The Red Green Machine

[ManiacLachy]

195kw is a nice bit of poke, should feel great when you're back on the road.

[greenMachine]

195kw is a nice bit of poke, should feel great when you're back on the road.

Lachy, it is a blast

Only worry is how much longer I keep my license ...

The car has been transformed since its last visit to Mania. The main difference is in user-friendliness, the light-switch clutch remains, but a new clutch m/c has transformed the feel. It is now consistent in feel and throw, gone are the bunny starts and stalls at uphill lights.

I am currently in beautiful downtown Coolamon, on grandie-minding duty, but as soon as I get back next week I start work on installing the Powertune dash, and the bonnet vents. Other items include re-doing the radiator ducting, re-installing the oil cooler, and some internal heat shielding inside the engine bay.

Happy days!

[greenMachine]

In other news, the Autronic is out (evidently, there is a FS advert here for it and the pnp patch harness), and a Link G4x pnp is in. This installs in the stock ecu box, and plugs right in to the stock connectors.

There was A good deal going on a Powertune touchscreen dash, so I picked up one of those too. It plugs into an auxiliary socket on the Link board, and I have analogue inputs for oil temp and pressure, and coolant pressure. Thinking about gearbox temp too.

I plan on setting it up in the double DIN centre console location, showing gauge faces, and retaining the stock dash.

[greenMachine]

I have been asked elsewhere to post some thoughts on the Autronic vs the Link G4x pnp, why I swapped, and my thoughts on the tuning software.

The answer is a bit 'it's complicated'.

First up, my local tuner quit the game, he was a gun on them, and I couldn't find another one locally. I used Mania to tune it after the rebuild, but relying on a tuner 3 hours away was not part of my game plan. At that time I decided to move to something new. Subsequently, late in the process I found that someone who tuned my first Haltech (E8!) in the racecar had set up near me, and did Autronics, but by then I was pretty committed to a change. He also does Links, so I was covered either way.

I looked at Haltech, they still have issues with the alternator and would need a patch harness so costly, but the upside was capability and availability of tuners. Link pnp, was attractive price-wise, capable as the Haltech (maybe more so), and can be tuned locally, hit the trifecta. Mania did the tune with the install, but I can have it updated here.

As far as I was concerned, there was no functional issue with the SM4 Autronic. There was a problem with communicating with the AiM SoloDL2, but that was an AiM problem, specifically the attitude and lack of help from the Australian dealer (caveat emptor in spades ). There was/is a bug in the aircon, but that seems to be an aircon issue, not ecu (the Link hasn't fixed it, nor was I expecting it to). I think the tuning may be a little different in how it is structured, but as far as I can tell it is pretty sophisticated and capable. Only drawback I can see is that it communicates by serial, no CAN. For tuning that is no issue, but hooking up dashes etc that can complicate things.

If you want an ecu to run the car, the Autronic will do it standing on its head. It ran mine without any work-arounds or the like.

OTOH, if you want to integrate with a CAN-only dash and a PDM (or any CAN-only devices), it may not be the right choice.

I am not a DIY tuner, so I am not well placed to comment on its suitability for that type of user. I have been told the software is more akin to how a trained mechanic approaches the tuning task, but I am not one of those either!! Only comment I will make is that given the number of professional tuners who won't do MS tunes, someone familiar with MS might, repeat might, find them quite different and consequently more 'difficult'. But that is speculation on my part. (As you will guess, this comment reflects the original was posted on Mt.net )

Happy to discuss!