I can't believe that people are complaining about prices. Have you looked at prices of ECU's before???

Motec - £2000+ (approx) with ECU, looms and custom mapping
PPP - £2000 (approx) with ECU, exhaust parts and intercooler hoses
Power FC - £1600 (approx) with ECU and custom mapping
GEMS - £1500 (approx) with ECU and custom mapping
Link - £1400 (approx) with ECU, Link hardware and custom mapping
Unichip - £1250 (approx) with piggyback chip and custom mapping
Ecutek - £700 (approx) with ECU and custom mapping
Superchips - £500 (approx) with piggyback chip and fitting
Electronic Boost controller - £500 (approx) with hardware and fitting
Dawes Device - £200 (approx) with MBC and monitoring equipment

These prices are approximate, but I think they are good enough for this example.

IMHO I think for the facilities and functionality you get with the Ecutek is fantastic value for money!

If we were talking about a plug and play item, then yes I would look for the cheapest supplier. With a custom map I would pay extra in the knowledge that the mapper I was using was experienced with my type of car!

 

Nice thread, I have often considered posting, but admit to being almost scared to.

We have seen it way too often so far within the impreza tuning market. From what I can tell a lot of the manufacturers have been taking the **** previously as they could.

Example, look at simple mods for say a Fiesta and compare to an Impreza, why when you are talking similar items can there be such a massive difference? Well supply and demand comes into it, but this will be increasingly weakened by the value of the cars and the number on the market.

Some companies stick to the cost plus type approach where they add a margin to the top of the product. (Should remember the cost isn't just the materials but the R&D, expected warranty issues etc). So if they spend £100,000 development/R&D and expect to sell 1000 items they need to recoup £100 per item sold, expect to sell 10,000 and recoup only £10 per item).
Other companies tend towards the what can we get away with. Good example here if Levi jeans, the denim isnt that much better, and they aint made that muc better than a pair costing £6 in Asda (good for using in the garden btw).

I think the impreza market has had a lot of the later type of company who could get away with it. Im sure this is changing now, just look at the number of newish tuning compaines that have arrived over the last few years. To survive and develop they have to beat the established companies on price. This leads them to have to push the suppliers harder for better prices and look for different ways of providing the service cheaper.

Back to the ECU bit

My understanding was that originally ECUTEK was a pet projec, i.e. as per a few other developments we have seen on Scoobynet, it was done as a challenge. The difference I think was that it developed into an excellent solution that was very marketable.
Prior to TEK remaps the 4 most common "remap" were from what I can tell
1) Link (has had problems in the past, but good results have always been seen from the knowledgeable mappers)
2) PE Phase1? remaps (at the time were slated as dangerous, I think looking back a lot was down to a lack of understanding of how to tune Subaru engines. Not by PE but by everyone)
3) Unichip. Seemed to produce similar results to Link.
4) Prodrive performance pack.

Now apart from the PE remap all required significant extra hardware which isnt cheap due to supply and demand. PE "just" required an extra chip, so less actual extra hardware.

PPP cost like circa £2000, but maintained warranty, could be argued improved resale value as opposed to reducing it. So the other solution had to come in below PPP, taking into account the resale etc. I think look back 2 years or so, and Link mapping and hardware was close to £1000 all told? Sure thats what I was looking at when I considered it.

So prices have dropped as you can get a decent remap now for a lot less.

You are looking at circa £300 for a VAG remap also at a place near cambs that m friend uses.

I think you will see a significant drop in the price as soon as an EKUTEK type remap becomes available as you will have more competition.

Is there any warranty on the work done. I know warranty gets really nasty, but do you have to sign a disclaimer etc before getting the work done? If so then I would suggest its still a bit steep in price for not warranty type work.

robski

 

ok point taken regarding experience, but if you are an expert in your field & command X- amount for your services, why do you therefore not back up your expertise with a warranty??

