn't have that particular SW version (which is most the time). The customer gets what they want for free and I added to my SW database which is potentially worth 1000 times the money I'd spend retreaving the data and modifying the tune file. Corner the market so to speak.

Unfortunately, nobody wanted to remove their expensive ECUs and send them to someone to do surgery on. Frankly, I was a bit worried myself. One improper connection or some stray ESD and "poof" I'd just ruined a $7000 ECU (or two!). Can't just run down to the local jumkyard and pickup another one. It just didn't make economic sense for one guy to proceed with that business plan. I know, I tried.

I got an idea. Why don't we start an "go fund me" Ferrari community account and collect enough money to buy the right tuning hardware/software and use the collective knowledge and experience of the owners on this site to do our own modifications? I'll certainly donate my time and experience.