HUGE developments on Ecuflash for the X {off topic content}
Strangely I agree with all of this.
Sean
Sean
This subject is really off topic and irrelavant to the topic at hand, but I feel it has some relevance to the issue as it is usually the experienced and professional (meaning those who work full time as an occupation) tuners who are authorized as dealers for products like Cobb, Ecutek, HKS, etc etc etc
Everyone has to start somewhere.
Speaking of myself, when I elected to get started tuning Evos at least I had to make some investment in equipment needed (Tech Tom rom editor and flasher, Motec wideband, etc) and also I paid to undertake some training in California on how to operate the equipment from one of the world's best experts on stock ecu tuning. Since that time, I have been involved in the daily tuning of Evos and in the racing of them, having traveled all over North America to test my base maps in just about every state in every kind of condition and type of fuel available.
At the end of the day those who want to 'self tune' are in a great situation with the current offerings of free applications and inexpensive data logging and wide band 02 sesnors that currently exist. When I got started in turbo awd performance in 2001 when the WRX first came out there were only two AWD dynos on the east coast. Think about how many dynos are out there now.
Those who want to 'self tune' and who enjoy playing with their cars as a hobby should not feel threatened by a professional tool like Ecutek which is used by full time tuners who work in dyno tuning facilities and who tune cars day in and day out for a living. The long and the short of it is that most of the 'self tuning' customers will not require or need the services of a professional tuner and will not be burdened with the need to purchase Ecutek as the free application seems to be headed to a sooner rather than later release.
Just as Sears and Home Depot sell cheap tools for the shade tree mechanic for the guy who wants to do his own clutch job - the free tuning tools are there for those who want to do it themselves.
I am sitting on the dyno now, taking a break with a giant MATCO wall of a tool box stocked with over $120,000 in every snap on hand tool you cvan imagine. The reason why we have these kind of tools, a dyno and a AWD alignment rack as well as a 18 year experienced Ferrari Master Technican on staff here is becuase we are professionals and we expect to have the tools needed to do the job the best way we can becuase we take pride in what we do.
PLEASE whom ever is reading this - remember Ecutek is just a tool. What you do with it is what is important.
Any rom editor and application which can install a rom file in the stock ecu can do the same job in the same hands.
My take on the market is that the X customer is a different kind of customer than the customer base of the 8 and the IX. My feel is that the typical X customer will not be the kind of person who enjoys self tuning and wrenching. That is just my take to date. These customers are getting into a more expensive car and will IMHO not be as gung ho about doing extreme modifications to the car as the Evo 8 and IX customers were. The X responds better and faster with less mods. We'll see if my feeling is accurate or not.
Based upon my experience with the Subaru market, most of the customers don' do their own engine work, they dont install their own cams and they dont install their own clutches and they don't try and tune their cars themselves. When Evo Flash first came out I thought I would be soon out of business of tuning Evos but suprize it seems that most Evo owners dont want to do their own tuning either. I have remained very busy, if not more busy than ever tuning evos to this day, despite the melt down of the general economy.
IMHO there is no need for this Ecutek vs. Ecu Flash hostility and conflict. At the end of the day if the Ecu Flash guys can make the free version as reliable, stable and effective as Ecutek then everyone will benefit.
In the meantime, Ecutek is to be commended for making a world class product which is very spectatcular and which has worked 100% perfectly and which has enabled me to tune my X customers who have wanted to modify their cars.
Al
Everyone has to start somewhere.
Speaking of myself, when I elected to get started tuning Evos at least I had to make some investment in equipment needed (Tech Tom rom editor and flasher, Motec wideband, etc) and also I paid to undertake some training in California on how to operate the equipment from one of the world's best experts on stock ecu tuning. Since that time, I have been involved in the daily tuning of Evos and in the racing of them, having traveled all over North America to test my base maps in just about every state in every kind of condition and type of fuel available.
