ScottEwine

Good Evening All,

I am continuing to work through the mechanical aspects of my LS swap, including a CamMotion Titan 1 cam swap. I removed the wiring harness from the engine and I am considering an aftermarket ECU and harness. Does anybody have any advice on that? I do engineering and work with machine learning in my day job and it seems that an engine is a perfect application for that, and I understand some of the aftermarket ECUs do machine learning. Rather than sending out the ECU and going through an iteration or two with tuning, is there an aftermarket setup that will self tune nicely? Just getting started on this this part of the adventure so any advice is welcome.

Thanks, Scott

bjankuski

Holley hp will work well.

Gordonm

supervette64

I went with an MS3 Pro EVO from AMP EFI and used their drop-on harness kit too. Extremely easy to use, and it has a self tuning feature for VE that worked incredibly well for me. Its a bit more affordable than the Holley systems (which are also good in my opinion).

If you're not familiar with MegaSquirt, its an extraordinarily flexible engine management system that can be used on nearly any type of engine. Its certainly proven itself as it's used in plenty of race cars and street cars. Its packed full of features, all the basics like cold start enrichment, close loop fueling correction, etc, and plenty of awesome extras too such as high and low current, PWM, and 5v reference inputs and outputs that you can assign however you want. I think you can even edit the firmware if you want to (but I don't see why you'd ever need to). The only cons that I can see are that because its so flexible/so capable, it can be a little easy to get lost in it all and lead your self astray, and that there my not be as much tuning/technical support on the other end of the phone (For example, I'm guessing Holley has people on staff for those kinds of things).

I'm not a huge fan of using the stock computers with HP Tuners. No doubt this will work, and being an OEM computer its certainly going to be robust/reliable/durable, but you're very defined/limited to what the capabilities of the computer are, and sometimes the software to edit these computers is kinda of "lying" to the computer to make it run well instead of actually just being calibrated correctly in the first place. Just more of hassle/headache in my opinion.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I'd be happy to send you my tune I have for my LS3 T56 C3. I've got a little more cam than yours but it should certainly get you started. No offense taken if you don't trust some guy off the internet though.

ScottEwine

Does anybody have experience with the Edelbrock ECU? e.g.: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/edl-35712/overview/

Corey_68

Considered aftermarket route, used stock harness and ECU and sent it to Speartech and could not be happier.

71 Vert LS1

I think one advantage of the aftermarket ECU's is that they can control the trans if you have an auto. But since you have a T56 that's no benefit to you.
I used Speartech and Howell Fuel injection harnesses and GM ECU's. I buy them as a set. All have worked well. All needed a tune to really dial it in. Some had stock cams. Some had mild cams so the tune was quite easy. The only thing I had to go back to the tuner with was fine tuning the shift points on a LS1/4L60E swap. On my manual trans LS swaps once they are tuned on a chassis dyno and then test run on the street they weren't touched again.
I like using the GM parts since they are readily available. My concern with aftermarket ECU's and such is after sale support and long term parts availability.
I think most tuners would prefer to have a VSS signal to the ECM to help tune the engine.

corvettedave383

Ive got the holley dominator ecu and loom, not used it yet, but iam told its good

Big2Bird

This^^^^^^^

Patro46

I began with a reprogrammed factory ecu and not one but three different tuners.
Finally said enough is enough and pulled the trigger on an MS3 Pro Evo. Once you figure out your timing tables, the "on-board tuner" takes over. Freaking cool as all get out.
Once you get over how much money you tossed at tuners you begin to smile, realizing you simply dont need them anymore.
Then you dig in and realize you just touched the surface with what this piece of electronic wizzardness can acheive.
For instance, the built in progressive meth injection controller puts my top of the line progressive Snow Performance system to shame, as it can not only control the meth injection but can protect your engine in the event something goes south. How about built in traction control? Yea baby. An 800 hp superchaged ZL1 engine in a 74 C3 can get to be a challenge with a light rear end and a heavy foot but add in full fledged traction control with the push of a button. How about a built in tranny brake controller? The list is endless with what can be done with an MS3 Pro.

squared

I had the same concern here with regard to the aftermarket stuff although I have to say that I was similarly concerned with the viability of HP tuners and other stock software tuning applications.

I put a 4.8 out of 2000 Silverado in my boat, I bought HP tuners and used that for the conversion. The engine is totally stock except for the Marine manifolds on it and I had a lot of fun working with HP tuners.

I was the F-22 diagnostics architect during the development phase, and spent a lot of time studying computer controlled devices. I don't do that at my day job now, but it is pretty interesting. I guess it depends on how much plug and play vs technical experimentation you want to do. Since you're using a manual, it basically just the engine, and using the stock stuff gets you in the road with a fair amount of technical adaptation.

DblTrbl

NewbVetteGuy

Scott, my understanding is that most of the self-learning EFI systems are only self-learning what the fuel map should look like; even the ECUs with ignition control capabilities aren't doing anything else -not even self-learning how aggressive the timing curve could be (that would be awesome- just have it use feedback from a knock sensor). My understanding is that it's a WAY more simple feedback loop, like a PID controller, rather than anything resembling machine learning. (Could DRAMATICALLY reduce the dyno time required to get GREAT results, would take the quality of the tuner (person) out of the equation, and could allow a dyno operator to dyno a whole lot more cars in a day- although they'd probably want to move to a per-session pricing model rather than by-the-hour.)

-I'd LOVE to see a major dyno operator gather sensor data from cars on the dyno, dyno sensor results, and then spit those results up to a cloud that runs a Machine Learning model against ALL of the results across all cars on these dynos to truly self-tune cars ala ML, though... (Workflow- pull #1, take data from ECU, send to cloud, let model make tune recommendations which get pulled back down to the ECU, then Dyno Pull #2 runs automatically several seconds later, results sent to cloud, -Pull #3 and maybe #4 focuses on timing adjustments rather than fuel map adjustments in #1 and #2; additional pulls could focus on tuning transmission shift points or generating a high octane race gas tune (after adding boostane or some octane supplement)....)

I went with the Holley HP and it's a good way to go, IMHO as it will grow with you if you want to make any major changes in the future- they have good power adders support, meth/ water injection support and on and on. The Holley HP now has traction control support, as of the last update, too -but you have to buy a $500 extra license and add a drive shaft sensor to use the feature.

Edelbrock has largely been bundling their EFI systems with their intakes, at least in the SBC arena, so I was surprised to see that the Pro-Flo 4 for LS engines -I'd say as long as you have a stock intake you'll be fine with the Edelbrock, too. My favorite part of the Edelbrock system is that the touch-screen display connects over Blu-Tooth via any Android Tablet --You MIGHT even be able to load the app on an Android Auto touch-screen stereo and use that to control the EFI, too, which would be pretty slick.

Holley has great support and keeps rolling out more and more features to existing users, for what that's worth.



Adam