Standalone ecu for a st205, Worth it? Options

[skogs]

Hi, a workshop is changing the engine in my st205, and they have given me an offer to change the ecu to a haltech stand-alone and remap it for a total of about 900£ extra. Do you think this will be worth it? They will be putting in a Spec stage 3+ clutch while they're at it.

[bsamps4]

That sounds like a really good deal to me!

[CELL_PROTOTYPE_X]

If you plan to make big power...it's necessary.

[malpaso]

As offer it is looking really good (price of ECU and good mapping would cost 2-3 more). Still I believe you should ask few questions:

- is provider/seller reliable? For example if my current mechanic said "I have new ECU for with mapping session included for 1400€ (about equivalent of 900pounds)" I would be just staring with open mouth... Good ECU and mapping costs about 2500-3000 Euros. But if the same I heard from guy who worked on my car previously I would say "no" becasue for this price I would have from him only overpriced ECU (with probably suspicious history) with some base map he downloaded from interent. I am not saying anything about your seller now! I just met few people in my life so far and know that level of quality (and sense of quality) can be different. Price is not everything.

- Are you really sure it's all inclusive total price? I mean... price of HW and value of map is one thing but there is also another aspects. Like instalation of ECU to the car (wiring it). Plus I would expect there are needed some sensors to buy in addition for proper functionality (always is there something like this). Necessary wide-band lambda for air/fuel ratio measurement??? What ever... just came to my mind first. I would check this as well. Just to be sure.

- do you really need new ECU? Some say... if you don't want go above 300HP your stock ECU is good enough. You can keep many OEM parts on car and new standalone is just waste of money. That is what only you know the best what is your goal and expectations.

hope that helped...

[yellowchinaman]

How much HP's do you plan on gaining is a big question.
Quite a few of the guys with fours have changed to Blitz or Apexi ECU's on stock internals and some breathing mods. They claim it's the best thing ever to free the stock power and puts the car to it's limits. But we're talking around the 300bhp mark with great improvement in torque.

I am a true believer in non branded ECU's and would be interested to see how cost effective this is going to be.
At the end of the day £900 is a good deal.

[Trodai]

having a standalone Ecu is only worthwhile if you have someone good to map it, I can see pros and cons in the standalone Ecu it can be better customised to your car and fuel available to it and add extra features like launch control.. i have seen claims of better fuel mpg but alot of this depends on the mapper. the standalone ecu will not be as variable/smooth under certain conditions unless mapped to it i.e running in extreme atmosphere temperatures i have heard of cases when temps drop to extreme colds cars wont run due to the map not being able to compensate for this but would run with stock ecu. id do alot of research and look at your needs..

[skogs]

The mechanic have a really good reputation, and is a true toyota enthusiast. The price is included everything, however he has to do the mapping on the road as he doesnt have a 4wd dyno.

The goal is just above 300bhp. Other mods are: adjustable Tein SS coilovers, 19" rims, aussie downpipe, complete mongoose exhaust, hks sqv dump valve and a wide-band lambda.

This post has been edited by skogs: Nov 25, 2013 - 2:01 PM

[malpaso]

Road mapping explains a lot. No need to pay for dyno rental. It makes price more "believable" as good investment.especially when you believe he's good.

This post has been edited by malpaso: Nov 26, 2013 - 4:18 AM

[skogs]

I will probably go for it then. The mechanic recommended me to switch to the original air intake, but with a KN panel filter. Could i still use the hks dump valve? And does it serve a purpose other than being louder than the stock one?

And one other thing, is it really necessary to have a turbo timer? Currently there is an apexi timer installed, but it feels a bit silly to walk away with the car still running. i Usually dont drive like a mad man just before parking.

[malpaso]

The mechanic recommended me to switch to the original air intake, but with a KN panel filter.

My mechanic did the same. Why making cold air intake box when you can use OEM one? I have OEM air intake box with apexi panel filter.

Could i still use the hks dump valve? And does it serve a purpose other than being louder than the stock one?

Why not? I have after-market Greddy dump valve installed . Purpose I see in chance to adjust it better (to open when should be opened in relation to your setup. Not more, not less). ..and I also like the sound .

And one other thing, is it really necessary to have a turbo timer? Currently there is an apexi timer installed, but it feels a bit silly to walk away with the car still running. i Usually dont drive like a mad man just before parking.

no... never had it on my car . No worries to remove it

This post has been edited by malpaso: Nov 26, 2013 - 8:28 AM

[delusionz]

just because you haven't heard of it, haltech does have a name for itself, it is not a no-name made-in-china deal at all.

sounds like a pretty average deal for the haltech and tune, you cant promise a price like that at all.

a good wiring job will take a day or two even if he's done several 3sgte st205 looms. a good road tune will take a full day to complete with a couple hours in the morning , a couple hours during the day, a couple hours at night.

then when you finally hit the dyno, all that mapping has to be gone over again with knock headphones and exhaust sniffer. road tuning will only save you a couple runs on the dyno, not enough to make it worthwhile, its alot faster to ramp up 4th gear on a dyno than it is to find a good stretch of road where you can nail it

[skogs]

There is a guy with a 4wd dyno, but he is insanely expensive. Can a good road tune be substansially better than stock?

[delusionz]

depends how good the tuner is, but in general, starting with a basemap and trimming it down to make the individual car run happy is about achieving reliability and safety for the motor rather than seeking power which is done on the dyno. so on a road tune its hard to say that youll get any gains at stock boost levels, the gains will come from increasing the boost and mapping out higher boost than the stock ecu allows

whereas on a dyno tune which is done to increase power at all revs and all boost levels. the road tune is done afterwards to make sure it all safe

[lagos]

There is a guy with a 4wd dyno, but he is insanely expensive. Can a good road tune be substansially better than stock?

