I don't want guys to think that standalones are a pain... They are really preferred over piggybacks even for some mild setups. You just have to get a standalone out there that has good tech support and comes with basemaps.
All the Honda standalones and even the Accel DFI's for Mustangs, etc... all have base maps. Running those standalones aren't so bad at all because the cranking maps, temperature curves, injection phasing, crank/cam trigger settings are pretty much done. When I tuned the AEM EMS on my turbo Integra, it took me less than 3 hours to get my car dyno-ready. Probably a week to get the car to drive like stock and get over 30 MPG.
Tuning the idle is really one of the simpler things to do. It requires no guessing or datalogging.. All I had to do was play with the IACV duty % and get the car to idle according to temperature.
As long as the car is idling, you are pretty much set.
On my Camry, it was a real headache get the car to actually START UP with the 720's... There was no reference point anywhere because the standalone was all raw. I had to make an educated guess on the injector lag time vs pulse width vs fuel pressure during cranking by doing some math. Each time the car would not start, and it could be from too little fuel or too much fuel which in turns floods the motor.
Afterwards, I had to pull the plugs out to clear out the fuel and crank the car with the throttle open for good 15-30 secs. It took me days to get the car to fire up because once the engine was flooded, it was hard to determine why the car wasn't starting. There was no way to find out if the injection times were off, or if there was too much fuel still sitting inside the motor. I would usually let the car sit for the day to let the fuel fully evaporate and then try again
After the cranking was done, I had to move onto the injector phasing times. I had to degree the motor to find out when the intake valves start opening, and then calculate the number of crank degrees to find out when the injector should start spraying according to RPM. Acceleration enrichment times were also consider when dialing in the injection advance maps. If the injectors are spraying at the wrong time, it would cause the fuel to spray directly at a closed intake valve. This would potentially cause the engine to lean out because the intake valves might close before the injection cycle fully is finished.
On the Camry though, it took maybe 3 months! And good luck finding basemaps for the 1MZ-FE. Maybe I could charge some money whenever I start selling my own maps
That was why I urged the folks to stay away from standalones for the Camry... So far, I haven't seen any basemaps available for the Camry, except for the 3S-GTE if the Camry happen to have that engine swap.
Stand alone ecu's
"Skoolin' the unlearned!"
Linear Mode
