Is that one of those things Honda/Acura, Nissan/Infinity to fool stupid europeans like me?
Yes, GEMS is pretty popular I guess.

 

I'd just send my ECU to Al and flash it for my mods (stroker, turbo, injectors, nothing extraordinary)--$200 bucks, and well worth it to pass the test and benefit from the EMS w/years of added power and drivability vs. my UTEC.

I think most people here with common sense know what I mean when I say it's the best. It's the best of all the standard EMS options we have and I'm not going to debate that--debate that w/every major Evo tuner in the US (e.g. Motec is currently not a standard option and it's in a different price category altogether).

Is your statement, "What pro racing team uses it?" really a logical criteria for product decisions in our market? Evo drivers (even the seuious modders) tend to fall within a certain price category and have limits to what they'll do to their cars if it's a daily driver (it is 99% of the time). We don't gut the interior, run magnesium wheels, or install fuel cells. The top 1% of spenders do build their motors and add coilovers, a GT turbo, and an AEM EMS w/speed density--some outliers install a Motec.

 

Well, now with a reflash cable, you really could do the same, but I was referring more to the things that would render the stock ECU impossible to get to work without throwing a CEL, such as aftermarket Accufab throttlebody, Losing the EGR valve, Disconnecting or removing the Evap system, No rear O2 sensor.. These are things you wouldn't remove, or you would tend to keep connected if you had a stock ECU in the car. Without that reminder, many people remove those things and I could only imagine the hassle of finding and reinstalling them would be.

I can't and won't argue the value of the AEM EMS, since if it weren't for an Emission/Inspection concern, I'd be running it too since I am a spender and have no problem putting money where its needed. Your also forgetting the possibility of a not-so-happy future possibility of an impound and fines for modifying/removing/damaging some components (A remote possibility, but there's always that risk on a cruise night) I just prefer to keep my car legal in spirit, and to legitimately pass a (New York, my car won't visually pass in California) visual and emission test, not to mention an OBD-II test (which it currently does)

However I strongly disagree with your statement of "added Power and Drivability -vs- the UTEC" think correctly configured, the choice would be based on need or preference.. Not power or drivability.. I have a pretty radical car that runs fine on a UTEC and produces the same power as if it were standalone equipped. HOWEVER I was willing to add components that allowed me to do that easily and still retain the ECU, and with the ability to reflash my ECU for injectors, idle control, and other things in the next few weeks, many of those things would no longer be an issue.

Most people just do "bolt-ons", and in that respect, they may not understand cause/effect correlations to getting a car to run well. But those people may also be best suited with a Reflash alone..

 

if i upgrade my turbo it'll probably be a 50 trim, ill want to run alky+ race gas on track days, thats about as crazy ill go with the car, so i guess is aem ems my option or the utec is better for me since im not going all out...
i dont want my alky running all the time because i dont have money to fill it up constantly , so i would just switch my maps to a 93 octane, then when i go race ill switch it to alky map and turn on my alky, is this how it would work? or is there something im missing?

 

My biggest issue is the lack of tuners for the UTEC. Jack, I know you have a great running car, but most of us don't have your skill. Without that unique skill and without a good UTEC tuner, a UTEC with injectors, cams and other basic mods does not have good drivability characteristics.

I have'nt been able to find a single tuner with the skill to overcome the OLF transition and injector scaling issue (among others) anywhere here in the world's largest high performance automobile market--Southern California. What does that mean? Plenty of great AEM and Apexi PowerFC tuners, excellent Xede tuner--all people who would guarantee their work in terms of producing a great cold start, idle, knock free tune in all gears.

For most of us, good drivability is a function of the equipment and the availability of skilled tuners to use it, and for the UTEC name one place in CA (again, world's largest market by far) who knows this thing. I've e-mailed TurboXS for advice/recs and they didn't reply, I'm tempted to drive to Vivid in AZ but I shouldn't have to.

