Emira JB4 Tuning Now Available for I4 & V6 Cars!

[dbjames]

Question if I may, so I found the rubber grommit on the side, made the slit but i couldnt get anything through it.. it was obstructed (EU spec car maybe).

So going through the firewall, do you have a quick guide or recommendation as to how to remove the 'upper shelf' that sits ontop of the back carpet?

I have a UK car OBD not connected, there is a clearly a difference between JB4 map 1 and 2 (on 99 Shell V Power).
The definitive way to answer is to take yours to a local dyno and do 3 runs - map 1, map 2 w/o OBD and map 2 with OBD and compare the plots

 

[K_Squared]

Question if I may, so I found the rubber grommit on the side, made the slit but i couldnt get anything through it.. it was obstructed (EU spec car maybe).

So going through the firewall, do you have a quick guide or recommendation as to how to remove the 'upper shelf' that sits ontop of the back carpet?

I personally gave up on the grommet idea. It does seem obstructed so you have to use something more rigid to attached to it to help push it through. I managed to get the wire through the grommet but it comes out at the very bottom left corner of the engine bay and I didn't have any good way to get to it from way up top. I could barely even see it through the engine and wiring.

Anyways, for the drill method, to remove the plastic trim below the window I just pulled at it (carefully but with some force) until it popped loose. I hate removing interior trim as I never feel like I get it back on exactly right but it worked out OK in this case. Drilling the hole was pretty trivial. I think I ended up having to use 1/2" bit for the connector to fit through. There is already a pre-cut hole on the engine bay lining. I like to think it was made just for this purpose

Here's a pic of the hole I drilled from the engine bay in case it is helpful:

 

[virtualmacho]

Question if I may, so I found the rubber grommit on the side, made the slit but i couldnt get anything through it.. it was obstructed (EU spec car maybe).

Try going "under" the obstruction.

 

[Eagle7]

I personally gave up on the grommet idea. It does seem obstructed so you have to use something more rigid to attached to it to help push it through. I managed to get the wire through the grommet but it comes out at the very bottom left corner of the engine bay and I didn't have any good way to get to it from way up top. I could barely even see it through the engine and wiring.

Anyways, for the drill method, to remove the plastic trim below the window I just pulled at it (carefully but with some force) until it popped loose. I hate removing interior trim as I never feel like I get it back on exactly right but it worked out OK in this case. Drilling the hole was pretty trivial. I think I ended up having to use 1/2" bit for the connector to fit through. There is already a pre-cut hole on the engine bay lining. I like to think it was made just for this purpose

Here's a pic of the hole I drilled from the engine bay in case it is helpful:
View attachment 74625

Get yourself one of these. It's a life-saver if you drop something that's either out of normal reach, or in an area you can't get your hand through.

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[UK-EM 🇬🇧]

I ran the wire down the exterior rear panel. used a dremel to make the hole larger and also removed the door trim and dremelled a gap for the wire to fit nicely. Firewall is a longer process imo.

 

[squish]

Get yourself one of these. It's a life-saver if you drop something that's either out of normal reach, or in an area you can't get your hand through.

Amazon.com: 3 Pack Pick-up Tool Set - Extendable Magnetic Pick Up Tools and Flexible Grabber Claw - Retrieving Telescoping Magnet Pickup Tools - Flexible Extra Long Reach Bendable Curve Grabber with 4 Claws : Health & Household

Buy 3 Pack Pick-up Tool Set - Extendable Magnetic Pick Up Tools and Flexible Grabber Claw - Retrieving Telescoping Magnet Pickup Tools - Flexible Extra Long Reach Bendable Curve Grabber with 4 Claws: Reaching Aids - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

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In addition to a grabby tool, I would recommend having one of these:

https://a.co/d/8pVJAPR

This helped me a lot running the OBDII cable through the grommet hole, more because of the light on it than the camera. I pushed it through the hole from the cabin-side and was able to see the light in the engine bay, used the grabby tool to reach down and grab it, pull it up, tie a string on it and pull it back through to the cabin. Untie the string from the scope and tie it to the OBDII cable, then pull it back through from the engine side.

