Sentry,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience at the shop. At this point it is sounding like more of a risk keeping your car there.

You might want to think about cutting your losses and getting the hell out of that shop. Let someone else tune it.

If these clowns end up frying your ECU by criss/crossing wires or mistuning your car to the point of causing permanent damage, then what?... It's risky. Dump'em!

Good Luck,
Tony

 

Wow, 6 hours to install a piggy back? At an average rate of $75/hr that's $450. Cprace charged me $225 to install my EU. I did have the autosport harness so I don't know if that would bring down the price though. If installing with the autosport is cheaper than it almost comes out to the same price as without it.

EU no auto sport = $450
Eu w/auto sport = $225 - $300 for autosport = $525

I hope you get everything sorted out. I know how you feel. I've dealt with a nightmare shop before. Good Luck!

 

i wish this shop charged 75 an hour, they charge $95...I know I know it's a lot. This shop is huge though and has a lot of stuff in stock etc and I still think the mechanic is a good one, but he kept saying doing wiring is his least favorite thing.

I think this has been frusturating for both me and the shop.

all I can do is say I chose the wrong shop

There's another really good shop in town that charges $89 an hour, but they're like an hour away from me vs 12 min. As critical as the EU is to get installed right, I didn't think any shop would have much trouble with it and so I went with the more convenient closer shop. I knew they had experience installing regular blue emanages. I'll probably still use them for simpler stuff, but not FI kits...

 

BoOsTedz33TT:

A man of Few Words - First Post - Hello

Been keeping quite until your first post.. I Guess you do more research than
Kabit's - Excellent HP - Was the Torque up there too?

Cheers Amy -

 

Dude !!

Sharif, How about a special option

From Your Company, ForgedInternals

To do this --- Ta Da !!

eManage Ultima - Pre Wired to the "Ready to Connect quick wiring Loom"

I bet it would sell !! - Better than the poor Fellow that had to pay 15 hour's of labor @ tuner prices..

Let me Know what you think, and don't under-rate your time and expertise !

Cheers Amy -

 

sharif I'm trying to call you, no answer


I went to pick up the car today and the shop had some bad news. They said they spend like 5 hours on it yesterday. They called in some sorta greddy tuner expert and he at first thought the wiring was wrong, then looked more carefully and decided it was right. They tried a couple other configs, but the car wouldn't even start or get a signal or i dunno so they were sure the wiring is right.

what they're now telling me is the emanage ultimate I have is defective. BTW does it get extremely hot when operating? They say it gets hot as hell when it's turned on.

So this leaves me with few options. How many EU experts are out there? Not many. Certainly no one where I live, it's just too new. Anyway they gave me 2 options, undo EVERYTHING they did and go back to ground zero and I just wasted $600 in labor. Or to pull the EU and hook up some temporary wiring so it drives like stock and get a different EU unit because they say they're not getting the laptop to see it right. That the red green or whatever lights light up saying it's processing, but nothing. Actually they said the laptop did connect for like 2 sec, then it went out again.

So this has been an all around horrible experience. I'm typing this on their computer at the shop here as I wait for them to pull the EU out. One thing they said was they don't have any base maps or don't think they're going to have any base maps - well someone mentioned that who's one of the unexperienced guys so who knows. I know you've tuned one NA car with it. Is it possible I can get that map to use as a base map?

They've installed a regular emanage before and I assumed this shouldn't be that much more difficult

I'll try to keep calling you, but right now it looks like I have no choice but to send my EU back to you because it's defective. I'd like to put you in contact with this shop if you have a few minutes

I'm really starting to think greddy products are a POS. I mean, I know I got one of the first batches of the EU, but if the instructions in the booklet are that far off, I can only imagine someone else will have these issues. So my car isn't running and I'm wasting money on this thing

 

sentry :
get out of there, drive out here this weekend, we'll get it wired correctly and working in 4hrs, tops!..then you can get your refund from these guys who have spent 20hrs plus playing pocket pool

TODD

 

Sentry,

Hope you don't mind some unsolicited third party perspective from a guy who himself owns a shop. GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE AND DO NOT PAY A DIME. What exactly would the charge be for? The task that they were hired to do - ie. sucessfully install the e-manage - was never completed. From the sounds of things they lack the technical skills to install a piggyback, plain and simple. They got in over their heads and are unable to finish. If your EU is defective at this point its probably because they fried it during their "experimentation". Seriously, I have never come across such a debacle in all of my personal and professional experiences. A colorblind guy doing a wiring install but having to double-check each wire with his co-workers? That sounds like a scene from a Mad TV skit spoofing TF&TF. I just hope that they have not damaged your stock electronics and that you truly can get back to "ground zero" at this point.

 

their final bill was $785. They say it's not a total loss, that the wiring is all done. I just need to get a good unit and rehook it up

I know they spent time on it. They say they spent 16 hours on it, but have to charge me something. Aparently they were working on it until 9pm last night. He paid $120 to someone who's a greddy expert to look over everything. I get to foot that bill for that dude's time.

They took out my emanage and of course charged me for that. They want me to get in contact with sharif, get a new unit, bring it to them, they say it'll take 30 minutes to rehook it up, then they'll tune it.

