RIP FM221
 

email from FM:

"As part of our ongoing effort to increase customer service and in order to maintain compliance in an increasingly stringent regulatory framework, we have made the difficult decision to no longer offer standalone ECUs as part of our product range. We will be handing off future sales of the FM221 to Motorsport Electronics and the Hydra Nemesis ECU to Nemesis EMS. This will give Miata owners direct access to the latest hardware and software and they will be supported by the people who designed the ECU itself. We are confident they will give Miata owners excellent service.

Existing FM221 & Hydra Nemesis original owners will continue to be supported by Flyin' Miata as part of our lifetime support commitment to our customers. This change will not affect them at all.

This means that Flyin' Miata turbo kits will no longer be available directly with a full replacement ECU. We are committed to our Stage 1 turbo kit- previously known as the Voodoo II - that offers CARB / 50-state emissions legality. We will also continue to supply kits without engine management so you can add your own, whether it is direct from Motorsport Electronics, Nemesis EMS, DIY Autotune or some other solution. The Big Enchilada will also disappear from our catalog but the Little Enchilada will remain.

We know this is a big change, as we have been offering ECU options for the Miata for over two decades. We're doing it to free up our techs to support and develop our other products, from our class-leading suspension to our 50 state legal boost options for all generations of Miata. Our ECU partners will concentrate on tuning, we'll concentrate on everything else and Miata owners win. This also helps us work towards our goal of full emissions compliance for all of our engine related products.

Remaining stock of FM221 ECUs are on closeout at $799. They will come with full FM support for original owners. FM II turbo kits and Big Enchiladas that include the Hydra or FM221 ECU will also be discounted while supplies last."

This sounds like the "Easy option" for FM, they wont have to support ECUs once the current stock has been exhausted.

While European customers may continue to purchase ME221s since they have more tuner support for these ECUs, would anyone in the US buy a FM221 or ME221 without FM to back them?

One of the advantages I saw with the FM complete kit was that it "should" all just work together and you had FM available for help in getting it tuned right which appeals to many customers.
Without the included ECU option, FM kits offer no advantage over some of the other options available (TSE, MK Turbo, Kraken) so surely they'll lose sales, especially since they don't offer "the new hotness" EFR6258?

My thought was that it had something to do with new EPA fears.

The easy option was just to opt-out of ECU support instead of coming up with a compliant solution (which many customers will want).

Or maybe they don't want to waste any more effort on polishing that turd, andddd will likely make way more money on the doodoo kits because they're carb compliant now and require literally no effort on their part.

You're not going to find an EPA-compliant ECU, especially not one that's open for tuning by the owner. It would be possible for the 1.6, more difficult for the early 1.8 and get very difficult starting in 1996.

There were a number of factors that went into this decision. The EPA certainly factored, as we're big enough to be a target and there have been a lot more crackdowns than have made the news.

But our support load was a bigger one. Dropping the ECUs allows us to spend more time supporting everything else we sell, which means better customer service overall. We've had some growing pains in this area of late, so we had to make the tough call. It was far from the easy option, as the FM II is one of our flagship products and we've invested a lot of time in the FM221 and Hydra. But this was the best choice for the company and our customers in the long run.

We already sell a significant number of turbo kits without ECUs, so apparently there are customers who understand the reasons to buy an FM kit besides our ECU options. And of course we have our CARB compliant kits, which are the only truly legal option for California and available for all years of NA and NB. We know that DIY Autotune does a great job of supporting Megasquirts and ME does the same for the ME 221 so customers still have good options out there.

I've received nothing but great support from FM even as of late. So to make it better is crazy. I had no clue about the EPA issue until now.

I feel like I know someone who will be getting a lot more remote tuning work out of this. lol

Obviously, someone's going to pick up the slack! We'll be encouraging our customers to consider the ME221, the Nemesis and the Megasquirt from DIYAutotune if they want a standalone, and the Voodoo Box if they want full emissions compliance. A pretty high proportion of FM turbo hardware out there already uses the MS.

Miataman, I'm glad we've been able to give you good support. The wheels haven't completely come off around here, but it has become obvious internally that we needed to shift some priorities around in order to continue providing the service our customers expect.

I couldn't figure out how the support lasted this long. I have done remote tuning on MS for a few years for a select group. It takes a bunch of time.

In full support of FM's decision :likecat:

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Me too. It is EXTREMELY time consuming to do it correctly, and that assumes the end user knows at least the basics. When you're dealing with issues or diagnosing, or attempting to explain things to someone that's never even seen one before, which I'm sure was the bulk of FM's workload, I can only imagine the amount of effort involved.

Then on top of that add the fact that Hydra at it's best was mediocre (2.7) and older versions are downright garbage, and all the issues with the janky MS2 knockoff that is the FM221/ME221 and suddenly it's not worth it at all.

:party: