Wow! Wes, thanks for posting, that is a wealth of infor for me, and just the sort of thing I am looking for.

I am going to scrutinize more on these sorts of things because I do want to learn how tuners tune.

Also, as you find out more about tuning software for PCs to write your own tunes, please do keep us all up to date.

I find it funny that people tend to think of "ricers" as canned tunes, but I hear about way more ricer guys actually writing their own tunes than I hear about 'Stang tuners writing their own tunes.

 

yeah, i think the fast and furious gave a stigma to these standalones, but they're so great on any application. after exchanging emails with one of the engineers at aem he said they have no plans of doing any testing on the 5.0 and they have a busy long drawn out schedule right now, but he recommends anyone in the area of carson california to check with mptuning as they specialize in doing things like ems on mustangs and such. i still have more research to do with the diyautotune megasquirt, but i know it's popular with some of the fox body guys, i just haven't been able to find out if it has support for cam angle tuning like the aem unit.

 

http://www.motec.com.au/home


I would imagine if any aftermarket ECU was going to be able to control the variable valve timing system on the new 5.0. One of there models would be able too. MoTec makes some of the best stand alones out there IMO. You have enough inputs to log and do about any damn thing you could dream of.

 

yeah, motec is top notch, i've never tuned on one, but i've never heard anything bad.

 

They had better be top notch, better than professional even. They cost as much as a supercharger kit!

http://stores.homestead.com/FASTMoto...Categories.bok

Also, would any of these be 'Stang compatible,? Especially with Copperhead? Or when you buy one of these, do they totally replace the Copperhead gear altogether? And then what about harnessing?

 

as far as mustang compatible, megasquuirt and aem are used on previous gens, but as far as the new ecm is concerned, the grunt work is already done with these tuners cracking it already. from the engineers i've talked to ford tends to be a lot more user friendly with tuning on the ecm, while most of the imports are like a 1,000 sided rubick's cube. a more simple way with the layout would be using a daughterboard (not true standalone) in the ecm with a usb port on the case to connect. i believe this is how megasquirt does, and it does the same as a true standalone. the aem should be run parrallel to the pinout.

 

Another thing I thought about as far as the versatility of tuning Ti-VCT: there are fans who want to have a lop to their engine to get that muscle sound to their cars.
It would be possible to tune the cams such that you induce that lop for the RPM you are running at by phasing the cams in, and so forth. Needless to say, a tune would be much cheaper than buying exhaust components and a cam to achieve this.