Gridlock, i will copy out the e-mail i recd & send it 2u

 

Andy,

YHM

 

Cheers

Andy T, with regards to complaining about the costs, your point is valid, but not if you think "Hang on, £2000 for a Motec " If that product was cheaper, then we would maybe have a knock on effect.
Motec deal primarily with race teams with eff off great budgets so to pay £10k for engine mapping for a race car is bugger all. To develop a road useable version and sell it at a fifth of the cost is still wrong! Crap marketing I think. "Because we can" mentality. Because of that, the whole market is overpriced. If they developed a unit (More likley they would produce a system based on the top stuff just with far fewer features on them and sell it as race developed ) and sold it for £1,000 everyone else would HAVE to drop to remain competetive. I've seen the Motec stuff in action and spoken to the reps, and I'm sorry, You and I DO NOT need THAT level of accesibility to that many parameters for our road cars, let alone pay £2k for it. The people who do are IMHO daft. All the gear and no idea etc.
It would be interesting to see (Don't know how) how many UNITS were sold by all the different Mftrs over the last year and then work out profitability and THEN Nett profitability.
It's more complex than just saying Motec need to sell less to make more money compared to say Ecutek.
I'd bet that the humble little DAWES was by far the best little earner (Profitability percentage) Funny how initially most mappers (Not all) dismissed the DAWES as dangerous, incomplete, nasty, etc and now they have developed Maps to include the DAWES. Can't beat 'em join 'em. Same as DAWES on a PPP car. Alright now apparently
So in summary, we all get charged too much, there is not a great deal we can do about it except not buying, but we can come on Scoobynet and Type away our woes

Just thought of another overpriced item Mudflaps with STi written on them WTF Go figure that one out It's a flap of plastic for christs sake with a bracket and screws. Some muppets out there actually buy these things (No offence intended, actually no, offence was intended there) What possessed you to spend that much money on these things?

Mikey < Off to see if I can sell a £500 copier for 5k because i've been doing it for 12 years and my knowledge needs to be paid for >

[Edited by Gridlock Mikey - 6/13/2003 12:38:31 PM]

 

This is just a simple case of supply and demand.

You DONT do some work yourself unless you think you can make a good job of it. A more real world analogy....

My conservatory has some problems at the moment - and its costing me £2,900 to get the problems resolved by professionals. Sure - I could probably try fixing it myself - but I ain't no builder, and I deffo couldn't give my work the 10 year guarantee that the professionals are offering....etc.

Why should the cost of having a bespoke map or engine management in your car be any different. I know a reasonable bit about the workings of a modern engines and management systems - but it doesn't mean I'd set out and try mapping a car myself (er - ok - so we have done a little with our XTR2 - but not to the level of a full remap). These people have very specialist knowledge - its not something you just wake up in the morning and have the ability to do - its a 'skilled' task.

so - if you want something 'specialist' you have to pay the price - its as simple as that. Its like saying a £50 alba CD player is the same as a £2000 Marantz CD player - sure they both play CDs - but one offers sound quality in orders of magnitude above the other.

You pays your money you takes your choice.

Things are expensive because there is a demand for them. If you found a market into which you could sell a product for significantly more than the cost of production would you sell it cheaper so you didnt feel bad ???

I thought not.

As for the subaru tuning market - I just don't think there is as much money in it as they used to be. There are only pockets of people left who are prepared to spend 1000's on modifying their cars to the limits. The whole financial climate has changed - there isn't as much money about as there was say over the last 5 years - and I would the newer generation of impreza driver is younger (not that thats a bad thing) and potentially doesn't have the money to spend on mods ( I think back to my first performance car - I could barely afford to buy it - let alone make modifications to it).

Ian.

[Edited by igratton - 6/13/2003 12:47:05 PM]

 

Andy M

Just read the E-mail.

We should sell up and get into this Mapping game!
Job Advert:
Wanted, experienced ecu mapper wanted. Good rates of pay, laptop provided. ALL Licence fees paid by company.

