A little background. One of the head guys at Autronic, Ray Hall, has decided to leave Autronic and stard his own ECU company. Ray has taken everything that made Autronic great and has improved on it, fixing known bugs and adding great new functionality. He’s has done this too while keeping costs in mind and is releasing some pretty gangster gear at pretty awesome pricing.
The reason why this is important to folks here though is because not only does ViPEC have complete universal standalones with huge flying lead harnesses for almost any engine imaginable, but it also has replacement ecu boards that go right into a stock ECU box and connect directly to the existing engine wiring. He has these replacement boards for a host of differnt cars but more importantly, for SR20 and RB series motors.
I already have a V44 box en route for my car that I will be testing in the next few weeks as well as an RB26DETT board that will be going into a customers’ drift s13.
So, check out the site and ask here if you have any questions. The boxes retail for $1675cdn and I will likely be doing tuning packages that offer decent savings. If any of you guys are thinking you are going standalone next summer…consider ViPEC.
The only thing I will say is in the last fours years I have had 4 different ecus in my personal car. This year it is tuned with Autronic SM4 and I can say without a shadow of a doubt the car has never felt better. ViPEC is like Autronic on steroids so I’m very excited to get one into my personal car.
Hahaha - oh well. Got a little too excited on a little cruise around SG.
As for pricing…nothing confirmed yet. Retail on the units is about $1650 - $1700 but I will be launching with some tuning packages that will be very competitive.
Dan How much different can the system be, I mean Aem is a pretty pimp ass system, bust asside from processing power from the physical unit itself, how can vipec control Injectors and take inputs from sensors like a map sensor any differently than other stand alone units.
I mean if we are comparing SDS to Vipec or AEm than we can agree that SDS is prehistoric.
Only Advantage i can see so far is 4 cam timing control and Vanos control,
But to be ohnest i havent looked at these options in the aem yet.
It’s a great question Radek…and it’s something I’ve been thinking about and chatting with the Canadian ViPEC distributor about. Both he and I will be conducting a few tests to try to shed some light on it.
As for controlling injectors and reading sensors, every system on the market uses its own logic to decipher what to do with the information. In my head, it is not that far fetched to think that some of the logic some engineers use is better than others. If there was only one way ot do it we would not have as many ECU options as we do.
Also, please don’t get me wrong. AEM is a decent system…but I won’t be putting one back in my car. I’ll leave it at that.
^^ I’ve heard a few different people including XS-Engineering that don’t much care for AEM.
Any particular reason? The way you said it implies there’s some sort of tragic flaw with it or something. I remember last season you were pretty pumped about it, wha’happened?
I’m considering going standalone with my spring project but thats a lot of coin to drop so I wanna get all the info on my options first…
I personally am a big fan of the AEM. The phrase that comes to mind is “Power corrupts”. The AEM gives you very little limits in what it will and will not let you do. Because of this, people end up with cars that don’t have good drivibility, don’t idle and surging. AEM has TONS of modifier tables to control anything you desire (boost vs speed, etc) but without the right guy behind the laptop the ecu is only good as the values entered into it. This is true for any ems, Gasrbage in, Garbage out. Who gets the blame for the car not running right? It is usually the ecu.
AEM software is lacking in the user-friendly department but that is just so that the tuner has flexibility in doing anything he wants and not be software limited. This ecu looks pretty cool and would like to play with the software for a bit. AEM can be fustrating to learn as the learning curve is steep but once you reach that point it will be worth it in the ability to tune for drivibility, idle, gas mileage and power. Anybody can tune wide open throttle. Thats easy. The real challenges is getting the car to run like it did stock and produce a good powerband.
Uh, Dan doesn’t really have an issue with the “learning curve”, he is a certified AEM tuner and he can do steady state tuning on his dyno… I have a feeling there’s something else.
It’s too bad they are still priced near the AEM units and AEM has a long history and user base.
If they made the VIPEC units maybe a couple hundreds cheaper and maybe even get some sorta sponsorship vehicle they might be able to break into popular EMS market. Not saying they gotta be like AEM but it would improve their image instead of being that ECU that some hardcore users use.
Not much reason for a Sponsor vehicle when respectable players in the scene like Dan @ U2N are willing to be the guinea pig and use it and master it on their own vehicles before pimping it out to everyone.
Dan doesn’t benefit personally from having a new ECU on the market - he’s not in the retail business. If someone comes to him and needs an ECU and a tune, he’s going to recommend what is BEST for them according to their budget and their needs.
If the ECU sucks, he won’t have any reason to recommend it.
Just appreciate that Dan is keeping himself up to date so that when you do need his services, he can give you the most current advise on the market.
John - you got it exactly right. I am just on a quest for great solutions. To put things in perspective, I spent well over $4000 getting the Autronic into my car. I have yet to even test the limits of the system and am already prepared to shelf it if I find a better option.
My best guess says the ViPEC will trump it but, if not, the Autonic goes back in the car at least for a little while longer.
