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Suby EMS Challenge
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 30
From: Phoenix
Car Info: 2004 Impreza WRX STi
Suby EMS Challenge
Greetings everyone,
I represent ProjectCar Magazine; an online magazine that is dedicated to the world of today’s high tech sport compact automobiles. I have visited this forum a lot lately and have seen the numerous posts by people wanting to know the details, benefits, gains, drawbacks, etc., about the different Engine Management Systems out there. I want to inform everyone about a project that we are coordinating. We are attempting to put together a dyno-tuning event that may answer most or possibly your entire EMS related questions.
Our plan is to get tuners of the most popular Subaru engine management systems (Vishnu ECU/XEDE, Hydra, eManage, COBB, UTEC, AEM EMS, ECUTEK, etc.) together in one location to issue a challenge to see which tuner (using their preferred EMS) can get the best overall performance tune using test cars that we provide.
All testing will be done under the exact same conditions, on the exact same dyno located in Arizona. We'd like to try and put this challenge out to all tuner shops that 'specialize' in tuning Subaru's, in particular the 04-06' model year WRX STI's.
We'd like to make it fun for everyone by having the event be open to the public for tuning, that way fellow Subby owners can mingle and be apart of the event. We'd also like to put together some sort of track event as well. We will be taking pictures, video, compiling results and featuring the whole event coverage in an upcoming issue of ProjectCar Magazine.
We have already sent invitations to ECUTEK, TurboXS, Vishnu and Cobb. ECUTEK has responded and Clark Turner will be representing them. The others have not responded as of yet and we still have to invite a few more. If you are a vendor and you think your company would be interested in participating in this event, please let me know.
We are simply posting this here to gain interest in the event and see what you all think about the idea. Please post your comments, and I'll try to answer any questions that you may have about the event.
(This post was approved by i-club.com before posting)
Sincerely,
Keith Sipmann
President & Publisher
ProjectCar Magazine
info@projectcarmagazine.com
www.projectcarmagazine.com
I represent ProjectCar Magazine; an online magazine that is dedicated to the world of today’s high tech sport compact automobiles. I have visited this forum a lot lately and have seen the numerous posts by people wanting to know the details, benefits, gains, drawbacks, etc., about the different Engine Management Systems out there. I want to inform everyone about a project that we are coordinating. We are attempting to put together a dyno-tuning event that may answer most or possibly your entire EMS related questions.
Our plan is to get tuners of the most popular Subaru engine management systems (Vishnu ECU/XEDE, Hydra, eManage, COBB, UTEC, AEM EMS, ECUTEK, etc.) together in one location to issue a challenge to see which tuner (using their preferred EMS) can get the best overall performance tune using test cars that we provide.
All testing will be done under the exact same conditions, on the exact same dyno located in Arizona. We'd like to try and put this challenge out to all tuner shops that 'specialize' in tuning Subaru's, in particular the 04-06' model year WRX STI's.
We'd like to make it fun for everyone by having the event be open to the public for tuning, that way fellow Subby owners can mingle and be apart of the event. We'd also like to put together some sort of track event as well. We will be taking pictures, video, compiling results and featuring the whole event coverage in an upcoming issue of ProjectCar Magazine.
We have already sent invitations to ECUTEK, TurboXS, Vishnu and Cobb. ECUTEK has responded and Clark Turner will be representing them. The others have not responded as of yet and we still have to invite a few more. If you are a vendor and you think your company would be interested in participating in this event, please let me know.
We are simply posting this here to gain interest in the event and see what you all think about the idea. Please post your comments, and I'll try to answer any questions that you may have about the event.
(This post was approved by i-club.com before posting)
Sincerely,
Keith Sipmann
President & Publisher
ProjectCar Magazine
info@projectcarmagazine.com
www.projectcarmagazine.com
Registered User
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 15
In theory a good idea, but what exactly does "the best overall performance tune" mean? The best for 1/4 mile? The best for road track, autocross, rally, towing your trailer home? Peak power, drivability? I think it's a great idea to get all these great minds together, but if you don't offer some impartial method to judge the attributes and detriments of each entry, then you'll have missed the point, and you may end up with some hurt feelings.
