Boltz

Let me start by telling you the backround of my motor. It has 55k miles on it and has been babied since i got it. The motor pulls on other Ex's with the same mods pretty disgustingly, so when i was NA i knew the engine was in tiptop shape.
ok as the topic states, Garage Kwai in Arlington Heights has my car and has had it for the last month or so. I brought my civic into him with a fully installed custom turbo kit and an AEM EMS installed, but with no program on it. Bensons only job was to tune the ems. So first time he tried to do a basemap the ems fried and needed to be sent back to AEM, so AEM put in an entirely new circuit board and sent it back.. so hes trying to tune the car now and its still fucked up but he doesnt know the ems is fucked. anyways he told me he tried a bunch to get a basemap running but said no matter what he did cyl. 1 and 2 kept spitting WAAAAY too much fuel, so much fuel that the downpipe was filled with gas. So we find out later that the ems is broken again and that the pins that control injector 1 and 2 are cashed themselves. I have to be at Irev in 1 week and my car doesnt run, so Benson tells me that i could drive around on the basemap for a little while until the show is over and just run cyl 1 and cyl 2 on different pins... so anyways he gets this little basemap thing *limp mode* looking good and tries to run the car and it runs like **** supposivly. So they do a compression test on my car and this is NOW what it gets 150,140,120,120.. so cyl. 1 and 2 are both very low, coincidentally the SAME cylinders that were being flooded with fuel... VERY FISHY

so anyways after my long story, what do you guys think happened to my engine? Theyve been saying i can pick my car up like "tommorow" for the past week or so. and now they say its monday. From what i have told you guys could it be possible that kwai is responsible for the thrashing of my motor?

im gonna cry this is problably the gayest shi# ive experienced so far with imports, and if youve been around my setup as weve tried to make it work you would realize how bad this is getting for me. ive spent almost 7 grand so someone can just thrash my motor and tell me its not their fault. I am going to shoot myself in the head, so many people think they can make the setup work and just get money for doing nothing.

::note:: - this isnt a bashing of kwai at all. Im just trying to figure out WTF happened to my car because this is total BS ::::

Boltz

bump

T3T495GSR

sorry to hear that
KWAI =
EMS =

im gonna try CJ motorsports

Boltz

HAH, dont do it... i have good friends around here that know them and the stories are bad. i would never trust CJ tuning my car. especially now that hes broke as a joke

boosted hybrid

Very sorry to hear about your problems. One reason that the injectors might be flooding the engine with fuel in cylinder 1 and 2 is becuase the injectors could be different sizes on those cylinders, or the other two injectors are clogged and those arent.

I have to comment on AEM for a moment. I have seen a number of people in the last three-four weeks have the AEM units go bad on them. I understand that the AEM unit is a very capable EMS, and comes in the plug and play configuration. I understand all the goodies and extra stuff it can do. What I dont understand is when the users of the AEM are having massive problems, why dont they just ditch and go with something simplier. I am in no way pointing fingers at you, it just frustrating to see everyone have these ridiculous problems with their AEM after spending 1200+ on the things. I am happier everyday that i went with hondata last year over AEM, I havent had a single problem since.

gitwidit

seems like they've had it for quite some time!

es four

Is Benson street tuning your car?

-Will

93LSivic

What I dont understand is why is there more people posting threads on problems with their hondata, then people with their EMS'. Its the truth
Why spend 1200 on ems? why spend $600 on hondata then have to pay someone again to change your rev limit, then pay again to change their fuel pressure, then pay someone again to change their 2 step when they borrow someones slicks......get where Im coming from I know that hondata will definetly cost waaaay more in the long run for the person who doesnt spend the $1000 plus for the whole self tuning stage from hondata.

I can totally see where your coming from on this, and it seems lately that you and I are butting heads on the standalone debate. Its good for you I guess, you have to make these comments, you are making money off of tuning peoples hondata...so why would you push anything else

I agree, EMS isnt for the faint of heart. But then again, its not much harder to figure out then a hondata stage4 or S200 with all the options is, right?

Bah.....Im done here.

Oh yeah, to the original poster. Sorry to hear about your misfortune with the shop and about the motor.

boosted hybrid

To each his own. I totally see where your coming from with the AEM. I had that viewpoint when i ran Haltech for awhile. I just got sick of all the little things that didnt make the car run like a honda. It did offer alot of impressive features though, which is one of the reasons I went with the Haltech.

I however have to say that I will be learning to tune the AEM this spring/summer so there will be an AEM tuner in our area (I dont know of any).

Suprdave

That's why i do my own work, and started doing it for others...Noone gives a **** about people anymore.

As far as your car goes, if there was that much fuel in 1-2 they are defiantely washed out. The gas washed out the oil and allowed the metal to score the other metal. Basically it's jacked...No need to pull the motor or anything yet, until yor ready for fully built. I have no idea why they would need your car for a month to do a basemap\tune. Should be a one day thing, seriously.

