The worth in installing an Emerald ECU?
Discussion
I would imagine the improvements are the same as putting aftermarket management onto any other rv8 tvr .. better response, more power, better fuel economy etc etc .. but you'd be beter off waiting until thenick has his already-emeralded chimaera supercharged then you'll get a good idea at least of the hp available.
Hi Joo! Yeah you're free to use me as a guineapig... The kit is 70% on and I'm just waiting for the charger its self and the new supercharger - friendly ACT n/s manifold to arrive...
I'll have to find someone to map it sometime after next week... Would you be up to the job Joo?
Edit:
By the way yes I've changed my name for no apparant reason
I'll have to find someone to map it sometime after next week... Would you be up to the job Joo?
Edit:
By the way yes I've changed my name for no apparant reason
Edited by 450Nick on Monday 1st September 22:55
450Nick said:
Hi Joo! Yeah you're free to use me as a guineapig... The kit is 70% on and I'm just waiting for the charger its self and the new supercharger - friendly ACT n/s manifold to arrive...
I'll have to find someone to map it sometime after next week... Would you be up to the job Joo?
Edit:
By the way yes I've changed my name for no apparant reason
People normally change name whn they have upset someone..I'll have to find someone to map it sometime after next week... Would you be up to the job Joo?
Edit:
By the way yes I've changed my name for no apparant reason
Edited by 450Nick on Monday 1st September 22:55
Who is it this time
We have had a LOT of experience with Emerald, having seen about 120 Lotus' (mostly with Emerald) over the last year or so.
Emerald wouldn't be our favourite weapon of choice, but whatever solution you choose, your choice of mapper is crucial. We get to see cars on a regular basis that have been "mapped" but leave a lot to be desired so need to be subsequently corrected.
Emerald wouldn't be our favourite weapon of choice, but whatever solution you choose, your choice of mapper is crucial. We get to see cars on a regular basis that have been "mapped" but leave a lot to be desired so need to be subsequently corrected.
The Emerald does have it's place in the world as it is fairly inexpensive.
As a tool it's quite difficlut to work with because it's unstable and tends to crash a lot during programming. We also prefer to use ecu's which have a greater resolution so that the tuning processes can be conducted with greater accuracy.
Hope this helps
As a tool it's quite difficlut to work with because it's unstable and tends to crash a lot during programming. We also prefer to use ecu's which have a greater resolution so that the tuning processes can be conducted with greater accuracy.
Hope this helps
I think you must be doing something wrong TDI or have some sort of ecu/computer conflict going on .. the Emerald is by far the easiest most stable ecu i have ever worked with and that includes via serial or usb, with fully user-configurable resolution for load/revs down to 1rpm if you need it (which you wont but it's good to know it can go as fine on resolution as you would ever practically need) .. what is it exactly that you are struggling with?
350Matt said:
It gives it far better idling and gentle driving manners, throttle tip-in is much improved and you can feed the power in like you'd expect on a modern car.
You can cure any shunting and poor pick-up areas and add a lump of mid-range power.
There are no downsides.
Matt
How much dyno time and how many return visits do you need to factor in though, before driveability end everyday reliability becomes better than the original installation? Most (non-TVR) installations I know about seem to be a work in progress for several months at least with a couple of curveballs thrown in for good measure and I can see why one would spend that time enjoying their car instead.You can cure any shunting and poor pick-up areas and add a lump of mid-range power.
There are no downsides.
Matt
I guess it all depends on the quality and location (relative to where you are) of available support.
Edited by 900T-R on Wednesday 3rd September 10:53
Well - I've installed an Emerald K3 with Zeitronix wideband on my own car and have found the programming completely trouble free.
The K3 is a very reasonable price compared to others and the features list is just what I needed..
I'm sure there is better out there but at a price .. OMEX and DTA for my V8 were nearly twice the price.
Very happy with mine - love the user interface - it's very easy to use and changes are made real time.
Big
for Emerald from me.
The K3 is a very reasonable price compared to others and the features list is just what I needed..
I'm sure there is better out there but at a price .. OMEX and DTA for my V8 were nearly twice the price.
Very happy with mine - love the user interface - it's very easy to use and changes are made real time.
Big
for Emerald from me.I have been party to a forum which has many hundreds of Emerald users and I've never heard of one crashing, ever. I've had 3 on 3 different cars and we (the forum) have been using Emeralds for 10 years now.
The resolution of the 16 sites is enough as the processor interpolates between them. If you need to close up resolution at particular sites, you can by spacing out others.
The Emerald isn't quite open source, like the MegaSquirt but Emerald (the company) has an open policy towards its customers. They take on board what people want and provide updates from time to time. You can do many of the updates yourself, and you can even programme/map the thing yourself now thanks to their self-mapping facility (note: you *do* need to know what you're doing still).
I've used 3 or 4 other ECUs (already present in friends' cars) and I honestly don't understand why anyone would chose them over an Emerald. I suppose the only reason I can think of is if your favourite mapper has a particular alliegance to one of them. Me? I'd chose a mapper on the basis that he can map an Emerald..!!
The resolution of the 16 sites is enough as the processor interpolates between them. If you need to close up resolution at particular sites, you can by spacing out others.
