Ok, so it's time for engine management & tuning of some kind. I've recently heard about OpenECU and how inexpensive it would be but am not quite sure which direction I want to go. Right now all i have is a DP, exhaust and a BOV. I have been told that with a tuning, and going up to 17ish lbs of boost i could get around 330hp and 360+ tq. Is that possible? The only other thing that I am really planning on doing to the engine is meth injection so i'm not too worried about having to tune again since it might be a little while... I'm pretty much decided that I'm going with either OpenECU or Cobb AP. I've heard that the AP has more tuneable peramaters. Is anyone running OpenECU now? What are the ups and downs to both and any other suggestions about what i could/should do? I have a slightly limited budget...
From what I've read on the openecu.org forums utilities like xmlwrite and eduedit are very early in their development cycles. I hope that the open source options mature and are accepted by good tuners, but at this point I wouldn't go that route. It's probably worth finding a tuner with a good reputation tuning your type of car and purchasing the solutions they have the most experience with. Even if that solution does cost more money I think with the research and development hours behind the commercial solutions like Cobb, EcuTeck, XEDE, and the UTEC would give you a greateer chance of getting a safe tune. Personally I went with the Cobb AP, since it allows real time map switching in volitile memory, and I have the ability to get a dyno tune from a professsional tuner.
I'm still wondering what to do. Battleground can do the tuning with OpenECU and says that they have 20 or so STi's running savely and successfully on OpenECU. Has anyone on here gone with OpenECU??
The OpenEcu tools have come a long way and are more than enough to tune a car safely. This also means you can fubar your car just as easy with this as you can with a Utec or Street Tuner. Just because this has not been around as long as Ecutek and Cobb does not mean it is not as good. There are some exceptionally bright people working on the projects. I have been using the flashing piece of the OpenEcu for over a year now to switch between Ecutek maps that have been custom tuned for me. Ecutek is now locking the ecu when it flashes them. If I get retuned I will no longer be able to do this unless I spend 350 to upgrade. I already am 1000 in the hole with Ecutek so there is no way I am giving them anymore. With OpenEcu as things like Realtime tuning are worked out the upgrades will be free. If my tuner will not use OpenEcu or at least guarantee me that I will not be locked out of my ECU, I will have to change to someone who is willing to use OpenEcu tools to tune.
I ordered the Tactrix cable yesterday and will be using enginuity for tuning. Look for an AP for sale soon.
They had dome posts on how to defeat cel codes within the eprom image on some of the sites, so yeah it looks like it's possible.