I am about to order a UTEC and the switch. What else should I get with this? I am hearing about a Tuner or wideband? Are they the same thing? If not, which is more important to get?

Thanks for your time and help!

 

The "Tuner" is the TurboXS wideband O2 sensor product.. In reality, you don't need anything but the UTEC to get it installed in the car..

If you want to switch maps easily, you get the switch (its not required obviously)
If you want to Log Boost, and use closed loop boost control, and some boost referenced features, you can get the MAP sensor
and if you want to tune your car yourself, you would get some sort of wideband O2 sensor, the Tuner is recommended because it interfaces with the UTEC and produces usable logs that you don't have to correlate together with other logs. (tuning yourself is something you might want to learn later after you have the car tuned professionally once anyway)

Thats about it.. in other words, all you need is the UTEC itself.

 

Malibu always a pleasure reading your posts valuable information and always there trying to help others. I just found out were my turbocharger was last month. trying to get into this tuner thing!

 

thanks for the quick and helpful response!

I do plan on having it tuned professionally first... but want to learn myself as well. As the more I get into my car the more expensive the labor and such is and it is starting to add up.. hahaha

I think I will just stick with the UTEC and switch for now. The others I think I will learn about more and get when I feel the need for them.

I think from what I have read the UTEC has an EBC as part of it. Is this correct? I have read some things about it which make me think it is a MBC partially and then controlled with the EBC? Have I miss-understood something here?

 

Your correct, it has a manual bleed valve which allows you to set the range of boost you can get over stock, and then you can control it within that range like an EBC.. Works pretty well so far for me.

 

thanks for the help and information!

 

I have to differ with Jack on this (do I dare lol). I think that the tuner is a neccesity. Even if you are having the car professionally tuned. A/F ratios vary before and after cat, weather changes can effect A/F ratios and the wideband sensors used by the dyno have parts that if not regularly changed they can give innaccurate results. My car came off the dyno reading 11.2:1 and after I installed the UTEC I found it to be more like 13:1 in passthrough mode. I do not trust must tuners and I trust their dynos even less. Thats why I bought the UTEC and Tuner so that I could only blame myself for mistakes. I know that it expensive but in the long run it is worth it.

 

On the TurboXS website, there look to be two tuners listed... which is the correct or best one to get when I do decide to get the tuner?

 

The Tuner Pro has additional features and inputs that most people won't use.. I have the Tuner Pro, the Tuner is all thats really necessary.

I don't disagree with what Gestalt said, however until your familiar with how everything works, having a tool that may not be getting used initially isn't as critical. I don't trust most tuners either and do all my own work, so my tuner gets used almost daily at times. But unfortunately that first tune if your not familiar with it, your at the mercy of your tuner. Afterwards having the Tuner (Wideband) is essential since you want to know your AFR's.. If you use a good tuner, you can be fairly certain that your tune will be fairly consistent unless you make changes.

 

click on the link in my sig gotta good deal on a whole utec tuning package
(used)