They say it was flashing red and green lights which means something is wrong with the unit cause it wouldn't connect


The company is Vivid Racing in chandler AZ

I paid the bill already cause I needed to get my car and get out of there to get to work. Do I have grounds for legal action? Should I call him up and say I want some sorta refund. I never asked or ok'ed them to hire that greddy expert. They charge $95/hour

The big thing is that I hired them to put the thing in. It took longer than what they told me. That sorta thing happens all the time. I'm not being charged for 16 hours, just 6 hours, $120 for that expert dude to look at the wiring and say they did do it the right way, then another hour for them to unhook the EU.

I have the instruction manual with their notes scribbled on it. They said Greddy's book was just flat out wrong and thus they had to basically redo it all from scratch.

I can probably take it to another shop and have them figure out if the unit is bad and if the manual is wrong. Depending on what happens maybe I can use that as grounds that Vivid Racing are idiots and take them to court if need be

I'll scan in a page and you guys can tell me what's up. Of course who knows, maybe my car is just really really different?????

 

here's a scan of the main page in the manual he was using

I circled in red at least 1 mistake

If the manual IS wrong, then I guess I can't do anything except bit*h that greddy sucks



ok

so I went to greddy's site and their PDF manual is different. I included the PDF manual on the CD i brought them. But I didn't tell them to ditch the printed manual.

So maybe this is MY mistake because stupid me assumed the printed manual that comes with this POS might actually be correct...


first 2 pics are from my printed manual

3rd pic is a comparison from my manual vs the newest pdf

 

page 7 of the ultimate installation manual has all of the pins labeled...on all 3 connectors!!!
the only wires they had to locate on the harness is the 6 injector wires, 6 ignition wires, and a few other powers and grounds..this info is EASILY accessable to most anyone, especially a shop!!!, you shouldn't have paid a dime...ask for a refund...

 

well I contacted Dynocomp - a shop I KNOW is a good one. I'm going to take it there, have them hook this stuff up and give me their feedback. If the EU is not defective then I think that's grounds that Vivid Racing are idiots. I'll call up Vivid and ask for my money back or we'll have to settle it in small claims court. I normally am not court happy about anything, but if it's the only way to get my money back.....I'll also have no problem pushing a lot of local Z people away from them.

I dunno, a few hundred $ is still just a drop in the bucket compared to what I'm spending on this car. At least it wasn't a turbo install or something.

Ultimately this has helped me narrow the shops down a little as far as knowing which ones are good and bad

 

I'm very interested in the EU, but for my gf's prelude. The problem with piggy-backs on Hondas (not sure if this affects Nissans or other brands) is that the Honda ECU tunes-out (essentially un-tunes) the settings of the piggy-back via a couple of short term and long term fuel trims that are constantly adjusted during closed-loop operation (part throttle).

Since the EU adjusts fuel by changing the actual injector duty cycle and there's a way to set a target AFR (allowing the EU to constantly adjust), I'm wondering if the EU would be able to work in closed-loop on a Honda ECU (or any other ECU w/ STFT and LTFT fuel trims)? Sharif, can you help?
Thanks.

 

Pretty much any car that I know of with closed loop modes will always self correct itself.

You'd have to set up the EU such that it tricks the ECU into thinking it's in open loop, otherwise the closed loop correction would still apply. There is a way to do this using the analog output map to feed the ECU an artificially high throttle or accelerator position signal so it will go into open loop and allow you to tune without having the fuel trims applied.

 

Sentry, calling you back now.

The page from the instructions you posted is not the one people should be looking at, and I havent checked it for accuracy. If they used that, then its possible that the wiring diagram was incorrect.

The best way to wire this up, is to you use the wiring diagrams in the first few pages of the manual, the describes the pin locations and their purpose. You mate that with the part 3 of the Greddy TT instruction manual, which shows the factory pin locations.

Or, you goto this thread, and I list all the pin locations for everyone to use. Your eManage is not defective...I can almost guarantee that. The red/green flasher means that your wiring is not correct, or the firware is corrupted. Based on the skills demonstrated by this shop, either of these are a possibility.

I really wish I was there to assist, becuase this is one big cluster-f that should have never happened, and I feel aweful. You are welcome to send your EU back to me, and I will plug it onto my car, and reload the firware if needed, and if somehow, it is defective, I will replace it no questions. But honesty, I have installed or sold over 30 EU's and 20 eManage Blues, and never had a defective unit. All of your symptoms point to intallation errors.

 

Sharif,
You should see if Autosport will just charge an extra fee for wiring up emanage harnesses to their extension harness you sell to save people this trouble.


Sentry,
I would NOT allow a shop to tune my car that has apparently never installed an EU and is not that wiring savy. Be afraid...very afraid Sentry, but GOOD LUCK MAN~!

 

Sharif and I talked

let me just say Sharif is awesome. He really goes out of his way to help you out.

hopefully this will get resolved and I'll catch Vivid Racing with their pants down when they find out my EU isn't defective (most likely anyway)

 

ha VIVID racing.. I almost had to sue them about 3 years ago, I made a $6,000.00 order on Subaru stuff for my shop and waited 4 months to get my items just to find he sent me VF20 turbos inted of VF34 (20's are alot cheaper than 34's) after calling the Better Business Beuro and 6 months later he had to give me a refund on my card. Do a reserch, those guys are clowns.

 

yeah well I've heard some of the stories and they all seemed to be shipping related from out of state. This was supposed to be a simple install and their shop is pretty big and their building/company is fairly impressive. Their mechanic I was working with seemed to be on top of his stuff so I figured sure why not just get this installed and I can check it off my TO DO list.....

anyway, this all seems to be the fault of my shop, not the emanage.

 

Noob question........I had my ECU reflashed so does the Emanage is gonna help me?