Aston Martin V8 Vantage

[shainiac]

Cool find on the VR input. Speed sensors and their 27 flavors are one of the most annoying parts of wiring/setting up aftermarket ECUs lol.

[digitalsolo]

So anyone running Motec?  Kinger?  Thoughts?  I have zero desire to spend >3000 dollars on a Holley Terminator that I don't super trust and has very limited functions, so that's out.  No one else has a good DI setup, and if I'm building a new harness, now is the time to put in a different engine controller.   It's only money... right? 

[digitalsolo]

...John Reed racing made me a great deal on a Motec setup.     

[shainiac]

What's the damage? I've always wanted to play with a Motec, but it always seemed like you needed a concierge service tuner to set everting up, tune it, and lock the ECU. I kinda figured the prices were "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" lol
A friend owns a high-end shop and does a lot of Motec installs on GT-Rs and Lambos/R8s. They work awesome, but my bank account statement is missing a few zeros compared to most of his customers lol.

[digitalsolo]

LOL, $4700 out the door, with a custom firmware that suits my needs and an initial base tune for my platform.   Honestly not as bad as I expected.

Other benefit is this stuff holds value, at least that's how I justify it to myself. 

[Venom13132]

And on top of that he just came into Harry's and he ordered 3 T66 turbos, with NOS, and a Motec system exhaust

[kinger]

So anyone running Motec?  Kinger?  Thoughts?

I am running the gold box hundred series and it is OEM reliable.  Zero issues there, which is nice being in a cold snowmobile and getting pounded on frozen trails.  The system is a little old and feels very DOS based with a ok windows GUI.  I LIVED off the 10 yr old videos they put out to figure mine out with no need to call tech support.  I also bought the Evans Academy training class for $300 I think it was and well worth it.  I am very comfortable with the hundred series now. 

The new stuff looks much more configurable but you have to buy from a dealer that sells you the firmware, Motec is essentially a hardware provider and wants out of the software support business it seems.  Which if you have a great dealer for support I think you will get the best of everything.  OEM reliable and full standalone functionality.  Myself personally I like what MaxxEcu is doing, reasonable price, near OEM level of reliable, CAN analyzer built in, and great support and upgrades keep coming free of charge (aka 8HP control).  When you get Motec Firmware from a dealer you will be tethered to them a little, a little if you need or want something thier firmware doesn't support you will pay to get them to make a new one I believe. 

Syvecs has a similar philosophy and I contacted a dealer in the UK who sells a firmware to control a Porsche PDK with a LS engine and had my brain spinning for awhile wanting a 996 911 LS swap so I could have AWD and equal length headers and fast shifting trans, basically everything I wanted in my next project car.  Instead I stayed with RX7 and 8HP and gave up the AWD and headers for about $60K less money LOL

[kinger]

LOL, $4700 out the door, with a custom firmware that suits my needs and an initial base tune for my platform.   Honestly not as bad as I expected.

Other benefit is this stuff holds value, at least that's how I justify it to myself. 

This is awesome, heard great things with John Reed!  Curious how you handle the firmware thing, I don't totally understand it as of yet. 

[digitalsolo]

I did some research before following up with John Reed.  He's been absolutely fantastic on the pre-sales side, and is doing a little "tweaking" to get me what I wanted.   I hopefully won't need a ton of support after the fact (ECUs are ECUs, for the most part) but I'm confident he will be good to deal with.

I do have some limits on what I can do with his off-the-shelf firmware;  if I had the ability to customize it myself I could make it do all the CAN stuff I do with my controller.  And the IO is a bit more limited than  my Haltech, but the ability to mess with my DI tuning myself vastly more easily than the HP Tuners/OEM ECU, and... I don't know, I just really hate dealing with tuning OEM ECUs.  I've kinda always wanted to play with Motec, and now seems like a good time.  I'm running out of ECUs/companies to play with (BS3, ProEFI, AEM Infinity, ECUMaster, Haltech Elite, Haltech Nexus, Holley Dominator, and now Motec M1 series).  Just missing Syvecs, Emtron, Link and Maxx really.  I'll let you know how it stacks up with what I've dealt with.

[Exidous]

If you want good DI go EMtron. You'll need to use a pair of dummy Toyota drivers off a BRZ but their fuel model is matched in the aftermarket only by their traction control.

I find spill valve control is the hardest part of DI setup.

The kv8 would be enough unless you wanted to add port injection.

[digitalsolo]

Link and Emtron were on my "consideration" list for standalone DI.   Link has the Voodoo Pro, which can run DI with their adapters and seems like a very advanced ECU, and Emtron looks solid as well.   My concern on both of those were the same though.  No one has really done the LT4 with them, and I don't particularly want to be a trailblazer.  Setting up all of the base tuning parameters for DI is fussy, and I don't expect much if any support from either vendor to dive into the unknown on that.   It's the same reason I've not played with MS3 Pro on things, even though I love the ability to customize EVERYTHING.

Basically I don't think either of those would have made my life easier/better than just using HP Tuners on my OEM ECU.   The Holley, I just don't trust for some reason, it was very expensive vs. configurability, and I'm not in love with their support.    Honestly if Haltech had a DI path, I'd have been all over that as I really like dealing with them.

All that in mind, JRR and Motec have done these, and I've found a lot of good testimonials on their stuff.  They have done the categorization ahead of time and were willing to jumpstart me with that, which takes a bunch of time off of my tuning effort.