Seriously, get a bunch of talented guys, call yaself ECU's 'r' Us charge £next to nothing and still make a fortune without being part of Rip off Britain. What's that I hear you cry, how can you make a profit without ripping people off, it's not the British thing.

Mikey

 

As far as mapping and Ecutek are concerned, dont forget that not only are you paying for the mapping, but also you have to consider that at some point the development cost has to be recovered.

Its not just a case of, plug it in, a press a few buttons and "Hey Presto...... Mapping software". The system was developed over many months, and the guys that put in all that work need to recover labour for the hours expended and any costs incurred whilst doing it.

If you went 6months or so unpaid, trying to develop something you'd expect something in return surely?

 

Also.

Its not like a conventional mail order service - I guess a professional mapping service can spend a fair amount of their time idle - they can't be mapping 6 cars a day 7 days a week.

The face that a car can be mapped in a number of hours is both a benefit for the mapper and the consumer. What you don't get to see is the countless hours of R&D that goes into the product before the customer gets to reap its benefits.

I think reprogramming via the cars OBDII port is fantastic - not even subaru themselves can offer this service to the customer.

A similar thing has also happened within the VW/Audi/Seat/Skoda market - there a several companies who can now map via OBDII for VAG brand cars. Prices are similar (about £500-£750 depending on who you go with and what you have done). The mappers for VAG vehicles have a far greater number of 'potential' customers due to the larger numbers of VAG cars on the roads.

 

Just my 2p worth along the same lines but slightly off topic

Some of you are saying it is supply and demand, but this is getting to be a weaker argument, Britain is just a rip off and everyone is out to make as much money as they can due to the government taxing everything except the air we breath.

I can get KW coilovers for at least 3 - €400 less than you can in the UK and there is no way the same demand for them here, it is all down to what people are prepared to pay not whether your getting value for money. In Germany we get the same petrol as you from the same arab and we pay less, we get the same cigarettes as you from the same factory and we pay less, we get Sports cars that are made in Coventry and exported to Germany and we pay less than you do, I can get a Ford Fiesta cheeper in Germany than you can from the dealer outside the factory gates in Daganham (if it was still open. You can all keep saying but if more of us complained then we could change it, this is crap nothing is going to change just because you want it to, just look at the massive petrol strike last year! did the tax on petrol come down or did the public get fed up and start buying petrol again, did all the fire strikes get them a 40% payrise? no they backed down in the end and made do with what they could get.

Here is a classic rip off, subaru foglight cover in the UK vary in price from 60 - 99 pounds for a bit of abs plastic, how the hell can 2 bits of pressed plastic cost so much to produce. We made a set over here from hi impact plastic that is virtually bullet proof for the princly sum of about 6 quid buying all the bits from a hardware store and working in ou spare time, admittedly they are not quite as refined as the mass produced ones but given time we will get there.

 

Good post Hippy !

May I add that EcuTek, although being relatively new and operating in a niche market, is years ahead of the mapping that can be done with the VAG cars ? Try doing a MAF calibration on those

Not saying everything should always be expensive etc, can't comment on "rip off Britain", but maybe you should also be a little proud of Stephen Done who not only "cracked" the MY99/00 ECU (and very shortly afterwards the totally different ECU on the later cars) but managed to set up an intelligent business around it, has developed a *revolutionary* product with DeltaDash/Road Dyno, and can now even count Prodrive as one of his "customers", as well as a few "established" Subaru tuning companies that first offered other solutions like Link/MoTEC etc...
and now have one more tool for helping out their customers
That is no small feat...

Not only that, but he managed to squash a few myths around the Subaru ECU, thus potentially saving quite a few engine failures.

As far as I'm concerned, I hope he gets filthy rich with this

 

Some of the comments on this thread are amazing

You take your choices, you pays your money. If you don't like it don't buy it and don't moan about it.

PPP - Countless hours of R&D to ensure reliability for warranty, you're paying a premium for all their engineers time etc.

