a friend of mine is having some tuning problems with his AEM EMS.

here are the problems.

first, an idiot tuner in the north tampa area was asked to install a wideband o2 sensor w/ display. after wiring the car the tuner accidentally wired the #3 injector incorrectly causing it to run WOT from the time he left their shop to about 10 miles from the shop...when the motor began to hydrolock from too much fuel in the #3 cylinder (i've never seen this before and i've been playing with honda's for 3-4 years) the motor began to run poorly...and eventually stopped running.

well the idiot tuner insisted an injector had locked up...and said the injectors (RC440's) needed to be recalibrated. so the injectors were sent to RC and tested...and every injector was working perfectly.

so then troubleshooting began and it was decided by the tuner that it must have be the ecu...as it wasn't the injectors. now it seems unlikely that an ecu would suddenly decide by itself to run the number 3 injector at 100% duty cycle.

well...the aem ems came back and everything was reinstalled by AEM without cost. the timing maps and air/fuel curves for his setup (a turbo gsr making around 300whp on 14psi) would be as they had been before the ecu was sent in.

ironically, this car had been dynoed by AEM technicians only weeks earlier as they came to the tampa area to train different dyno tuners in this area.

so the ecu is back to its original settings, and the injectors are fine and it was discovered later that the idiot tuner messed with the wiring harness and accidentally miswired the #3 injector wire. this was done out of carelessness and now we're faced with getting the car to run properly again.

the car was fired back up a few days ago, and we ran around town while i watched the timing/air-fuel and temperatures on his laptop. his airfuel stayed at around 12.5:1 and base timing was at 15 degrees.

now everything seemed fine and the car pulled evenly through the gears...much like it had before. however, some change happened after i left and the car began running poorly. it seems as though the ecu was pulling timing and adding fuel.

now this is where i'm asking everyone here...because i have run only hondata in my honda. how do you check to see if there is a problem...or a check engine light. does this ecu act like a factory honda ecu? does the CEL come on? in his case, it isn't.

now the other variable is the distributor. a new distributor was also added (an aftermarket moroso distributor) and i was wondering if there were any known complications by running this distributor over running an OEM honda distributor.

also...are there settings that have to be changed on the ecu after it is plugged back into the car. in other words...can aem reprogram the ecu to the same settings it had when it came into their place and be plugged back in withuot any other complications.

when the timing is set, as it had to be (at 15 degrees) is there something inside the ecu that needs to be changed?

what else could we be missing?

thanks for your help...i apologize about the long story...but it is relevant in this case.

thanks, chet

 

i think i may be having the same problem