I just tried sending you an email today about a tune and the email came back to me as undeliverable. Austin@giac.com?

 

Despite what any company will tell you, a piggyback is a compromise. You start developing piggybacks when you cannot gain access to the code within the ECU. No tuner, given the choice between them, is going to say "Hey, we'd rather develop a piggyback unit." They are cheap to make (given they are largely a box of resistors), quick to develop (as they only falsify a handful of signals to bypass the ECU's own processes) and allow for some sort of "tuning solution" when other options are outside the realm of possibility.

 

Please take a look at what we are doing and how our module works using this link. Our module ties in to the intake manifold pressure sensor, boost pressure sensors, fuel rail pressure sensor, the ECU (Can bus low and high) and camshaft angle sensor to give you power safely and reliably. We have tested this unit with several cars on the Autobahn at great length, hence our late official notice that we have this unit. As you can imagine, the Autobahn will certainly let you know what is safe tuning and what is not. As a third failsafe, we have tested this with our partners / dealers throughout Europe with nothing but positive feedback. To us, our unit is the safest means by which to program the car without having to remove the ECU.

 

Awesome, a great debate on "piggy back" systems As we all know that piggy back systems in the past have been problematic at best so the concern that piggy back systems are substandard would be a concern - with the digital age things have changed dramatically - we have been testing our system for over a year now on a many different brands and models and they have worked flawlessly - they do not interrupt any of the safety features that the factory ECU looks at and if they are set up too aggressive (tuning wise) the ECU will let you know by a couple of different ways - to much to explain there - also they are not effected by factory software updates and are not detectable (we have tested ours to verify) - but the real advantage is that for the most part easily installed and can be bypassed if needed and then removed for when the is sold - we have invested in the actual software so we can actually tune the "box" and make adjustments if and when needed for any circumstance that might come up - in closing there are many ways to skin the cat, but so far we have gained extremely good reliable and repeatable numbers that make this system a very viable and valid way to tune this car and many others - if you look at our numbers that I posted they are actual dyno charts, not smoothed out recreated graphs that have a percentage added back in to show crank numbers - what is at the wheel is at the wheels on our numbers - Level1tec tuning kit "piggy back"$2995.00

 

I'm interested in this if you don't mind explaining.

 

So let me chime in real quick. I have been working with piggybacks for over 6 years and re-flashes for about 12 or more.

first off piggybacks have always from day one been looked at as bad (this is because the first ones were just resistors and diodes which can cause major issues with long term heat and other under hood issues (electrical connectors and pins), but they have been around longer than any re-flash and if they are properly tuned and designed can actually work just as well or even better than any re-flash. Reasons are listed below:

1) They work with vehicles voltages (usually 0-5v) without hindering reliability ( they change voltage increments in small stages and any over voltage condition the check engine light comes on or the vehicle goes into an ECU default mode (safe mode)).. with an ECU re-flash it is very easy to go over stock voltages and hinder the overall reliability of an application without any fail safe mode or default mode activating if a tuner does not understand what they are doing. (this is why you see re-flash companies re-calling or changing flashes constantly)
2) They are 100% undetectable from a factory stand point ( once unplugged a manufacture has no way of determining where the increase of parameters came from (where a re-flash always leaves a code or "trail" that something has been changed, even gives the date it was changed or re-flashed)
3) Any fuel used (might it be 100% octane or pure propane) can be adjusted for on a different map-set (map-set is stored in the piggy-back ECU which can be switched with an external device or automatically while driving). Re-flash must be powered off and then powered on (key cycle) to accommodate for the change in fuel.
4) Can accommodate for added features (like supercharger, turbo, and NOS or water injection). Remember all you are working with is voltages so all added features use voltages. All you need to do is tell the piggyback computer what voltage to see and at what rpm and adjust accordingly.

Now a little about MAXRPM and Level1tecs piggyback:

1)It is the only piggyback in the world that has an auto-calibrate feature (as you drive or use the device it accommodates for your habits and conditions just like the adaptive parameters on a stock engine control module)
2) It can store up to 7 different calibrations on one ECU box
3) It has watertight connectors and a high temp circuit board that will not fail
4) Can be custom tuned and adjusted via Level1tec
5) DOES NOT POWER ON UNTIL APPLICATION IS DRIVEN because of the micro-processor used instead of the normal diodes and resistors like other piggybacks ( piggybacks in the past power up off 12v or battery and ignition voltage immediately on key on , these piggybacks don't activate until actually driven which gives them the extra edge in reliability and being untraceable from a manufacturer.