Motec - Its a race solution for a road car! Nobody is twisting your arm to buy it, but for those that want the best, its there! Not only does it run many times faster, it'll also run a V12 if you have one. What are you gonna do with your ecutek chip when you sell the car? You can't stick that in a TVR. Motec you can. Its a chip for life, just need different looms.

Ecutek - As has already been said, every individual car has a substantial licensing fee which takes up (in most cases) the majority of the mapping charge. Once thats paid you can remap as many times as you want, and just pay for the mappers time. A lot of time and skill has been spent cracking the ECU codes and developing some great software to allow mappers complete control over one of the most advanced road car ECUs. Why should they give it away at £100 a time!!! How are they expected to have funded the original R&D work and how can they fund exciting new stuff in future? There are only a limited number of Subaru's on the road, divided by the amount of people that mod, divided by the amount of people that choose Ecutek.

Get a grip people.

 

I find this thread quite amusing.

Everyone want's something for nothing.

You have a choice already. You can buy and fit a 10row link ECU to your 99-00 cars and map it yourself.

It will cost over £700.

Oh wait, that's more expensive, that can't be right?

Okay, how about this, you buy the Delta ECU software and map it yourself, only that costs over £2000. Surely I must be able to get something for nothing somehow?

Oh yeah, get a custom map from the US, they're much cheaper over there. Oh wait, they're in the US, you could fly them here and put them up for the weekend, then pay VAT on top of the US prices.

Hmm, we're not doing to well here.

Maybe you should club together and do brain surgery. After all, operations can be charged at a premium rate and it surely can't be that difficult?

Paul

 

Theo,

I have total and complete respect for what Stephen and the ECUTek boys have done. I remember when he was starting out doing this stuff. I had some wild idea to begin with to use the diag port for just datalogging via a laptop. I was fortunate enough to get a select monitor to play with pretty much whenever I wanted it (Thanks to David Wood - RIP ).

Did loads of OBDII research to the point I pretty much new how the data came back through the port, managed to source cable components etc.

I'd been in conversation with Stephen becuase I knew he was onto the same thing - and making significantly more progress. Then we hooked up at power engineering one weekend and I was amazed how far boy wonder had got - we were able to take full diagnostics feeds whilst my P1 was sat on the rollers (incidently it won group 1 on the day - 317bhp and 289lb/ft with only HKS Hyper, HKS Racing downpipe and HKS Super Racing suction kit - not bad eh ) and at the same time he needed a full ECU dump from a P1 for part of his research - and I was more than happy to help.

The fact that he has figured out how to make use of the diag port for upstream data is fantastic - ECUTek deserve every success in their business.

Remember - next time you see a car being mapped by that software - just think about asking how many months of brain pounding effort went into the product allowing you to perform a very complex operation in only a number of hours.

Ian.

 

Ian, stop posting information, we only want *opinion* on here LOL !

Incidently, I just showed my wife where the ODBII port is on our T5 Vulva... Bugger me, I only found out 3 weeks ago it had such a port MY1996 BTW...

Now you just make sure your XTR2 gets stickered up right eh

(lol @ Paul & Edcase BTW)

Andy, not meant in a negative way, but whichever tuner you choose, you will get value for money.

 

LOL !

my lips are zipped

 

Consider how to achieve a genuine 40 - 50 bhp from mechanical modifications and then a remap seems like very good VFM

 

£650 I could justify for a Tek3, but not another £113 for the VAT

 

maybe things will change soon with the advent of the Greddy E manage the hardware can be had for circa 300 notes. I'm gonna get one soon and have bash myself (thats where everybody starts isn't it).
I'm sure if greddy can make a fully adjustable ECU for all MY's of car other manufacturers will jump on the band wagon soon, it can also make use of MAF sensors from other cars helpful for later MY cars with the fragile MAF sensor.

 

Remap of the Link = £125, now thats better.

 

dont forget someone spent nearly 3 years cracking the chip codes so that re mapping can be done my p1 is being remapped on 6 sept i got it on group buy for 700 with a 3 point solinoid to i will put a post up when its done to let everyone know if its money well spent but mines running at 1.4 bar this will be reduced to a safe 1.1 with the remap so the car will last longer money saved allready me thinks!im the first remapp on the group buy list.

