Mr. Sacks.
Here are a few things to consider with a well setup standalone. I already know you are a firm believer that the stock ecu is magic so this will be difficult for you to get on board with.
Just because a craftsman wrench works ok doesn't mean you don't upgrade to a powered ratchet. As you said, things get better. Things are a long way from a 2000 fast system or a stock evo ecu with some patches. We can leave the OBD emissions testing out of this discussion. We all are aware of it.

Some examples of what a standalone can do.

Onboard logging . Example, I have my cars setup to log anytime TPS is over 80%. Then weeks later I can pull a log and look at anything I want. AFR, VE,Oil pressure, fuel pressure,boost, turbocharger shaft speed etc. You can get ahead of a dying fuel or oil pump by the data. Or a boost leak causing the turbo shaft speed to exceed limits.

Data acquisition. The possibilities are endless with what you can do. Its also at a much higher rate compared to a 2003 ecu. With the Motec you can also tune the ACD on the 9 which may help with track conditions or lap times.

A cut if its too lean, or loss of oil pressure,loss of fuel pressure etc.
AFR closed loop correction under any condition. More fuel over time if you want.
Live tuning
Softer rev limit so the valvetrain isn't harmed or rockers don't fly off. I've seen a number of evo's with hard limiters and it doesn't go well.
Boost control, fuel correction per cylinder, timing correction per cylinder.
Extra sets of injectors or a nitrous window
You can also run DBW for rally anti lag, or traction control.
GPS traction control
Diagnostics .
Knock control, A professional can easily set this up. With sequential ignition you can see each cylinders action. You can also see it on a dyno graph if you were fat fingered or timing sync was off. These cars don't need alot of timing and you can pretty much have a ramp from 2-13 by 8000 in 500 rpm increments and its in the ballpark. Most fuels, and compression.

I've had someone else drive my car down the road and adjusted VE or timing going off live data for cruise. Or make a pull and then make a change and do another one. Its just an easier deal then ecuflashsums. Once you've used one there is no going back. Most standalones do exactly what you program them to do.

The list goes on .

As you already know, the fastest Evo's and other tuner cars run a well tuned stand alone. Lets take the race to the 7's with the evo 8/9 platform. Making the power is easy. Plenty of people tried to get down the track and broke everything on the way. FOR YEARS. Stm went low 8's almost a decade ago. Later , people like Lucas English requested certain tables (Motec JRR stuff) be made to get the car to leave easier. Boom, right into the 7s. Now you see others following that path.

 

This is an interesting new player in the ECU space.

It's slightly cheaper than something like the Haltech, but once you add up all of the costs of sensors and tuning and everything else the price difference isn't huge.

However, I do like to see newer companies implement newer technologies. They have some interesting features with their apps that could make it attractive. If they're iterating quickly on the software it could be fun to see where they go with it.

 

As mentioned above, getting knock detection right is one of my concerns with an aftermarket ECU. Mitsubishi has done a lot of work to get the OEM knock sensor working well with the OEM ECU. If I move to an aftermarket ECU, I'd want some way to confirm that knock detection was setup properly.

The Plex Knock Monitor V2 looks great, but $1K is hard to swallow.

I've been eyeing the Knock Monitor Pro ( https://tunernerd.com/knock-monitor-pro/ ). The $330 package looks reasonable enough. Their logging system and associated hardware looks well thought out.

Are there any other knock monitoring products I should look for? Worst case, I could set up some basic det cans for cheap and do it the manual way.

 

Please... no need for the formalities , you can just call me Mike (that's right...another f'n Mike). I appreciate you taking the time to type all that out, but I know all these things. I've been following along with standalones across different platforms since...2001 I guess. Twisting the analogy further, the evo works ok, but that doesn't mean you don't go buy the model 3 performance, or a P-car etc. for the track. I don't think the stock ECU is magic, I'm just really invested in it. So convincing me I NEED to switch is a pretty heavy lift. My delusions of grandeur car is the mustang, and it's sitting in a million pieces suffering from a long term case of mission creep. I've tried to learn from those mistakes and keep the evo as grounded as possible.

 

Just to be super extra clear that Evo 6 did not have any safety subroutines turned on. Including knock. I don't even think the knock filters were changed from default. Assuming there was something there by default even. It knocking into oblivion wasn't the standalone ECU's fault.


