I live in the sticks and do not have access to tuning. Adrian has been great, but he's pretty busy and we're over 10 hours apart so getting in synch to tune is not so easy. I have been kicking and the idea of installing an aftermarket ECU and learning my own tuning.

Can anyone with experience speak as to whether there is any advantage to buying the vipec vs the ecumaster? I am a complete tuning noob and looking for ease of tuning not necessarily super technical features.

Long term I am considering building a full build. But But for now I have a new factory bottom end, ported head with ph2 cam, 1.5mm oversized valves and crower springs. There's an rmw header, 15% pulley, aluminum flywheel, ported intake, ported supercharger and tce charge pipe.

My current Adrian tune is running rich. I'm starting at about 14.10 a/f when I mat the throttle at 2k rpm. The a/f steadily drops to 10.05 at 5500rpm. If I'm correct that's really rich and I can feel the power drop off at the top end.

I think the only thing that is a concern is seeing only 90% for TPS at wot. But I've read that may be accurate too. Any thoughts would be appreciated. If I'm way off on thinking of a stand alone then feel free to let me know.

Thanks to everyone and you're knowledge.
Brad

 

I also live in sticks, and went with ECUMasters to learn myself. I have not completed the car yet, but while I work my way there I did HP academy’s tuning course which covers ecumaster.

Their forums have a lot of people self tuning, and the r53 FB group had a lot of people running them. That was my deciding factor, seemed more self tuners run the Black so best chance to find others to ask questions while I learn if needed.

Lohen also recommended it for their crate engine that I tried to have them build. They told me they started it and then disappeared, so building myself now.

 

I have the EMU black, i've done a lot of work myself at home on it. All of my tuning has been on the street while i drive back and forth to work. I can give some pointers

• The latest version of the EMU Black firmware and desktop client no longer support narrowband O2's. However the basemap on their website is several generations old and designed to work with the narrowband on the R5x mini. So when you open it in the desktop client the software will throw a bunch of errors at you. Rest assured, the shipped firmware on the EMU Black PnP is purposefully a few generations behind so it will work with the narrowband, you can go here to download an older desktop client if you wish to keep using the narrowband.
• If you don't want the narrowband you can do what I did and just immediately upgrade the ECU the latest firmware and use a wideband. Any Bosch LSU 4.9 or 4.7 will work from any car, its a very simple wiring job. I used an old LSU4.9 i had laying around form an '18 Focus ST. You can see how I did it in my thread. I definitely recommend PTFE coated wire and fiberglass sleeving for the wideband wires as it gets really hot near the header and PVC wire wont last long.
• For me, the base fuel map was not accurate, I used the autotune feature to get it adjusted and it worked very well. There's a bit of an art to autotune, personally i set the transient filter to 900ms and ignore things below 30kpa and 2k RPM as I've found those areas behave better when tuned by hand. This would be a lot easier and faster on a dyno but I didn't have access so I did it on the street. I find slow gentle pulls to redline in gears 1-3 trying to target a constant MAP work well with autotune.
• Base timing is really low, I was able to add a lot of timing, I think the base timing is from an R50 but i'm unsure of that.
• The knock sensor settings in the base map are absurdly sensitive (I understand why they did that) I've been playing with that a lot recently. This will take some experimentation to get dialed in for your car specifically, every car is different. The stock settings wont let you blow the motor up though.
• Be careful with the built in injector numbers! The dead time built in for the Bosch 0280158117 550's that we use so much on this platform are (in my opinion) not right. Definitely overwrite those with real values before you tune fuel. I took numbers from Ford Performance and they work great.
• Idle control works well, I've been happy with it. Set it up first.
• The low speed fan and the PS cooling fan are the same circuit that will help you get that working right, that took me forever to figure out lol.
• Stuck throttle protection does not work and I haven't spent any time figuring out why, I have it disabled for now. If you have it on any throttle input at all triggers STP and nearly stalls the engine. You'll need to shut it off before you even start the car. This is an area that needs some work, I assume its just a mapping issue with the inputs/outputs.
• I added a ECUMaster Bluetooth CAN module and use TunerView on my iPhone to view data while I'm driving, this is optional.

One additional important note:
Right now all EMU Blacks are still shipping on "V2" firmware, there is a new beta desktop client and firmware called "V3" that adds a lot of features to the ECU, more advanced idle control, user defined custom functions, overrun fuel control, more advanced injector calibration, updated documentation, a better interface layout, and many other things. Right now there is no way to cleanly "convert" a V2 tune to V3 without doing manual work to fill in the gaps. I am still using V2 but I plan to eventually switch to V3 to get the extra features. I might suggest just starting on V3 if I'm being honest with you, but the V2 basemap does have all the inputs mapped so it will save you a lot of time getting up and running. Worth looking into for sure.

Overall its a nice ECU, the logging software is nice and easy to use, it has real-time tune editing which is superb. The integrated lambda controller is awesome and gives incredible peace of mind by allowing you to know the mixture at all times. You can add race dashes or even build your own with an Arduino and a screen by reading the CAN bus data stream. The possibilities are endless. It supports flex fuel sensors, rotary switches for map switching and all sorts of cool other features. I got mine for $1500 but the price was recently increased due to tariffs to $1700 . I think even at that price its still a great option, for a home tuner I think its better than the Link/Vipec, the simpler interface makes it easier to get up and running and get your tune going.

 

Amazing information, thank you!!

 

Wow, thank you guys so much. Makes for an easy decision. Especially good to have you guys for reference as I'm a noob as I said.

I did forget to mention that I'm having a stalling problem when I let off the throttle and depeess the clutch. It happens about 50% of the time and I'm guessing it's due to the lw flywheel.

I will likely pick up the black fit the new year and spend some time learning. Thank you all again. I'll keep you posted
Brad