How many of you are willing to perform a computer upgrade- say it was an honest price.

And what would you consider an HONEST price. Keeping in mind the parts are not cheap to begin with and considerable tuning is involved.

I'm curious as to the # of people even interested in this upgrade. There has been alot of talk about several computer upgrades on the market now.

Please take the time to respond to me with comments at keith.rivera@dep.state.fl.us or just post to the forum.


Thanks,
Keith

 

Well price makes a difference here. I always see upgrades that people are touting for like $800 - $1000. Well spend the extra $500 and get a standalone! Then you're not stuck with the settings they put in....*ANY* time you add something new to the car, you can retune for the most power, and it will then support ANYTHING you do. Turbo. Supercharger. NOS. Anything.

Even if you're not upgrading injectors, etc, standalone will work and is a good idea. Much more expandability!

Of course, this is all my opinion on the matter

SR

 

If you don't mine me posting. I am strongly considering one... I am looking at the S-AFC because of the price of $300 bucks. Now if W-R ecu upgrade was just a couple of hundred of bucks over this price it would be a no brainer... I think a fair price (based on other car ecu upgrades) is about $6 - 700 bucks since there is 2 ECU. IMO That's 2 Apexi S-AFC and tuning for the price of a W-R upgrade tuning included

I'm not ready until the spring... Unless there is one hell of a group buy...

 

Does the S-AFC allow you to tune your car pretty much along the lines of a re-programmed ECU ?

 

Computer upgrades don't hold much value unless they are put there to take advantage of a new part say a turbo, NOS, supercharger, or a new head/cams setup...

I can't see anymore than $500-$600 for a computer upgrade.
Anything more than that is just stupid unless its a standalone (like the AEM or Haltech, etc)

Greddy Emanage is coming to USA markets soon enough; the software just needs to be translated. Its basically a Super-AFC, ITC, and AIC all in one. $400 too; thats a damn good price for that kind of control.

The computer upgrade to be worth it (say for like NOS and a new set of cams) would need new fuel maps to take advantage of the cams and cams+NOS (two different maps); different ignition maps; and definitely a higher redline... and a spark revlimiter, not a fuel cut like the SC3 has... If it could take advantage of bigger injectors it would be nice as well

 

Bean, I have seen the Emanage advertised for about $300 here:

http://www.takakaira.com/performance...age_frame.html

I dont know if we will have to get two (since all the other chip companies say that one ecu controls one bank of cylinders), but even if we need two it is still only around $600. Only advantage I have heard about with the other ECUs have been tranny shift point changes and rev limiter changes I think.

 

I am not considering it at this time at all. Usually, you do not get something without giving something up in return.

My SC is essentially stock with the exception of mufflers. I would like to hear what the result of this ECU is on a likewise stock SC400 and then understand what happens to the trannie, etc over a period of time.

MadMax and Leo of Weapon-R are to be commended for their efforts, time and dollars that they spent on this project. If I were out there with them then I would not have as many unanswered questions. However, I feel that this project is promising but has not gone thru beta testing as it were.

As I understand it, MadMax's SC has a nice but very non-standard exhaust composed of a custom X over and some universal high flows. His current configuration is unclear to me. He also has the Weapon-R intake system which, Leo of Weapon-R just emailed me is not available for sale at this time.

Just before the chip MadMax changed out his ignition wireing harness. How much of the gain he has enjoyed is attributeable to the new harness, vs perhaps an old less optimal harness is unclear. There is no dyno data presented pre harness vs post harness without the chip.

Lastly, MadMax's car is a California car with perhaps advanced smog controls, we can suppose this to be the case but have no data on this. That in and of itself may mean it to be different than non-California SC400 specimens. Perhaps the chip mods have overcome or unleashed the potential of the engine by unmasking the detuning imposed by the smog controls.

So, MadMax has an SC configuration which most of us do not have at this time. The chip was programmed with MadMax's car, which is not like ours. The intake which MadMax has we cannot duplicate at this time as Weapon R is not selling it. I am sure that will soon be available however.

We also have no long term or even short term data on what this chip does to our autos in a positive or negative way. I am, for the time being waiting on the sidelines to see what gives and to see the results on some other real stock non-california SC400s.

Please do not take any of this as critical. These are the facts as I have read them and understand them to be. Notice I have not mentioned price at all or the odd need to solder in wires which I feel is micky mouse considering the space shuttle uses wire taps.

 

Bean the ECU alone gave me 38 hp on the dyno... timing and air/fuel, shift points, etc. With the gains I've gotten over the stock levels, plus what we can get out of the MAF upgrade, I'll be in supercharger HP territory for half the price. I don't have any personal interest in selling the WR upgrade other than representing for a friend that gave me a lot of help. Yes, I put some money into the R&D for it - I paid the money assuming that I would get a 25 hp boost, and that it'd be a one-off thing that couldn't be sold to other people unless they lived close enough to have it done.

The fact that it's now essentially bolt-on is a side effect of something I WANTED for my car because I couldn't replace the car with something faster for a price I could afford. I almost bought an SC300 for a turbo upgrade, but CA is too hard on smog. I really wanted the extra power, and I looked for a new car for a long time hoping I'd find someone with a Supra, all I got back were people with insanely high prices or same-day sells. With the V8 the power is there, you just have to find it.

We all have cars that were very expensive when they were new, and they don't have much of an aftermarket. If you had a Honda, you could buy all the go-fast crap you wanted for it and have yourself a 13 second (or less) economy car. Porsche people go into S-Car-Go Racing here in San Rafael, and they don't even blink spending 5 grand for maybe 60hp gain. Their motto: "you gotta pay to play"

I paid, so to hell with all this, I'm gonna go play!

 

To clarify: I have normal exhaust, with cats, that has a better inlet to the cat which has also been replaced. The pipes off the cat are 2 1/4 inch (the only non-stock pipes on the system) going into Magnaflow straight throughs. Out of those, they go into a pair of small Weapon-R R1 bomb mufflers that Leo gave me.

My intake is a larger 3 inch (not sure on the size) intake pipe with a WR V2 filter and an aluminum air intake isolator. The air sensor housing is stock, and it uses one of those MAF adapters that Chris sells, but mine came off the RMM intake that I had before. The ecu is wired in, damned if I know how but it's in there, I wasn't here when he installed it. Anyone who lives in the SF Bay Area can PM me if you want, we can hook up and race or something.. I wanna race my car

 

Now I'm a little confused, you say the ECU alone gave you 38 dyno'd Hp; then you go on to talk about your exhaust and intake being upgraded too. Well which came first, the ECU or the intake/exhaust?



Keith

 

I would like to install an upgraded ECU.

However, until they are tested on mutiple cars, I have no interest in dropping $1300. If someone wanted me to be one of the Ginny pigs, I could risk spending around $500-$700 on the chance that it may give me 25-30rwhp. Over that I don't feel comfortable.

I have a BPU++++ supra that I did get a chip for. I had no problem contacting UPRD and looking at their $1395 ecu upgrade for my supra. I ended up getting another chip, but my point is that I could have paid nearly $1400 for a chip upgrade. The difference is that the UPRD chip was tested, proven and came with a guarantee.