[glaser67]

Hey all,

I have my project just about wrapped up with the mods you see in my signature, pending a wideband and electric fan install.

I've come this far and don't want to settle for "good enough" and want this build to take me many miles down the road for years to come.

The Moates QH seems like the logical solution to my situation. I've been on the Moates forum, and realize how steep the learning curve must be. My goals are basic; I want to dial in the timing and fuel trims, while also use the software as a diagnostic tool. I suppose this would entail dialing in the injector pulse width, spark timing and MAF curve.

My concern is that this is my daily driver and only transportation. I cannot afford more than a weekends down time to tweak the tune. I do have another ECM that I can swap out in a pinch.

So what it boils down to is this:

1. Is it plausible to expect to install the chip, upload a basic known strategy in a weekend?



2. Can anyone with experience with the Moates community weigh in on it? If I do my research and submit well thought out posts that I'll get the help this community is known for?

3. Is it all worth it? I like the power my 302 makes, but don't want to leave anything on the table or doubt I'm not getting everything out of the setup.

Any info or experience would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks all,

-Glaser67

[cgrey8]

Is it plausible to expect to install the chip, upload a basic known strategy in a weekend?...

If you do your homework ahead of time, it's plausible to have the chip loaded with a tune before you install it. For someone that knows exactly what they are doing, they could have the QH unboxed connected to their laptop, and downloaded with a tune in about 5 minutes after unboxing. Given you are new, will be slightly more cautious, and there may be some Windows driver installs and possibly software configuration, it may take a little longer, but nothing extravagant...certainly something that should be capable of being done in an hour or so.

...Can anyone with experience with the Moates community weigh in on it? If I do my research and submit well thought out posts that I'll get the help this community is known for?...

The level of support you'll get from the community is almost guaranteed to be related to your level of respect for the community AND clarity of your questions. Obvious effort that you've tried things and attempted to figure things out for yourself goes a long way. But it also means you have to keep up with more and tell what you've tried. Also keep in mind special times like holidays. There's nobody paid to man these forums. So don't get upset if you don't get an immediate answer. With very few exceptions, everybody here are volunteers.

...Is it all worth it? I like the power my 302 makes, but don't want to leave anything on the table or doubt I'm not getting everything out of the setup.

Yes if you are willing to learn. DIY tuning is far more about learning the EEC than it is about saving the money and not having it professionally done. If you want to drive the vehicle more than tinker with a laptop, then a professional can serve you better. However if you want the knowledge that DIY tuning can unleash, then it can be greatly rewarding.

As for tuning software, TunerPro is free to use, although the developer requests a donation which will unlock a nag window. It also has available a free-to-use GUFB definition file (GUFB is the strategy A9L follows). Add to this TunerPro now has the ability to write tunes to the Moates QH. Ever since TunerPro's support of GUFB processors via the QH, newbies tuning GUF1, GUFA, or GUFB EECs have flocked to it...understandably.

However in your case, I would recommend BinaryEditor, which is not free and relatively speaking is a bit pricey for GUFx users. So why would I recommend it? For this reason alone...BE supports you writing multiple GUFB-based tunes to a QH. And with a hardware switch connected to the QH (available from Moates), you can flip between those tunes on the fly!!! So if you made some seemingly simple change to a tune, wrote it out, then the next day you are on the drive to work and don't realize until you are well away from the house (and your laptop) that something you wrote doesn't behave as well as you'd hoped, you can flip to a well known "safe" tune at a moment's notice. With TunerPro, your drive to work might happen more like this the moment you realize you need to revert the tune:

• You'd have to pull over
• Boot your laptop (assuming you had it with you)
• Connect the laptop to the QH while it is booting
• Get TunerPro launched & loaded with your safe tune
• Write the safe tune (I don't know if this conks the engine out using TunerPro but I'd hope not since that's a rather large selling point of the QH over the TwEECer RT)
• Continue on your way

Also consider if the "bad" tune results in the engine dieing in the middle of traffic, pulling over to do this may not be an option which is why I HIGHLY recommend having tuning solutions that support multiple tunes so you can quickly get yourself back running if a seemingly simple tweak ends up with unexpected results at a very inconvenient time. Add to this, making a fat-fingered mistake or just an intentional-but-bad tweak out of ignorance that crashes the EEC isn't difficult to do as a newbie. It only takes entering a bad value on a function, like the MAF curve, to send the EEC's processor off in the weeds when the conditions get right to "use" that value you entered. For example, a popular mistake people used to make is setting the TOP voltage value in their MAF curve to something like 4.5v which it should never be changed from 16v (actually 15.99something). Then the first WOT they do that, for a split second, sends the voltage above 4.5v sends the EEC off in the weeds...and the result is their engine goes immediately from full power to engine-braking. That's an example of a bad tweak that's only usually seen at WOT. But bad tweaks aren't limited to showing up only at WOT. A bad tweak in the Adaptive Learning table could have mid-throttle conditions killing power because the EEC went off in the weeds and started dumping HUGE amounts of fuel into the engine...flooding it making it difficult to get it cranked back up once you do get things back straight (been there, done that a few times).

Point is, I can't stress how nice it is to have a "safe" tune at your fingertips available at the flip of a switch when you need it in your daily driver.

BTW, I also found Alex's Parts and bought my GT40p valve spring package including, retainers, keepers. Once I got closer to completing the build and got an accurate measure of how long my pushrods needed to be, I bought them from him as well. As well, my heads also use Scorpion 1.6 RRs. Although mine are the "fat" ones, not the skinny contoured ones. The ones on the ends of the heads had to be modified with a file to fit under the Explorer valve covers. So they aren't as pretty as they others, but who cares? I don't have clear Valve Covers.

[glaser67]

cgrey8,

Sounds great! I'll get my WB going then pull the trigger on the Moates QH. Software you recommend seems like good investment, as I feel if you're going to go with EFI and mods, you kind of have to go all the way.

I've got some homework to do and am sure I'll have lots of questions to come.

Thanks all!
-Glaser67

[cgrey8]

One of the nice things you can do is get the software and QH connected to the laptop with just a USB cable (i.e. not installed in the EEC). You can even use TunerPro to verify you can communicate with the QH and write a tune to it. Then once you've gotten connectivity confirmed, you can pay the license fee and get BE licensed. At that point, getting BE to communicate with the QH should be a lot simpler once you know the QH and the Windows driver is good.

Depending on whether your laptop supports Bluetooth or not, you have the option to connect to your QH via Bluetooth. If you do that, another benefit to BE is that it has been "better" tested to work with Bluetooth...not that TunerPro won't work with BT. Your experience just might be a bit more iffy. But you can always "upgrade" to wireless BT support after you get everything installed and working with USB.