Not sure if this has been posted yet .

 

I've been waiting years for an aftermarket company to make something "stand alone" for the TPI cars! Sucks that we couldn't see a before vs after comparison of it though. Hopefully somebody with a relatively "stock" car will do a proper comparison of what this FiTech setup can do. Also, what is the approximate cost for the system? How many labor hours to install?

 

What kind of "before and after" are you looking for? What metrics?

 

Oh just the typical improvements in horsepower & torque, more aggressive timing

 

its been proven over and over the addition of any high quality ECU over what GM had is a vast improvement.
Add an 'ls' 0411 ECU and coil on plugs and never look back.

Were talking about huge advancements in electronics and tuning ability--its really a no brainer

 

Oh I'm with you on that one, I'm just honestly perplexed that Tom 400 CFI wanted to know. He's the one you should be replying to.

 

good stuff

well dang, hit the wrong button..lol when you coming up from down there to hang out with us

 

Not really. I wouldn't expect much from a different ECM other than what you can get out of it's tuning capabilities...that you couldn't get from tuning a stock ECM. I'd expect the improvement to be somewhere between minimal and nothing.

 

The idea here is cool but only minimally from a performance application. Yeah, it's easier to tune but the TPI is so limited in power why spend the time. A 383 w a TPI I'm sure is super torquey but at this point why use an antiquated TPI w a modern computer on a performance build? Using a Holley/edelbrock standalone system would make so much more sense and it's minimally more work/money. Plus the FItech interface is pretty poor compared the edelbrocks. I get this for a stock(ish) car but the car in the video should have a better system in general. A 383 typically has 420-480 hp and can rev to 5.5-6k. The car in the video should have a pro flow XT or low rise super ram. The XT fits under a stock hood and has better flow, easier to tune and makes much more power. Again, I guess it makes sense for a stock car or standalone TPI swap if someone really needs a TPI.

 

^That^.


Only way that I see any stand alone making sense on a TPI is when the OEM ECM has died, harness burned to the ground, and/or you've made a personal decision to move on to another mgmt platform that can be moved from car to car, engine to engine.

 

price is $719 for harness and computer and and touchscreen controller

 

No knock feedback/spark control, it doesn't look like.

I can't believe that guys 383 only made 280. Rough.

 

Agreed... the user-friendliness on tunability is probably vastly improved I'm sure, with all the self-learning and stuff like that. Taken against say, an old 7730 ECM... you really need to dive deep into what the 7730 8D code has to offer with S_AUJP and all that in order to get it to compete with aftermarket capabilities. Or what Vanilla Ice is doing and actually creating more parameters in the bin than the factory (damn I wish I knew how to do that... lol). Or the EBL type stuff.

So, yeah, speaking from a practical perspective, the aftermarket is superior for the majority of people. But once you take full control of a 7730 for example,I think it'd easily hold its own with the aftermarket stuff. In reality, It's actually pretty impressive how much capability there really is in the 7730 8D code given the time period it was made in... you just don't get access to it all without S_AUJP... which not only provides that access, but explains what each one does to boot... I know that w/o S_AUJP, I probably would have dumped the 7730 a while ago.

 

It does have provisions for a knock sensor, it can also be disabled if desired.

Seems kinda lazy mounting the ecm in the engine bay like that, I guess they wanted some brand awareness. Also removing the air system can be done with the stock ecm so that's not really a perk of the FiTech system; it just doesn't have any provisions for air or egr.

 

Unless this is something new-new there's a couple vids on youtube about it and a number of forum threads in the various places online.
People seem happy with them on fairly stock engines. It's what I plan to use on my stock-ish L98 eventually. Getting away from 40 year old
unavailable ECU and timing control modules and wiring and connectors that are falling apart is just about worth the price of admission,
and having basic parameters to play with from a handheld unit with real time data display without taking out a laptop looks pretty sweet for a non-tuner type like myself.
I don't really see a downside unless you're planning on more power than a stock TPI setup can manage.
The Edelbrock setup with the intake and all is pretty appealing too but getting to be kinda spendy if one has modest goals.

 

My hsr topped, afr headed 355 with a 216-221 cam is running a fitech stand alone. Runs better than it did on the eblp4. Drivability and power wise. Not sure what stock has to do with how well it does. Also not claiming the ebl was tuned to perfection but the fitech has been an improvement by far. Was my tune at least partially to blame? Sure. I have no doubts a tuner better than me would get it. But methodical changes got me no where close to where the fitech started out basically out of the box. I'm glad I wasn't stuck burning chips the whole time with the ebl. The fitech has a few drawbacks. The user inputs to tune are limited compared to others. A real tuner is going to hate that. A mid ground tuner like me finds it easy, minimal questions that are online answered. The speedometer shouldn't be such a pain in the tail and fitech should have acknowledged the issue and have procedures or better advice to the buyer. They should also give more advice for setting up a standalone chassis harness because they kinda make it like you don't need anything of the sort. Many people looking at this product is looking for simpler, the details for the common guy should be listed. It was straightforward for me to figure out, but I'm a wrench, not everyone buying is a mechanic. People hear plug and play. It's not, technically. All and all, worth the current price for me. I can easily deal with it's foibles to have a 'simple' fuel injected sbc.

