Kazman,

Do you have any personal experince with Vishnu's tuning or products? I think you will have a completely diffrent out look after driving a vishnu tuned car.

IMHO

 

No, I don't. That's why I never commented on anything that Vishnu puts out. I can only comment on what I've dealt with in the past with Dave.

I never said Vishnu's products were inferior as I've never dealt with them. I only commented on his tact in this forum. Dave did not attack him. He merely said that he thought it was a waste of money to go from a standalone back to a piggyback. That was the jist of the discussion from what I remember. I just didn't like the personal jabs that came back from Shiv. I am sure both tuners produce excellent cars, I would just rather go with someone I can trust not to come back with a smart remark unrelated to a discussion I am having with them.

I do see Shiv's point of standalone not being for everyone and I can respect that. But I think if the person already has one it might as well get tuned properly. It sucks for the customer in the long run as they obviously got sold something that was not right for them. But Dave has a good point too that the standalone can do the job if properly configured and tuned so why not work with it instead of throwing it out.

 

One doesn't exactly "throw out" a stand-alone ECU. One sells it, at times, for 75% of what you paid for it. You also save yourself the 3-4 hours of tuning time/money it would have taken to get your car to run anywhere *close* to acceptably. You also save yourself the hassle of re-tunes down the line and other misc. complications that come from replacing nearly the entire EFI system in your car. Yes, you save money as well as time in the long run by switching over to something that better suits your needs-- whatever that may be.

For the last customer that was converted over to an XEDE, here's the monetary breakdown:

With the EMS he paid $1700. For installation and basic tuning, he was looking at another 3-4 hours. For a race gas map sometime down the line, he was looking at another 1 hour. Total cost to him was $1700 plus $800-1000 in shop tuning. That's $2600-2700 for someone who never wanted to open a computer for tuning in the first place. What he did was sell the EMS for $1300, purchase an XEDE for $995 and spend 2 hours for tuning a pump and a race gas map. Total cost was $1395 plus the $400 he lost on the EMS. Despite having already bought the EMS, this is $900 cheaper than his other alternative and certainly more suitable for his needs. And he doesn' t have to hook up a computer ever again which he is happy about. And hopefully the buyer of the EMS will find it suitable for his needs and everyone will be happy. So maybe switching from a stand-alone to an XEDE wasn't so dumb afterall Our customer is happy and the new EMS user picks one up for a screamin' deal.

Shiv

 

No problem driving the car to your shop, your in OH I belive...nice road trip from AL

 

Kazman,
You've got to be kidding! You need to reread the sections from Dave's post below. It is both condescending and very personal. At least be fair with what you post.

I don't have products from either and won't begin to venture a guess as to who the "Greatest Tuner in the World" is. I will say that I am one of those that bought a stand alone, and wouldn't do it again if given the chance. My tuner is very capable and my car runs better than stock in all ways, but I could have done the same thing with a flash or piggy back.

 

To be fair, yes, Dave came back with a jab, but notice the posts below. You will see the first post by Dave referring to swapping a standalone for a piggyback with no jabs at Vishnu. He merely stated that the shop (which would not be Vishnu, since they would have guided the customer to a piggyback) the customer bought the standalone would or could not help the customer out. And in direct response (the very next post in the thread I might add) comes a direct attempt to slander Dave. So, no I don't have to be kidding. It was rude, plain and simple. Dave did not initiate any ill comments about anyone except to a theoretical vendor that sold a customer an untuned standalone.

 

$800-$1000 for Shop tuning...for your guestimate of 4-5 hours? Tuners are charging $200 an hour now? God at that rate, Id pay for the dyno lease in half a day every month. I think your hiking that tuning price up A TON to make your xede total look favorable.

You don't feel bad about giving someone else a "screaming deal" on an AEM they don't need since your so against it?

Didn't DB just say in this thread that he tunes AEM's that are bought at his shop and installed there for FREE, included in the price?

this arguement just makes my forehead hit the keyboard.

 

There are more people successful with Vishnu's xede than the AEM ems on the EVOLUTION 8 platform.

 

what about ECU +?

 

Did you just make that up entirely or do you have some statistical datum you'd like to share with us?

 

No, he just stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Grovytang - better to leave this thread to the Tuners... That way, people looking for hard info don't have to wade through irrelevant posts to get to the good stuff.

