Having a hard time deciding what to use. Originally I was going to use the ostrich on the 86 TA. Plan on doing a 383. Would like to here what everyone is using and why you picked one over the other. I know the big differences between the two of them. If doing the Ebl, I know I'll have to re pin, and go away from my maf.

Is going away from a maf really better? I have seen some claim maf is better if you do aftermarket one with bigger diameter. If you have tried both, I'd definitely like to here from you!

 

I looked at the cost of going the route of getting the stuff to burn chips vs the EBL P4 system biggest thing that sold me on the EBL was the ease of changing the tune. I have gone thru over 100 tunes so far. You can for example have 8 different tunes loaded in the EBL and change the tune with a mouse click while driving down the road. Try that with a chip!

 

An Ostrich is not a chip. It's an emulator that will allow any small changes or full bin changes with a click as well...

I've been trying to find a reason for m to use an EBL, and I just can't find a reason to go EBL for any of my vehicles. It looks great, and the extra I/O is almost a good enough reason to go that route.

I have gone Ostrich, in fact I have several now, mostly because I found good deals on them and I like to have spares. It's kinda of a quirk of mine, I tend to own several of the same thing... when I find good deals. *shrug*

Anyway, what I like about the Ostrich is that is quite portable and can be used with most any OBD1 GM ECM/PCM. It can stay in the ECM/PCM, or can be used to make the tune and then an EEPROM can be programmed with that bin.

Not that I've ever heard of an EBL failure, but one thing that worries me is that IF there was a failure, and I usually find ways to do so, hence my need for spares lol, that it's not as easy to substitute the EBL part as it is to substitute an Ostrich, by the use of an EEPROM. The Ostrich is a direct replacement for an EEPROM, which makes substitution easy. In the case of the EBL, you would lose any of teh extra I/O and programmed features by going to an EEPROM, which is not very easy at all with EBL, due to the daughter card replacement (original EBL, not P4 version). Again I've not heard about any failures and is more my own paranoia of being able t o quickly repair/replace things if something fails.

As far as the MAF/SD debate goes, I prefer SD, it just makes more sense tuning wise than the MAF codes that GM used. If you wanted to go that route you can do this with the '7165 using some Australian GM code originally meant for the '808 ECM, and there is a much improved code called $12P, that also adds in some generic outputs.