I am trying to decide between a reflashed ECU from Vishnu or going the AccessPort route from Cobb.

Anyone wanna take a stab at helping me decide?

I am not looking to turn my 02WRX into a monster. I just want kick it up a few notches.

I am also planning on replacing (In order):

UpPipe
Pulley (I have heard good and bad things about this)
Turbo Back Exhaust
Tires and Rims (I heard this will give me like 10 more HP :devil: j/k)

I live about 1 1/2 hours from Vishnu...so rather than ship my ECU I would just take it up there....

Or should I just suck it up and look at a UTEC?

Carson

yeah, and how much will Vishnu charge you for a reflash ??? What if you decide to go back to stock, do you still have to pay for him to reflash the stock parameters ??

With the AP you can save all those maps and upload them whenever you want. Besides, Vishnu will simply reflash your ecu with a MASS PRODUCED map.....hes not gonna custom tune + flash it on your ecu.

Get a AP and wait for the tuner to come out so you can have YOUR CUSTOM map.

;)

PS: I hate Vishnu (businesswise speaking)

from a non biased stand point, it all depends on your wants. if both flashes are off the shelf uni-tune maps, the power difference is going to be extremely close. if you are planning on staying stock turbo, i say go with the accesport. if your planning on upgrading your turbo, i suggest you get shiv to custom tune you a map.

Besides, Vishnu will simply reflash your ecu with a MASS PRODUCED map.....hes not gonna custom tune + flash it on your ecu

A mass produced map is all you're going to get with the Cobb stuff also. It seems it would be more feasible for him to get a custom flash from Vishnu, since he lives pretty close to them.

My $0.02: do the power mods you have listed (shouldn't have any problems on the stock ecu), and then get a custom Vishnu reflash when you can. Must be nice having a well-known tuner that close to you :cool:

Of course, having been custom tuned by Shiv already, I'm somewhat biased :lol:

yeah, and how much will Vishnu charge you for a reflash ??? What if you decide to go back to stock, do you still have to pay for him to reflash the stock parameters ??

With the AP you can save all those maps and upload them whenever you want. Besides, Vishnu will simply reflash your ecu with a MASS PRODUCED map.....hes not gonna custom tune + flash it on your ecu.

Get a AP and wait for the tuner to come out so you can have YOUR CUSTOM map.

;)

PS: I hate Vishnu (businesswise speaking)

The price of our user-tunable Reflash is $650. To take advantage of the user-tuning features, you will need to purchase or borrow someone's Delta Dash.

If someone comes to our shop for dyno tuning, they get a custom tuned flash. This usually takes 1 hour and involves 15-25 dyno pulls and a bit of street testing. I don't believe any other option will provide as good results in terms of absolute power output, drivability and safety margin.

As for our "mass produced maps", they are calibrated from having custom tuned hundreds of WRX over the last few years. They account for the lowest common denominator which means that power will be 5-15whp shy of custom mapping (depending on octane, associated mods, etc,.). However, this intentional "detune" should apply in any off-the-shelf tuning map (reflash, XEDE, UTEC, etc,.). Although I've seen some off-the-shelf maps, which clearly haven't been tested on a sizeable pool of cars, offer little or no significant improvement over stock.

Just my 2c,
Shiv

id go with the accessPORT....cant go wrong with the ease of use of changing the maps...granted you get the thing working...

plus from what ive experienced, cobbs customer service is absolutely amazing! i got my AP yesterday and i was having trouble getting it initialized, well they overnighted me a new diag cable and ill have it today...thats friggin awesome if you ask me

if carson can hold out, go ahead and do the extent of his mods, and then get a reflash. i would deffiantly say shiv, cant go wrong with a custom reflash.

IMHO, I'd go with the local tuning and have Vishnu do the work for you. You'll maximize the results for *your* car with his package and dyno tuning.

So if I was to bring up my MY02 WRX from Monterey for dyno tuning am I looking at $650? Or is that just the bare bones ECU Flash? It almost seems like it would be worth it to just throw few bucks more into it and get an up-pipe and pulley at the same time....

I would much rather be able to bring the car in and have it professionally tuned, than to just go the "Plug and Play" route with an access port.

The only hang up again....is the pricing. Sadly..money is gonna dictate what I do more so than bare performance.

But thats what tax returns were meant for!!


The price of our user-tunable Reflash is $650. To take advantage of the user-tuning features, you will need to purchase or borrow someone's Delta Dash.

If someone comes to our shop for dyno tuning, they get a custom tuned flash. This usually takes 1 hour and involves 15-25 dyno pulls and a bit of street testing. I don't believe any other option will provide as good results in terms of absolute power output, drivability and safety margin.

As for our "mass produced maps", they are calibrated from having custom tuned hundreds of WRX over the last few years. They account for the lowest common denominator which means that power will be 5-15whp shy of custom mapping (depending on octane, associated mods, etc,.). However, this intentional "detune" should apply in any off-the-shelf tuning map (reflash, XEDE, UTEC, etc,.). Although I've seen some off-the-shelf maps, which clearly haven't been tested on a sizeable pool of cars, offer little or no significant improvement over stock.