Great idea! However I feel that EMS is not only reliant on the product, but by the knowledge and talent of a tuner. I'm sure many users have gone out and bought their EMS and experiemented with different maps or perhaps researched several sites that contained info from people doing the same thing. Bottom line: I feel this event would be a true representation of each product's ability by using the same, non-biased tuner. Also, I'm pretty sure "the best overall performance tune" translates into everyday driveability. The kinda tune that's streetable but still competetive.
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 30
From: Phoenix
Car Info: 2004 Impreza WRX STi
Originally Posted by Weak Sauce
Also, I'm pretty sure "the best overall performance tune" translates into everyday driveability. The kinda tune that's streetable but still competetive.
Keep in mind everyone, this is just an idea at the moment. We don't have all of the details worked out yet. It's not happening tommorrow, we have a lot of planning that will go into this. This is going to take some time to put together. Which is why we are trying to gauge an interest before we spend a lot of time on it.
Most of the EMS companies have not responded yet to the "idea". So far we have ECUTEK and UTEC possibly particpating. I'll post more when more details are available.
--
Keith Sipmann
President & Publisher
ProjectCar Magazine
info@projectcarmagazine.com
www.projectcarmagazine.com
Registered User
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 15
Originally Posted by 2Quick
Weak Sauce, your correct.
Keep in mind everyone, this is just an idea at the moment. We don't have all of the details worked out yet. It's not happening tommorrow, we have a lot of planning that will go into this. This is going to take some time to put together. Which is why we are trying to gauge an interest before we spend a lot of time on it.
Most of the EMS companies have not responded yet to the "idea". So far we have ECUTEK and UTEC possibly particpating. I'll post more when more details are available.
--
Keith Sipmann
President & Publisher
ProjectCar Magazine
info@projectcarmagazine.com
www.projectcarmagazine.com
Keep in mind everyone, this is just an idea at the moment. We don't have all of the details worked out yet. It's not happening tommorrow, we have a lot of planning that will go into this. This is going to take some time to put together. Which is why we are trying to gauge an interest before we spend a lot of time on it.
Most of the EMS companies have not responded yet to the "idea". So far we have ECUTEK and UTEC possibly particpating. I'll post more when more details are available.
--
Keith Sipmann
President & Publisher
ProjectCar Magazine
info@projectcarmagazine.com
www.projectcarmagazine.com
iClub Silver Vendor
iTrader: (12)
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 8,228
From: 631 Railroad Ave. Fairfield, CA
Car Info: A Laptop
CFoD is right on the money here.
I actually arranged a similar event about two years ago. The challenge involved a single stock test car and all of the invited tuners were asked to provide an off the shelf map to be tested on a dyno on the day of the event. We ended up with Cobb, Vishnu, and I-Speed participating in the event and all of the base maps ran very similarly with only a 4-5whp variance between the lowest and highest entry. The main problem we ran into was that the day of the event ended up being very warm and every ECU tested experienced significant audible knock during the dyno pulls, which IMO should pretty much disqualify that ECU from the competition anyway.
Aside from the dyno tests which proved to be pretty much useless, I had also wanted to do a judged aspect of the competition which would involve several judges to drive the car with each ECU and rate each one in several aspects of drivability and overall feel. Sadly I found that this would not be possible to do in a single day, so that part of the competition was scratched. In hind site, this part of the competition would have proven to be much more usefull than the dyno pulls and if I had to choose between the two, I would certainly choose this. Of course to get any useful data out of such a judged competition, the tests would have to be done blind (judges don't know which ECU they're driving when), and the categories would have to be well thought out and defined wich very specific scoring schemes.
I think that for any daily driver, drivability and overall feel of the car is much more important than a possible variance of a couple peak whp from one tune to the next that could easily be accounted for by dyno reading variances from run to run. It may also be important to note variables of each tune such as a/f ratio's, peak boost levels, any pinging encountered during the test, hesitations, boost spikes, etc.
It seems that all of the good tuners out there are making very similar numbers in the end, so that really shouldn't be a customer's main concern. Rather most customers should look for reliability, drivability, smoothness, and overall feel when choosing a tuner and/or EM.
BTW, I'd be happy to either participate in this event either as a competitor or just help you guys organize it and hopefully get better results than I did with my previous attempt.
Thanks
I actually arranged a similar event about two years ago. The challenge involved a single stock test car and all of the invited tuners were asked to provide an off the shelf map to be tested on a dyno on the day of the event. We ended up with Cobb, Vishnu, and I-Speed participating in the event and all of the base maps ran very similarly with only a 4-5whp variance between the lowest and highest entry. The main problem we ran into was that the day of the event ended up being very warm and every ECU tested experienced significant audible knock during the dyno pulls, which IMO should pretty much disqualify that ECU from the competition anyway.