Your going to see alot of fast **** coming outta the Whip Factory this year, stay tuned...

Suprdave

Boltz

integra707 - yea, benson was supposed to do a tune thats just good enough for getting from place to place, no boosting or any crazy ****. it was just so i can go to irev... but from what superdave said it looks like they cashed out my basicly perfect motor... ...... this is very very bad, also i tried calling kwai today at 2 and vince said that he'd have benson call me back, and he didnt call.. so i call 5 mins b4 they close and vince answers again.. benson isnt available, i ask him to have benson call me back and he doesnt.... what is going on here? this is shady

Ivan

take it to the whip factory

fsarfino

I would assume that the extra gas washed off the oil in those 2 cyclinders and caused scoring on the cylinder walls.

Oh BTW if they would'nt pay to fix your engine I would just sue them for the damages.

Not sure if this shop is in Dupage County but the small claims court limit is $10,000 in Dupage that should cover the cost of the damages

Boltz

think i have a good enough case to even take this to court and blame it on kwai? I wouldnt really like to sue them but if they dick me around it may be my last fair resort. what would you guys do

Suprdave

Better off using the threat of a lawsuit to get what you want.

Suprdave

Unknwn_1

Sorry about the bad experience.. I once had my car tow to Garage Kwai.


[Modified by Unknwn_1, 6:24 PM 4/6/2003]

dfoxengr

Kwai is one of my suppliers, and I have never had a problem with their company...

hmmmm

boostedsol

I guess I am one of the lucky ones that has no problems w/ my AEM EMS. I have one on my teg and my sol. I couldn't be more pleased with the results either. I have noticed that in the last 4 wks or so, people have been having alot of trouble w/ their AEM EMS units as well.

youngkow

Sorry to hear bout that. Not to jack this thread, but where can you take your car to get tuned in chicago then? Is there anymore options?

Suprdave

What do you have?

Suprdave

Suprdave

You must be getting 'middled' really badly...

Suprdave

prophet

hey justin...haven't talked to you in a LONG time but it seems that your problems are just getting worse and worse.

I have had the EMS, have tuned it (found out later that my tune was way off because tech edge sent me a MISCALIBRATED unit), and talked to many others that have had it.

I LIKED the EMS, it just didnt' like me. The unit went bad on me TWO times...need i tell you that this is a DAILY driver? I had no problems tuning it except that whenever I would get a semi good tune the EMS went bad on me for no reason. Both times it went bad when it was a VERY cold night. I haven't had a problem since but, because I needed to have something with a better reliablity record I eventualy went to Hondata per Jeff's suggestion. He delivered what he had promised me and I couldn't be happier.

Now i'm not saying the Hondata is better than the EMS, heck even hondata sent me a bad ecu and it took a few calls with a couple of arguments before they admitted they were wrong and sent me another ECU. I'm sure both are great systems and the EMS will eventually prove itself when more and more people know how to tune it but, for now the Hondata has the advantage because it has been around longer.

AEM EMS Reliablity?
AEM Techsupport?
Hondata Reliablity?
Hondata Techsupport?

Let's remember fellas..the EMS isn't even out of TESTING stages yet. Once they goto the 1.0 firmware version it will offer more stability, more refined, and tested and tested features that WORK.

As for tuning, yeah it's great that you can do all that stuff with the ems, but if you read this post you will know that he isn't tuning it himself. Thus it would of been cheaper to go hondata + tune instead of AEM + tune. For example: I sold the AEM for around 950 shipped + some extras (i paid 950 for it myself), bought the Hondata for 700ish for an odb2a P28 ecu + s200 (could of saved some money buying the p28 myself but I needed something asap), paid 95 bucks for 1 hour of dyno tuning and jeff's time.

Basically you will see i saved over 100 bucks, got a car that has been reliable for the past month, and no more headaches related to tuning.

vactor

welcome to chicago. we have a dearth of shops, and it has always been difficult to find a shop that really knows their stuf, and has a reasonable pricing structure. i agree with the other poster, learn to do this stuff yourself like i did. i installed all of my exhaust stuff, gagues, intake, supercharger, electronics etc. paying other people to do it, especially near chicago, is worse than throwing your cash away, as most of the time you end up not getting what you expected. and a MONTH for tuning?? i just don't see how that is possible unless they were waiting on parts. in any case, i feel your pain. that's why i went hondata, and am getting a wideband setup for myself and my friends so i can tune my own car and show others how to do it themselves as well. hope everything turns out ok.

Boltz

yep, and get this; he is charging me 500$ for this quote unquote tune. that includes only 1.5 hours of dyno time. because of all of this **** benson has given me another 30 mins of tuning.. yay ... so thats 2 hours, but either way it doesnt help me.. so im fucked...
what ive learned from this is; i get fucked over in every way possible and no matter how many lies people tell me, my car sucks *** and so do i for owning it. for all the money i have spent i could have had one crazy fast setup, but instead i got fucked

later

Suprdave

I wouldnt ******* pay that...that's crazy

Suprdave