At the end of the day those who want to 'self tune' are in a great situation with the current offerings of free applications and inexpensive data logging and wide band 02 sesnors that currently exist. When I got started in turbo awd performance in 2001 when the WRX first came out there were only two AWD dynos on the east coast. Think about how many dynos are out there now.
Those who want to 'self tune' and who enjoy playing with their cars as a hobby should not feel threatened by a professional tool like Ecutek which is used by full time tuners who work in dyno tuning facilities and who tune cars day in and day out for a living. The long and the short of it is that most of the 'self tuning' customers will not require or need the services of a professional tuner and will not be burdened with the need to purchase Ecutek as the free application seems to be headed to a sooner rather than later release.
Just as Sears and Home Depot sell cheap tools for the shade tree mechanic for the guy who wants to do his own clutch job - the free tuning tools are there for those who want to do it themselves.
I am sitting on the dyno now, taking a break with a giant MATCO wall of a tool box stocked with over $120,000 in every snap on hand tool you cvan imagine. The reason why we have these kind of tools, a dyno and a AWD alignment rack as well as a 18 year experienced Ferrari Master Technican on staff here is becuase we are professionals and we expect to have the tools needed to do the job the best way we can becuase we take pride in what we do.
PLEASE whom ever is reading this - remember Ecutek is just a tool. What you do with it is what is important.
Any rom editor and application which can install a rom file in the stock ecu can do the same job in the same hands.
My take on the market is that the X customer is a different kind of customer than the customer base of the 8 and the IX. My feel is that the typical X customer will not be the kind of person who enjoys self tuning and wrenching. That is just my take to date. These customers are getting into a more expensive car and will IMHO not be as gung ho about doing extreme modifications to the car as the Evo 8 and IX customers were. The X responds better and faster with less mods. We'll see if my feeling is accurate or not.
Based upon my experience with the Subaru market, most of the customers don' do their own engine work, they dont install their own cams and they dont install their own clutches and they don't try and tune their cars themselves. When Evo Flash first came out I thought I would be soon out of business of tuning Evos but suprize it seems that most Evo owners dont want to do their own tuning either. I have remained very busy, if not more busy than ever tuning evos to this day, despite the melt down of the general economy.
IMHO there is no need for this Ecutek vs. Ecu Flash hostility and conflict. At the end of the day if the Ecu Flash guys can make the free version as reliable, stable and effective as Ecutek then everyone will benefit.
In the meantime, Ecutek is to be commended for making a world class product which is very spectatcular and which has worked 100% perfectly and which has enabled me to tune my X customers who have wanted to modify their cars.
Al
Remember 
created the ecu - all the tuning tools do is provide a interface to communicate with and adjust the factory maps. No one is creating new maps or new means of operation (yet). Therefore, the end result is the same provided the tool used is able to access all functions and works in a reliable and consistant manner.
Al
created the ecu - all the tuning tools do is provide a interface to communicate with and adjust the factory maps. No one is creating new maps or new means of operation (yet). Therefore, the end result is the same provided the tool used is able to access all functions and works in a reliable and consistant manner.Al
Last edited by Mr. Evo IX; Jun 10, 2008 at 09:26 PM.
This is why I suggest that the jury is out as to what the capabilities and features on any Evo Flash Evo X solution will entail and which application (Ecutek or Ecu Flash) will be a better choice for the customer.
Currently, on Evo 8 and IX I have the following tools for tuning :
Tech Tom Reflasher for Evo 8 and IX
Cobb Access Port Access Tuner for Evo
Ecutek Flash Evo
Taxtrix cable and Ecu Flash
When a customer comes in for a tune, obviously I like to know that I can have access to and I have familiarity and training on all the available platforms. This was the benefits and strong points of each system can be reviewed and the customer can make a choice.
One important consideration is that every different ECU works in a unique fashion and what works well on one ecu platform may not work as well on another.
