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All my opinion, of course:
1. Costs. I paid approximately C$2150 for my SDS, complete with custom wiring lengths and all available options. Crane Cams Hi-6 runs about C$400. I think you need the boost retard module on top of this. Modified APC is another C$400 or so. Apex'i S-AFC is expensive, I think in the region of C$700-900. Okay, to be fair, on top of the SDS items I HAD to get included custom Magnecore wires and some sort of boost controller. The wires are about C$100 all said and done, the controller I could have gone cheaper with a manual one, but the electronic Profec-B ran me about C$500, second hand, with remote control.
2. Tuning and control. Pirelli (and Eric van Spelde!) says that "power is nothing without control". There is no way that one can tune LH as finely or as precisely as any stand alone system. The same goes for Trionic. The best way for 'chiptuning' is to have your car on the dyno, with a wideband, with the chip burner sitting there analysing everything, and burning a chip right there. Otherwise, it would be a best guess. Every engine is different. Modified, hi-po engine builds with weird CRs and cam combos make, IMO, chiptuning a moot point. The chip will be burnt for a certain engine, not the particular engine in the car, on the dyno. With any stand alone system, you CAN tune for the particular engine in the car.
3. Driveability. Okay, so LH and Trionic come from the factory with hundreds of man hours of work into them, but the fact remains, they were made for mass production vehicles. Yes, tuning with stand alone for everyday driving can be a pain, as I am finding out. BUT, and this is a big but, once it's done, it's done. Further, if you're clever enough with the tuning, you can get better mileage than stock. For example, I have turned my fuel basically completely off in some high vacuum conditions, ie. when coasting down, off throttle. This alone got me a credible increase in mileage. Granted, I have some way to go, but the initial setup is not as difficult as some might feel it would be, and not as difficult as I thought it would be.
4. Reliability. The youngest c900s are coming along at least 10 years old now. Okay, the wiring is probably still okay. I've actually never seen an injection harness come apart from rotting, other than on '85s. Nevertheless, I have brand new wiring for my injection and ignition. Personally, my injection harness was good, but daaaamn...the ignition stuff was UGLY. The hall effect sensor wiring seems particularly prone to rot, especially on the older cars with the older plugs. AND I don't like distributors with moving parts to wear out. Buy the right stand alone system, and you can get rid of the Bosch ignition stuff and have a true distributorless, direct ignition system. Maybe not as slick as Trionic or DI, but I dunno of many stand alone manufacturers who could program in knock sensing from spark plugs!
5. Boost. APC or not to APC? APC is wonderful. I won't say anything else other than a) my boost with the Profec-B is rock solid and I can set it to whatever I want and b) you can retain APC if you really wish on a stand alone install.
6. Install. Now that several of us have installed stand alone systems, I would say a lot of the hard work has been done. I know Roger B and Eric Z helped quite a bit with my install, I know Justin Van Abrahams is probably looking for the time or the excuse to drag himself away from one of his other cars before going SDS or similar. I've documented my SDS install as much as possible too. I know I would help whoever asked, as much as I could, with an SDS install on his/her car, and hopefully Ryan Bard, another local, will be going this route. Further, with either some sort of piggyback fuel computer or stand alone or Trionic or whatever, some wiring will have to be done, you cannot avoid this. I was initially very intimidated by it. But I managed to do it, the car runs and well - and I have no formal mechanical or electrical training, I did it all on my own (all the while balancing law school too!)
7. Downside with SDS. No datalogging. This is just about my only complaint. On the other hand, customer support with them has been phenomenal. They have many cars all over the world running their systems too. It is proven.
Anyway, my thoughts. Not meant to provoke flames, but to provoke constructive thought.
posted by 129.128.3...
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