Myszkewicz

iTrader: (2)

No way would I pay that much for a one-time flash made by a guy that has never even seen my car, much less tuned it for WI conditions.

If it were a program that could be used (like ECUflash) to make as many changes as I want, I might go for it, depending on price.

$700 is a LOT of money for 15hp.

hackish

Neither offer services for the Ralliart.

The trouble with an open source reflash is that someone has to do the work for free and give it away. I wish I could do like we did with the first honda stuff and give it away but at the end of the day I have to somehow put food on the table and pay for the electronics used to build the testbed for "cracking" the ECU - the equipment alone costs more than a new Ralliart.

I've been working on the reflash now a number of months. I have learned a great deal about how the ECU works and I know the reasons why no available piggyback will work correctly with it. I designed one that does but it's too expensive by the time it's installed and tuned (over a grand).

If I can figure out a cheaper way to build the daughterboard that goes inside the reflashed ECU then I might be able to bring the price down.

-Michael

otter

iTrader: (14)

I'm aware that nobody offers flashing services for the Ralliart, I'm just basing what I expect off of the going price for a flash without tuning for a variety of cars where they are offered. Also, I think you misspoke, but Split Second does make custom piggybacks that work with our car (the ones RRM sells.) IMO, you really have to come way down in price, even if your price includes free reflashes. Having to mail the ECU to you every time something needs to be tweaked is not feasible. It's easier to purchase the appropriate SS piggy and be able to tune it yourself.

I think that, if you want something to sell, figure out a way to make our ECU cooperate with existing reflashing software/hardware (ECUflash and Tactrix cable.) I think you'd find more people willing to pay for the ability to do their own flashes than those who'd want to do mail-ins.

hackish

I know what SS is doing with their piggy. I have a customer who bought one. It does not function correctly for a turbo system and it cannot drive the necessary larger injectors and still suffers from the fuel trim and check engine problems. It just takes longer to fall out of trim and run the engine lean.

Based on the parameters in the ECU it is very very difficult to come up with any piggyback and piggyback tune that will ever work. The trouble is that a set of sensors must all follow the same adjustment profile. If you change them +/- 7% you start getting check engines and trim problems. Unless you know exactly what it is you can't just twiddle one sensor and have it not screw up. What is the sense in having a piggyback that you can't tune then? That ends up being identical to a reflashed ECU except the reflashed ECU can be set for your vehicle and there is no cel or fuel trim issue.

-Michael

RalliDew

well ima mail the thing tomm dont know how long it will take to get there but hope it goes well.

joeyj

This.

hackish

Unfortunately if I spend 250-500 hours of labour figuring it out - that's typically on the low side of what it can take how do I get paid? Even if I got paid $10/hr that's like up to $5g. Running a business means if I don't get more like $60/hr then I can't afford to keep the lights on and pay the rent and that's not paying myself any wages either.

If someone did the work for free and gave it away then sure I'd use it to build a turbo map and an NA map but really I'd sell one of each. Once it's done it's going to work pretty well on pretty much any setup. With a MAF sensor the ECU will do a pretty good job of fuelling it properly no matter what mods you do.

-Michael

OttRalliart05

This is not for everyone. Not all of us has the ability to fine tune engine management systems. Hate to use this word but RRM for the longest time did not sell the tuning software with their piggyback....

Who this is for is someone that wants a good tune for a NA or turbo set up that will work hassle free. Not all of us want to have their piggy retuned every few months. I have been long term testing 2 piggies. First if the Haltech mini, great unit more settings to play with than the SS unit but you need to reload the tune every 2 months or so...Second is the SS and same thing great unit for what it does but every 3 months have to tweak it or reload the map. The fact is this friggin ECU is way more advanced than it needs to be and will eventually "See" any changes you make and try to go back to stock settings. With the piggies some take longer but the end result is the same, you will have to reload the map every so often.

Just my thoughts....

goldenthumb51

iTrader: (1)

I see the befenits of a reflash vs a piggyback but you would be basically giving the same tune to everyone. We all live in different places, different mods...how is that gonna work out?

OttRalliart05

Hackish is the best to answer this but I will give it a shot. The ECU is designed to makes changes to the readings it gets from the sensors. With a relfash you are giving the ECU more to "room" to make changes. The piggy alters the incoming signal so the ECU will make an adjustment. With this @#%@^* car the ECU sees every little change and will make adjustments, some adjustments sooner than others. The goal is with the reflash is to set the parameters high enough that the ECU can make adjustments regardless of the mods you have and your location/elevation.

Hackish and others will correct me if i am wrong I am sure of it...lol.

hackish

Mitsubishi spent millions of dollars solving that exact problem so you don't have to. This is part of the reason your ECU and engine have like 25 different sensors to montor everything from the temp of the air to the barometric pressure. My main objective is to come up with a remap for those who decided to put a turbo on their vehicle. None of the turbo setups have worked reliably and I've had more than one discussion with other tuners about the problems the other kit out there has had. I even sat down with the lead engineer with AEM and for more than an hour I discussed the problems.

With a standalone you have to spend the hours duplicating the factory mapping. With a piggyback you have to try to fool the factory ECU into doing what you want but like most things it has unwanted side effects.

When you reprogram the ECU then you're changing the values themselves so it will never fight you to achieve something other than what you ask for. On the downside, cracking an ECU is very labour intensive business. You could spend a year learning to crack something and never figure it out.

Hope that helps.

hackish

Got an update guys. I've figured out a way to do this without requiring an expensive daughterboard. This takes almost $250 off my cost of doing a reflash. This means if people are willing I will be able to come in at about $450-$500USD. A little more reasonable.

-Michael

BlackRaven

iTrader: (8)

Does the process you propose to put on the ECU...

a) ...make it turbo-ready?
"PnP"...you slap on bigger injectors, high-flow fuel pump, snail, and some piping, and you're good to go.

b) ...make it turbo-compatable?
Makes the ECU more turbo-friendly, so should you add a more traditional fueling setup (i.e. rising rate FPR), you don't get the closed-loop learning, etc. that plagues existing RA setups.

If a), you'd (obviously) have to tailor the product you ship back to your customer for his/her specific setup, as pointed out by otter. If b), this would still require a secondary mechanism (piggy, etc.) to be properly controlled and tweaked by the end user, thus increasing total cost.

...or does the system you propose have a happy medium between the two?

hackish

The system is best described as "A". What people don't realize here is that since the system uses a MAF sensor it is very flexible. I know that many people purchased a kit for this vehicle and I've spoken with many who are on their 2nd or 3rd engine. I've also spoken with a number of tuners who have said "there is no effing way to make this thing work with a piggyback."

Since a MAF sensor reads the amount of air going into the engine then I will be scaling the injector constant so larger injectors will be fitted and work as stock. On many turbo cars from the factory you can add a few extras like exhaust and a few more PSI of boost. This is due to the fact that they inject an amount of fuel proportional to the amount of air that goes in. So if you install a huge turbo and it sees 300lb/min of air it will inject enough fuel for 300lb/min of air.

So the AFRs should be bang on the money. I will also adapt the open loop / closed loop circuit to work properly with turbos. With timing I will pull a conservative amount based on the fuel type. I think it will be able to run the engine and run it safely. No more check engine/ limp mode problems. No more fighting with the ECU's fuel trim. No more fuel system too rich/too lean codes.

-Michael

Black Rally

iTrader: (2)

and he dont spend a lot of money