For example, on the Subaru side I generally refuse to tune any vehicle with so called "open source" tools as they generally have limited tech support and poor functionality when comapred to Cobb AP for example which affords live real time map changes and map tracing as well as innovative features such as the ability to change maps on the fly and no lift shifting etc. Ecutek for Subarus is also vastly superior to any of the free offerings and much easier to tune well. Finally, both Cobb and Ecutek have full time top notch world class tuners who give amazing tech support to tuners like myself and who strive on a daily basis to inprove the product and also help the dealer network deliver a excelent result for the customer.
Generally, for what ever reason the open source tools have an edge in the Evo 8 and IX market that they do not have on the Subaru market.
I guess what I am suggesting is that those of us who are not ecu hackers sit back, relax and wait to see what the Ecu Flash product looks like and how it works as a tuning aide before you proclaim the end of Ecutek. Remember, Ecutek is here, working and it works really exceptionally well - NOW. I think before you can make a determination if its worth the additional license fee and initial purchase cost by the tuners we need to know how the other product will work in practice.
Al
Noise, I'm not a guru but ECU Flash is just a customizable memory table editor with a rom flashing component. It displays tables at memory addresses. I can probably think of 10 EMS management applications that all have the same "look" as ECU Flash. And
Al, actually the ECU Flash guru's HAVE created new tables and new means of operation at least for the CT9A platform, I would expect that this would continue on the X. ECU Flash is supported by the general community, that's the magic of open source projects. Its about people helping one another. The ECU Flash community is strong when it comes to supporting the product and providing assitance to the people that use it.
Al, actually the ECU Flash guru's HAVE created new tables and new means of operation at least for the CT9A platform, I would expect that this would continue on the X. ECU Flash is supported by the general community, that's the magic of open source projects. Its about people helping one another. The ECU Flash community is strong when it comes to supporting the product and providing assitance to the people that use it.
1 - There is no "open source" provided by Taxtrix - Taxtrix is a for profit enterprize which sells a flashing cable. The source code has not been dislcosed.
2 - As a Cobb and Ecutek dealer when for example a new ROM version comes out or if I run into any problems with sorting out how something works I can call a specific person who is paid to assit tuners to resolve problems and get bona fide tech support. This kind of immediate and expert tech support has a very high value when you have a customer who wants his car tuned today and its sitting on the dyno.
3 - When it comes to seeking tech support from the general community often you have a high signal to noise ratio. For example, post a question on a forum and you will get 20 answers in many cases a lot of them may be wrong. When dealing with organizations like Ecutek and Cobb we are working with a team of experts who are the best at what they do and the tech support is worth every penny I have spent with them.
And, what does this have to do with ECU Flash? Which is the open source rom editor for the X that is the focus of this thread. 2 - As a Cobb and Ecutek dealer when for example a new ROM version comes out or if I run into any problems with sorting out how something works I can call a specific person who is paid to assit tuners to resolve problems and get bona fide tech support. This kind of immediate and expert tech support has a very high value when you have a customer who wants his car tuned today and its sitting on the dyno.
3 - When it comes to seeking tech support from the general community often you have a high signal to noise ratio. For example, post a question on a forum and you will get 20 answers in many cases a lot of them may be wrong. When dealing with organizations like Ecutek and Cobb we are working with a team of experts who are the best at what they do and the tech support is worth every penny I have spent with them.
3 - When it comes to seeking tech support from the general community often you have a high signal to noise ratio. For example, post a question on a forum and you will get 20 answers in many cases a lot of them may be wrong. When dealing with organizations like Ecutek and Cobb we are working with a team of experts who are the best at what they do and the tech support is worth every penny I have spent with them.
. There are 2 Evo X's in my region and one has been sitting on the showroom floor for 2 months. Maybe one day ECU Flash will have realtime features. I hope so.
Last edited by Mr. Evo IX; Jun 11, 2008 at 05:22 AM.
From Ivey's website.
If you have a good tunner it doesnt need to be messed with for the most part, that is the idea that so many people don't understand. Weather I understand but still...
