17 January 2008
I hope you
all had a relaxing holiday J
Over this
festive season I had some time to think about the pain & anguish I have
been subjected to by working on aftermarket stand-alone Fuel injection systems;
especially those installed by somebody else.
As you
probably know I have seemed to have gotten quite a reputation as a Tuner of
vehicles.
These are
cars & bakkies brought in to be perfected using a Unichip or conventional
Carburettor tuning. I have been doing Diesels with quite some success over the
past few months as well. Either with the Plug ‘n Play (N$ 4900+) or
conventional Unichip (N$ 2000+). The advantage of the Plug ‘n Play is that the
vehicle owner can remove it at will, personally that would be a moot point for
me- but then that is personal J
I can tune
cars as close to perfect as is possible, with a vehicle that was mechanically
sound & operating as the factory expects it, it can easily be felt by the
customer. Therefore I can guarantee that you will feel an improvement. If not I
will refund you !
After all,
my entire job is to make the customer happy by showing that our work does make
a difference.
BUT where the problem comes in , is when we do
Stand alone ECU’s such as the Dicktator etc. I can guarantee nothing, unless we
built the Engine installed the ECU etc. according to my recommendations
Often such
cars get towed in and the expected performance gains are in the customer’s
mind, so there is no benchmark to compare against.
Furthermore, quite often the vehicle is
sick or built up incorrectly from the start.
Case
in point:
1 Opel Superboss comes in where the
owner installed the system/engine himself with multiple throttle bodies.
It did not
want to make proper power or hook up to the Dyno.
2 Somebody shoehorned a VR6 motor into
his Golf 2 and then we could never get it to show proper timing.
The owner
supplied his own pick-ups etc. and was not prepared to pay us to fix the
problem.
3 A Sentra was brought in with a lot of
stories on how professional his motor was built; in the end one story
contradicted the other.
4 Somebody had a 2.7 motor fitted to his
old Hilux in SA and now it did not make power or give a decent fuel
consumption.
5 we installed a Gotech unit on a 2.8
Cressida motor that later on failed to run as expected, cause: customer fitted
a faulty fuel pump.
6 a 3L Cressida Motor that was installed
into a Hilux overheated (as can be expected) and I was told “tune hom maar so”.
Who takes responsibility for the extra time,
effort & risk involved ?
The list goes on, but I don’t want
to bore you L
I don’t
want to seem negative, but judging from the above, it seems to me that most of
my frustrations stem from a lack of customer information. This then results in
unwillingness on the customer’s side in having to pay for my having to blunder
about in a dark morass ???
My company
specialises in enhancing a vehicles efficiency, be it via a Tune-up or through
the fitting of performance parts (Exhausts, cams, headflowing etc.), we do not
do fault finding, repairs or Voodoo !
Therefore I have decided to draft the following letter that prospective
aftermarket EFi customers can peruse.
There are a
variety of reasons that you might want to fit an aftermarket Electronic Control
Unit to your vehicle, according to my experience:
1) You have
a factory racer with a state of the art Variable cam, fly by wire, flapped
motor and the Unichip seems not to be the answer because you are running way
out of stock parameters- although with the new Uni-Q that seems to be a moot
point. Then you might want to go for an aftermarket ECU system costing 30 000 +
Rands.
2) Your
stock ECU is blown and cannot be repaired (we have a company doing ECU repairs
for us, usually costing well below 4000 N$)
3) You have
bought a fuel injected motor without the original ECU & harness, such as
while doing a conversion
4) You have
a fuel injected vehicle and want to learn more by having access to its
management system
You now
have the following choices:
1) Buy a system from us as per advice and
get a certain amount of back-up
In this
case we can install and tune it for you. Pre-requisite is that you bring in your vehicle
with the Motor fitted and hooked up to your electrical system. It must be able
to turn over with its starter and you must provide me with an Ignition wire.
Also the
Tank should be full and the fuel pump must be able to supply 200 l/hour at 3bar
+.
The
I can
supply most of the necessary components, such as a quality coil and in-line
fuel pump if you don’t have.
In
interesting cases (race cars, loved vehicles etc.) we can also build and
install the motor for you.
2) Buy the parts from us, install them
yourself and hire our services and/or advice when it becomes too complicated
for you.
3) Buy a system somewhere else and hope
those suppliers will back you, I am only prepared to get involved with the
final tuning.
In all
cases I can only back our parts and our labour. It goes without saying that the whole set-up
must be mechanically sound and ready to function 100 %
So if you
install dud plugs and it takes me 2 hours to find that problem, you will have
to pay my current fees of 2X 300 N$ excl VAT.
If you
bring in a motor that has a cam timing switch installed but don’t know how it
works, you will have to pay for that labour also.
In all
cases I can only tune fuelling & timing on that motor to the best of my abilities.
If your
motor does not want to idle properly or make the expected power or shows any
other problems, I cannot help you unless you are prepared to pay for additional
services.
If you are
not happy with what you are getting- tough, simply because the installation is
not a factory one, therefore I cannot have control over unknown variables.
I am always
prepared to help, by checking my work. If I am at fault= no charge. If I am
not= you have to pay. I do not give quotes on unknowns.
If you lie
to me or omit to tell me vital information, such that your motor has been
worked on since my last tune; will result in a cancellation of our business
relationship and an invoice to be settled in hard cash L
I claim not
to know everything and since these jobs are all one-offs, the customer has to
foot the bill for research & development on my side.
Please
understand that we normally carry these costs and time on a local popular
model, if we Unichip it, as we can then pass the cost on to a broad customer
base J
I do not
wish to sound too harsh here, but aftermarket stand-alone fuel injection
systems have provided me little joy since servicing these in
I want to
enjoy my work and will rather not make money than hate my job !
The fault
does not seem to lie with the system itself, but rather with the
vehicle/customer.
I have
therefore decided on the following; If you want to bring your car to me for a
tune-up on an aftermarket ECU, deposit a minimum of 1000.00 N$ (or what seems
appropriate considering the state your vehicle/system is in) into my account.
For this
I’ll put it on the Dyno and attempt setting it up. Should it go without a
glitch then I’ll refund you the difference.
Should I
experience problems I will use your deposit to correct these and advise you
should I need more funds.
Please
ensure that you have given me an appropriate deposit, since I hate wasting time
(your money) on unnecessary communication.
Also
strapping a car to the Dyno & taking it off again, whilst awaiting your decision/funds
takes time (again costing money)
When
bringing me your vehicle, please remember to advise me in writing on what exactly you wish me to do or achieve.
It is also
a good idea if you need me to do more than adjust timing & fuel, such as
boost control, cam timing etc. My guessing = your $$$
Also it
would be good to let me know beforehand what your financial constraints are, if
any.
Finally if
you have doubts about your set-up, also advise me please. This will alleviate
stress and financial burden later on.
Just to
reiterate one point, I am not knocking Fuel injection factory or aftermarket,
simply stated the Unichip is an excellent product that will enhance your
factory “computer box”. I have not yet come across one SA manufactured
aftermarket EFi system that comes close to modern OEM systems. None have proper
sequential injection, where I can decide when to inject. All use either MAP or
TPS none can interpolate between TPS, MAP & MAF- the Unichip can J
Nick
"Man darf in der Demokratie eine Meinung
haben, man muss aber nicht. Wenn man keine Ahnung hat: einfach mal die Fresse
halten. Ist mir ganz wichtig, dass sich das mal rumspricht."
Kabarettist Dieter Nuhr