 

What is required to have a functional KS on the thing? On Summit's site, under the feature list, it says; "Knock Sensor: No"

 

idk, it's hooked up and functioning on mine without doing anything special.

 

Must be a mistake on the 38350 SKU, the others correctly report 1 knock channel. I believe all the kits are the same thing other than number of o2 sensors and whether or not you need trans control.

 

In the video he mentions connecting the knock sensor. It's somewhere close to where he mentions fixing the power wire to the starter that got burned by the headers.

 

This past summer I put a holley terminator and 8x LS coils on a totally stock 305 TPI/700R4. So stock, it doesn't even have a cold air intake or headers

The difference is night and day for low/mid range. It's still a 200hp powerplant, but the performance improvement where the driver spends 90% of time is incredible
I did it for easy of service, troubleshooting and foundation for future improvements

I'd say any aftermarket ECM or 0411 conversion would be a benefit over the archaic TPI boxes. Even the crappiest FiTech, Aces etc will be easier to tune and have a greater potential than any 80's relic ECM regardless of the actual engine used

 

Next Part of copmaro..

 

It's always been difficult to quantify things that can't be shown on a dyno, meaning anything other than WOT full power. I can absolutely believe there is a real improvement.

 

You could also press the gas pedal more.

I mean, this stuff IS quantifiable on a dyno...if you chose to pursue it. The only possible things that could affect part throttle are A/F and timing. Which you can tune on the dyno. Or not on the dyno, too. If you don't tune that area...then you won't get a gain...the engine won't be optimized in that realm of operation....it'll be "out of tune", there. Then you put another controller on, tune it....of course you get a "gain". It runs better.

Same as having a poorly tuned carb, swapping on a well tuned carb (or one that just happens to have an out-of-the-box set up that more closely matches your combo), then claiming it's a better carb. Whatever...you could have re-jetted the old carb and observed the same "gain".

 

I hear ya that the old 80's stuff is probably better than a lot of people give it credit for and I like an underdog as much as the next guy.
The newer stuff sure runs better though for whatever reason. Like daily use, around town, cold/hot starts, idle, throttle transition, etc.
Everything that's not WOT. Getting away from the old AFM's and 40 year old sensors and wiring and hardware
is a thing too. I assume it's better sensors, faster ECU's larger tables for more precise control of fuel and spark, etc, etc.

Every dyno dude I've ever asked said they couldn't accurately measure part throttle power, nobody ever explained why and I've never seen
anyone do it but that is what I've been told so I take their word for it. I've seen them load a motor enough to hold it at a given RPM but that was still WOT.
Pressing the pedal more isn't really the point regarding part throttle lower RPM performance.

 

I don't think the sensors have changed much. A thermistor is still a thermistor. A TPS is still a rheostat, basically. A MAF is still a heated wire in an air stream. And so on....But, if the old ones aren't working, they're not working and we diag and R&R them. Otherwise....they're still working. IDK....I'm still running original everything (except the opti which has failed 3 times) on my '92; 33 years and 220,000 miles and by every objective measure, it runs as good...no, it runs better than new. So well in fact, it has been SHOCKING to some local FOLKS. And in my life of car ownership, that's how it's been. Could it/they have run even better w/an aftermarket controller and requisite tuning? Probably. But it could likewise run equally better if I took the time to tailor the tune in the stock ECM as well. I agree that EASE of use is the big attraction to the aftermarket units.

I'd like to hear that explanation too, b/c it's BFS. I'd say that's typical of dyno ops that I've seen. Most don't even really "Get it", how engines work. I had one tell me that I was going to "blow a rod" if we started the pull at 500 RPM where I wanted to. We eventually started the pull at ~500 RPM and blew nothing. I've seen dyno ops who didn't know what the inductive spark pick up clamp was for.

If you went on the dyno, hooked up a device to give you live data, picked a TPS value and did pulls from 500 RPM, there is no reason why you couldn't tune that way, and for that operating condition. Its:
*Driving the car at part throttle
*Measuring power and tq from low RPM
*While measuring A/F and timing
*Repeatable

You could totally do that, and it would be valuable, but most just go do it on the street and use the good 'ol SOTP meter...which we all know is basically worthless.

 

It would be really cool to see low rpm part throttle data from a dyno, always tell me it won't work and nobody has ever explained why.
You may well be right in that they just do it how they were taught to do it and that's that. You run into that a lot with this sorta thing.
I've never seen anyone do it but I'd like to.



