brianfulcher15

Hey guys,

I had reciently been sold on the idea of a ffs kit as its 100% plug and play and obdII compliant, but reciently ive been looking at the FM voodoo II kit.

From your experiences, how close is the tune that comes pregrogramed on the voodoo box? From what ive read it seems no laptop is needed, just a wideband.

How diffcult would it be to tune one of these at home w/out a dyno?

18psi

iTrader: (76)

the doodoo box and powercrap cards are not programmed. They are simply little handheld gizmos with adjustment pods on em tricking the signals going to your stock afm allowing you to richen or lean up 3 areas of your powerband. you have tons of reading to do if you don't want to get harassed by every member here for asking 1 million year old questions that have been beaten to death.

brianfulcher15

i did read several threads on multple forums, Just none to indicate if it was safe to run off of the settings those cards come with. Ive also read that the FFS one is set to what it needs to be, but with the voodoo box ive read both that its close to what you would need, but others saying its way off and a tune is a must before driveing.

For me, i have no other options unless i try to run parrellel with a hydra, or megasquirt. And ive yet to find anythreads to completly walk though whats needed to do it. Most are simply people running into issues and never completeing their parrellel install. I do not want to swap back to stock with every upgrade.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

Why would you swap back to stock with every upgrade? Or did you mean to say smog/inspection?

Bottom line: both are severely limited crude little piggybacks. Both will require a wideband kit and tuning to get them to work well and correctly (though both are real simple and easy to dial in, will probably take 20 minutes). Both will max out at 180, maybe 200 if you really push them and do a ton of supporting mods.

However, if you're still only considering between the two, FM2 will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS be the better decision then the crappy piece of garbage FFS. Seriously, not even a contest. The FFS is THAT bad.

PS: tons of GOOD engine management systems can run parallel: xede, hydra, megasquirt, adaptronic, etc.....Heck, even the emanage blue and ultimate are a much better system than the two you're considering. Just saying: don't rush and really read up on this subject.

brianfulcher15

in my state, NC, we have to pass OBD 2 scan, so going standalone removes the functionality of the OBD 2 port. thus you cant get your car inspected. we have no visual/smog here.

So if there is a solution to make the FM2 hydra kit work with OBD2 Im open to it, but all Ive gotten from reserach so far was to run the hydra parallel with the oem ecu which seems to have issues with several setups, or to demod back to stock for inspection. which is a bit of work for annual inspections.

and for me I have an 01, so idk how difficult it'll be for the voodoo, or powercard to hold a tune anyways, since tis my understannding that I may have to adjust frequiently.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

yes pretty much all the systems I listed will retain a functioning OBD2 port when run in parallel. that is the whole point of running PARALLEL in the 1st place

brianfulcher15

is there a step by step doc anywhere on here for running parallel with a vvt ecu?

Godless Commie

iTrader: (2)

With all due respect - and yes, I do have an MS, it is just taking up room in the bookshelf behind me till I can find the time to install the thing - powercards are indeed programmable.

I do have a programmer for them, and not only you can perform version upgrades, etc, on them, you can change fueling and timing on a quite wide scale.

They do work. Not as good as a standalone system maybe, but in all honesty and fairness, they do a pretty damn good job.

On a related note, I have nothing but good things to say for Tom. he has helped me tremendously expecting nothing in return, and knowing full well that I will not be a significant customer, meaning I will not be buying anything major from him.

He gladly accepted to be a "collection point" for the parts I had to buy after my accident - from those vendors who would refuse to ship outside the US - for critical parts like headlights, body parts, odds and ends, he helped me find sources for parts, and generally made himself available just to help me.

He is a deeply religious guy, and knows full well I am a hardcore atheist. So, no connection there, either.
I honestly fail to grasp why people beat on him so much. The guy does not hold a gun to anyone's head, he does not make anyone do things they do not want to get involved, he makes his product available unlike many of those who take your payment and give you a sob story for months on end, and if he makes a mistake, he more than makes up for it. (There was a solder problem with the harness he modified for me,
I noticed and corrected it, he just sent me a full oversize fuel rail set, just to apologize and make things right.