 

Shiv,

i don't think you can base the success of the ems off what you see in the bay area, frankly... the ems tuners around here are not good.

i just finished a Data Acquistion class @ motec the past 3 days, and I brought up the topic of knock sensors and oem ecu's. they did infact verify that they did work, however, when one goes changing parts to aftermarket, they said that it changes the frequencies at which the engine resonates and makes the knock sensor error prone. whether or not this is true with the exede i don't know, but it would be interesting to know how it deals with this issue. They said that the M800 is actually compatible with a knock module made by bosch. However, that technology is extremely high end and cost 5 digits for bosch engineers to come out and do testing on your particular engine, and it is so sensitive that any engine changes requires a remap. This type of technology is used in lemans, and by oems to develop their knock strategies.

so is the knock sensor a panacea for detonation? if the stock knock sensor was really that great then why are our USDM cars detuned for US gas? has no one ever blown an engine running exede? are you saying you've never blown any of your personal engines on your red EVO?

 

By "around here", do you mean within a 5 foot radius or does your comprehensive survey extend farther down into contra costa and castro valley?

It's good that you go to tuning classes. But reading can also be good. If you go back and read my posts from last week (and even those from the past year) you'll see that our "knock adjust" table recalibrates the response curve of the knock sensor to be more in line with what we would want with modified cars. Namely those with ringy stainless steel exhausts, noisey valvetrains, camshafts, resonant tubular exhaust manifolds, etc,.

And that is precisely why we don't dump the whole factory knock control system in favor of something that was written by an aftermarket ECU programmer in an afternoon. It's also why most high-end engine control systems simply don't offer built-in knock control.

Also, just because a OEM knock strategy isn't as optimized for a modified car as it is for a stocker, doesn't mean that we make make it close to optimal if we put a little thought into it. It's not as glamorous as hiring a group of Bosch combustion analysis engineers and renting a bunch of pressure transducers and a gas analyser but it gets the job done quite well.

No. But it's a good safety net that is to be used on top of appropriate mapping. The more accurate it is, the better chance you have at keeping you motor in one piece when conditions beyond your control change. FWIW, most modern turbo cars are now relying on the knock sensor to actively test knock thresholds in order to decide which one of the ignition advance maps is most suitable. In the case of the WRX, for instance, the knock sensor is used to ADD timing to the base super-conservative timing map. It's a huge departure from what us aftermarket supertuners are used to seeing . If you care to learn more about Fuji Heavy Industries knock control strategies, check out their patent which you can find with the help of a simple google search.

Because it's better to be proactive in response to compromised octane and castrated cam timing than reactive. Hasn't this been an underlying theme in this entire debate?

I know of two people who had a rod failure but it was not attributable to any engine management issues as far as I know.

No, I'm not saying that. But since you're asking, no I haven't. The only failures we had was a head gasket on a built motor not sealing minutes after start-up. That same "built" motor also spun a rod bearing shortly thereafter during daily driving. Both of which failures would, my most folks, be considered build-related issues. Fed up of built motors, we eventually re-installed the original 30k mile factory long-block, boosted it up to 600bhp, ran One Lap of America, a few magazine shootouts and continue to run it to this day in my daily driver (the red shop car). Oh yes, we did replace the valve cover gasket once

Shiv

 

By here, I mean... Norcal. No ones car from here is stand out fast.

 

DSMMotorsports,
That is correct on the tuning of the AEM EMS. IF you guy the unit from us then I will tune it absolutely free. This includes a pump gas and a race gas tune, fuel mileage, cold start etc. Now if you don't buy it from us I charge $75 per hour to tune it. Depending on the combination it can take 4-5 hours $300-375 for tuning like that.

Groovytang,
I don't know how you measure results but the fastest EVO's on this or any other forum are all tuned with the AEM EMS. If you are referring to people that don't know how to tune one installing it and having problems compared to people that buy the Exede and have Shiv tune if for them then of course it would seem as though the results with the Exede are better. Performance wise, hands down winner is the EMS on this and any other board. This is not to say that on the same car the Exede would not be able to make the same over all power. As Shiv pointed out power tuning is nothing more than air/fuel ratios and timing. This can be achieved with just about anything.

EFIxMR,

Good points. That is one of the things nice about the AEM EMS. When the unit is installed in the car one of the first things you have to do is set up the knock sensor calibration table. This gives you the baseline for regular engine noise. From what I have seen if this is set up properly (not many guys doing it right) then the knock control in the EMS is just unreal.

David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com