First let's get some details out for everyone.

A few months ago when I was having problems with my car I started talking about using another form of engine management.

One of the forum members here, crcain, contacted Vi-Pec, owned by Ray Hall and asked him to send me a ECU for evaluation. This was quite a surprise to me. Ray contacted me, we exchanged a few e-mails and the Vi-Pec showed up.

Here is a link to Vi-Pecs home page for anyone that would like to read up on more of their products and such. http://www.vi-pec.com/index.html

Vi-PEC stands for Versatile Intelligent Performance Engine Control

The unit I have is the "Plug-In ECU".

The ECU comes with a cable for connecting to the ecu, air temp sensor and a 2.5 bar map sensor. This particular unit is a circuit board with the factory plug in connectors on it. You take your factory computer, open the case, remove the factory circuit board and install the new Vi-PEC circuit board. Very easy to do and it's nice being able to bolt it back into the car in the factory case/factory location.

We used the supplied Vi-PEC air temp sensor, an AEM 5 bar map sensor and an AEM external wide band controller. Wiring is simple to hook everyting in, just wires into the factory sensors.

I ran into just a few small problems. 1st problem was the unit came up with the fuel pump set up incorrectly so the car would not start. A quick phone call and we figured out the problem with Alex at Apex Speed Tech. The next issue was an odd one that I thought was related to using Vista. The ECU went offline and I could not reconnect. I loaded the program into my other laptop with XP and same problem. I disconnected all the connectors to the ECU, plugged them back in and it worked instantly. After those two small issues the rest of the job of tuning went smoothly.

With all programs it takes a while to get up to speed where things are located, how to change them, shortcuts etc. Right now I have about 6-8 hours in working with the Vi-PEC and I feel like I am pretty up to speed on it. No expert but moving around the program with very little effort and tuning quickly.

The Vi-PEC has a quick tune feature. This is really nice. As long as your AFR target table is set up and your wideband is reading correctly you can start. Simple click the Quick Tune feature and hold the engine in a cel and the ECU will do the rest and dial in the AFR's very quickly. Don't get me wrong, it takes some effort to hold the car steady enough in each cell to get it to self tune but it is TONS faster than doing each cell manually.

The idle is exceptional on the car and so is the start up, the car fires instantly and with no gas pedal input will start and go to high idle.

There is no knock control in the Vi-PEC but one is being offered seperately. I do not have 100% of the details on it yet and when I get it I will release that information.

We installed the Vi-PEC on my brothers "beater" as he calls it. It's a 2003 EVO8. Stock EVO9 turbo, Stages 1-4, 780cc PTE injectors, single Walbro, drop in pistons a fairly basic build.

My brother, Daniel, is a hard guy to please. He had the AEM EMS on the car and couldn't start the long cranking. He then went to the stock ECU and wasn't happy the car was down on some power. Knowing how hard he is to please makes him a great test bed for anything new! haha

I did some of the initial tuning to get the AFR's close just out in the parking lot. The car was loaded on the dyno after that to get all the low end dialed in.

The AEM and the Haltech both use boost fuel correct. This means once you get the AFR's close at low boost each load cell can be set the same and the ECU calculates additional fuel needed based on boost pressure.

The Vi-PEC doesn't have this feature so each load cell needs to be tuned individually. I did some quick math in my head and hoped to error on the rich side, plugged the numbers into the fuel graph and made a pull. Power was pretty good but what surprised me was the car pulled clean with AFR's in the 8:1 range.

To make a long story short, the tuning went very well. The car also made the most power it has ever made regardless of what ECU was on it.

Here is the final 4th gear dyno graph:



I'm happy as hell with the results and surprisingly, Daniel is happy as hell with how the car runs and drives. I have just a bit of idle hunt when the car comes to a stop and will fix that tomorrow. Tonight it is suppose to drop to about 3X degrees F so I'm anxious to see how the car starts tomorrow morning in the cold and how it drives in to the shop.

The issues I had so far are small and could be from my lack of experience with the ECU, I'd rather let all you guys know that every install and every new item doesn't go perfectly smoothly all the time. You all know I tell the good with the bad. Fact is so far, there really is no bad. I'm not even missing the knock control or ability to monitor it.

I'll keep this updated over the next few days as we drive it in some colder weather and check the cold start up etc.

Tonight I have a lot of reading to do to pick up on using the datalogger, so far it has baffled me enough that I didn't use it at all.

I have to give the ECU a thumbs-up so far.

 

Dave awsome bit of kit I am just tuning one now 83lb inj and big cams and factory cold start and idle,
Did you check you have afr correction on and then the vipec will add fuel for boost,
for idle check the stepper position is 130 hot idle speed this then gives a real nice idle with the correct cold starting.

