Hi all,

I was wondering... in the first drag race (Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and some other dudes, 4 in a drag)... you know how Paul has a laptop connected and everything. Is that real? I remember it has all sorts of real-time stats, and it alsohad the "manifold warning" or something like that when he was pushing it.

Has anyone ever done this type of thing? I know we can have a laptop analyse results after-the-fact, but if we could plug into it like that... think about that.... especially forpeople with LCD monitors in-built into the car. That would be very good eye-candy

I'm drooling just thinking about that...

 

Real-time dataloging has been around for years, but leave it to the movies to over-embelish it You can get all kinds of pretty graphs and dials on the screen, but you'll never get a warning saying "eminent danger to your manifold" since the computer has no idea how to run a metalurgical analysis of your manifold...at best it could give you a warning if you go above a certain temp that YOU set, and even THEN it doesn't say whather or not the manifold is going to go.

But if all you want is eye-candy, you could have the LCD show you anything you want, even if it's just to scare the unsuspecting passenger.

 

Dammit... well, I suppose you could set things like oil pressure, oil temperature, etc. and if a combination goes over the pre-determined threshold, then you get an "Engine Overload warning" or something like that ;-)

But does the S2000 have a "data port" like they do in BMWs, so that with the correct laptop software and cable, you can get all the stats directly from the ECU?

 

OBD-II....all late-model cars have them, quite a few earlier-model cars have OBD-I.

 

You can get quite a bit of info from the OBD-II interface (speed, RPM, intake air temp, etc...) - however, the communications can be a bit slow and the protocol was really designed for trouble-shooting.

I am working on a rolling dyno software package that uses the OBD-II port connected to a laptop. Testing (was out this evening running some tests on a back road) looks promising, but I have to due considerable debugging to ensure clean reliable data. The only promising thing is that my peak HP is always right on (within 2%) to my RWHP on the dyno a few weeks ago.

For in depth data you would really need a dozen or so sensors and an data aquisition card + software.