For those of you who have went from a ROM Tune to a Standalone,

[SixSpeedSleuth]

Was it worth the extra $1500 in price, and would you do it again? I'm getting a bonus at work and contemplating going to a standalone even though the car made 420whp and 320wtq on a Enthalpy Rom Tune. Car drives fantastic now, but everybody talks about Standalones as the next best thing since sliced bread. My question is Why? What is the big advantage over a ROM Tune other than ease of adjustments?

What makes the Standalone worth so much extra dough? I've also heard horror stories about driveability OFF of Wide open throttle.

Pretty much, for those of you who have switched, what different characteristics have you noticed during decel, WOT, idle, Ect, and was it worth the cost to upgrade. Thanks for any input!

[-=RS13=-]

Depends on the tune for all of those driveability problems.

I went from an Enthalpy tune to a Haltech (still on a slightly modified basemap) and i would never ever go back. The adjustment of a Standalone is soo much better, it's not just in the tune but in the sensor set-up and diagnosing issues. I never really noticed untill my Haltech was installed that my TPS was messed.

And anti-lag, adjustable rev-limit, all the other features make up for it.

[g6civcx]

I'm getting a bonus at work

<chinese accent> let me financial plan for you </chinese accent>

Perhaps you should save your money for a little bit and see how things shake out in the market.

Why? What is the big advantage over a ROM Tune other than ease of adjustments?

What makes the Standalone worth so much extra dough?

In general, a reflash is changing the parameters of the ECU memory, but you are still bound by the protocol of the ECU programming. The factory programs certain things that they don't want you to mess with. These things are almost hardcoded into the ECU and are very hard to bypass.

A piggyback is like a translator between the engine and the ECU, and offers you nice feature like easy tunability, but you are still confined by the ECU's original programming protocol for certain things.

A true standalone will allow you full control of every single engine function and sensor.


Think of the ECU as a mailroom. You have mail clerks delivering mail back and forth.

With a ROM tune, you change the contents of the mail. The people delivering the mail are still the same. If the people sux then your mail is pretty much worthless because it won't make it to the right person. Some people just throw away mail without delivering.

With a piggyback, think of it as someone intercepting the mail, changing the content of the mail, and then forwarding the mail to the destination. Slightly better because you can change the contents in pretty much realtime, but you still have to deal with the mailroom morons.

Now with a standalone, you come in and fire the entire mailroom. Then you staff the mailroom however you want and you have full control of the contents of the mail as well as how the mail is processed.


I've also heard horror stories about driveability OFF of Wide open throttle.

Pretty much, for those of you who have switched, what different characteristics have you noticed during decel, WOT, idle, Ect, and was it worth the cost to upgrade.

"With great power comes great responsibility".

It all depends on the skills and thoroughness of the tuner. You have much more adjustability, but in doing so you also have many more opportunities to mess up.

A lot of the problems people attribute to standalones are actually the result of improper tuning or something wrong with their engine. Anything a stock ECU can do a standalone can do. So by logic, anything that messes up on the standalone but not on the ECU is user error or something is wrong with the programming of the standalone.

I have an excellent tuner so I would always go with a standalone. Reflashes and piggybacks don't offer you the tunability of a true standalone.

If you don't have much support where you live, I say stay where you are and save your money.

[SixSpeedSleuth]

Thanks for the input, and especially you g6civcx. That was a very informative post that answered a bunch of my questions! And, you bring up good points with how the economy is right now, it might be better to just save the money, or invest. But, I do have one last question for you. Is your Tuner in VA? I'm in NC which is not too far, so a drive to see him is not out of the question.

[g6civcx]

Is your Tuner in VA?

NO!!! I am not sharing him with the world!!!

:)

I have seen him fix so many things that other shops can't fix with so little effort. He surprises me sometimes too. I'll give him something that I think is hard as hell for me to figure out, but then he figures it out no sweat.

I tell all the local guys to bring him problems other shops can't fix, or just go there in the beginning and save the drama.

Shop is about 1.5 hours north of Richmond. Not sure how far you are from the NC/VA line.

I'll PM you.

[murda-c]

How far is he from md/dc area? lol

[g6civcx]

How far is he from md/dc area? lol

What is the point you want me to calculate from? MD is huge :)

He's in Lorton VA.

[gotta240]

96civx- GREAT post. thanks.