philo

I wanted to start a new post to see how other folks were doing with their AEM EMS systems. Since getting mine a week ago I have not had much luck getting my car running.

After encountering a “know problem” updating my firmware and having to have the unit replaced I am now not having much luck getting the new unit going either.

Neither came with calibration tables loaded but that wasn’t much of an issue. Even with the updates calibration tables loaded I am still not able to start the car.

I am running 550cc injectors and the car runs perfectly when I use my Hondata ECU. It also runs fine with the stock ECU and the 240cc injectors.

I spoke to JP @ AEM and he said all I would need to do is adjust my fuel table for the large injectors. I did a percentage adjust to 44% and uploaded to EMS. Still no luck.

One strange thing it is doing, is the fuel pump doesn’t prime when I turn the key to the ON position as it does with the stock and Hondata ECU’s.

I am guessing there are other parameters that need to be set but don’t know which ones. Anyone had any luck with AEM and oversized injectors?

I will post the results of any conversations with AEM and if others could do the same it would be very helpful.

philo

AEM Reply, Quote:

Remember that when doing a "percent change" to the fuel table it will get
you close, however, fuel is more sensitive upon start up and idle
conditions. For instance, if I were to give you a calibration with stock
injectors and you were to have huge 1000cc/min injectors, the fuel map could
be way off. In other words, you might need to modify the Crank Fuel, Start
Fuel, and Fuel Maps.

philo

Does the silence mean no one has the AEM running with large injectors, or you all have it running and dont need any help or have any to give?

brian b

i think everyone is still waiting on someone to install the EMS.. lots of people on this board buy stuff and hold on to it, but claim its the best part ever without ever using it..

Kamin

damn man its brand new
give it some time for people to start using it
ill be using it eventually

philo

Brian B,
I know what you mean, lot of folks talk about how great products are just from hype and marketing but have no real experience with them. The other day a guy said AEM was way better than Hondata and he would be installing his first one that day. How do you know it's way better already, when you havent even used it yet?

BTW: I'm not saying Hondata is better than AEM or visa-versa, just saying we should reserver judgement till the AEM has proven itself.

Anyway, if anyone has any actual hands-on feedback with AEM EMS let us know.

Arturbo

Good points Brian and Philo..

art

philo

Anyone have anything yet, I am gonna put my 240's back in tonight just to make sure the ECU works.

Tomakit

How come you ditched the hondata?

Tom

philo

Not at all, I love the Hondata. The part of tuning I enjoy the most is the P-ECU stuff, and when I saw the AEM I was curious. I was offered a great price and picked one up.

PressurizedSi

I have the EMS but I'm waiting for my tuners motec unit to get back from repair. I have the Greddy kit with larger injectors also. Someone from AEM (forgot his name) made me an updated map for my larger injectors at the last dyno session. My car idles just fine now, so I'm ready to build a perfect map. That is when the Motec arrives.

98Psi ITR

I am gonna have to bring up these questions for next weekend. I should receive my ems on wed or so and hopefully get to play with it before I get to R&D. I have some 720's so we'll see what they say.

SW20 MR2

AEM came up to my area today and did a demo of the EMS at the local dyno. Wow! I am so impressed with the system. The Windows-based software is excellent compared to the other systems on the market. I just hope I don't run into any major problems with my car since I need to use the Race system (no PnP for me).

DirtyLude

Hey, Kevin. I was there. I have no idea what you look like, though.

DirtyLude

[Modified by DirtyLude, 5:11 PM 2/23/2002]

ekb18c

PnP and Race system is same thing. It's just that the Race system comes with a harness so you can wire up the motor. The box is the same thing.

DirtyLude

He knows that, but you can see by his name that he has an MR2 which they don't have a plug and play version out for, yet.

There was a few minor negative I ran into during the seminar, but generaly it's an excellent system.

Arturbo

Does any one know when they are coming to texas? I'd like to check it out...

art

philo

What did you feel were "minor negatives"?

DirtyLude

I don't want to rewrite this, so I'm copying it from another board.

There's only a couple downsides I've seen to this ECU.

It's still in development and it doesn't look like their testing is strong enough. This thing is based off of GEMS technology, but they are R&Ding like mad. Expect a few minor bugs along the way. The Firmware is upgradeable so they will be releasing updates as they make them. The Automatic transmission control will be a firmware upgrade in the future, it's not available yet. People have already reported crashes while doing firmware updates which means the unit gets sent back to AEM to be fixed.