After some more research (we all research more after we buy... right?) it looks like the firmware I'm running will let me do a little more with CAN than I thought.  I might even be able to creatively customize the configurable CAN outputs to negate the need for my CAN gateway.  Maybe.   I also have a little more IO available than I initially realized.  I thought I had exactly what I needed to run my basics, but I have 6x more programmable low side controls, which lets me do some more fancy stuff (and also add more features I was doing in my control box).   I can also put an E888 on it and get a few more I/O and 8x EGT, because, why not.

Motec M1 Tune is a little different than other software I've played with, but it seems pretty logical once you sort out the thought process on how you configure the ECU.   All of this, of course, is just theoretical until I actually put the thing together and see how it works.  There is still a lingering possibility I might do a dev license on the Motec at some point to totally customize things to EXACTLY what I want, but time will tell if the costs justify any small benefits in this chassis/build.

[kinger]

 I can also put an E888 on it and get a few more I/O and 8x EGT, because, why not.

Motec M1 Tune is a little different than other software I've played with, but it seems pretty logical once you sort out the thought process on how you configure the ECU.   All of this, of course, is just theoretical until I actually put the thing together and see how it works.  There is still a lingering possibility I might do a dev license on the Motec at some point to totally customize things to EXACTLY what I want, but time will tell if the costs justify any small benefits in this chassis/build.

I also run the E888 as I ran out of I/O on my sled.  Everything Motec is such high quality, its top of the top for sure.  You will definitely feel you got your money's worth and it may even convert you for life!  The only thing I need to learn more on is the Firmware, I just can't grasp the concept yet.  It feels like a "Map" to use old school terms which would be fine but I just don't know the limitations if any that would piss me off.  I can't wait for you to play with it some and get your feedback. 

I toyed with a FK8 Type R project ONLY because it had a plug in Motec option which would make everything stupid simple and fun to work on.  I actually don't enjoy making harnesses so if I could use the factory crap all programmed in the Motec and I could focus on just my upgrades I was a happy camper.  For my LS7/8HP and Maxx I will be wiring it up this winter and not really looking forward to it at all lol.

2:38 of my vid I express my displeasure of the E888 coming with nothing lol

[shainiac]

Do you know yet if you'll be able to bring in CAN data from at Aston body module, like individual wheel speeds? I'd be sweet to be able to use all the OEM wheel speed sensors for traction control.
IIRC, the GTRs and Lambo/R8 guys are able to use a lot of stuff from the OEM modules to make traction control and driver features work properly. Obvious a high(ish) volume PNP option vs your one-off, but it'd be nice to have the ability to put in the work and do the CAN analyzing yourself.

Have you considered a piggy-back system, using the stock ECU for GDI control, and a standalone as a CAN hub to allow the Aston and LT4 to communicate? You'd still be stuck with HPT for fuel and spark tuning, but would offload all the bells and whistles elsewhere. At least with Maxx, you can make tables and mask data to emulate the CAN addresses an OE ECU or module is expecting to see. Take in data from one OE's module, and repackage to look like what the ECU would expect.
Full standalone may be easier in the end, assuming you can do everything you want.

[digitalsolo]

LOL, KSV Looms is one of the places I buy a ton of stuff from.   I'm the opposite of you in that I don't want any of this stuff to come with harnesses, etc, as I want to make my own and use the specific pins/connectors/seals/etc. that I like.   For example, on the M142 I'm using solid pins (not stamped) and plastic backshell extensions for the connectors and 70* sealing boots to route the wires easily.   So if it came with connectors I'd have dumped everything but the plastic connector bodies anyway.   That's probably why they don't come with stuff.

Still, stark contrast from other stuff, for sure.

[digitalsolo]

Do you know yet if you'll be able to bring in CAN data from at Aston body module, like individual wheel speeds? I'd be sweet to be able to use all the OEM wheel speed sensors for traction control.
IIRC, the GTRs and Lambo/R8 guys are able to use a lot of stuff from the OEM modules to make traction control and driver features work properly. Obvious a high(ish) volume PNP option vs your one-off, but it'd be nice to have the ability to put in the work and do the CAN analyzing yourself.

Have you considered a piggy-back system, using the stock ECU for GDI control, and a standalone as a CAN hub to allow the Aston and LT4 to communicate? You'd still be stuck with HPT for fuel and spark tuning, but would offload all the bells and whistles elsewhere. At least with Maxx, you can make tables and mask data to emulate the CAN addresses an OE ECU or module is expecting to see. Take in data from one OE's module, and repackage to look like what the ECU would expect.
Full standalone may be easier in the end, assuming you can do everything you want.

I looked at doing a piggyback and it just wasn't worth it to me.  If the OEM ECU is doing the fast stuff (DBW, Spark, Fuel) then the rest I can just get out of CANbus at a 20ms cycle time and work from, so why bother "splitting brains" right?   All the data I'd need for other stuff is on the CANBus anyway.  Plus every ECU is harder to make do what I want with CANbus vs. me writing an Arduino program to do it myself from scratch, EXACTLY as I want it to work.

I'm pretty sure I have the addresses for the CAN data from wheel speed sensors, etc.  I think the firmware I ordered can actually input the wheel speed sensors as well.  I'll find out.  I know I'm capable of writing a package to do all of this stuff also, but I'm not going to "boil the ocean" to start.  I can dig into writing custom firmware to do all kind of stuff later;  I want to make sure I have everything working before I add 2-3x more complexity.   That is probably a winter 2025/2026 season task, assuming I get the current stuff in and debugged this winter/spring/summer, anyway.   Scope creep is my enemy (I say as I rip apart a running car with 1 mile on it).