vF Tuner for the 3.5L Tacoma

Whoa, 11 knobs to turn to tweak alternator voltage? Hope someone develops a roadmap...

 

Same here @OVTune . Thanks for your continued research and update coming!

 

I’ve been saying presets from the beginning

 

Your phone will work.

Mine did.

 

These are only the base duty controls.
If you really want to get into it deep there are about 15-20 more controls

 

Can you work your wizard skills and give us pee-on’s an easy button? A “battery charge voltage” option where we can just select “AGM” or “standard”?

 

Probably too optimistic, but I'm with you 100%!

 

Again,...presets

 

Disclaimer Again: total noob perspective here. Not trying to criticize, this is just an observation as I’ve followed things along. TL/DR summary: VF is awesome but I and many others are too dumb to use it responsibly. Can you dumb it down a little?

I played around on VF again a bit today after @OVTune dropped an update for the battery voltage tweaking. Ho Lee Shit this software is crazy the amount of customization it allows. I’m guessing around the top 5% of the population familiar with engines and tuning will be able to do great things with this tool. I’m an engineer in a totally unrelated field (composites/aerospace) and took several internal combustion engines, thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, etc... classes 20 years ago so I’m fairly capable of mashing on keyboards and getting a feel for things. But this is the first vehicle I’ve owned where I’ve tinkered with tuning. As of now I’m not in that 5% and could totally wreck my truck with this software, temporarily anyway. I’d flash back to a safe tune after I Frankenstein-tuned my truck.

I feel that what OV tune has done here is a bit of a pendulum swing too far the opposite direction of the flash tuner/dongle days. The flash tunes attempted to spoon fed the masses a “one size fits all” tune and did a damn fine job. It just so happens there are a ton of outliers (and assholes) for that model and OVTune quickly got swamped trying to make everyone happy. I get why they moved to VF as it takes the burden off OVTune and empowers the user to make their truck behave the specific way they like. My fear is there are not enough people smart/experienced enough to do it. There will be a small percentage of people that can take VF and do great things, and with luck they will share/sell that to the masses.

I’m also concerned with the risk there. Someone well intentioned might release something dangerous. I’m hoping, for myself anyway, there is a middle ground and that VF will evolve towards a tool where we can color within the lines and tune our trucks to our liking while minimizing the complexity and risk of making something terrible, or dangerous. To that top 5% the current VF may provide those boundaries, but to myself and I’m guessing many others, those boundaries are not defined enough.

OVTune is likely way ahead of me. They likely have a plan to get this tool to that point and this release is yet another way to filter the needs/wants of the masses and work towards that happy place. I’ve rambled long enough, time for more whiskey...

Thanks @OVTune, you are awesome at what you do. I’ve got a lot to learn.

 

I think once everyone is able to use it and everyone is able to share their experiences, it will make it easier. A lot of people are still waiting for their keys and also their ECU version to release. Give it some time and see what works for everyone else and ask what they changed. Maybe even start a separate thread for your particular ecu version?

 

So wait... you can just buy the tune library and Tactrix if you only want 2.0 final? ‍♂️ I thought I had to have vF to upload the tunes.

 

You will need
VF
Cable
Tune pack

 

since VF tuner now has a link to access Toyota flash tool 1.3.2, should I just use this to flash any further files? I can safely uninstall Toyota flash tool 1.0.4?

Thanks

 

Hey everyone, this is all completely new to me, I just purchased vf tuner and tune pack. So I was wondering if this item is the same as the tactrix?

 

looks to be identical, yes. Being that OV has recommended that Tactrix cables are used for flashing, I imagine they’d only stock that same cable.

 

Yes.

 

Thanks. We do want our software to be comparable to other software / options out there for tuning vehicles. So it will have all the bells and whistles for accurate calibration.

There are a lot more tables going in on the next update too. What we have right now is the "basic" stuff.

 

Were you able to figure out how to set everything for an AGM battery? If so, can you share? I don’t want to screw anything up. I am a software designer and this thing is a bit beyond me.

 

Nope. Only tune available in vF is the stock tune and I don’t want to go back to that just for the battery charging. I’ll throw mine on the charger once a month. Once performance tunes are available as starting points in vF I’ll give it a shot. Having the other tunes will also allow me to click through all the maps comparing stock to performance to see what all changes and magnitudes of changes for each variable.

Which brings me to a question for @OVTune will vF let us open 2 files at the same time to do a compare of each map?

 

Good to hear. I dig it. Good question too