It has also helped me find a bolt that I dropped in the engine bay that bounced into a small ledge on the firewall that I was able to retrieve with a magnet once I knew where it was.

 

[David s]

Off subject as bit. Have there been any firmware upgrades for the JB v6 version recently?

 

[FlyNavy01]

I installed a JB4 on my V6 Emira a couple weeks ago. The first few drives were slightly underwhelming since it felt barely noticeable below ~5k RPM. I could feel a power increase around 4.5-5k which was nice, but that also made the car lose its characteristic linear feel which I prefer. It almost felt like the old days of Honda VTEC kicking in. My first Map 2 log before Christmas initially showed a few lean AFR fluctuations under WOT (13-14), timing dips below 20 degrees, weird fuel trim swings, and peak boost only around 7psi. Fortunately, I think that was erroneous or possibly the ECU not having enough time to "learn" the new tune (if that's even a thing).

I ran 3 back-to-back pulls tonight at Map 0, 1, and 2 respectively in 3rd gear, 2500rpm to redline, on the same fuel and had ChatGPT stack the logs together to make them easier to read. It now looks more like I'd expect. I've attached a few screenshots from the analysis, but overall it estimated a gain of 36whp from this plot from Map 0 -> Map 2. This is just a rough estimation made with a handful of assumptions, so it could be considerably off.

If I were to speculate based off my data, along with others who have shared here, I'd guess the JB4 team used a more aggressive tune on their original test car to show big 90hp+ dyno gains, and then dialed it back to a much safer 30-40hp gain on the actual sold units to keep a conservative safety margin. This is 100% my own speculation, but the data seems to support it. Not necessarily a bad thing; I'm still happy with the value of the tune and feel good knowing it's setup to stay within safe parameters for the engine for a wide range of conditions.

JB4 + Eventuri intake + 3rd cat delete is probably somewhere around 50-60hp total gain from stock, which is a nice sweet spot for my use case.

EDIT: I believe the X-axis is off by an order of magnitude, it should be 0-8 sec, not 0-80sec.

 

[LotusB]

possibly the ECU not having enough time to "learn" the new tune (if that's even a thing).

That's not a thing. But first, if the X-axis on the speed chart represents seconds, that's a significant gain if all the pulls were in the same gear. Like unbelievably good. Is that right?

Now, regarding "learning" the tune, all the ECU does is tries to dial in your fuel towards stoichiometric at part throttle (STFT) and will over-time apply these values to the Long-Term Fuel Trim (LTFT). Again, this is only done during part throttle/closed-loop operation. LTFT is the baseline used every time you restart the car, so that STFT doesn't have much in terms of corrections - it always tries to zero out.**

Unless you run a wideband O2 sensor, there's no real learning/tuning. A JB4 just fools the ECU to use a different part of the OEM map, it doesn't remap the underlying tables. It would need outputs to control your injectors to do that and as far as I can tell a JB4 doesn't support that.

**EDIT: Forgot to say why it does this. It's done to adjust to ambient conditions, wear, etc. The LTFT's are then applied to all the base tables in the stock ECU. You can check them (and reset them) with an OBD-II tool.

 

[UK-EM 🇬🇧]

I installed a JB4 on my V6 Emira a couple weeks ago. The first few drives were slightly underwhelming since it felt barely noticeable below ~5k RPM. I could feel a power increase around 4.5-5k which was nice, but that also made the car lose its characteristic linear feel which I prefer. It almost felt like the old days of Honda VTEC kicking in. My first Map 2 log before Christmas initially showed a few lean AFR fluctuations under WOT (13-14), timing dips below 20 degrees, weird fuel trim swings, and peak boost only around 7psi. Fortunately, I think that was erroneous or possibly the ECU not having enough time to "learn" the new tune (if that's even a thing).

I ran 3 back-to-back pulls tonight at Map 0, 1, and 2 respectively in 3rd gear, 2500rpm to redline, on the same fuel and had ChatGPT stack the logs together to make them easier to read. It now looks more like I'd expect. I've attached a few screenshots from the analysis, but overall it estimated a gain of 36whp from this plot from Map 0 -> Map 2. This is just a rough estimation made with a handful of assumptions, so it could be considerably off.

