DIYEFI.org Forum

Just a note here too,

I didn't mind trying something new- hence the Vems. Personally I would put the EMU in the same catagory.

Really, doing it yourself, even with a commercial system, is the way to go. It's just not that hard, and gives you so so much better value through knowledge and the many things that come with it.

I have to correct myself here after some thinking. Half my family is Polsky/Uky so I grew up with disparaging ethnic jokes- and being an ex soviet bloc country I figured low tech, but that is a generation ago and I should give the EMU a second look. Features that caught my attention were the strong safegaurd skew on this ecu. Did you get to have a peek inside, what was the quality of the unit like? the kit that just has the connectors and pins allows me to reuse the $300 Vems harness if I chhose to replace- my thinking also is down the road if I have to revisit the Vems, how difficult is that vs another ecu.

dfarr67 wrote:I have to correct myself here after some thinking. Half my family is Polsky/Uky so I grew up with disparaging ethnic jokes- and being an ex soviet bloc country I figured low tech, but that is a generation ago and I should give the EMU a second look. Features that caught my attention were the strong safegaurd skew on this ecu. Did you get to have a peek inside, what was the quality of the unit like? the kit that just has the connectors and pins allows me to reuse the $300 Vems harness if I chhose to replace- my thinking also is down the road if I have to revisit the Vems, how difficult is that vs another ecu.

Yes I did take a close look at the hardware on the first one I used. I'm no electronics expert so cant comment on things like routing and general layout design etc, but can at least say to me it was a very clean and professional looking PCB. All surface mount components and all components were square and properly aligned etc.
Since you mention polsky family - it might be worth me mentioning ecumaster actually also sell a "polish only" version quite a bit cheaper than the English version (my understanding is the "PL" ecu is locked to the polish software and that only installs on polish windows).
The VEMS will probably be a little more difficult to work with for a beginner - with the very little/poor documentation and not much support from the manufacturer there will have to be a lot more "learn as you go". Having to learn a little isnt always a bad thing but it helps a lot when you've got some good documentation and support people to bounce questions off...

I don't have any experience with the Holley that you were considering, but can give some superficial comments; specs look ok on paper, i/o count is a little low but ok for your application - enough for fuel pump, fan, boost control and that's about all, the software seems a bit odd but is probably aimed more at beginner users so would probably be easy to learn with, documentation appears to be quite complete.

I suppose Holley has a price point to meet and has to save some gravy for the Dominator- I like the dual WB and the trans controller.

I would say if Vems hasn't got their sh** together by now, there are to many good choices out there now.

http://indy-speed.com/

Talking to these guys about taking the project over- they have several good ecu's they use, sounds like they prefer not to use Vems and on condition will only invest 2 hours in the Vems before moving on- on another note they have recently picked up EMU but don't have the reliability experience to put it forward as a choice for me as yet.

Well it's come down to Kink Atom/Storm, or the Haltech Sport 1000.

Make sure it's a G4+, the earlier ones were lame. We pronounce and spell it Lunk over here :-D A lot of money for a Lunk Atom when it can't do much due to lack of pins and PCB real estate IMO. But my perspective is warped ;-)

I would compare a Link Atom to a Haltech Sprint500. I have used both Link and Haltech, and Sport1000 is a step above the Link Atom. It would be more comparable to the Storm. An Atom is freaking cheap (at least here) because Link has freaked out about Emtron and lowered the prices and added features to try and hold market share. If they made a less buggy product that didn't do random shit then they'd have a better chance than on price comparison. If the Atom does what you want (run the engine and that's about it) then it might be an option.
I rate Haltech over Link any day, supposedly I am/was a dealer but haven't fitted one since they told a guy around the corner from me that he could be a dealer too. I use DTAfast now and rate them waaay better on stability, but have less flexibility with outputs. Which is fine as I spec an ECU per job. In fact, as much as I dislike Link, I may fit an Atom instead of a DTA S40 based on the outputs and trigger setup I will need on a job coming up.

How do you like the emtron? Was phoning around for prices and a dealer suggested the SL version. More money, but perhaps worth it?