First let's get some details out for everyone.
A few months ago when I was having problems with my car I started talking about using another form of engine management.
One of the forum members here, crcain, contacted Vi-Pec, owned by Ray Hall and asked him to send me a ECU for evaluation. This was quite a surprise to me. Ray contacted me, we exchanged a few e-mails and the Vi-Pec showed up.
Here is a link to Vi-Pecs home page for anyone that would like to read up on more of their products and such.
http://www.vi-pec.com/index.html
Vi-PEC stands for Versatile Intelligent Performance Engine Control
The unit I have is the "Plug-In ECU".
The ECU comes with a cable for connecting to the ecu, air temp sensor and a 2.5 bar map sensor. This particular unit is a circuit board with the factory plug in connectors on it. You take your factory computer, open the case, remove the factory circuit board and install the new Vi-PEC circuit board. Very easy to do and it's nice being able to bolt it back into the car in the factory case/factory location.
We used the supplied Vi-PEC air temp sensor, an AEM 5 bar map sensor and an AEM external wide band controller. Wiring is simple to hook everyting in, just wires into the factory sensors.
I ran into just a few small problems. 1st problem was the unit came up with the fuel pump set up incorrectly so the car would not start. A quick phone call and we figured out the problem with Alex at Apex Speed Tech. The next issue was an odd one that I thought was related to using Vista. The ECU went offline and I could not reconnect. I loaded the program into my other laptop with XP and same problem. I disconnected all the connectors to the ECU, plugged them back in and it worked instantly. After those two small issues the rest of the job of tuning went smoothly.
With all programs it takes a while to get up to speed where things are located, how to change them, shortcuts etc. Right now I have about 6-8 hours in working with the Vi-PEC and I feel like I am pretty up to speed on it. No expert but moving around the program with very little effort and tuning quickly.
The Vi-PEC has a quick tune feature. This is really nice. As long as your AFR target table is set up and your wideband is reading correctly you can start. Simple click the Quick Tune feature and hold the engine in a cel and the ECU will do the rest and dial in the AFR's very quickly. Don't get me wrong, it takes some effort to hold the car steady enough in each cell to get it to self tune but it is TONS faster than doing each cell manually.
The idle is exceptional on the car and so is the start up, the car fires instantly and with no gas pedal input will start and go to high idle.
There is no knock control in the Vi-PEC but one is being offered seperately. I do not have 100% of the details on it yet and when I get it I will release that information.
We installed the Vi-PEC on my brothers "beater" as he calls it. It's a 2003 EVO8. Stock EVO9 turbo, Stages 1-4, 780cc PTE injectors, single Walbro, drop in pistons a fairly basic build.
My brother, Daniel, is a hard guy to please. He had the AEM EMS on the car and couldn't start the long cranking. He then went to the stock ECU and wasn't happy the car was down on some power. Knowing how hard he is to please makes him a great test bed for anything new! haha
I did some of the initial tuning to get the AFR's close just out in the parking lot. The car was loaded on the dyno after that to get all the low end dialed in.
The AEM and the Haltech both use boost fuel correct. This means once you get the AFR's close at low boost each load cell can be set the same and the ECU calculates additional fuel needed based on boost pressure.
The Vi-PEC doesn't have this feature so each load cell needs to be tuned individually. I did some quick math in my head and hoped to error on the rich side, plugged the numbers into the fuel graph and made a pull. Power was pretty good but what surprised me was the car pulled clean with AFR's in the 8:1 range.
To make a long story short, the tuning went very well. The car also made the most power it has ever made regardless of what ECU was on it.
Here is the final 4th gear dyno graph:
I'm happy as hell with the results and surprisingly, Daniel is happy as hell with how the car runs and drives. I have just a bit of idle hunt when the car comes to a stop and will fix that tomorrow. Tonight it is suppose to drop to about 3X degrees F so I'm anxious to see how the car starts tomorrow morning in the cold and how it drives in to the shop.
The issues I had so far are small and could be from my lack of experience with the ECU, I'd rather let all you guys know that every install and every new item doesn't go perfectly smoothly all the time. You all know I tell the good with the bad. Fact is so far, there really is no bad. I'm not even missing the knock control or ability to monitor it.
I'll keep this updated over the next few days as we drive it in some colder weather and check the cold start up etc.
Tonight I have a lot of reading to do to pick up on using the datalogger, so far it has baffled me enough that I didn't use it at all.
I have to give the ECU a thumbs-up so far.
I am just tuning one now 83lb inj and big cams and factory cold start and idle
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