I was watching "The Fast and the Furious" the other day and couldn't help think about the part when they mentioned that he spent 10 grand on a stanf alone fuel management system. Here is the question. What is it, what does it do, and could it be used for the MCS? How expensive is it really? Is it feasible?

 

I guess nobody has an answer...

 

Sure it could be done, for i have a stand alone on my GTA, it would easily run the MINI motor, but you will lose all other functions of the factory ecu, its about 1500-2000, look at either commander 950 from holley built for eight cylinders but has the option for running four as well as accel's dfi and many others, i have the holley system on my TA but it was built for a race only car so i didnt mind losing ac, cruise, torque converter lock up, etc.......in the mini i would not be suprised if you lost airbags, abs, dsc, and there probably would be only one issue would be the drive by wire which in another thread i have seen that there is a conversion kit to make the mini a cable throttlebody... it would be expensive, but could be done, i personally think i will wait and see what happens with reprgramming the ecu, for that the mini computer reprogrammed will retain other functions.

 

that movie is crap for many reasons, the one that stands out in my mind right now is in the beginnign scene, he is testing the eclipse, count the shifts in the scene as he accelerates to top speed, I counted 6 shifts, or times when it can be heard that the car would be shifting gears, making for a 7 SPEED ECLIPSE! neat trick!? :smile:

 

Yeah the movie is crap, but it exposed a lot of people to the import scene. It revealed what can be done in the aftermarket.

 

A "stand alone" is a unit that doesn't use the factory ECU at all. For example, the Motes and Wolf 3D AEM units replace the parameters all together for fuel (and a host of other things). The APR, EVOTech, Superchips and others simply work within the ECU's parameters to adjust the fuel. Then there are "interrupters" which are a sort of hybrid - the UNIChip and SMT-6 are examples of this technology.

As far as the cost of stand alone technology - you could end up with $10,000 of Motec equipment and testing costs. Take a look at the Nuzzo Motorsports MINI, the equipment alone is arounf $5800 - and that doesn't include the time on the dyno to dial everything in.

Hope that helps!

Randy