If I were to speculate based off my data, along with others who have shared here, I'd guess the JB4 team used a more aggressive tune on their original test car to show big 90hp+ dyno gains, and then dialed it back to a much safer 30-40hp gain on the actual sold units to keep a conservative safety margin. This is 100% my own speculation, but the data seems to support it. Not necessarily a bad thing; I'm still happy with the value of the tune and feel good knowing it's setup to stay within safe parameters for the engine for a wide range of conditions.

JB4 + Eventuri intake + 3rd cat delete is probably somewhere around 50-60hp total gain from stock, which is a nice sweet spot for my use case.

EDIT: I believe the X-axis is off by an order of magnitude, it should be 0-8 sec, not 0-80sec.

I think that’s the main point. This is worth it if you have other mods on the car.

 

[dbjames]

You don’t get 20hp from Eventuri and cat delete sadly. Latter is up to 10hp and Eventuri almost zero - GRP tested it a while ago.
The JB4 gains are very dependent on your fuel quality - did you have decent reliable 93 gas?

 

[Eagle7]

You don’t get 20hp from Eventuri and cat delete sadly. Latter is up to 10hp and Eventuri almost zero - GRP tested it a while ago.
The JB4 gains are very dependent on your fuel quality - did you have decent reliable 93 gas?

This is my dyno run with the Eventuri. The car was completely stock otherwise. I installed it right after the 1,000 mile mark, and had been driving it around just over 100 miles before I got the dyno run. As you can see on mine, stock hp was 369.6, and 386.1 with the Eventuri. Torque stock was 303 FtLbs, and 318 with the Eventuri. It was the increase in torque I noticed the most after installing it. The JB4 gains have been modest compared to what they showed in their original install/test video, but I think that's because he literally custom tuned it to that customer's car, and spent 2 days doing it. We're probably getting a safer average tune like @FlyNavy01 said, but I agree with him that it's worth it. The engine runs much smoother with the JB4.

The problem I think with the GRP test was they did all the pulls the same day, back to back to back. I'm guessing the ECU went safe or conservative on them so that's why you don't see hardly any difference in their test results.

 

[LotusB]

The problem I think with the GRP test was they did all the pulls the same day, back to back to back. I'm guessing the ECU went safe or conservative on them so that's why you don't see hardly any difference in their test results.

Doing back-to-back run, same day, same conditions, same strapdown method, etc etc. Is actually the most accurate way of measuring. Assuming proper warmup/cooling, of course (especially cooling the chargecooler, as that may have a significant changes to the density of air coming in). ECU doesn't have a "safe" or "conservative" mode, assuming all the pulls were performed with the same settings. The stock tune from the factory is purposefully conservative.

Note that I'm not saying you can't get power gains with (fill in the blank) mods, but there will always be individual variations between mods/cars/conditions.

 

[seriously]

I installed a JB4 on my V6 Emira a couple weeks ago. The first few drives were slightly underwhelming since it felt barely noticeable below ~5k RPM. I could feel a power increase around 4.5-5k which was nice, but that also made the car lose its characteristic linear feel which I prefer. It almost felt like the old days of Honda VTEC kicking in. My first Map 2 log before Christmas initially showed a few lean AFR fluctuations under WOT (13-14), timing dips below 20 degrees, weird fuel trim swings, and peak boost only around 7psi. Fortunately, I think that was erroneous or possibly the ECU not having enough time to "learn" the new tune (if that's even a thing).

I ran 3 back-to-back pulls tonight at Map 0, 1, and 2 respectively in 3rd gear, 2500rpm to redline, on the same fuel and had ChatGPT stack the logs together to make them easier to read. It now looks more like I'd expect. I've attached a few screenshots from the analysis, but overall it estimated a gain of 36whp from this plot from Map 0 -> Map 2. This is just a rough estimation made with a handful of assumptions, so it could be considerably off.

