EvoDaWayToGo

iTrader: (8)

Anyone know of any CHIPs for the Evo VIII or Ecu upgrades..... let me know, Im looking forward to get a nice program for the car....

Hor

Forget the brainwashing from the Vishnu crowd about ECU upgrades. Think intake, exhaust, boost control, and an S-AFC to start. Unless of course you enjoy going slow and spending a lot of money in the process.

shiv@vishnu

iTrader: (20)

Or better yet, just put a fishtank bleeder in your wastegate line and drop your fuel pressure by 10psi. Rock and rock

Cheers,
shiv

Turboniam

I know a few people that have blown their motors up over less than $5 fishtank bleeders!!!

shiv@vishnu

iTrader: (20)

Just to make sure.... I hope you know I was kidding

Cheers,
Shiv

Turboniam

I hope for everyones sake!!!

mitsu_evo5

Have been helping out with tuning evo's for a while and for most of what you have an Apexi AVCR is good...its safe till about 1.3 or 1.4 bar. but above that with the 93 octane you are in trouble.
as for after market ECU's go chek out mines, Valdi but my personal fav is a nice old M48

N10S

iTrader: (4)

With respect to ECU related upgrades, I am very interested in the comments made by Sports Car International writer Eric Gustafson in the May 03 issue regarding the EVO VIII testing in Thailand.

The article is a pretty good read overall, but the segments I found most interesting were encompassed the comments about the US spec car @ 271 hp vs the JDM 276 hp (the article also states that this 276 is really 315 per dyno tests of the VII, which I think most of us already knew), and more specifically the comments coming from Bryan Arnett Mitsubishi Manager of Product Strategy. It reads verbatim:

As Manager of Product Strategy Brayn Arnett puts it, "Meeting emissions was easy; keeping the power was difficult." The rest of Mitsubishi's legendary 4G63 2.0-liter turbo four is the same. We get the same twin scroll Mitsubishi turbocharger spooling up as much as 19 psi of boost; the same ultra-wide intercooler mounted in the grille, complete with water-cooling nozzles (there's a manual squirt button on the center console); the same high- revving 16 valve valvetrain; the same bulletproof iron block. Even the Mitsubishi folks admitted that getting back the lost horse-power is just a chip job away.

Again, most of this info we already know, but its interesting to confirm the same turbo, valvetrain, FMIC, and block. More importantly though is the the fact that they (Mitsubishi) would confirm that regaining the lost delta of 44 hp is really a matter of a "chip job away" ECU tuning.

Lots of conjecture has been flying around regarding de-tuned US engines with different cams etc... . After reading this article it appears that the only major change is in the ECU tuning.
I am sure there may be other factors but if we can get an ECU program similar to the original JDM ECU then the EVO VIII could be restored to its original intended glory. That might not get everyone to the max power they want, but it would be a nice option for a start!!

Now comes the waiting game to determine which enterpising tuners will develop the best ECU solution for the EVO VIII. This also makes me wonder if the current EVO VII ECU chips will work in our VIII's as is, or do they have to be massaged for our lower octane? Are the EVO VII's that Evolution motorsports imports using a modified ECU chip, or just the original?

Lots of questions, and big hopes for an already awesome car!

KK

iTrader: (4)

Please keep those comments to yourself next time.

Mark

josh

hey

EvoDaWayToGo, there will probably be many options out there to increase power on your EVO. since shiv will get bbq'ed for trying to sell anything, i will mention it for him.

i would steer clear of "chips"(actual replacement chips on the mobo of the ECU). shiv (and probably others down the road) can overwrite the stock ecu (called flashing) and increase power. substantially. that coupled with some other basic mods will yield very usable power throughout the entire power band, as well as increase torque. "piggybacks" and "chips" tend to modify the signal to the ecu, and in my experience is not ideal. modern ECU's are pretty smart, and can learn around the modified signal. not to mention the modified signal is limited to only the signal it is modifying, not all the signals the ECU needs to make proper fuel and timing adjustments.

in short, there will be plenty of ways to modify the ECU, and if i heard him right, shiv@vishnu should have some product out within a month. i believe there are others also, i just havent seen any post or actually talked to them myself.

josh

Hor

I would also suggest steering clear of anything that "ties" you to your current setup. Nobody is ever satisfied with their current power output over the long term, so you want something that is end-user adjustable. No sense in paying big bucks for a re-flashing and dyno tuning session if there are better options out there. Of course, what is actually out there remains to be seen.

