J2263 Coastdown Testing with VBOX 4

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The SAE J2263 Coastdown Test is a test plugin for the VBOX Test Suite software.

The test itself gives you the ability to complete a coastdown test to the SAE J2263 specification. By using wind speed and direction inputs, the software will automatically apply the required equations to produce a road load force.

This guide will detail the requirements for the hardware and software setup of the test equipment from Racelogic, taking the mounting requirements outlined by the J2263 specification into consideration.

Equipment

Required Hardware

VBOX 4 data logger
VBOX MFD Touch (Optional)
Anemometer
(We recommend the RM Young 05103 Anemometer)
Windows PC

Required Software

Hardware Configuration

Before you can perform a J2263 Coastdown test, you must connect and configure the required hardware.

The following is a connection diagram of the basic equipment you will need for this test.

J2263 Coastdown - Hardware Connection Diagram_VB4_750px.png

Hardware connection diagram with VBOX 4

Note: When you are performing a coastdown test, you do not need to run Kalman Filtering.

Connecting the Anemometer

To connect the anemometer to the VBOX 4 unit, you must wire the anemometer cable into the D-sub 15-pin adaptor in the VBOX 4 kit and connect the adaptor to the Analogue Inputs connector on the front of the VBOX 4 unit.

Use the following wiring diagram:

Mounting the Anemometer

When you have connected your hardware, you need to mount the anemometer on the vehicle. Traditionally, the anemometer is mounted out in front of the vehicle. It is your responsibility to physically mount the antenna as Racelogic does not provide a mounting solution for the anemometer.

The anemometer should be mounted facing in-line with the body of the vehicle. The RM Young anemometer has a 360-degree physical rotation. In practice, however, there is a dead spot between 0 and 5 degrees. Based on the SAE spec, if an anemometer has a dead spot in its measurement, you should mount it with the 0-position of the anemometer 90 or 180 degrees offset to the body line of the vehicle to avoid the dead spot during calibration.

Example of a vehicle with an anemometer mounted.

Software Configuration

When you have connected and mounted the hardware on the vehicle, you can begin your software setup of the VBOX 4 unit.

Connect the VBOX 4 unit to the PC.
(Connect the USB cable between the USB port on the VBOX unit and the USB port on the PC or connect via Bluetooth.)
Open VBOX Setup.
Connect VBOX Setup to your VBOX unit by selecting the relevant COM port.
Open the Channels Setup menu.
Select the Internal A/D channel tab/section.
Configure the anemometer channels with the scale and offset information provided below.

Note: If you are using a different anemometer (not the RM Young 05103), you must check the anemometer specifications to make sure that you use the correct scale and offset values.

Wind Speed

Configure this channel by clicking on the VDC_CH1 channel name.
This will open the CAN Channel Properties for this channel.
Enter Wind_Speed in the Name field.
Enter mph in the Units field.
Set the Scale to 72.00000.
Make sure that the Offset is set to 0.00000.
Click OK to save the new channel settings.

Wind Direction

Configure this channel by clicking on the VB3i_AD2 channel name.
This will open the CAN Channel Properties for this channel.
Enter Wind_Direction in the Name field.
Enter volts in the Units field.
Set the Scale to 72.00000.
Make sure that the Offset is set to 0.00000.
Click OK to save the new channel settings.

If you are using MFD Touch, you can select the channels you want to view in the MFD menu in VBOX Setup or you can select the serial channels you would like to view directly in VBOX Test Suite.
When you have entered the relevant settings click the Write to unit button to save the configuration to the VBOX 4 unit.

You are now ready to begin the coastdown testing.

Data Analysis

Using VBOX Test Suite, uou can either run the coastdown test in the online mode and see the data in real-time or you can do the analysis offline.

Online Mode

Open Test Suite.
Open the Home tab.
Click on the Online button.
Select the COM port your VBOX 4 is connected to.
You can verify the COM port your VBOX unit is using by checking Windows Device Manager.
Click on the Add Test button and select the Coastdown category and the SAE J2263 Test.
Enter the relevant test settings and run the test.

Offline Mode

An alternative to using online mode is to log all the required data to the compact flash card and do your data analysis in VBOX Test Suite in offline mode.