As for me, I have reached a point with my car where I:

* have enough command over the car where I can set/tweak more parameters than the powercard setup can handle - like a second failsafe fueling table, launch control, you get my drift,

* would like to benefit from the minute adjustments I could make on a standalone in the name of extracting more power, and,

* would like to get rid of a MAF based system.

BUT, for the first couple years where I was running more docile power levels, I was perfectly happy with the setup. Never a ping, solid fueling at up to 14 psi, using an MP62.

So there, gentlemen.
I just wanted to defend Tom and what he sells.
Thank you for reading so far.

18psi

iTrader: (76)

I have nothing against Tom.
I have everything against his terrible product and idea that you could douse an already rich and inefficient running system with additional gasoline to replace a proper heat exchanger. I have everything against him and his clown posse arguing about turbo's generating heat and having terible throttle response and torque under curve. I have everything about how fail his reasoning is.

This is not personal against Tom.
For the record I've "t00ned" a voodoo box and power card before, and not saying its completely useless, just severely limited and the end result of ffs+pc is a far cry from what you could get with a turbo kit running ms.

Have you driven a sc car and turbo car running same boost back to back?
Its ridiculous.

Faeflora

iTrader: (2)

So vlad please explain how OP with apparently minimal knowledge will set up a PARRALEL ems.

Also, i want to mention that yesterday, braineack and y8s tried to convince me to buy a FFS instead of going msd retard and begi rrfpr

18psi

iTrader: (76)

Its been done multiple times. I'm not going to mouth feed him. You can though.

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

Once you go to a real computer you won't go back.

And Tom may be a very nice person but his explanations demonstrating his knowledge of the physics and chemistry behind what he is playing with is, at best, infantile. His arguments when questioned display a lack of understanding. Many believe he is playing fast and loose with the engines of others and take offense to it.

I am just and observer who has just been watching and reading when the FFS questions come up. I don't have a dog in this hunt but I wouldn't touch the FFS system because of the lack of research and design considerations.

brianfulcher15

yea, all im asking for is a link to an actually step by step parallel intall so I can determine if its something i want to attempt. all i find when doing a search is tons of threads with peple having problems. And as im in an OBD II state im not taking chances on having a car that i cant get inspected due to engine management issues.

So to make things simple my options are pretty much go with voodoo 2 and have potential to upgrade to fm2 running parallel one day

or i can go with the FFS supercharger kit. which IMO is a much simpler install and if you want a bolt in and go application its the simpliest solution from what ive read since it comes with a plug and play harness, and pretuned card.

now one thing I do want to know is how will the VTT change the tune on the card. Will it cause timing to adjust making me constantly have to adjust the settings of the cards?

18psi

iTrader: (76)

you will not be able to control vvt with either. it will function like when stock. vvt doesn't cause your car to pull timing, your knock sensor does

brianfulcher15

Ok, that sounds good then, seems like my decision is pretty simple, going with the voodoo 2 with the larger turbo for upgrading to a fm II kit once the 180-200 hp wears out its feeling.

its hard to see 4500 for the ffs when i can get the same out of the fm2 for 3400, or really 2900 when you facter in that no headers would need to be bought.... even though the ffs in stock form doesent show gains anyways on the NB2

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

For F*ck's Sake

Leafy

iTrader: (1)

How to wire a stand alone in parallel. Buy a patch harness, Begi sells them. Then wire your stand alone into the patch harness, allow for all the sensor that OBD II needs to pass to go through, aka all the sensors. This requires you to leave the maf in the air flow but you dont need to use it to tune on the stand alone if you dont want to. They you need to put resistors on all the fuel injector wires that match the resistance of the fuel injectors we have. You have to do the same for the spark wires, however depending on how our setup works you may have to use inductors and/or capacitors to sufficiently simulate them to the computer. You'll also need to leave all the emission parts plugged into the harness, some dont have to be mechanically connected to the engine though.

Alternative to keeping the maf and the emissions stuff you can use extra outputs from the stand alone to fake the those components to the stock ecu enough to pass emissions.

Honestly, you dont seem smart enough to do this and dont seem willing enough to research it so I doubt you'll be able to make it work and you probably shouldnt be tuning your own car.