Mark

 

looks good. I remember asking you about that when i was there friday.

 

Sounds good so far Dave!

Got to give you a lot of credit for trying so many different ECU's. Haltech, ViPEC, AEM, PowerFC, stock ECU, etc... your head must be spinning!

As anything, I'm really interested in your review of the Vipec after some time passes and you really get to know it. Same goes for the Haltech you have been working with.

My understanding of knock control for the Vipec, is that the plugin board for the Evo is the v44 unit, which does not have it built-in. The v88 does have it. But I've heard that if use the Knockblock from Link, and route it's output to the v44, you can then set up a 3d table of noise thresholds and configure ignition trims based on knock, etc. I think I heard the v44 will have it built in coming soon but don't quote me.

Dave keep this thread updated with info as you learn more about the ViPEC.

 

Thanks for the review Dave!

I'll keep checking back in on how you like things as you get more tuning time w/ it.

Sounds very promising.....

 

Will this work with Emissions?

 

You can use closed loop narrow band lambda.

Mark

 

When did Dave use the Haltech? cuz i must have missed that thread. Not to go off topic Dave but how did you like the Haltech cuz I know mike from AWD Motorsports likes it a lot and they have been popular with other cars for a long time.

 

I can the Haltech on the BadBish, it's been on the car for about 2 months, I like it but because of the breakage I can't seem to get away from I haven't actually completely finished tuning with it, very close though.

No this can not be used for emission testing, no OBD2 port.

I spent a few hours reading the manual, good to see I figured out most of the tuning and doing it correctly with no help from the manual Maybe I'm not so dumb afterall. I have the datalogger figured out now too. That will be very helpful tomorrow.

Mark, the Boost Fuel Correct I was talking about with the AEM is not 02 feedback. Basically how it works is it adds or subtracts in vacuum, 100% fuel on a linear scale for every 1 bar of boost above or below 0. So if you tune the car at 1 bar and then turn the boost up to 2 bar the ECU would calculate 100% more fuel for 2 bar. The fuel table ends up having all the same numbers for load from 0 psi to 60 psi in each RPM column.

 

from a hardware perspective this unit sounds almost identical to an Autronic. Which is ironic since Ray used to deal Autronic. I have downloaded the ViPec software and from what little I played with it though I have to say its no where near as nice as the Autronic software.

Glad its working out for you and your brother though, I agree the long cranking is annoying.

 

Good to see you USA boys are liking New Zealand technology
The Vipec is just a rebranded Link ecu, because apparently Link is disliked in Australia.

I'll be tuning my car with a Link G4 Storm, it has some amazing features.
My tuner states that these are as good and simple to tune as Motecs, at a fraction of the price.
Do you know what causes the AFR to be wavey?

Dave, if you have any questions about the Ecu, i'm sure i could give you my tuners email and he could point you in the right direction.

Cheers, Mike

 

Dave I'm quite sure the AFR correct Mark was suggesting is exactly what you're looking for and not an o2 feedback type thing.

 

I've done the same as you.. Autronic user and downloaded the ViPEC software to check it out. I agree with you about the software. What I've heard though is a lot of new features are being added and the software is getting better each month right now. And I think Autronic software and datalogging is ridiculously good so it is a high bar to reach.

 

any updates?

 

Updates for today.

This morning I came in and first thing out of my mouth was, "How was the car this morning?" Daniel replied, "Excellent." I was shocked, never have I got that response from him. He said he started the car this morning instantly, idle was perfect and then he instantly tried to take off and see how poorly it would run dead cold, to his surprise it ran perfectly. He said not so much as a small stumble or glitch.

Once he got here the car cooled off for a few hours and then I went out to work on it. There were quite a few things I changed today after spending a few hours reading the manual last night. I figured out the datalogging enough to use it. The fan temps I lowered considerably as the car was getting too hot at idle before they would kick on. I also set up the rev limiter today.

I went through and set up all the RPM tables to they are the same and then the load too.

Then I took off down the road with the car to check to see if I was hitting the target AFR's at cruise. Now this car is pretty mild with just 400 whp but I was amazed at how well it runs, it is seriously one of the smoothest driving EVO's I have ever driven. Idle control is the best of any ECU I've ever used. With a huge set of cams and injectors that could very well change and I am looking forward to putting this on something with 600+ whp.

The last thing I need to do to this car is to set up the launch control and I had just got to that towards the end of the day. I hope to finish that tomorrow as it should only take a few minutes.

I have to say I am impressed. To dial this in with this limited amount of time in it pretty much boggles my mind. It's nice to have it working this well with very little actual time and effort.

As much as I don't want to see it get cold here, I am anxious to see how it's going to perform when it does as far as cold start and such.

Very happy so far.