No.
You can tune the fuel on the street, but the real gains come from tuning the timing map, and that is something that can only be done on a dyno where knock and torque output can be measured.

Don't think that an EMS is just going to magically solve all of your problems and make your car a thousand times faster. The engineers at Toyota knew what they were doing when they tuned the stock ecu.

[delusionz]

^-- the difference between st205 tuned and st205 stock is like night and day,

fuel economy, turbo response and midrange torque are all drastically improved. at the same boost levels a tune can pickup an extra 10-20hp from the midrange to the redline, with every psi after that yeilding a good 5-10hp spread across the whole range and from stock theres a good 5psi you can bump up from 14 to 19.

the more advanced the ecu is the more things you can do when you find yourself detonation limited at a certain power level you want to surpass

[malpaso]

In my opinion both guys (lagos and delusionz) are right.

I can confirm from my experience: Street mapping is just useful just for "base map" because you can not simply simulate all situations on public road. I passed this mapping on my car as driver and it was pretty scary sometimes . And always final tune up was made on dyno. To get 100% precise results. Sad is it costs money. 4WD dyno rental for 1/2 of day (or even whole day) plus time of professional who tweak the map is not cheap. This gives you great opportunity to find weak spots. For example situation: when you can find on dyno when you reach 7000rpm you are running at 94% of your injector's duty cycle. That means when you get inside bit bad fuel (or your injectors become dirty) + rev you engine to 7000RPMs you will have too lean mixture and risking troubles.... Something like this you hardly discover on the road. That is why I talked about thousands of Euros in my first post here for upgrade like this. In comparison to 10k€ investment to the engine it's wise pay for dyno. Just my opinion.

I can not confirm: how much would be different remapped stock car (no mods, just new map created). When I passed through mapping it was always after some upgrade. From general knowledge (and you can say the same for any car) car makers makes maps very conservative. They count with any possible quality of fuel around globe where car is sold. So map is made as 3x bullet-proof to keep engine safe. When you re-map it you just make it more tweaked to your local fuel quality = you can squeeze more power from it (plus maybe also better curve when making small upgrades). I would not call result like "nigh and day" difference but there definitely is.

[skogs]

It seems that some recommend dyno tune, some road tune and most recommend both. After a good road tune, how much time on a dyno are we looking at? For an experienced tuner. A local shop charges 2k€ per HOUR.

Are there any dangers in driving around with a properly road-tuned ecu? I dont want to experience a blown engine in this car ever again. Embarrassing and expensive.

[pitcelica]

You need to understand that a full standalone tuning includes a lot of things other than fuel and timing :

-idle control
-warm up control
-cranking/startup control
-Accel/Decel control
-Etc...

A lot of these things can be tuned without the need of a dyno. You need to understand completely the Standalone ECU you are using along with the software if you want ot do it yourself. If you don't want to mess with all of it, send your car to a tuner and pay the price.

The only need for the dyno is to find power. You can find power mostly by playing with the ignition table. You can also find some power by leaning the AFR target at high RPM (around 12:1 AFR). This is where the dyno shine. For all the other things, you can do them on the street/in your garage.

Based on my tuning experience, it took around 3-4 hours to fully tune the ignition table (from 2000 RPM to 7500 RPM). The fuel table didn't need much tuning because I were able to tune it pretty nicely on the street (thanks to my wideband AFR sensor and the Megasquirt Tunerstudio VEAL software). The rate was 150$/hr for the tuner and the dyno (Dynapack 2WD).

My huge advice for the guys that are looking for a tuner is : ask them what kind of dyno they have : inertia or load-bearing. If you only want a WOT full power dyno number, than an inertia dyno can do the job. But if you want to tune part-throttle (this is where you can gain some fuel efficiency/MPG), you really need a load-bearing dyno.

A street-tuned car won't necessary blow his engine unless there is something clearly wrong with the parameters inside the ECU. Usually, you use a retarded igntion timing table and maybe a richer than it needs to be AFR target table, just to be safe. The engine will only lack some power and the fuel efficiency won't be as high as it should be, but at least you will be able to drive your car.

Sam

This post has been edited by pitcelica: Dec 3, 2013 - 2:30 PM

[lagos]

^-- the difference between st205 tuned and st205 stock is like night and day,

fuel economy, turbo response and midrange torque are all drastically improved. at the same boost levels a tune can pickup an extra 10-20hp from the midrange to the redline, with every psi after that yeilding a good 5-10hp spread across the whole range and from stock theres a good 5psi you can bump up from 14 to 19.

the more advanced the ecu is the more things you can do when you find yourself detonation limited at a certain power level you want to surpass

I'm not saying there is no difference. I'm saying that there won't be much difference if you don't visit a dyno and properly tune the spark map.

This post has been edited by lagos: Dec 3, 2013 - 8:59 PM

[skogs]

Finally, the car has been mapped, but i suspect it is not optimal. Its harder to start, uses more fuel and its useless below 1500rpm. I talked to the mechanic about the last problem, and he just answered " youre not supposed to drive at 1500, so it doesnt matter".

When cruising the AFR shows 10-12. Same conditions with the stock ecu it was around 14-15. If i slowly apply the throttle when driving below 1500rpm, it suddenly jerks forward. Above 3krpm it has got way more power, but drivability has taken a serious hit.

This post has been edited by skogs: Sep 12, 2014 - 5:14 PM