I hope this helps and if you have any other questions I will be more than happy to answer them

 

Aaron, how would one switch between the different maps? can you do speed density tuning?
What kind of potential is left in the car from a durability standpoint? don't need any bendy rods or pooed out pdk lol!!

 

How could you "tell" the car's PDK and rest of the system weren't happy with the extreme amount of power?

 

See above.

 

Great to hear. GIAC is still in the lead for my first choice tune. However, I'm going to give it some time to get more "real world" feedback.

 

There is always more than one way to skin a cat :-), which is the beautiful thing about tuning and technology today. Aaron McEvoy our engineer has shown us this. We use all platforms available, which sometimes requires us to use a reflash or use a piggyback. No matter what you use each one has its own benefits. When a re-flash is unavailable or will not work on an application (which we have seen a few times) then there is almost always the piggyback option. Also you have to remember that ProEFI and AEM Infinity are some of the most advance piggyback systems on the market and have features that no re-flash can even do just because the stock ECU has its limits.

 

I'm not an engineer by any means, but I work with (and know) quite a few really really smart ones. And every time I mention the words "piggy back" all I get is cringes and rolled eyes.

To be honest, I don't think you need to be really technically inclined to understand why piggy-backs are not a good idea, either. With a piggy-back you're not actually re-writing any of the actual software in the ECU, you're simply altering sensor inputs that the ECU reads to determine boost, timing, etc. Key words from that sentence..."altering sensor inputs". Sound like a good idea?

The reality is that your factory Porsche ECU is extremely smart and VERY good at protecting itself and the car. So eventually, after the ECU starts to realize it's receiving altered signals, it will adapt and begin to change it's operating parameters to compensate. What does that mean in layman's terms? It means that eventually the ECU will detect the piggy-back and re-adjust itself back normal operating....i.e. factory performance levels in this case. Remember, the factory performance programming will still be at the heart of the ECU, so it will only deviate from that for so long. We have seen it happen many time.

Right now GIAC is the only company that can OBDII flash the 991 Turbo/S. Heck, they're just about the only company that can TRULY flash any Porsche car since 2012 if you really think about it (that should tell you something). GIAC is truly a unique company in the sense that they not only know an incredible amount about how to achieve higher levels of performance from Porsche cars, but they also employ a team of engineers who develop all of the proprietary software which is use to gain FULL access to the ECU and install their performance software. They are the only company that develops all of this technology in-house. This is the reason we trust GIAC, and only GIAC, with not only our customers' cars, but with our own. We currently have two development cars (a Turbo and Turbo-S) on which we are testing and developing higher stages of software. Both cars have seen dozens of dyno runs, and countless hours of road "testing" (wink wink)...and neither one has ever skipped a beat. I honestly can not say enough good things about the team at GIAC and their software.

 

I think you might not be understanding how closed loop control systems work. The piggy back acts as another control, it's changes to the inputs also modify the closed loop behavior which modifies the transfer function. There is no reason a piggy back can't work as well as a flash if the designers are able to effectively map the response of the system without the piggy back in place.

 

We have had nothing but excellent results with G.I.A.C. Software on the 991's

G.I.A.C. 991 Turbo Performance Software

Coupled with our AWE Tuning Porsche 991 Turbo and Turbo S Performance Exhaust you can see some serious gains on these cars.

 

Well I am a multi-degreed engineer (BSEE, MSEE in signals and systems) with experience in the area of interest. I designed closed loop control systems using both digital and analog components so both sampled and continuous systems. The car is simply a sampled data control system, it used to be analog a long time ago. The ECU implements a transfer function for control of the car which produces the dyno charts that people love to reference. The dyno is the output, the ECU implements a set of controls that result in that output given the inputs sensed and delivered to it as data.

Any modification of the tables in the ECU is a modification to the transfer function implemented by the ECU and is tantamount to a modification of a combination of signals at the sensors. The tuners that modify tables still have to understand the response of the system to the inputs and modify the ECU transfer function accordingly by changing the table values, they certainly cannot modify the software and hence, they aren't really doing anything more than a good piggyback would do.

Modifying the inputs is the same as modifying the response to the inputs by the control in the ECU. A good control engineer could change the dyno response either way.