I dunno if it's the resolution of the sensors or that on newer stuff you can get non-chinese replacements (or get them at all).
The sampling rate is undoubtably higher on newer ECU's or able to be processed more quickly, as are the fidelity of the maps so strictly speaking they
can be more precise. I suspect that is much more of a thing at part throttle and transitional states than at WOT.
But that's largely where I am in life with cars, not at WOT much so I'm interested in gains elsewhere. My 96 LT1 does everything
better than my 86 L98. Except WOT, other than the obvious differences between an LT1 and an L98.
But literally everywhere else, the LT1 acts for all intents and purposes like a new car and the L98 feels like 80's
fuel injection. It's fine, it works well enough, but it's not elegant in operation at all. It's what I remember them running like in highschool
but we didn't really know any better at the time. And it took a lot of fixing to get it to that point.
I would expect that behavior to improve overall with a modern aftermarket (or modern retrofitted factory) engine management.
I don't have the slightest desire to change out the stock very mildly modified ECU on my LT1 car.
The 86 TPI, not so much lol....

 

Not so sure about that...lol. It's how I dialed in my AE so well.

Probably because of what you have to do get that kind of non-WOT performance out of a stock ECM. I keep saying it... if it wasn't for S_AUJP making it possible to dig WAAAAYYYY deep into the 8D code, there's no freaking way I'd ever get it to run anything like the newer stuff. It can be done, but if someone is at a decision point on trying to tune or go aftermarket, I'd probably go aftermarket. I was just super stubborn and determined to make it work and I eventually did, but man it was a long, protracted effort...

I remember back in the early 90's, people I knew buying the Hypertech stuff and saying, "Oh yeah, man, this thing is so much faster now!"... LMAO... now that all the code has been laid bare, what a load of BS those "performance chips" were.

 

Yeah?
I agree. People were using their SOTP meter....and they thought that they had scored!
Old "CFI-EFI", he took his Corvette to the track after a Hypertech install and went slower. Put the stock chip back in.

 

When I was getting into cars in the early 90's all the guys I was learning from said leave that **** alone and either put a carb on it
so you can tune it or take it to someone that knew what they were doing (which was damn few people in that area back then).
I don't remember when I first ran across people doing actual tuning at home, late 90's maybe? I moved on into European
cars early in my automotive hobby path so I haven't had to worry about any of this stuff till pretty recently.

 

The stock tune on my '89 has better drivability than the FiTech in the truck. Truck seems to lag behind the throttle a little and correct asap, as you'd expect a canned tune with autotune enabled.

I don't really like trying to tune on the FiTech because the interface sucks. You get like 3 different values and you just change em and let the thing interpolate what it's supposed to be doing and I'd rather have them graph things the Holley guys get.

It's nice to change things on the fly though. Shifting too hard through the 1-2 at 10% throttle? Pull over, press some buttons, continue on. I don't do that kind of stuff often but it's the easiest way to get a system dialed.

I should learn how to actually tune the FiTech, I've watched videos before but I still think it's clunky and obtuse. Still a great option for swaps leveraging mostly stock parts and old hot rods struggling with 90's aftermarket EFI. Personally I don't think the value is there if you've already got an ecm and harness because Tuned Performance exists and you can get hooked up for less money and effort that way.

 

Seems like I read somewhere you could use tuner studio with Fitech, might be able to sort some of that out.
No personal experience but the handful of L98 vette guys that have posted about it seemed really pleased
with it's behavior pretty well out of the box. You never know how screwed up their stock stuff was but
that's what I've read.

 

Likely they were using Tuner Studio to interpret the datalog because the journey to getting the FiTech software talking to the handheld isn't worth it for the primitive csv reader you get.

FiTech should provide software that makes the data in their ecm easier to modify and interpret. Instead, what is provided is essentially no better than the handheld and allegedly less reliable.

That coupled with the incomplete feature documentation and general lack of common knowledge on the platform makes it tough to get invested in, for me. I understand they're working on these things including a new interface with better built in documentation.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good product for the money and there are practical applications for it, I like how my truck runs for the effort I have put in. But it does not compete with the premium aftermarket ecm options for sbc, it will not make your engine run better unless egr or the maf sensor was the problem, and there's no additional potential for more power that doesn't also exist in the stock ecm as the fidelity of the sensors, injectors, and ignition remains the same.

 

It's cheap, is the thing. You can't expect Holley features or performance for half or less the money.
Heck you can barely get into Megaquirt for cheaper these days.

I didn't look hard into it but it was talked about as if you could tune it from a laptop with TS like any other
compatible EFI system, data log, etc. That may not be the case but it's what I remember reading.

Edit: I think this is what I was thinking of. Says only for LS and power-adder system.

 

ProCal can be used with Ultimate TPI with some files off the handheld. There's instructions for it. I'm pretty sure Ultimate TPI is just a modified version of their Ultimate LS product, based on looking at the filenames.

 

Is pro-cal pretty comparable to Tuner Studio? I've only used TS a bit with a microsquirt setup, it knew way more than I did but it worked out fairly well.

 

I haven't used Tuner Studio, but Pro Cal seems to me to be an engineering interface to replicate the handheld inputs combined with a csv reader that will draw lines on the screen for you.

 

Not too surprising I suppose. I imagine the software is as expensive to develop as the hardware.

 

Too bad there wasn't a software package that would let you modify the actual factory bin code to add new tables and parameters and stuff.

Man would that be powerful.