NOT AT ALL! And I had a bit of hassle getting my com port up and running. But the idea of re-tuning is that you get a new map when you change your mods for FREE!!!!!!! No sending the unit back (Shark or equivalent), you can load the stock tune as well, and the guy who did it even said he can program your car to use a wideband 02, but we didn't go into details.

This notion that we can't have tools to program our own motors is just BS. No one has chosen to bring one to market that's Mini specific. One could go all out and by a race computer, and many in my mustang world use things like

http://www.mustangworks.com/articles...terceptor.html

And you'll notice at the bottom that you can blow up your motor if you do it wrong.

I'm hoping we get somthing like this, but I'm not holding my breath.....

There's another one for the EEC-IV, and that's a Tweecer, it does data logging, and allows you to get to about 200 variables (scalers, vectors, tables, and functions) people even re-program inputs and outputs for Nitrous support without a piggyback computer and the like. With logging, off line analisys, and one of those dyno programs or accelerometers, you don't really need a dyno either (wide band's a good idea though).

Matt

Matt

 

Yea, I used two different standalones with my civic track car - AEM EMS and MBE.

This is an ODB1 car though. Things are much more complicated for me with the mini. I have to pass ODB2 testing in my area, which involves the technician connecting to the ECU. This prettymuch limits "legal" modification to piggyback devices or alteration of the stock maps.

For those without these restrictions, I'd take a full standalone anyday to some type of piggyback. With the amount of money some people are throwing at their cars, the additional cost of the standalone is money well spent.