Thread: MAF vs VE Tune Efficacy

Hey all, I've recently disconnected my MAF so that I could do a VE tune instead. So far all my trims are pretty good and the driveability is also good. The tach tends to wander a bit more at idle and sometimes stalls when the engine is cold but other than that I can see no loss of power or any other issues. Without dyno testing, I imagine it's going to be hard for me to tell the difference between the 2 methods of tuning but for everyone else out there, what's your experience been with MAF vs VE? Did you find a significant benefit of one over the other for this vehicle (specifically the GT, which I have [2003])? Thanks in advance.

You can't properly tune the VE in a 3800, it's just not possible.

Keep the MAF, it's far more accurate way to tune.

Yep, totally possible.

I'm doing it for a couple reasons:

1) MAF fouling tends to skew my trims pretty consistently, as does changes in weather
2) VE is supposed to be more reliable at high flow rates due to turbulence not giving an accurate reading with a wire
3) I want to use VE on my Camaro so I figured I'd practice with my GPGT

I commend you for trying a VE tune. but like said stay with MAF. i think more people who have wild builds should spend time doing a VE base tune and then start their maf so down the road if the MAF fails the car is safe.

Originally Posted by darkhorizon

LTFT's are practically disabled, so dont use them for tuning information. This means you will not have a closed loop functionality and you may run into some unknown acceleration enrichment and power enrichment tables that are not mapped to anything.

Maf's are accurate year round. I run them on turbos and SC stuff... VE is a downgrade.

I'd be interested to know more about these wonky tables you're referring to. That might explain the odd tachometer bouncing at idle. Other than that the car runs pretty good.

Yeah, if the MAP sensor or something fails I'm screwed, that's a good point. Good news is I didn't break anything on the MAF so I can always plug it back in.

Trims are disabled? I still record them live and they still drive other parameters in my tune...

Cylinder charge bias.

Can u guys not tweak that table.?

im also not understanding the stigma of tuning ve and maf, ve is great for lower airflow resolution as compared to maf (bigger ones) but maf is awesome at higher to a certain point. gm blessed us with the ability to run all together in harmony.

are your 3800 pcms not capable or using ve diffrently than anyother dark?

3800 VE is nothing like a GM V8 VE table, not even close to the same.

And no we don't have that cylinder charge table.

That's what I keep hearing ffdp. I just haven't seen a per say example or why this is that you know? It'd be nice to be able to understand

As mentioned, part of the reason I'm not taking this seriously is because the 3800 PCM isn't setup for a high resolution VE tune. The Camaro's VE table is much better under HPTuners but I'm just doing a feasibility experiment. I can't say I know about any of the tables I can't access with DHP but maybe the computer's going into "limp" mode and using different tables... could be. It just hasn't seemed to hurt the car's performance much that I can tell.

I don't even tune VE on these cars. If you plugged your maf back in, and zero'd out your ve table, you probably wouldn't notice any difference.

But......why....

The speed density of a GEN 3 v8 has far more info it can gather than a 3800. There just isnt enough to go off of in a 3800 to make it work really great. If you read one the greg banish books on the SD tuning, there is just so much more that a LS1 style PCM has to offer for getting a dialed in VE table.

I guess I'll go back to MAF then. I've been driving with SD for months anyway and done several road scans. No worse for the wear but I've learned as much as I can from it anyway (which isn't a whole lot). Really it was an experiment to see how the car behaves and how easy it is to tune in that mode. Once I get into a SD tune for the Camaro, I expect the process to be more difficult and yield better results so no harm in practicing right?

On a side note, an SD tune would allow you to remove the mesh for the MAF sensor but has anyone noticed any sort of difference in flow from doing this? I'd expect the TB to be the limiting factor in the intact tract.

Go back to MAF again - that's the best solution in my opinion.