I agree - knowing Sean's work - he is in a leauge of his own in mapping ecus. Aftera guy like him or David Buschur is done tuning your aem it will drive very close to stock with zero customer adjustment needed.

Those who doubt the abilities of these tuners should check out some of the cars they have tuned and compare them to other aem equiped cars

 

What does it cost to tune a Aem ems? Are there many different prices?

 

Any downside in having the 5-bar MAP sensor over the 3-bar?

 

Not really, you can scale the loadpoints to regain resolution lost by scaling out to 60psi.
The 3.5 and 5 bar Kavlico sensors are medical grade snsors and are alot better than the GM 3 bar sensor, the #s are more repeatable. But the GM one works fine and it's pretty cheap.

Sean

 

bump

 

$0 to $Ks..... Depends who does it, how well they do it, what you expect and want out of your tune, etc.

You might want to ask specifically to tuner how much he'll charge you to tune your AEM in your car. You might also want to ask him just what exactly he considers the job to be, how long it will take him, what assurance he'll give you of satisfaction. Oh yeah, you need to know what exactly you expect your AEM to do. Do you want your car to run just like stock except with more power? Are you willing to trade some driveability problems for the sake of having the AEM?

Oh yeah, be absolutely sure that you and your tuner are talking about exactly the same thing. What is "better than stock" or "exactly like stock" driveability to you, might not be the same for somebody else......

For reference purposes, I spent probably around $1.5K just in tuning and dyno costs with my AEM EMS in my '03 EVO 8...... And I was never satisfied completely with the results. YMMV, etc.

 

The price for tuning varies from shop to shop. With some shops you will need to figure in your engine rebuild too when they are done with the tuning

With us, if you buy the complete AEM EMS unit from us we tune the car for no charge, it is included in the price of the unit. We sell the complete integrated wide band EMS unit, 5 bar map, temp sensor, pigtails for wiring, MAP sensor billet adapter for the EVO intake, wide band 02 sensor and both weld in bungs for the 02 and temp sensor for $2400, this includes the tuning and future tech help with it. I also like to show the guy buying it how to make some simple changes on his own and how to datalog so he can send any files in the future to us for changes and review.

If I tune an EMS that someone bought somewhere else I charge at a minimum $75 per hour and I charge for every minute I spend on it. If the car does not have the integrated wideband and I have to use ours I charge more. Many shops are selling the boxes without the integrated wide band and it is just stupid to do it this way. The integrated wide band is so easy to use and makes datalogging a snap. It is the only box we even sell for the EVO.

David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com

 

The problem with an internal UEGO is that you cannot monitor it, presently, without a laptop open or a GaugeTech box. When I'm tuning or even just driving I like to monitor A/F constantly and that requires a display. I do use a warning light to let me know if I've run lean while WOT (along with other warnings) but the guage is VERY important to me. At this time I wouldn't purchase a box with an internal UEGO <shrug> A correctly setup external UEGO will datalog just fine - mine does. Does the internal UEGO go lower than 11:1? If so it's likely using a cherry picked Bosch sensor which could only be had from AEM although I believe their price is reasonable.

 

BLKMGK,

I see you joined the forum. Welcome to the site, and hopefully an evo can replace the Supra as well .

 

BLKMGK,

Wanting to look at a gauge isn't nearly as important as getting the tune dead on. Tuning with the intergrated box makes not only getting the tune dead on much easier it also requires half the time to do it.

I won't sell an EVO box without the integrated wideband.

David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com

 

My 2cents:

If you live near a great AEM tuner or can do it yourself, go EMS if you have the extra cash, can live with the technical complexity of this solution, and want maximum flexibility in tuning all aspects of your car's electronic controls. David Buschur, Al, the guys at TurboTrix, AMS, or Jason Siebels himself (2 hours?! whoa - you *did* help with designing the thing, didn't you!) would all be at the top of my list for tuning an EMS. But I don't live near enough to them to visit regularly as I change my car's specs/hardware.

If you don't live near them like me, I believe the best bang-for-your-buck (read: real HP gains with minimal effort) is the TurboXS UTEC. It's a piggyback and therefore retains the stock ECU for the more mundane electronic control of the car and lower-level engine management as well (parking lot driving, cold starts, etc.) Yet it has all of the flexibility I need from a standalone for tuning the important parameters and leaving the rest alone. The base map for a simple turbo-back setup, posted freely on their site with the new open loop fueling feature is quite a winner, and smooth as silk driveablility-wise. IMO, they corrected the major shortcoming of the UTEC with the latest software revision, which was a bit of an abrupt transition from ECU-controlled timing/boost/AFR to UTEC-controlled. As it is now, it's plug-and-play, set-it-and-forget it, just plain works. Plus, when I go for cams, upgraded injectors, bigger I/C and even bigger turbo later on, the UTEC will be ready. I'll likely take it to the boys at TXS for a post-upgrade tune because I do live near them, but they can even do that over email or on this very board. Check the number of posts in the TXS UTEC forum here, you'll see how great support can be. We've been tuning our UTECs using this forum for quite some time, and the UTEC community has even developed some free tools to add graphical dashboards and tuning apps for laptops if you're into that.

Let me reiterate I have nothing but the utmost respect for the many *qualified* and experienced EMS tuners around. If you have access to them and have the cash then I'm sure you'll have success with an EMS. I'm having fun with my UTEC, am happy with the performance-for-the-price factor, and I wish everyone best of luck with their tuning projects.

Regards,
Adam

 

Do you really have to Retune the EMS everytime the weather changes? Does it improce idle with big cams? How are these tuners dealing with daily driving and gas milage.

 

As long as you have a tuner that knows the AEM inside out - you will be fine

 

Meaning 1 tune and that's it? I mean 80 degree summers and 2 degree winters? rain? humidity? all that?

 

Frankly, I don't know that.... It could well be that if it's set up and tuned properly, it can be a set and forget deal.... There are at least a couple of guys whose skills are proven and I respect them as tuners. They say it can be tuned once for all seasons and is not necessary to tune it every other day. However, in my experience, the AEM EMS was never tuned quite right so I cannot tell if it'll hold a proper tune forever like the factory ECU... By rights it should work just like the factory ecu. Once it's tuned right it should stay that way. Again, in my case George of busted solutions dicked around with my car and that AEM EMS countless times and it went from bad to worse... Finally, at the end it seemed to stabilize somewhat, but given all the intractable driveability problems I experienced, I cannot say it will work flawlessly like the stock ECU.... BTW, after it was removed from the car and the stock ecu was put back on with an Xflash and the XEDE, it worked pretty damned well. Likewise, after it was almost back to stock with just the Xflash and nothing else, it ran quite smoothly and with no driveability problems. YMMV, yadda, yadda, yadda...