I imagine you could make it a bit easier by using a system already set-up to run on the 951, such as:

http://www.speedforceracing.com/prod...management.php

 

To answer the original question – standalone vs piggyback.
The modern piggyback systems are getting pretty impressive with their abilities and on newer ODBII cars it is difficulty to find a reason to go to pure standalone for a street car.
That being said – our 944’s are getting pretty old and the wiring harness are quite often not in the best of shape. The DMEs are being a 20 year old design in addition to being a known failure point. Kind of like hot rodding a Mac Plus or an 8088!!

If you want to be fair you need to compare prices based on replacing the stock harness with either a new stock or a custom made unit.

The drivability of a standalone is up to the tuner/programmer or what ever you want top call them. I work with the Electromotive system and have gotten better drivability than the stock set up (especially considering the mods involved).

Finally – the most important thing on either piggyback or standalone – buy the system from somebody that will be there to support you. You don’t want to go through he time and effort of learning the system form scratch as well as the dyno time to get it tuned to your set up from a blank slate.

Chris White

 

Chris, what amount of work and/or money is normal for setting up a standalone for drivablity comparable to stock?

 

There is an awful lot of variables there!
When I started out with the Electromotive stuff a bunch of years ago I would guess that the first one I did (my own car) had 100’s of hours tweaking the cold start, idle, throttle response, off boost power….and many other things. Setting a standalone system up for max power is the easiest part of the deal, making it truly road worthy takes a bit of tweaking.
I tuned my first set up by datalogging (in great detail) street driving – left foot breaking makes for a great road dyno, you can hold it at a given boost level and RPM…as long as you have big reds! When I got the set up to a chassis dyno the changes in the VE table were 1 or 2%. Now I feel I can tune a tec3 without a chassis dyno, after all we are looking for real world response.

That would add to why I say to get a system from a vendor with knowledge and experience. You can spend a lot of time and money (hopefully not engine parts!) getting your new system up and running – better to have some expert advise and hopefully a basic file to start.

Chris White

 

because I know first hand what's its capable of

But as Chris White said you don't want to be paying for a lot of R&D in fitting an ECU that has not been fitted to a 951 previously. It's probably be easier if you intend to turn it into a track car forever, you need to think about the removal process as well if you intend to resell the car as a street car. Unfortunately the 951 market are so small for any standalone ECU manufacture to bother making a plug-in board. They only need to make a plug-in board for the wrx, evo etc... and they will have a market of ten of thousands. A plug-in for the 951 they be lucky to sell one hundred.

 

Not only would they be lucky to sell 100 – 50 of those would be calling to find out why it doesn’t work perfectly and the answer would be – Old TPS is flakey, wiring has intermittents, corrosion on connections, and so on.

I thought about making a tec3 set up that was ‘plug and play’ with the stock harness but gave up the idea – too many problems with 15 year old sensors!!

Chris White

 

First, as a disclaimer, I have not used a standalone computer on a car of my own.

Second, I think that you will find that the two biggest success factors for a standalone are quality of customer support and quality of integration. You can argue until you are blue in the face about Link vs. AEM vs. Wolf vs. TEC3 vs. Motec and they all have their ups and downs. Almost all of the time, and especially on a non-professional race car or street car, the computer itself isn't the determining factor.

For the 951, at least in the US, I would say that only the TEC3 from Chris White or a Link setup from Performance Developments really make sense. The only exception being a person that already knows standalone setup inside and out and that is seeking the challenge and effort associated with the integration and lack of support.

Max

 

Like Chris White says, it depends on the guy tuning the car. I was able to completely map (from scratch) a supercharged E36 M3 with cams using TEC3 in under an hour. Involved about 30 mins on the road, and 20 mins on the dyno.

 

Rage, this E36 M3 wasn't the first standalone you had setup, right? I assume the experience gained from your SDS system helped.

Max

 

Ivé seen guys using the Autotune function with great sucess!
I know a guy in sweden that made 10 sec runs ont q-mile with his Supra using the Autotune funktion and a decent ignition curve...

/pete

 

My Link was pretty well tuned out of the box, it was drivable from the go. But to really fine tune at a cell level for fuel and timing and acell values off the wide band and detonation tools, it will take time!

 

Is the Autotune just closed loop lambda?