FYI, I now have some personal experience with tuning these Yamaha's, using the hardware, and what the aftermarket tunes/tuners look like.
What I've "claimed", "assumed", "expected" and "stated" about tuning, the available tuning hardware and what is available as far as "canned" tunes turned out to be 100% dead on.
Guys, this ain't my first rodeo. lol. There were absolutely no surprises in what I've found with tuning these Yamahas. VERY few actual editable tables, VERY primitive hardware and software, and the changes made by the "professional" tuners in the tunes you would buy is VERY basic. Exactly what I expected and tried to explain on here before. Somebody mentioned that these well known tuners know the difference between a racer and a recreational guy. Do you realize that the difference in their "race" tune and their "safe" tune is literally a couple minor changes in the values in a couple tables? And in a table that has a couple hundred cells from full engine vacuum to full boost, they're only changing the values in about 25% of the entire table. The rest is bone stock.
Again, this isn't anything surprising. 90% of "professional" tuners even in the automotive world have absolutely NO training or experience in actual engine management. So what those tuners do is WOT dyno tuning. And even that is usually only between 5000 and whatever their cutoff rpm is set to. All they can easily do without fully understanding basic things like stoichiometric fueling is to move mixture and ignition timing around until they see higher power readings on the dyno. The missing parts are huge. There's tons of "driveability", fuel mileage, engine response and ability to gain rpm's and basic engine efficiency that can be gained if you understand how it all works.
Understanding exhaust gas byproducts is another gigantic missing piece of the knowledge of most of the tuners out there. When you understand emissions, you can look at a fueling or ignition timing table and understand WHY they set it up the way they did. If you don't have that knowledge or experience, you have little to no clue what the factory was thinking when they built the table values. I'm not talking about wideband readings either, but even that's another point. The watercraft guys are using widebands that we (me, and two other guys who happen to test o2 sensors for the OEM's for a living) in the automotive tuning world realized were way too slow to accurately "auto tune" which is again what most tuners do because they don't know how to read and interpret logs down to the 100ms level. In simple terms, they use analog hardware to determine how to set up the fueling in their tunes. I've used digital hardware for half a decade exclusively for logging and tuning.
Wojtek, I know you're probably reading this and can't wait to copy and paste it in an email to your buddy Jesus. Please don't bother. I don't wish to turn this into a battle or compromise the business of any of these watercraft aftermarket accessory companies. I'm only posting this because a few of you guys wondered about tuning on the boats or watercraft. I made comments and claims on the subject on here occasionally. I still stand behind what I've said, I don't believe anything I've stated is inaccurate. Honestly, the other reason I posted this is because there is almost NO information on boat or watercraft tuning. It's kind of funny but it's like a big secret, mostly because there's simply so few people out there doing it. Case in point, Swatski, do you know exactly what they changed in your tune? You wouldn't unless you paid for an edit license. I can tell you what was changed isn't much, in only a couple tables, and would take a couple minutes to "build". Building a tune in an automotive ECM is a matter of editing hundreds of tables and sometimes takes hours to build just a first version of. I know you're happy with how your boat runs though, and that's all that matters so don't worry about it and know it's most likely plenty "safe" because they don't change much.
Like I said, just a "BTW" or "FYI", nothing more. I'm really not trying to start anything, just thought some of you would like to know what I found. And as far as my GP1800 is concerned, THE THING IS A F*CKING BLAST!!! Just under 80mph on the stock impeller and stock blower wheel. We ran 35 gallons of fuel through it in one day! Spent all day jumping the boat wake and doing laps on a water ski slalom course.