You don't need to do many things to hit specific goals. Standalones for the most part won't gain you any HP over stock. It will give you flexibility. Including flexibility to setup protections that could save your engine. But you don't really need that to run a car successfully. You might want that though.

Also I might be a bit younger than you but anything before AEM series 1 to me is not feasible or usable on a street car. But those were shyte looking back at them. Felt windows 95 like. Modern standalones introduced to market in the last 5 years especially are generations ahead. I was able to immediately tell driving at parking lot speeds that my friend's GR STi didn't have a stock ECU because of how smooth it drove. Even that stock ECU is more modern than the best ct9a open source ecu.

 

Getttting back on topic. I was told by more then one person so far that the actual knock sensor used BY mitsu on the 4g is fairly lame when you break it down. The ones you CAN use with aftermarket ECU's, like the one you mention, are hundreds of times more sensitive and provide more ability to hone in on any issues. These are the same count on one hand guys that have done motec's and such for our platforms and used both sensors. So it's not that the ECU isn't .....actually....capable or well researched. It's more that you're locked into said restriction of a $100 part of the "whole system". Same can be said about several other things external to the ECU itself.

I'm honestly past the point of having half a dozen "things" attempting to provide feedback on a screen or sound I'm not looking at while doing many g's in a corner because I've proven to myself none of it will help save anything, the computer needs to do that for us and we focus back on driving the thing.

 

Speaking of old ecu’s.
Not sure if you’re aware of the M800. It was developed in the early 2000s. It set the benchmark for stand alone ecus for well over a decade. Still a very powerful and stable ecu.

 

The inside scoop. I guess you can't blame the ecu if it was all turned off.

 

So is motec the only ones that have something available for the CZ4A and CT9A? If I did want to give a standalone the "pepsi challenge" I would want that experience to be applicable to both my evos if possible.

 

This is the truth. Lots of engine failures can be prevented if you can rely on the ECU to pick something up AND react to it faster than you can. Anyone really pushing at the track is not paying attention to lights or buzzers. Only time I realized I maybe had low oil pressure issues is when I heard rod knock pulling into the pits....

 

What are the limitations on standalone setup if you want to preserve the ability to swap back and forth to stock ECU?

Recommended Mid-Atlantic tuners for a standalone to do initial setup? Jeff Evans isn’t too too far away from me.

 

I have visual and audible alarms for fuel pressure, oil pressure, crankcase pressure and a couple other things. They all can trigger map switching and it's setup to dump all boost to wastegate pressure. Oem ECU. Just to be clear, I am not in the "anti-aftermarket ECU" camp. Just stating it's possible to add warnings and triggers with the OEM ecu.

I have this, it's all wired in but I haven't used it yet. I'll let you know how it goes if I ever getting around to configuring it.

 

You don't necessarily need det cans to tune the knock tables. I find it very effective to setup a conservative 93 pump ignition timing curve and then run it with race gas at the lowest boost possible. With the Haltech Pro this is what I did and started by making the knock threshold values extremely sensitive, but didn't allow for any knock correction. With this approach you have to assume it is not possible for a conservative 93 pump ignition timing table to knock on race gas, but that is not a stretch.

At this point you simply drive around and start raising the knock threshold values until they aren't registering any knock because you are assuming a 93 pump ignition table can't knock on race gas. You don't need to run high boost because what you care about is mechanical noise so just make sure you sweep the entire RPM range under various loads. Once finished, you can run straight 93 pump and at this point, any knock you see will be assumed to be real knock because your sensors have been setup correctly.

I put 40K+ miles on my 10:1 2L like this with the Haltech and when I pulled the head the piston tops looked perfect as did the cylinder walls. I tuned my 2.15L on stock ECU using the same approach and it has ~17K miles on it so far boosting 35psi on 93 pump. I think using this approach in conjunction with the det cans should give you a lot of confidence.

 

whats the obsession with knock sensors? they are an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff. Tune the car right and you dont need them. I dont even have one

 

I agree with this statement, however most evo owners don't pay attention to anything so it's a good ambulance to have.

WIth modern ECU's, knock sensors are an integral part of the strategy. Most of them run off the knock sensors and use them as real time input. However, modern ecus are much more sophisticated than both the CT9A and CZ4A ECU's. They measure knock per cylinder, turbo speed, cylinder temp, and all that fun stuff.

The ECU's on my VW's are 5,000 billion light years more sophisticated than even my CZ4A Ecu.