ECU Slection and Tuning Capabilities

[Drift King]

I'm been hearing alot about how DSM Link is so great for DSM motors. And yes thats true, but what about standalone ecu, I mean, come on man, how come no one in here ever talked about standalone ecu. Not dissing on the DSM link, but its not even a piggyback system. Anyway, it would be nice if someone could talk about the various type of ECU, AEM, Power FC, etc. Because, it would really help some of us whom using standalone than a DSM figure of SAFC. And compare each ecu to one another and see what is easier to tune and produce better result for your car.

 

[Ludachris]

Not sure why this was posted in Site Feedback. Moved to a more appropriate forum.

 

[snowborder714]

If you want to know more about standalone systems, talk to turboglenn (profile link - View Profile: turboglenn - DSMtuners.com). He is very knowledgeable about these and has tuned and worked with many different systems.

 

[NN4S]

I'm been hearing alot about how DSM Link is so great for DSM motors. And yes thats true, but what about standalone ecu, I mean, come on man, how come no one in here ever talked about standalone ecu. Not dissing on the DSM link, but its not even a piggyback system. Anyway, it would be nice if someone could talk about the various type of ECU, AEM, Power FC, etc. Because, it would really help some of us whom using standalone than a DSM figure of SAFC. And compare each ecu to one another and see what is easier to tune and produce better result for your car.

IMO, the biggest advantage of using DSMLink when compared to ANY of the standalones is many fold:

A) DSMLink is the most flexible tuning solution that retains the factory safeguards built in from the factory. While it will still let you alter things enough to totally screw your engine, it can be used with relative ease on anything from a stock DSM to a pretty heavily modded car and be quite effective at it. It changes the factory ECU from a locked box into a relatively flexible and communicative system for tuning and troubleshooting your DSM's driveability.

I've even used it on one of my DSM's (my current DD) to detune it to use 87 octane fuel (the cheap stuff) on stock boost to stretch my budget further. No, I don't drive it like a maniac with that tune, but it does let me drive in a fairly normal manner while getting about 5 MPG more than I was on the higher-priced 93 octane. The real advantage is that I can go back to the hotter tune at any time simply by going back to the higher octane fuel & loading the cal settings I have saved from it (just like a standalone).

B) The limits to what you can adjust with DSMLink are generally in your favor for at least 80% of the folks that are looking to tune their DSMs; the majority of them don't need the complexity that stand-alones like AEM's unit have to offer. While any standalone can offer much more than a factory based ECU tuning system since it's software & firmware are designed to be more flexible, why bother with that level of complexity if you don't absolutely have to? As with any system, the more that you can do to it, the more that there is to make a costly mistake with by tweaking the wrong thing.

C) Piggybacks are even less appealing to me simply because they are the "phantom in the wings" that doesn't directly communicate what's needed to the ECU. They are simply used to fool the ECU into believing the operating conditions are different from what they actually are to make things work. Yes, they do work, but why not deal directly with the ECU instead of trying to fool it? I'd much rather have direct control than deal with that.

Yes, I have some experience with all of the systems I mentioned; the AEM blew me away with how flexible it is. While the car it was on needed it (mainly for all of the extra sensors it was running), the opportunity to mess things up with the wrong settings was constantly in my mind. It would be absolutely daunting to me to imagine trying to tune a new build from scratch with it if I hadn't already gained the basic experience that DSMLink gave me the opportunity to do in a relatively failsafe environment. As far as the piggybacks go, I believe that folks would be better off saving their money a little longer to pick up a DSMLink system. At least there always seems to be someone else out there looking for a piggyback to buy when you do decide that it wasn't enough and you want to sell it to upgrade to a better way to tune!

 

[steve]

Ignoring the details, DSMLink turns your factory ECU into a standalone.

The current version doesn't provide people with the low level access to everything like a standalone does but the upside is that your car runs out of the box and the tuning most people need to do is much simpler than programming a AEM, Microtech, or Haltec.

Piggyback solutions are less powerful than DSMLink because they lie to a stock ECU and create secondary problems because of it like too much timing advance as injectors get bigger. The SAFC is the most common piggyback used.

There is information here on other solutions but since most people don't need more than what DSMLink provides few take on the headaches running a full standalone without some shop doing all the tuning.