 

Well, thats my whole point... The UTEC is not that difficult for a skilled tuner to understand, and if you know a skilled tuner, and he understands our cars well, then **ANYTHING** he tunes on will run well. How good can they really be if they can't learn to do something new?

Most tuners don't seem to ever look at part throttle drivability, and thats where the problem is, they only tune on the dyno, and never on the street to improve drivability. This isn't a UTEC problem though.. The transition issues are due to large jumps in timing or fueling between the ECU's Closed loop fuel control, and the UTEC open loop fuel control.. If you reduce those jumps in your part throttle driving, you will eliminate those issues..

This is where having injector duty reference instead of background map offset in the UTEC will make a difference since it will make it easier to match that transition without as much trial and error.. If your dealing with a timing issue, then I tend to use ECU settings at lower RPM's in the 10-30% column.


Another note is we now have more tools at our fingertips to work with the stock ECU, which will make matching it to the UTEC's quirks easier (though I have yet to really need anything)

 

Thanks for the useful input Jack. Again, I'm not planning to switch, although I'll admit I would if money wasn't an issue. But then again, if wasn't an issue, I'd be driving a Gemballa 911 TT or F430 :-)

Fact is, there are some very good tuners here in so Cal but they focus on the AEM because that's what a lot more people have. It's easier because they don't have to deal with ECU transition or quirky injector scaling. Can you tell me why we don't hear lots of complaints about ECU transition issues from the Xede users (just curious, not taking another shot at the UTEC)?.

 

Its simple, Transition is a factor of injector control being taken over from the stock ECU, to the drivers in the UTEC.. The XEDE doesn't ever take control of the injectors directly, it uses MAF offset (similar to an S-AFC) to alter the fueling... Timing is corrected by offsetting the crank angle sensor (though from the engineering docs I've read, its signal is reproduced to prevent issues with the ECU being unhappy)

Since the stock ECU uses hard coded MAF cutoffs, Injector and RPM limits, a piggyback system that uses a MAF offset to alter fueling will not be able to overcome those limits and would therefore require a reflash for those things.

What is interesting is OLF is a fairly new feature, which is designed to operate more like a standalone ECU than a piggyback, it takes an input signal, and provides its own injector signal, a reference signal is returned back to the ECU to keep it from throwing an error, but the injectors and its features are driven directly by the UTEC. The OLD VERSION of fuel control using MAF OFFSET is still there, and its still used for closed loop fuel control where the ECU is still in control. With the new reflash cable, we actually could go back to using MAF offset from a base map in the ECU (Non OLF fueling)

Another way to reduce the transition error is to closely log your data when you experience the transition problem a majority of the time, then adjust it so its closer at that time and the car will drive alot better (most people complain of a transition problem while driving under low load, you can't fix that by dyno tuning!) You can try using MAP sensor reference for the maps, but I don't have a high level of confidence that the resulting tune will be appropriate for all loads and I have always preferred to use a MAF reference signal.


And your right.. If OBD-II was not a factor (I can't quite figure out how they get away with this in California!!) I would probably be running some sort of standalone, but given the UTEC, and now the ability to reflash an ECU on my own, I really do have access to all the necessary tuning parameters that Its really not necessary. Once the guys at openECU write some logger software that gets data off DMA instead of the OBD-II data rate, we'll have some very very comprehensive data collection abilities.

 

Got one for sale real cheap is your interested. Brand new, never used.

 

Uhh this thread is almost a year old.....forget it was '07 or what?

 

 

THe way everyone's getting rid of the UTEC's I wouldn't be surprised if someone had one sitting for sale for a year!! I'm sticking with it, transition be darned.

 

That's just because your car is so fast.

Hi, it's Evo8 here, still thinking about them tires. I'm going out of town for a week and haven't gotten my catback issue sorted out, so don't wait on me. But I do want them.

Now if I can just convince the wife. Maybe yours could call mine and convince her how great they look in the livingroom...