Obviously, but I still don't know if I'd go to all of the effort of getting a custom Haltech 1500 setup working on a IX when I could spend a little bit more to get the plug-and-play 2500 solution with zero additional effort.

 

Remember the ol sayin. You get what you pay for.

That piece right there though "local support if required" is a big one. "Tuners" that can take a look at something and help out on the STOCK ecu are just about everywhere. If I were to do it I'd deff be doing Motec M150. While I do have a local shop that does these extremely well, they don't go to any races, and none of the shops at said races would I really trust with a truly custom map that it would end up being. So the happy medium for me is the AiM monitoring and the stock ecu doing until that changes.

 

Is the stock ECU really that bad as to not be used? Are people blowing up motors? Or is it a matter of wanting to eek out every percentage of performance? Or... is it just being able to monitor more? Safety checks? Higher resolution data logging? All of the above? And is it really necessary? I see people doing amazing things and going really fast on the stock ECU. I ask because everyone I know that has gone with a stand alone unit, has some serious growing pains they go through before they can trust it and have it working they way it should. If the juice is worth the squeeze, then I get it.

 

Stock ECU can go a long way.

I'm considering an upgrade for three main reasons: 1) Better safety/failsafes 2) Better logging and 3) Not having to jump through hoops to make the stock ECU do what I want.

It's certainly not necessary if you're willing to play all the games to make the stock ECU work properly. However, I'd like to get on top of an aftermarket ECU and associated safety mechanisms before I spend money on an expensive motor upgrade.

 

I did mine mostly for the ease of tuning and amount of safety parameters you can set up. If i blow an engine, its cause a rod is going out the side of the block. Plus free flex fuel. I really did not like all the add ons you have to do to make the factory ecu do what you want.

Edit - forgot to say that full time o2 adjustments are also awesome. Thats what really sold me on it.

 

I’ll be changing as I want to modernise my road car. Cruise control through DBW and ACD control on one unit are plus points for me, then the usual extra IO’s and failsafes that can be utilised.

 

I am looking into link G4+ as a affordable alternative, to make mapping easier and to run ITB intake manifold at some point..

Motec would be great but funds are not there..

 

But that's the thing, it's not zero additional effort. There's still nearly the same amount of setup work required whether you go 1500 or 2500. Plus the 1500 can be made more than capable by adding an IO expander. The 1500 with IO expander is more capable than a 2500 and costs less.


OEM ECUs will never be as easy to work with as a standalone. I work with them every day on engine dynos at work. There's loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of tables that aren't ever even used when you're tuning a car. Lots of them get in the way and make it harder to do simple things. The refresh rate is atrocious on datastreams, especially when you're talking about ECUs that are 15+ years old. You're limited on safeties, for example oil pressure is just a dummy switch; you don't actually know what oil pressure is, you just know it's over 7psi. Running any non OEM sensor isn't possible in most cases, like if you wanted to add any extra temperature sensors or a turbo speed sensor. Also, on most standalones you're able to make control tables using nearly any data parameters for the axis values which means you gain higher control over everything. Some of this might sound pretty moot, but when you get heavily into racing it becomes almost necessary to have this kind of control and resolution.

 

Anyone know where I can score clear lexan flat luvers/extractors? Looking for something 6-8 inches long and 3 inches wide. She said.

 

Thanks for the replies, guys. Kinda what I figured.

 

Those are pretty short for most of the louvers on the interweb. Adding the clear lexan requirement makes it even worse. Where are you trying to put the vent?

 

I've got the drysump tank in back of the pass area, mounted the catch can to the cage above and behind it right up against the rear pass window midway. So I need an extractor or the expensive rally style vents to pull the fumes out.

 

What Austin said.

And from a tuning stand point, there is no "trickery" in the code to get the ECU to do we want. RE- the half assed speed density for the 8/9 ECU and the way the flex fuel works. Its all there already and works as intended because its how the firmware is coded. It's not using a modified firmware that sort of works. It makes tuning simpler. As well as changing parts simpler. You change injectors on a stock ECU, and its a complete retune. On a stand alone, you plug in the new injector data and ship it. Change a map sensor? Stock ECU needs full retune, stand alone you just plug in the new MAP sensor data and ship it.

Datalogging is much better and easier on stand alones. On my car I have the tactrix set up to log with the SD card slot, but it was a decent amount of work to figure it out. And with a car even at my level that isn't "that" much power, you can see the ECU have occasional glitches in the log. Usually you'll see load make a big jump for no reason for a few data points. As long as timing or fuel doesn't jump with it, you ignore it. But it still points to the limitations we're dealing with.

Things like full time closed loop and actually safety strategies are a huge plus as well.

 

It's too bad jcsbank's DMA logging work never really took off. I patched my ECU with the DMA logging code and wrote a custom logger. IIRC, I was getting something like 50Hz data logging rates from the stock ECU across multiple channels.

I'd still rather have a standalone that handles it all seamlessly, though.

 

One other thing that hasnt been mentioned, no flash tuning and live updating. Flash tuning loosing data like fuel trims in stock ECU is lame when trying to dial in injectors where like in DSMLink we could update values a little at a time and see if the LTFTs moved in the right direction.

Dialing in cold cranking on the stock ECU is doable but pretty convoluted finding the right tables and then wondering if some tables have an effect or not.

For me, logging and safeties are #1 reason I'll change.