Feedback on AEM FIC

Hello
I'm after feedback on the AEM FIC & 91-94 OEM ECU with a low boost turbo setup. approx. 400hp

I understand there's not too much adjustment.
So is there a max injector size I can run before I run out of adjustment of nice idle & cruise & full load.

any advice appreciated.

I have heard a number of comments, from my tuner and others, that the FIC does not work very well with OBD1 cars. Without feedback of fuel trims, it's hard to get the the closed-loop portion of the map. Though it seems to me that one could unplug an O2 sensor to force open loop and tune those portions of the map that way; it would just take more time.

The reason the FIC seems to work well for the NSX in general is that the OE ECU does not apply fuel trims during open-loop operation, so the map in the FIC is predictable. My car still does not do well with rapid throttle transitions, which admittedly may relate to the settings for acceleration enrichment. But even lifting rapidly invokes a jerky response. I have an '00, ~7 psi CTSC (399 hp).

Regarding injectors, my car idles fine using RC 550 cc/min injectors. I believe that [MENTION=4799]DDozier[/MENTION] has experience with other injectors and is of the opinion that very large or Bosch-style (e.g., Injector Dynamics) injectors do not work well. Large do not work well because of the resolution of the FIC and modern injectors do not work well because of the characteristics of the OE ECU.

Bottom line is that the FIC is an okay solution if you need to maintain OBD2 functionality but I'm not sure why you would use it otherwise. A standalone would allow you to use better injectors and have more control generally.

You can pick up an AEM Series 1 box for cheaper than an FIC. That would be your best bet imo. I have one sitting in my garage I'm not using let me know.

whrdnsx said:

Hello
I'm after feedback on the AEM FIC & 91-94 OEM ECU with a low boost turbo setup. approx. 400hp

I understand there's not too much adjustment.
So is there a max injector size I can run before I run out of adjustment of nice idle & cruise & full load.

any advice appreciated.

Click to expand...

My car is a 1998 NSX and it is still a OBD-1 car because for some reasons Honda did not introduce OBD2 until 2000 in Europe.
I have added a AEM FIC after I blew my first engine with the standard Comptech box on my low-boost CTSC.
Even though I had expected the Comptech to be as reliable as every one said, it still did not work out for me, so I am much more careful now.

Together with the AEM FIC I have added the 550CC injectors from SOS to make sure I will always have enough fuel, whatever the RPM. I also added a IAT, boost and AFR sensor.

So far, the car has been reliable. My tune is very conservative with much enrichment and much retardation under boost. I'd rather sacrifice some HP for the sake of less chance of sacrificing another engine (the 3.2 is hard to come by).

For a time, I had some trouble with throttle response at low RPM's. I went back to the tuner and he changed the mappings (driving him around and he looking at the fuel maps). Once he changed that, it has been running fine.
The car might not be as fast as with the previous (non-FIC) setup, but I feel a lot safer now.

The main reason I chose the FIC was that a full engine management system was at that time not advised. Not because it would not work, but because a full after-market AEM setup is only as good as the tuner setting it up.
Since there a very few NSX's where I live, I did not want to take any more chances than I had to.

[MENTION=5180]MvM[/MENTION] your experience nearly matches mine. My motor suffered from pulling the head bolts out of the block. When I had Timeserts put in to repair that, I also had all bearings and rings replaced, along with a valve job. And switched over to the FIC and 550 cc/min injectors. I'd be interested to compare FIC files since we have the same engine and injectors, albeit different ECUs.

I personally didnt have a great experiance running FIC with factory ecu on OBD1.

I switched to OBD2 and it ran so much better.

Wayne,

Since you're in Australia might suggests the HKS F-Con iS. I ran this piggyback for a while. It is far superior in both hardware and software. HKS owns the underlying Honda NSX ECU code base so they talk to each other properly. You just need the HKS Power Writer to tune. The piggyback knows how to read OEM sensors for example and outputs it to a video display. There are very few ECUs that can translate the OEM code base.

Thanks for the Advice.
Just looking at cheaper options than a full aftermarket ECU, but looks like not much option. I already have a Motec M800 for my other NSX. So I may just look for another.