It still only supports high resistance injectors. It does not have a proper peak and hold injection driver and relies on resistance to control injector current. It means there's going to be a run on resistor packs soon. Even though the X and Y axis of the maps is defineable I would have liked more tuning points and from what they were saying and what the software shows I suspect the interpelation between cells isn't very fine.

A minor annoyance, but the case is a little big. It's not going to fit in the stock location without some metal work. Since it's meant to plug in to the stock harness, there's not many places it can go.

The user interface is a little overwhelming. There's just too many options that no one is ever going to use. Especially on the fuel and ignition maps. The 3d views are nice, but you can see the full numeric map on one screen and noone is going to look at the 3d graphs once they get used to looking at the raw numeric data. If you plan on working with this thing intemmetly, read the manual several hundred times. The number of features is huge and requires alot of working with the system to discover it all.

There is 140 input and output pin outs possible with this ECU. To put it in perspective, the Haltech E6K has 34. This is the number of wires that can be attached to the ECU. Many of them are being used for standard functions that the regular ECU used to do, injectors, fuel pump, ignition, fans, vtec, solenoid control and idle control....etc.. but it leaves alot left over for your own options, dual stage shift, shift light, NOS switch, boost control solenoid control. If you look at your own ECU plug you'll see that one of the connectors is empty: http://www.higginstribe.com/gallery.../connector2.jpg
The AEM connector has that filled with pins for extras. Also if you look at the wiring harness not all of the pins that come out of the stock ECU attach to a wire. All of these pins that aren't used by the stock wiring harness are still active on the EMS and you can use these pins for added options.

This thing is going to clean up. Soon pretty much everyone is going to be using one. Putting this much functionality under this price is great and other ECU companies missed the bandwagon completly not going with a mass marketed application specific ECU. We'll see if any of the other companies try to catch up.

There's a bunch of stuff I didn't mention, like the programmable knock control looks sweet.


[Modified by DirtyLude, 12:33 PM 2/24/2002]

SW20 MR2

Hey Mark,
Hehehe, yeah, I don't know what you look like either. I was there with my cousin, who happens to be the guy building my motor. We ordered three AEM computers yesterday.

The EGT function is also very cool. We're thinking about doing quad EGT probes in the turbo manifold. Using that function combined with fuel tuning of each individual cylinder would be awesome. It gets really expensive though.

DirtyLude

I was the guy in the light brown jacket asking questions about the knock sensor sensitivity and rx7 ignitors. I was only there because my own car was on the dyno that morning when the AEM guys started coming in.

Here's some video. I don't remember the guys names, but the guy in gray was supposedly the head of R&D and he definitely knows what he's doing. I have no idea who the guy in yellow was. http://www.higginstribe.com/movies/aem-ems-demo.mpg

SW20 MR2

Hahaha, you got me on video. At the beginning of the video when you pan left, I'm the guy in the black jacket with the hat. The guy in the grey is the founder of AEM, John Concauldi (sp?). He is a guru and really knows his stuff. I was actually very impressed with John and Kurt (the guy in yellow). They answered the questions very well and were very technically-sound.

philo

Well, i put the stock injectors in and still no luck. The car runs fine with stock ECU or Hondata, but not AEM. It still wont prime the fuel pump and the motor just turns over with out so much as a sputter.

I have checked the firmware and calibration files and all seems to be fine. I even updated with a new Si calibration file from JP @ AEM. No luck. I finally tried to update the firmware with the latest version from the AEM site and just like last time the update failed part way thorugh.

Now the ECU is dead again. How is everyone else doing with their EMS's, I'm having a dusty time.

philo

Finally got the car running with the EMS last night. John from AEM was in town for a seminar and offered to help get me going (thanks john).

After replacing the EPROM that I had somehow hosed (maybe power management on my notebook), John enabled the parameter to get the fuel pump primed and that got us started. He played with it for a while longer and we got the idle to a pretty stable place.

We have not had a chance to do anything beyond just setting the idle, but I am hoping he will be able to do a little bit more tonight. The basic drivability of the un-tuned EMS was very good although i only drove very gently.

I'll do a full comparison of the AEM vs. Hondata once I have the AEM fully operational. Stay tuned...