Mail in tunes is one thing but figuring out what the car needs when cold, when hot, and everwhere in between is a very hard skill to attain.
Scorke
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Joined: Oct 2005
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From: Ft. Walton Beach, FL
i've never messed with either of the rom editors but being a haltech stand alone tuner i agree with this 100%. tuning wide open throttle is the easy part. tuning drivability under all conditions is the hard part. expecially when you don't want the customer coming back every time the temperature changes or it rains. it's an art and a science at the same time.
i've never messed with either of the rom editors but being a haltech stand alone tuner i agree with this 100%. tuning wide open throttle is the easy part. tuning drivability under all conditions is the hard part. expecially when you don't want the customer coming back every time the temperature changes or it rains. it's an art and a science at the same time.
Nailing your A/F's and knock counts at WOT on a dyno is cake, knowing what your car needs at all throttle positions and load cells is what you pay for.
Scorke
1. Frankly, given that Steve admited that he applied for Ecutek dealer status and was rejected or ignored makes his comments some what less credable to me.
2. it would be like if I was complaining about the V pro ater HKS blows me off when I inquired about tuning with it
3. How HKS runs their buisness is just that their business - if a customer or tuner does not care for the business model - too bad. Choose another less effective ecu and tune yourself. HKS could care less what i or anyone else thinks.
4. Ecutek is a global outfit and the business plan is set to work with the other markets where they do not have the self tuning movement to such a great degree.
5. On Evos the customers are spoiled due to the ease of using Ecuflash. In my Subaru tuning business where the etock ecu is vastly more complex and where pro tools like Ecutek and Cobb AP have huge technical advantages to facilitate the ease of tuning there is no uproar about Ecutek license costs or AP unit costs.
6. The X is a more complex car to tune and less forgiving than the 4G63. Customers should think twice before they start buying $49 or $99 eflashes which have not been carefully tested. I have been tuning Evos since they came out and we were amoung the first to have a X and tune it and I have hundreds of hours of R & D into sorting out the ecu at this point and getting good base maps. No one can do this overnight and get a excelent result. R & D, testing and time spent all mean that the end user will be having to pay a rational price for the tuning service and the invesment in tools and time to have a very good end product.
Al
2. it would be like if I was complaining about the V pro ater HKS blows me off when I inquired about tuning with it
3. How HKS runs their buisness is just that their business - if a customer or tuner does not care for the business model - too bad. Choose another less effective ecu and tune yourself. HKS could care less what i or anyone else thinks.
4. Ecutek is a global outfit and the business plan is set to work with the other markets where they do not have the self tuning movement to such a great degree.
5. On Evos the customers are spoiled due to the ease of using Ecuflash. In my Subaru tuning business where the etock ecu is vastly more complex and where pro tools like Ecutek and Cobb AP have huge technical advantages to facilitate the ease of tuning there is no uproar about Ecutek license costs or AP unit costs.
6. The X is a more complex car to tune and less forgiving than the 4G63. Customers should think twice before they start buying $49 or $99 eflashes which have not been carefully tested. I have been tuning Evos since they came out and we were amoung the first to have a X and tune it and I have hundreds of hours of R & D into sorting out the ecu at this point and getting good base maps. No one can do this overnight and get a excelent result. R & D, testing and time spent all mean that the end user will be having to pay a rational price for the tuning service and the invesment in tools and time to have a very good end product.
Al
OK, you directly addressed me so I need to reply to this. I'm going to try REAL hard to keep this post from being deleted as I have gone off the deep end in replying to you before and it gets me no where.
