Brought my car out of state to get tuned and the tuner couldn't get my Power FC to work and they recommended Greddy Emanage Ultimate. I've always read poor things about that system in my research. I'm going to mess with my Power FC after work today and see if I can get it to work and if I can i'll just write them off as idiots but in the meantime i'm wondering what you guys think of the Greddy system or other options like AEM EMS?
Engine is question is RB20DET
Those two in question aren't really something you'd cross shop. One is a piggyback that "tunes in reverse" and the other is a full standalone ems.
If you aren't going to be tuning it yourself, then you should pick whatever your trusted tuner is most familiar with.
ASSuming we're talking about an Apexi Power FC with the funky hand-held deal, that should be pretty well hashed out on a Skyline and you may just need to find another tuner that has more experience with it.
I keep hearing tuners singing praises for AEM's systems, apparently they're super-easy to set up. On the cheaper side, there's Megasquirt. Those two are probably the most popular (among people who know what they're doing) and for good reasons.
Could you elaborate on "couldn't get the PowerFC to work"?
IIRC there may be a way to lock access to the maps, maybe that's the whole problem...
GameboyRMH wrote: I keep hearing tuners singing praises for AEM's systems, apparently they're super-easy to set up. On the cheaper side, there's Megasquirt. Those two are probably the most popular (among people who know what they're doing) and for good reasons.
I asked them about megasquirt and they didn't want to do it and suggested the Greddy system because they used that on their 240SX rb builds. It does sound like I need to maybe find someone else if this is what they are suggesting.
It's crazy hard to find a good tuner out here in Nevada that you can get in contact with. I was using Church Automotive for my WRX but they never get back to me on their Las Vegas visits and they are impossible to get ahold of.
Could you elaborate on "couldn't get the PowerFC to work"?
They claimed that they couldn't get it to idle and the gauges like the tach were not working. I didn't see for myself wish I did now but that doesn't matter i'm going to try it again tonight to reproduce what they were doing to see exactly what was going on. If I can get this to work I will be extremely angry this will be the 2nd place i've been to at this point that I wasted money at.
Nistune
evildky wrote: Nistune
Sounds like that might be a solution. I've been told it's good but the tuners I know all never used it.
With Nistune when you get it installed in the ECU is it running the stock map or does it need to be immediately tuned? Car is running fine now on the stock ecu untuned. It would be great if I can get it in there then just drive to a tuner rather than having to ship the car or something.
i have used SDS(simple digital systems),canada, for over 20yrs, been upgraded thru the years, last time they sent me a complete board, that fit into my original box(no Charge).
like many,it took some experience to tune correctly, but lots of info on there web site.
Swank Force One wrote: If you aren't going to be tuning it yourself, then you should pick whatever your trusted tuner is most familiar with... OR if you find you can't tune it yourself....
THIS is the MOST important thing when it comes to purchasing engine management (in my humble opinion) Just in case you bite off more than you can chew, having an experienced tuner available who is familiar with tuning the system you chose... is the difference between doing it right and half-berkley...
an RB20DET isn't extremely complicated... so any decent system should be capable.
Some systems I've heard of... ViPec, AEM, Haltech, I've also heard pretty good things about the newest MS3, there are others as well.
oldeskewltoy wrote:Swank Force One wrote: If you aren't going to be tuning it yourself, then you should pick whatever your trusted tuner is most familiar with... OR if you find you can't tune it yourself....THIS is the MOST important thing when it comes to purchasing engine management (in my humble opinion) Just in case you bite off more than you can chew, having an experienced tuner available who is familiar with tuning the system you chose...
Well the problem here is I did have a tuner that would work with Power FC but he never answers his phone or gets back to me. I call his shop and they say to text message him, no response. Ridiculous. This is a guy I used in the past to tune my WRX without problems so I thought I would be good to go. Going out of state really was a last resort at that point.
There is this place in AZ i'm going to contact when I get home, Concept Z Performance, and they can do nistune. I could sell my Power FC + hand controller and have money left over after Nistune with that being so cheap. Probably going to go that route if I can't get this power FC working myself tonight. Probably should go that route regardless because these power fc stuff was expensive.
Got home and tested my Power FC. Works. IDK wtf these people were doing. Did the initialization for the car to be able to idle and got a stable idle. IDK wtf they were talking about with the gauges everything seems fine.
One thing is weird. Even though I did this and i'm able to drive the car and it seems to be working properly whenever I start it the car is almost stalling for a second at very low RPM then shoots up to above 1500 rpm then hits idle and stays there fine.
Sounds to me like you're figuring it out on your own. Which is the way it usually is, and in my opinion, should be, with involved owners who run standalones. Noone spends more time with your car than you do (I hope!)
Iroz Motorsport is in Vegas. They have a good dyno. I don't know if Hank works with Power FCs or not, though.
oldeskewltoy wrote: an RB20DET isn't extremely complicated... so any decent system should be capable.
There is one complication - the CAS is a bit of a weird pattern; not every ECU can read the stock unit. AEM gets around this with a swap in trigger disc, although the CAS is a bit of a pain to disassemble. Some ECUs can support the stock CAS natively - MegaSquirt III will do this. In the interest of fairness, so will Haltech, and of course, the Power FC.
bradyzq wrote: Sounds to me like you're figuring it out on your own. Which is the way it usually is, and in my opinion, should be, with involved owners who run standalones. Noone spends more time with your car than you do (I hope!) Iroz Motorsport is in Vegas. They have a good dyno. I don't know if Hank works with Power FCs or not, though.
Well one thing is that I didn't want to drive 5 hours to a tuner on the untuned power FC so I figured they would just get it running there while tuning it which is what they tried to do. I can't tune this, I have no idea how to do that and don't want to experiment on my car just based on google searches and youtube lol. I can probably adjust once they get a good tune on there. I am confident in that. But starting from scratch I would be clueless and I don't have a dyno I would be doing this on a highway or something which is a bad idea imo lol
At this point, just teach yourself how to tune. Its not rocket science its just pv=nrt.
Leafy wrote: At this point, just teach yourself how to tune. Its not rocket science its just pv=nrt.
Well these people got back to me and said they would tune it again (for $250) so we'll see what happens.
A $250 tune? That doesn't sound... promising.
5 hours? Thought you were in Vegas.
The steady-state and WOT tuning should get well dialed-in on the dyno if they're any good, but it's the tinkering afterwards to make the cold start, hot start, heat-soak idle, etc, perfect that you will most likely end up doing mainly on your own over the next few months.
Do you have FC-Datalogit, or just the handheld programmer?
In reply to Swank Force One:
For real. Either their labor rate is stupid cheap or the guy running it is just stupid.
Swank Force One wrote: A $250 tune? That doesn't sound... promising.
At best they're flashing a canned tune they've got sitting around on it. At worst its someone who has no idea what they're doing and they're actually gonna "tune" it for you to get their name out there.
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