The Emerald isn't quite open source, like the MegaSquirt but Emerald (the company) has an open policy towards its customers. They take on board what people want and provide updates from time to time. You can do many of the updates yourself, and you can even programme/map the thing yourself now thanks to their self-mapping facility (note: you *do* need to know what you're doing still).
I've used 3 or 4 other ECUs (already present in friends' cars) and I honestly don't understand why anyone would chose them over an Emerald. I suppose the only reason I can think of is if your favourite mapper has a particular alliegance to one of them. Me? I'd chose a mapper on the basis that he can map an Emerald..!!
TDIPLC said:
The Emerald does have it's place in the world as it is fairly inexpensive.
As a tool it's quite difficlut to work with because it's unstable and tends to crash a lot during programming. We also prefer to use ecu's which have a greater resolution so that the tuning processes can be conducted with greater accuracy.
Hope this helps
Thanks for being so frank. Wasn't trying to be provocative, just interested in what the perceived negatives were from your PoVAs a tool it's quite difficlut to work with because it's unstable and tends to crash a lot during programming. We also prefer to use ecu's which have a greater resolution so that the tuning processes can be conducted with greater accuracy.
Hope this helps
Another vote for emerald, I used mine for about 8 year and 60K miles without any issues, the only time I had the program crash was when I was the guinea pig for the new V8 dizzyless sequential software ( about 6 years ago) then it didn't like the non-resistive plugs I had at the time.
Fitted resistive plugs and no problems.
for the cash its can't be beat the next step up would probably be DTA but they're about twice the price for traction control, all other features are matched by the K3 emerald.
After that Motec?
Matt
Fitted resistive plugs and no problems.
for the cash its can't be beat the next step up would probably be DTA but they're about twice the price for traction control, all other features are matched by the K3 emerald.
After that Motec?
Matt
350Matt said:
the only time I had the program crash was when I was the guinea pig for the new V8 dizzyless sequential software ( about 6 years ago) then it didn't like the non-resistive plugs I had at the time.
Fitted resistive plugs and no problems.
To be fair, the ECU I bought from one of Emerald's very well known competitors suffered exactly the same problem (which ironically the supplier failed to identify or resolve, although fortunately 350Matt's solution did fix it).Fitted resistive plugs and no problems.
Never known my Emerald ECUador to crash.
The software and the drivers for the cable USB adaptor they supply can be unreliable when run on Windows 32bit Vista.
The Minimum is getting different drivers from the adaptor manufacturer. Then that has to be installed before the Emerald. Uninstall and re-install it if already installed.
Uninstalling a version of Emerald software prior to installing a later version seemed to delete the drivers, necessitating removing everything and starting from scratch.
Even so, it keeps giving 'Not responding' error message. Sometimes it works, others not and I can't figure out why. Shutting the program and restarting it usually works.
I suspect that it may not have been developed with Vista in mind. As it's hard to buy anything else now, this is poor.
The software and the drivers for the cable USB adaptor they supply can be unreliable when run on Windows 32bit Vista.
The Minimum is getting different drivers from the adaptor manufacturer. Then that has to be installed before the Emerald. Uninstall and re-install it if already installed.
Uninstalling a version of Emerald software prior to installing a later version seemed to delete the drivers, necessitating removing everything and starting from scratch.
Even so, it keeps giving 'Not responding' error message. Sometimes it works, others not and I can't figure out why. Shutting the program and restarting it usually works.
I suspect that it may not have been developed with Vista in mind. As it's hard to buy anything else now, this is poor.
Uncle Fester said:
Never known my Emerald ECUador to crash.
The software and the drivers for the cable USB adaptor they supply can be unreliable when run on Windows 32bit Vista.
The Minimum is getting different drivers from the adaptor manufacturer. Then that has to be installed before the Emerald. Uninstall and re-install it if already installed.
Uninstalling a version of Emerald software prior to installing a later version seemed to delete the drivers, necessitating removing everything and starting from scratch.
Even so, it keeps giving 'Not responding' error message. Sometimes it works, others not and I can't figure out why. Shutting the program and restarting it usually works.
I suspect that it may not have been developed with Vista in mind. As it's hard to buy anything else now, this is poor.
In fairness, there's loads of software out there from multinational vendors that is not especially stable on Vista either, including MS products! Hardly the fault of Emerald if Uncle Bill changes the OS platform without an eye to backward compatability is it?The software and the drivers for the cable USB adaptor they supply can be unreliable when run on Windows 32bit Vista.
The Minimum is getting different drivers from the adaptor manufacturer. Then that has to be installed before the Emerald. Uninstall and re-install it if already installed.
Uninstalling a version of Emerald software prior to installing a later version seemed to delete the drivers, necessitating removing everything and starting from scratch.
Even so, it keeps giving 'Not responding' error message. Sometimes it works, others not and I can't figure out why. Shutting the program and restarting it usually works.
I suspect that it may not have been developed with Vista in mind. As it's hard to buy anything else now, this is poor.
That said, provided I use the correct USB/serial interconnect and observe the pc boot, load K3, turn on ECU sequence, I find it connects faultlessly. Never had a 'not responding' or any other error apart from comms difficulties that were entirely my making by not using the correct interface. That was right at the outset (Easter) and I've been playing with it pretty much daily since.
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