Can someone tell me if its worth the trouble to learn how to tune with the aem ems.

Should I just go with mellon or someone?

I have a series 1 aem ems for evo 8. The guy I bought the evo 8 from included it. Im good with mechanical stuff, but have never worked with tuning.
Besides cobb accessport on my sti lol. pre made maps

 

There's really no reason to go AEM EMS unless you're going for some crazy big numbers. We have several cars well over 700+awhp on the stock ecu/maf combination that can pass emissions too. I would sell the AEM EMS v1 and put that towards mods/tune instead.

 

While the factory ECU is more than capable of handeling upwards of 800 whp, the convenience of a standalone is second to none.

If you have no idea about aem or tuning period; Sell it. Or pay someone to tune it for you.

If you plan on learning to tune on your evo, you are better off going stock ecu and use the awesome documentaries and support of the ecuflash forum. Aem is by no means for beginners.

My .02c

 

If you decide to sell it let me know. I may be interested.

Thanks
-Em

 

aem is easier to tune then stock ecu. atleast it was for me. i figured it out in 6-7 hrs of reading the supra forum tutorials on it and tuned a s2000 with e85 to 400whp+ with under 12psi on a home made 35r kit.

aem is not hard at all.. its all there out in the open.. stock ecu is a pain in the *** because theres lots of stuff you need to patch to your xml to even get what you want sometimes.

both are easy for me, but if the car already has aem then keep it in the car.. aem does have some cool features like boost compensation and better 2 step etc, nitrous control, traction control, and other stuff. boost compensation is nice because you can tune for low boost then as you raise the boost the aem will auto adjust the AFR as you raise boost.

the logging resolution is extremely crazy with aem also because the ecu in general has more powerful hardware.

personally i suggest keeping a evo with a factory ecu, but if it already has the aem in it just leave it!

thats my opinion on it.

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btw the stuff i was explaining regarding aem was for the thread starter here.. i know you're already familar with AEM billspec.

 

I love my AEM. I tried working on the stock ecu for a while, and I just did not like it. If you are going to jump into tuning and you have no knowlege on either system then it is really going to be a choice of how much learning do you want to do. I would say both systems will take just as much work to make run very well.

Just remember to ask lots of questions.

 

I'm partial to AEM EMS and AEM Series 2 myself. The tools and convenience of live instant tuning, high resolution logs, and the abundant of features just cant be beat...

With that said however stock ECU is fully capable of making the power and filling just about anyones needs. It's a pain though as mentioned above and I speak with experience as I am self tuning my Evo X and it just doens't compare to tuning my Evo 8 with Series 2. I can do it so much faster with AEM.

 

Im in the army. So I dont have a lot of free time to learn. Plus its my DD so I dont want to mess anything up.
Im not looking for anything crazy like 700hp.

 

In that case I'd say don't fix what isn't broke. Whatever system it is running on just leave it alone and enjoy the car.

If you need tuning and are not planning on doing anything crazy I'd say stock ECU is the way to go for you then. There are plenty of tuners around that can help and even email tuning such as Mellon Racing that can get you squared away with convenience.

 

If thats the case, go with the oem ecu & find a tuner feel you feel comfortable with.

just know that you still need to have items on your car for remote tuning + you will be conducting the same pulls to provide the tuner with logged data, regardless if its oem or an aem ecu.

 

Makes me miss my Cobb accessport. Good off the shelf maps. Awesome fuel economy map for long trips.
Maybe I'll stick with the aem and drive down to az to get tuned. The altitude is crazy high here in El paso 3400ft. So there would be a major difference.

 

agree, although im not a "tuner" i can work thru most standalones. i would be lost with the stock ecu.

 

I hear a lot of tuners say that with aem the power is more consistent than a ecu flash is there any truth to that ?

 

none at all, unless the stock ecu tuner doesn't know what hes doing. then timing trims or possibly phantom knock would make the car very inconsistent.

or mapped oddly. which in that case would effect aem maps as well.

 

Thanks for the info .