 

Reading all this makes me feel that some people think there is a cartel in operation, not the case! have a little more faith in the free market economy, as more options and tuners appear prices will fall if there are large profits involved (which I doubt)
Personallty if you want more performance £700 is a small price to pay, although I wouldn't expect there to be any warranty at all from the mapper, if I am wrong on this point then we are talking a bargain in my books.
Consider also the fact that a business has a lot of hidden overheads ,advertising, r&d (a biggy w. r. t. time)phone, etc.You have to do a fair few remaps etc to make a good living out of this and hey if you can good on ya.
Licence issue is a bit of a red herring, even if it is say £100 pounds, why the big secret though? ,its the same for all I assume or is it negotiable? This is the sort of thing that helps feed the rip off argument IMHO

 

I hear there is a vacancy in Scotland for a mapper
http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/threa...hreadid=242828

 

I have one opinion here, although if I get shot down for it then so be it.
I cannot see how the price can be justified when JB charges a similar amount for a better map, when he does it out of hours, not commercially as others so.
There is no way that that is fair, and for what it is worth, I would pay JB for his work more readily than I would to anyone else because he is going out of his way for me.
£700 for a re-map of a standard ecu, with no additional functions such as als or launch control is frankly too much for me.
I understand the effort that has been put in, and apprecate it. But when I am looking at parting with my cash, frankly I don't care if someone has taken fifty years to develop it, I just want the best deal I can get!
For what it's worth, I want a tek3, but I cannot and will not pay that much for one.

 

JB's map isn't better, he describes it himself as a 2.5 (much to Stephen's despair!)but that's academic now. You'll find that BRD do their mapping in their spare time as well as the two individuals involved also have other businesses to run during the week. As several people above have pointed out, this is all about market forces, if users weren't happy to pay the amounts quoted either Ecutek would have to reduce prices or it would choose to leave an uneconomic business area. The fact is enough punters are happy and in increasing numbers it seems - investigate the alternative methods of optimising your car's performance, and making sure it doesn't go bang, and you'll find that £700 is good value.

If you think it's too much,then leave your car as standard or start your own computer decoding and mapping business - you'll soon appreciate the time and money involved.Either way, bitching on here and other websites is not going to achieve anything.

FWIW I have a "Tek3" from BRD on my P1 and I think it's worth every penny. (no commercial involvement etc etc)

 

Launch control is on it's way for any 6 speed gearboxed MY01 onwards scoob with the Ecutek option.

http://www.mrtrally.com.au/forums/to...TOPIC_ID=10533

Cheers,

George.

[Edited by WREXY - 8/25/2003 1:00:36 AM]

 

weel done for bob rawle to comment again out of all the mappers.in my opinion you probably could not go wrong with this bloke if you wanted a re map.

97my turbo, no re-map and wont be getting one.

 

I'm not criticising the mappers or their time. Just that for me the price is too high. All the same I have 'test-driven' a tek 2 today and can confirm that I will indeed now be getting one!!
Sooner rather than later as well.
Just wish it was a little cheaper. 'Bithing' was never the intention, but even if it was, as a free country and a free forum , I have that right.

 

Barristers earning £20k an hour...even the highest paid silks in the country would not come evn close to a fraction of this made up figure..lets keep the analogies real!

 

This all seems very odd - the attitude of some people on ths thread seems to be that they are only willing to cough up for TEK3 if they know where/who the money is going to. What the hell difference does that make. Is it going to the mapper or ECUTEK, who cares, that's the cost. Do you worry about who is getting the cut of your milk in the supermarket? Is it 40p for Sainsbury and 20p for the farmer. Does that make you chose whether to buy milk? What does it matter to the consumer who is getting the money provided you want and are happy with the product. Who cares what the split is? Why does it matter?

Someone explain this to me.

LoFi