Aside from the dyno tests which proved to be pretty much useless, I had also wanted to do a judged aspect of the competition which would involve several judges to drive the car with each ECU and rate each one in several aspects of drivability and overall feel. Sadly I found that this would not be possible to do in a single day, so that part of the competition was scratched. In hind site, this part of the competition would have proven to be much more usefull than the dyno pulls and if I had to choose between the two, I would certainly choose this. Of course to get any useful data out of such a judged competition, the tests would have to be done blind (judges don't know which ECU they're driving when), and the categories would have to be well thought out and defined wich very specific scoring schemes.
I think that for any daily driver, drivability and overall feel of the car is much more important than a possible variance of a couple peak whp from one tune to the next that could easily be accounted for by dyno reading variances from run to run. It may also be important to note variables of each tune such as a/f ratio's, peak boost levels, any pinging encountered during the test, hesitations, boost spikes, etc.
It seems that all of the good tuners out there are making very similar numbers in the end, so that really shouldn't be a customer's main concern. Rather most customers should look for reliability, drivability, smoothness, and overall feel when choosing a tuner and/or EM.
BTW, I'd be happy to either participate in this event either as a competitor or just help you guys organize it and hopefully get better results than I did with my previous attempt.
Thanks
IF this does go down i would break it up into two groups:
Stand alones....AEM and Hydra
Flashes/Piggybacks...Xede/Cobb/ECUTEK
Big difference between the two in terms of product cost and tuning cost aswell.
I wish you luck in gettin this together, it is gonna be hard to pull off.
You may want to think about doing some pulls of say 30-100 mph to test the actual affect the tunes have on the performance of the car...as many times dynos #'s don't transfer over to real world #'s.
Stand alones....AEM and Hydra
Flashes/Piggybacks...Xede/Cobb/ECUTEK
Big difference between the two in terms of product cost and tuning cost aswell.
I wish you luck in gettin this together, it is gonna be hard to pull off.
You may want to think about doing some pulls of say 30-100 mph to test the actual affect the tunes have on the performance of the car...as many times dynos #'s don't transfer over to real world #'s.
Last edited by MARKSTI; Dec 7, 2005 at 08:52 AM.
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 30
From: Phoenix
Car Info: 2004 Impreza WRX STi
Well I hate to say it,...but I don't think this is going to happen anyhow. It seems that the only EMS manufactuers that are willing to put their product through any testing like this is ECUTEK and TurboXS. It would have been an interesting article if done correctly.
Since I'm on this forum now, can you guys think of anything else that you would like to see an article done on? Any comparison testing? Part testing or installs? Etc.
Sincerely,
Keith Sipmann
President & Publisher
ProjectCar Magazine
info@projectcarmagazine.com
www.projectcarmagazine.com
Since I'm on this forum now, can you guys think of anything else that you would like to see an article done on? Any comparison testing? Part testing or installs? Etc.
Sincerely,
Keith Sipmann
President & Publisher
ProjectCar Magazine
info@projectcarmagazine.com
www.projectcarmagazine.com
Registered User
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 528
From: 925
Car Info: White 2000 2.5RS-Turbo
I'm in the middle of a 2.5L turbo motor build. With the hands-on experience I have, lurking on most EFI discussions, comparing variables of price, reliability, added features, and USER INTERFACE... I've found THIS EFI SYSTEM from 034 Motorsports. They are Audi tuning gurus. They have that market on lockdown. Their EFI system is amazing! When first discovered, it did everything the TEC did, better, easier, with more user support. The interface is easy to use, while having the ability to utilize more advanced configurations. The customer service is incredible, and the price is right. Research in hand, This is the system I will be using very soon.
You should email any questions you may have to those guys. Tell em "Subaru Dan" sent you.
Happy Boosting!
-Dan
You should email any questions you may have to those guys. Tell em "Subaru Dan" sent you.
Happy Boosting!-Dan
Registered User
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 527
From: Glen Rock, PA
Car Info: 95 Impreza coup, green, 5speed 1.8l awd
One word "megasquirt"
http://www.bgsoflex.com/megasquirt.html
http://www.bgsoflex.com/megasquirt.html
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