Date: Mon, 28 May 2012 13:28:54 -0400
Reply-To: Jim Akiba <syncrolist@BOSTIG.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jim Akiba <syncrolist@BOSTIG.COM>
Subject: Re: Why no bolt-on HP upgrades to the 2.1 WBX?
In-Reply-To: <0M4N005BJUTY1W00@vms173011.mailsrvcs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
We got as far as running our setup, and we produced two methods of
crank position sensing that don't require you to remove the engine (as
a flywheel crank pickup would). The stuff was pretty cool, but we
stopped development because the market for it is way too small for us
to continue and we switched to focus on other projects (as was
speculated on in this thread). We offered a while back our setup and
experience to GoWesty so we'd have enough secured sales potential to
complete it, but they said they were already working on the GM stuff
in-house(their pace is very slow). Still the GoWesty General motors
ECU setup sounds promising. I wonder if they are working with FAS, as
the new FAS conversion also uses GM/Delphi ecus. Hopefully GW got
someone better to develop it than when they were using the MAF
translator to try and come up with the air meter replacement.
Developing engine management for small entities is very risky, and
there are lot's of pitfalls that you won't know about until you find
them yourself. Critical mass for EMS is 50 customers, then you'll
start to understand what's really going on and if you're too weak in
one aspect or not (50 is also critical mass for conversions, after
about 50 the weakness of a vendor to continue/support/grow starts to
be exposed). The "cores" are funny about the GoWesty setup, likely
that they are also using it for obfuscation like when they do their
bigger engines. Or they also want them for other customers and it
helps getting connector backshells etc. They have a pattern of
concerted activity to slide their products past emissions regulations
by appearing to be stock, unethical, but highly profitable as we have
seen.
There are plenty of tuning tools for tuning GM ecus, almost as good as
the ford stuff we have through SCT, but it's a function of the
calibrator's ability/understanding as well. One has to be careful and
educated from hardware choice down through the actual calibration.
They aren't many who can do this well especially in the space between
huge volume, and custom one-offs. That is what they have to avoid, and
with speed density (although it might be they have a MAF system with
MAP, there aren't any real details), they are going to need a
different calibration for each of their different engines, and each
specific configuration, but since they aim to sell more or less
complete setups (eg their engine + their exhaust etc) it shouldn't be
much of a problem. It will be interesting to see how they do.
Jim Akiba
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