Just my 2c,
Shiv

Go with the CUSTOM, I have the AP running stage 2 (91) and it's not all that, never hits target boost levels in lower gears only on hard pulls.

So if I was to bring up my MY02 WRX from Monterey for dyno tuning am I looking at $650? Or is that just the bare bones ECU Flash? It almost seems like it would be worth it to just throw few bucks more into it and get an up-pipe and pulley at the same time....

I would much rather be able to bring the car in and have it professionally tuned, than to just go the "Plug and Play" route with an access port.

The only hang up again....is the pricing. Sadly..money is gonna dictate what I do more so than bare performance.

But thats what tax returns were meant for!!

Hi there,
The $650 price is for the baseline reflash. Custom tuning is $200 extra for a total of $850. We'll be happy to install any additional components (up-pipe, turbo-back, etc,.) if you'd like. Give us a call at 925-924-9800 if you need any help or advice. I'm quite confident that you'll be happy with the results.

Regards,
Shiv

Dyno chart can be found @ http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wNDkxMjcwNnM0MTNkZmQzMXk1NDE%3D.jpg

I am currently in the initial stages of selling the AP and getting a ECUtek tune from Vishnu, I think I might just do the standard $650 flash simply because of costs. $850 plus gas from 6+ hrs away($140)=$990. But first I want to dyno my current Stage 2 map from Cobb to see if its "richer" aka safer than my Stage 1.


"Peak boost is a bit lower than target. This could be due to many things including how much your wastegate is preloaded. Have you tried the Stage 1 HWG map or are you just using the standard ECU reflash?

The general A/F curve looks correct but the exact numbers are hard to see due to the resolution. Normally we see about 11.8:1 A/F around 4000 RPM that gradually drops down into the 10's by 6000 RPM which looks to be correct in the general scheme of things. The dips in the torque curve @ 4000 RPMs could be again for many reasons. The most common is boost fluctuation as its learning. It will tend to "hunt" through this range on cars that may not be hitting the target or don't have the miles to have learned properly. This can also happen on load based dynos, like the dyno jet, that don't accurately represent true road conditions so what the car has been experiencing on the road versus what it's experience on that dyno will be different things. That's why you'll rarely find higher end tuners using dyno jet dynos for anything other than product comparisons, etc. You can't really tune on them because what they do on the road versus the dyno can be quite different.

Other reasons why you can see a torque dip there has to do with timing and what that particular car wants for A/F ratio. Sometimes we see this on cars where the owner tries to accelerate the Advance Multiplier to the maximum value and then make a run. Particularly with 91 oct CA fuel, this may push behind the envelope of safety. The reason the Knock Correction capability is in there is to adapt for different conditions and fuel. Otherwise, we would just zero it out and run what you would have at the maximum Advance Multiplier in the base timing map.

And finally, the A/F ratio -- which tends to be the biggest concern for the folks over at Harmann -- is a much more complex things to explain in a way people can understand. The best way I can try and explain the reason for running a A/F Ratio CURVE is the same way you do an ignition curve. Some people tend to thing that A/F Ratio under boost should be a static value regardless of the RPMs and other conditions. This would be the same school of thought when people said that you should lock your distributor at a particular timing setting back in the old days of turbocharging. Now people have learned its ok...actually good to advance timing after the torque peak even on turbocharged cars. With the A/F Ratio, there is also a benefit to running a curve. What we run at 4000 RPMs we would never run at 6000 RPMs. Likewise, what we run at 6000 RPM may not be optimal at 4000 RPMs.

And finally, every car is different. Custom tuning should always net better results. Hopefully in the near future we'll have the Tuning software available so individuals and shops can address the needs of those that have the ability to get their car on a dyno and have a map custom tailored for them."

Cheers,
Trey

I have the ap and love it. But, If you live that close to vishnu I would absolutely go with them for a custom tune. Custom tunes can't be beat by mail order programs.

I too have the accessport and think it's great... but only if you don't plan on upgrading you're turbo. At least not upgrading outside of Cobb's turbo list. Until Cobb releases their tuner software you're limited on turbos you can upgrade to.

I'm currently stage2 and content with the results but I still want more power. I want to upgrade turbos but the only turbos Cobb has in their maps are the vf34 & vf30. I want to go bigger but can't unless I go to Cobb and get a custom map made but that's not realistic since I'm in CA and they're in Utah. You just have to decide how far you want to take your mods. I do like the accessport itself and it's simplicity, I'm sure when the tuner software comes out it will be an even better product.

you can sell your accessport later
you cant sell your reflash
Custom is another story but its a waste of you are gonna mod it after the customer tune
i would mod then do the ecu
or
get the AP and use gneric maps and sell it later