Ecutek from another perspective

S&J Automotive have been doing as much R&D as possible with their own V7 STI. Even to the point of taking the laptop and necessary hardware devices on the family holiday.

The story highlights yet another reason to consider an Ecutek upgrade of some sort for your Rex.

For this test the car was completely standard, bar the unlocked ecu. We took a break at Easter time towing a large off road camper, and believe me the tow rating of the poor old Subi was maxed out. On the drive too and from the traffic (moderate), ambient temp(22-27 deg) and wind (dead still) were as far as we could tell equal in both directions.

On the drive there we used a program "Tek 2" that we have developed. The overall performance of the car was staggering given the less than aerodynamic holiday house that we were towing. Keeping in mind that we have customers with standard V7's complaining of noticeable down low power loss just with the A/C on. We recorded 9.5klm's/litre between Tailem Bend & Horsham using the cruise control of course!

Whilst in Halls Gap I downloaded the standard STI7 program and gave it time to relearn without the load on. Without exaggerating the car was woeful to drive, we couldn't wait to get to Tailem Bend to check the usage an switch the programs back. Not surprisingly the economy dropped to 7.7klm's/litre. The most noticeable difference behind the wheel was the way it bogged down with the cruise on at any incline and God help us when it was time to over take.

Monitoring the Air fuel ratio showed that at all times of cruise both programs ran the desired 14.7:1 AFR. However watching the load of the 2 different programs on the laptop, it was interesting to note that the "Tek 2" ran mostly between 1.1grams/cyl (cruising @ 100) and 1.7g/c ( slight inclines). With the standard program using 1.1-1.4g/c (cruising @ 100) and upto 2.6g/c (slight inclines). In simpler terms the engine spent more time in boost with the std. program.

So the moral to the story is, be as unpractical as us by trying to do everything with your Subi, and your misses has to let you upgrade your ECU, even just for economy!