Tom Cloud's self tuning EFI Idea

[George M. Dailey]

Tom,  I think, what you are proposing is hardware and software that will
dyno tune the engine as you drive. Kinda like having a personal staff of
performance engineers in a black box to continuously search for that state
of "ultimate tune" for your hot rod. 

I do see potential problems though. For starters, if the system had all the
sensors needed to determine the "state of ultimate tune", how long would it
take the cpu to find it?? People that dyno tune engines on a regular baises
(TODD) would have a very good idea of this. I don't, but I'll guess any way.
Let say 20 full throttle quater mile runs just to get maxium dead stop
acceleration. There are lots of things to change and adjust, right?. I've
done this manually in my early hotrod years. You could spend a whole weekend
adjusting and evaluating things.

I'm assuming that the system is told a few things and given some baseline
parameters to work within. This would make an excellent excuse for a
speeding ticket, "My EEPROM got erased officer, so I needed to hold 155mph
for 20 minutes to adjust the upper end of my fuel map." I think you get my
point, even with a fast cpu it's going to take a few runs to set every thing
up. 

I've been told differently, but I honestly believe the GM TPI system does
this to a certian extent with ignition timeing. I've experienced and read
(or imagined that I read) that ignition timeing is bumped up in small
increments from a baseline value until knock is detected. Then it's retarded
a fixed amount and the process starts over again. This is done, I believe,
to make the best use of the gas being currently used under the actual
current conditions. If GM isn't doing this, remember you herd it from me first:)

I would be interested in exploring this futher. It is certianly possible
with todays off the shelf components. This would be a DIY'ers dream come true.

GMD