1. Let me rephrase because I did leave out part of the ecutek story. I didnt get blown off or ignored from ecutek. I first contacted them when I was working with Top level and they DID respond to me. They were not nearly done with the ECUTEK at the time but told me to keep in contact with them and they would keep me updated. I believe they would have wanted to see my car tuned on the system and how it turned out before giving me a full fledged account with them. And even though an AWD dynojet was literally less then 3 miles away they were more interested in us having our OWN dyno, which I completely understand. I then left Top Level, went into business with NRG Tech and NRG Tech at the moment only has a 2wd dynojet. We're currently working on getting an AWD version but nothing is set in stone yet. Once I left top level I stopped looking into Ecutek. When they first released the beta versions of the software 2 months ago, I then again e-mailed them from NRG Tech telling them I was again interested, but I imagine due to the fact i switched businesses while speaking to them, I guess they werent so enthused about setting up with me. BUT the last time I did not get an answer at all and that says something for professionalism. A simple reply stating they werent interested in setting us up would have been fine. Regardless, I was never bitter about it. I always planned on using ECUflash as well when it came out. Just like you use it to tune evos now even though you were an Ecutek only Evo tuner before.
2. I'm not complaining about Ecutek. Its a great product and works without an issue. It just has some drawbacks. I understand the license fee, but like I said, giving end use adjustment capabilities would be best. At least in the EVO market where ALOT of people either tune their own cars or like to bring their cars to their own tuners, be them PRO, AMATEUR, or a toothless hillbilly whose good with computers.
3. Yes your right, HKS runs their business the way they like, and its a geat business. But if they ever wonder why they're NOT conquering the evo community in the US, a simple Poll on evoM would tell them exactly why. V pro is like communism. It sounds great on paper, but doesnt work in the real world. Why would someone like myself living 2 hours from the nearest V pro tuner want to take a full day off from work AND wait god knows how long for an appointment if I just wanted to run 5 more psi AND I knew how to do it myself? Or what if I wanted to have someone else tune the car? I guess I'm not a Vpro customer then. But neither is 90% of the rest of evoM. And thats why I do not know 1 person who has it. Not 1 person IN person OR online. I'm sure vpro tuners will come on here and say they tuned 50 cars a month on Vpro but IDK where or what all those guys are doing. If HKS is not interested in tapping into the market the way AEM did, thats fine. But to call AEM an inferior product? You use AEM in your car. What makes it "less effective"? And why or how is EcuFlash "less effective"
4. I understand Ecutek is based overseas and they have more markets to look into. But offering self tuning but still keep the license system wouldnt be THAT hard to do. Even if they offered it to all markets, its not that big of a conversion.
5. Subie guys and Evo guys are different and you know this. The proportions of exterior mods to engine mods on each forum among the members also tell you this. How many 9 second subies are there on Nasioc? Or in the world for that matter? I'd venture to say 20% of how many evos there are. Not knocking subie guys at all, but its a different market. Theres not AS many self tuners either. Most subie guys do LESS work then MOST EVO guys. The Evo platform has been dominating among self builders/tuners since it came out. Just like DSM market was the SAME way. JUST like the Honda market is the same way. But you wont find Volvo guys caring about a 500$ license fee if there was one because there arent enough volvo guys that are really looking to go crazy with their car. The evo market and subie market can not be compared when it comes to this.
6. You have all of those R&D hours because it came out months ago. Ecuflash isnt out yet. When it is, thousands of people will have countless hours invested as well. You cant compare the 2 programs when one isnt out yet. And you also cant say the X is gonna be less forgiving when you do not know the limits of it yet either. The X could be a stronger motor for all you know. It already seems less prone to knock.
In conclusion, Ecuflash is not a less effective or Bad product. Ecuflash is a very reliable very effective tuning tool that needs to be tuned by someone capable of knowing how to use it AND knowsing how to apply it towards a machine. To say it is less effective or has less support is not fair at all. AL, you use Ecuflash even now to tune 8's and 9's and I doubt you try to push people into ecutek. Obviously it has been reliable for you, and AMS, and TT, and everyone else who tunes it.
Use a Dyno Dynamics. You can change load, limit speed, and hold the car at X RPM so you can hit all load cells in a row. Once you are done, move the dyno up 250rpm and do it again.
Scorke