First time tune using Greddy E-manage ultimate

Hello Andre/Ben and fellow tuners,

I'm new on here and I've already purchased and looked at some of the courses from HPA. Andre/Ben, the course material is outstanding and I can't begin to tell you how happy I am with what I've learn't so far. "Tuning" here in Trinidad seems to be far from what you guys are teaching here. Take for instance the reason I am starting this thread, I own a 2004 Suzuki Ignis Sport.....Andre/Ben I am sure you guys are familiar with it in New Zealand. Its fitted with a Greddy E-manage Ultimate piggy back ECU. It's been supposedly "tuned" by some tuners here in Trinidad, and although I was not as educated as I am now when those guys tuned the engine, I believe that all they have done is tuned WOT on an inertia dyno on the main fuel and ignition tables.

Having completed the EFI fundamentas, Understanding AFR and the Road tuning courses, I am much more educated now and I want to undertake "re-tuning" my car with my new found knowledge together with help from you guys of course.

Firstly to Andre or anyone else on here, do you guys have any experience with the E-manage ultimate?

While watching your courses I realized that most of your info was based on a full stand alone system and not a piggy back so I became a bit worried that it would not apply to me but having looked at the E-manage operating manual I see a lot of what Andre has spoken about from the stand alone perspective.

Anyways, I started this thread to be an ongoing discussion for me to get help from Andre/Ben and other experienced tuners that may be on here. My aim is to perfect the art on my personal car and build some confidence before trying to tune anyone else's car.

Details of project:

Car: 2004 Suzuki Ignis Sport

Engine: Suzuki 1500cc 16 valve (M15A) high compression (11:1) engine with DOHC and variable valve timing on the intake cam alone

ECU: Greddy E-manage ultimate wired into the stock ECU via a custom made plug and play harness

Fuel: 95 octane pump fuel

Application: Street car/occasional weekend warrior

Modifications to engine: Custom Air Intake, gutted cat converter, oil catch can with pcv delete, condemned coolant through throttle body, lower temp engine thermostat, exhaust barrel/muffler changed....mid pipe still stock.

Hope to you guy's thoughts,

Chris.

Tuning piggy-back type of ecu is quite a complicated thing, I think you shouldn't start with it, because you will never completely understand the working algorythm of stock ecu, hence you wouldn't be able to understand why you are recieving the output number that you are not expecting and will chase your tail. Look at cheapest standalone ECUs such as Link G4+ atom or Haltech PS500.

Hey Chris, first up thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you've found our products valuable!

As far as the E-Manage goes, I've got some news and it isn't great. Years ago when these were first released I spent some time tuning a couple and found the results to be very irregular. I couldn't get a result that I deemed to be acceptable so we made the decision not to tune them. I haven't tuned one for probably 6-8 years or more though so maybe there have been updates in that time to improve stability. If you already have the unit installed then I'd try using it but be prepared for some frustration.

Here's some theory for you anyway:

A piggy back ECU is actually simpler in a lot of ways to a full standalone as you only need to change the parts of the map that you want to effect. Normally for example the cold start, idle speed control and closed loop cruise areas can be left untouched. The piggy back takes the stock ECU signals and modifies them to achieve a change to the fuel and/or timing, so if we don't request a change then the stock mapping will remain.

I see a lot of people get themselves in trouble trying to do too much with a piggy back. They are capable if you're only wanting to make small adjustments - Perfect for example on a N/A engine that has had headers, and exhaust and intake fitted. If on the other hand you've fitted a turbo and larger injectors to an N/A engine and expect perfect results from a piggy back then you may be sorely disappointed. The further you need to move from the factory mapping, the harder it is for a piggy back to do a good job.

I can't remember the specifics of tuning the e-manage now but generally you will have a fuel and ignition map and these make changes to the stock map. Typically when you're looking at the fuel map it will provide a percentage change but with ignition timing it may be a percentage change or it may be an absolute number.

Either way the approach to tuning is very much the same as a standalone ECU. Just be aware that if the ECU is running in closed loop (idle and cruise), you won't be able to influence the AFR with a piggy back as the closed loop system will correct any error.

Andre,

I thoroughly understand what you have said. I'd even go as far as saying you read my mind and answered some questions I had before I even got to asking them. I do however have a couple new questions, I hope you don't mind:

1.) Can you explain more on closed loop/open loop with respect to ecu functioning as you use it in your response? I did not hear much on this in the courses, granted I may have missed it.

2.) Why then does the E-manage have IAT and acceleration compensation tables among others in its repertoire? If all this stuff can basically be left at the factory setting.

3.) I don't know if you can help explain this, but ever since I have that emanage connected to the car, when I start the car from cold start it cranks way more before it turns over than when it was being run by the stock ecu alone.

4.) Can you point me in a more suitable direction to head in with respect to a ECU platform for the Suzuki Ignis Sport?

Chris.

I've tuned a lot of theses and they have a lot of bugs in them , I've seen cars Rev lower then stock with no adjustments made , misfires when adding timing etc , there ok in some cases and others not great at all , A lot of the older ones were very poor u want one with a E board in it

If it was me I would fit a link , great ecu

Hi Chris, here's some answers for you:

1. When I was referring to open loop / closed loop, I'm talking about the factory ECUs control over fuel delivery. In closed loop, the ECU will look at the output from the oxygen sensor and adjust the fuel delivery up or down until a 14.7:1 AFR is achieved. This allows the ECU to adjust for small day to day variations and ensures good economy and low emissions. Closed loop control is normally used at idle and cruise, while at full power the ECU will ignore the oxygen sensor and operate in open loop mode, providing fuel delivery based solely on the fuel map.

If you try and trim or adjust the fuel delivery when the factory ECU is in closed loop mode, it will simply adjust the closed loop trims to cancel out any change you've made.

2. If the changes to your engine are minimal then theres a good chance you won't need to alter the accel or IAT mapping. If you've fitted larger injectors and made dramatic changes to the engine in general then it may end up that the stock ECU's mapping for these parameters may benefit from some adjustment.

3. I've got no idea but it's aspects such as this that make me sceptical of the e manage.

4. Without knowing much about the ignis, it's hard to recommend a standalone ECU. If you have a manual transmission then I doubt you would have much trouble running on just about any popular standalone. It's only really when you have an automatic trans and/or CAN communications to worry about that your ECU options become much harder.

I used to do a lot of work with the EMU and found that forcing the ECU into open loop ironed out a few of the issues, on the other hand it also created a few.

The acceleration enrichment and IAT compensation were items to allow you to ditch the air flow meter on a car that ran them, it also allowed extra fuel to be added for the likes of a turbo'd N/A car which will have a faster draw of air compared to stock and may end up with a lean spot.

Are you using a wide band lambda sensor and do you have some form of knock detection?

The cold cranking issues you'd need to see what area's of the map, if any, the car is hitting as it may have been adjusted

There is a company in the UK which started off using the EMU in their Swift turbo kit but has since developed a standalone kit, it might be worth contacting them:

http://www.ctc-performance.co.uk/

Hello, chris1388

Have you got ECU pinout for the Suzuki Ignis Sport M15A engine ?

If you have please can you share it

Thank you