silverEVO8

iTrader: (12)

OK, here is my $.02: ECU upgrades and/or piggyback chips can be expensive and yield miniscule improvements while producing unanticipated negative results. My experience (bought and paid for by me) is that products such as the Unichip as sold by TurboXs (and perhaps others as well) is a piece of crap, at least as it applied to my MY02 WRX. I've also went around with several other types of signal modifiers and other "performance" up-grades. So far, I've not been very happy with these things.
I've turbocharged one Miata and supercharged another, both with mixed results. There are always problems with engine management. The replacement programmable ECU have a host of problems associated with them as well. For all the praise people sing about all the various after market ECUs, you can just read all those posts about all the little quircks and problems those guys are always having to fix.

The best bang for the buck I've ever had was putting a supercharger in an Integra GRS. It made it extremely fast (I hope my new EVO VIII will be quicker in the 1/4 mile). Of course, it did not last long The Honda engine could not take the added stress and at least one cyl went bad.

This led me to purchase the WRX. It was a very nice car but I could not leave alone I immediately added a turbo back 3" exhaust and before long the infamous Unichip/boost controller up-grade. I also installed a boost gauge, turbo timer, K&N filter and new wheels, etc. In the end, I removed all the mods except the turbo timer, boost gauge and K&N filter. I really liked the driveability of the stock car a lot better.

For the nearly $2K spent in "performance" up-grades, I got maybe a .3 second improvement in the 1/4 mile and sacrificed driveability and comfort. The Unichip caused all kinds of engine missfires and hesitations plus check engine ligths. The exhaust was too loud and eventually caused a CEL. The whole thing ended up causing driveability problems and reducing the fuel economy by roughly 10%-15%

The turbo timer can be a dangerous thing since it requires that you never forget to leave the car in neutral and pull the e-brake, I know, I know, you are supposed to do that all the time anyway, but the consequences of forgetting that without the turbo timer are a lot less likely to cause an accident. Also, you always have to explain the thing to valet parking guys, mechanics and anyone else who gets behind the wheel for any reason. All in all it's a pain in the *ss.

The boost gauge was nice to have to see the boost come up, but I did not choose it well so aesthetically it was not so good. Also, I was told by several "tuners" that the gauge was not accurate enough to use safely to tune the boost controller, ECU, etc.

The end result for me is that modifying a car will almost always be very expensive and although one can achieve impressive results, there is a very great chance that the results will be pretty substandard and the unexpected problems can be vey vexing. I tell myself that I'm not going rto do anything to this car.......

Demo

Maybe this was their plan all along! Detuned stock ecu, non emissions legal Ralliart Sport ECU "for competition use only" (hehehe). Will it be here in time for the STI launch?

trigeek37

my tuning experience has been different then many of you....
one of my first mods will be a ecu swap

I hope Apexi releases the PFC for the Evo, I adored mine in my fd, as did just about every I know who drove an fd. Easy to program and ad new maps, and with ad on datalogging piece fine tuning was easy, and the commander allowed simple on the fly adjustments.

I too am not digging the whole ecu flash thing... seems silly in this day & age to use an ecu setup like that as many people have laptops & such that they can use as a tuning tool.

but, I am far from an expert here... just my opinion.

ShapeGSX

I guess it is time to tell the reason that DSM owners are so biased against "chip" tuning. We (used to) have a great guy in the DSM community named Todd Day. He is the owner of www.tmo.com . He was one of the first guys to really understand what the ECU code in a DSM was doing. He started to modify the code to add things like gauge enhancements, engine disablers, valet mode, etc. He also removed fuel cut, added code to shut off the A/C at WOT, added a stutterbox, etc.. Along the way, he started testing various "chips" from other "tuners." He found that most of them just contained stock ECU code from various years. These chips also included a cheap bleeder boost controler to "optimize the chip setup." Riiiight. Some of the other chips did change timing or fuel, but in a way that might be dangerous.

Todd never did offer any tuning options. He felt that tuning was best left to the user. Personally, I agree. Without the ability to tune your car on the spot to the current environment, you will never get the most you can out of it.

And before you mention the obvious, yes, Todd is trustworthy. He ran the Talon Digest for over 10 years. I had the opportunity to meet him at the Diamond Star Shootout a few years ago. He taught me and a bunch of other guys a ton at an ECU tech session. Nice guy.