If I were to speculate based off my data, along with others who have shared here, I'd guess the JB4 team used a more aggressive tune on their original test car to show big 90hp+ dyno gains, and then dialed it back to a much safer 30-40hp gain on the actual sold units to keep a conservative safety margin. This is 100% my own speculation, but the data seems to support it. Not necessarily a bad thing; I'm still happy with the value of the tune and feel good knowing it's setup to stay within safe parameters for the engine for a wide range of conditions.

JB4 + Eventuri intake + 3rd cat delete is probably somewhere around 50-60hp total gain from stock, which is a nice sweet spot for my use case.

EDIT: I believe the X-axis is off by an order of magnitude, it should be 0-8 sec, not 0-80sec.

I like the VTEC feel. Not laggy like turbo, just flipping a switch to higher HP curve while still building power linearly. it's also fun because the engine tone changes. I'm looking forward to adding the jb4 at some point.

 

[Eagle7]

Doing back-to-back run, same day, same conditions, same strapdown method, etc etc. Is actually the most accurate way of measuring. Assuming proper warmup/cooling, of course (especially cooling the chargecooler, as that may have a significant changes to the density of air coming in). ECU doesn't have a "safe" or "conservative" mode, assuming all the pulls were performed with the same settings. The stock tune from the factory is purposefully conservative.

Note that I'm not saying you can't get power gains with (fill in the blank) mods, but there will always be individual variations between mods/cars/conditions.

Traditionally that would be correct, and I would agree with you. However we're not driving traditional cars anymore. We're driving computers with wheels that can and do make adjustments on the fly. EVERYTHING is now controlled by a computer, so any sudden change (i.e. the traditional method you mentioned) is something the computer sees as an aberration, and starts compensating for it to keep things at the factory programmed levels. This explains the results GRP got with their test. It also explains the results I got with my dyno pull, as it shows the system will adjust TO the aberration if it keeps seeing it over time, as that means it's a non-momentary condition.

The ECU does have pre-set factory programmed performance maps it uses when monitoring the car's performance, which it does do.

 

[LotusB]

Traditionally that would be correct, and I would agree with you. However we're not driving traditional cars anymore. We're driving computers with wheels that can and do make adjustments on the fly. EVERYTHING is now controlled by a computer, so any sudden change (i.e. the traditional method you mentioned) is something the computer sees as an aberration, and starts compensating for it to keep things at the factory programmed levels. This explains the results GRP got with their test. It also explains the results I got with my dyno pull, as it shows the system will adjust TO the aberration if it keeps seeing it over time, as that means it's a non-momentary condition.

The ECU does have pre-set factory programmed performance maps it uses when monitoring the car's performance, which it does do.

Happy New Year, @Eagle7 it's been a minute

Admittedly, the last time I've done tuning and looked at a map was over a decade ago, so maybe something has changed. Besides adaptation via LTFT's, what other kind of "learning" does the ECU do in Emiras? I haven't heard of this in OEM applications, so I just want to make sure we're discussing facts, not assumptions.

 

[UK-EM 🇬🇧]

Having some battery issues only since installing the jb4 on my v6, do we know if the OBD connection is constantly draining whilst the vehicle is off or only comes alive whilst the ignition is on? I had an OBD reader connected to a previous vehicle and it killed the battery… wanting to know if the same is happening here.

 

[virtualmacho]

Having some battery issues only since installing the jb4 on my v6, do we know if the OBD connection is constantly draining whilst the vehicle is off or only comes alive whilst the ignition is on? I had an OBD reader connected to a previous vehicle and it killed the battery… wanting to know if the same is happening here.

I always unplug the OBD reader, but leave the JB4 connected. I have not seen significant drain to the battery.

 

[UK-EM 🇬🇧]

I always unplug the OBD reader, but leave the JB4 connected. I have not seen significant drain to the battery.

Just tested... ignition off and you can still connect to the JB4. So where the car has been sat up for days to a week it's been draining the battery and making my alarm go off at all hours of the night. I've removed the OBD connection and will validate.

 

[virtualmacho]

Just tested... ignition off and you can still connect to the JB4. So where the car has been sat up for days to a week it's been draining the battery and making my alarm go off at all hours of the night. I've removed the OBD connection and will validate.

I can not connect to mine. More than half an hour since locking the doors.