Ark's City Goblin #187 (2008 SS/TC donor)

Ark :D

Ark :D

Goblin Guru
Sluggonaut said:
Here are my thoughts presented in the order I would do them:

1) Brake proportioning kit - This can be done relatively cheaply if you want to do all your own fabricating. I'm lazy and ordered the kit without the valve (I already had it as I was planning on making my own), as I didn't want to deal with bending brake lines or dealing with making a steel mount in the cold garage this winter.

2) HPTuners - I bought mine but haven't used the credits yet. Wrapping my head around the tuning portion is also on my off-season list. However, even without using it to tune, being able to log is worth the price IMHO. It lets you know what is going on while you are driving and cannot check gauges and stuff. This would be #1 if the brake proportioning valve didn't have such a great ROI.

3) NACA Ducts - I'm not sure what the correct answer is here and for transparency, I have the NACA ducts installed on mine. I figured they are passive and cannot fail like a fan can. If the car is not moving, you don't need air going through the heat exchanger unless you are in a burnout contest or something. I am not sure what appropriate IAT temps are for us, but mine have always been within 10 degrees or so of the ambient temperature. I plan to log more next season and will be tracking that for my own edification. I put it 3rd because if you follow through on #2, you'll want reliable IAT temps.

4) Seats/harness - This should go higher if there are safety or significant comfort issues. I think anything other than a regular seatbelt will give passengers trouble. Everyone struggles a little with harnesses the first time they use one, don't they?

5) Data display - I originally didn't understand why someone would want the extra hassle/expense of reinventing the wheel when the donor provided all the gauges we need. Then I finished building and drove mine. Running Torque Pro on my phone in front of where I sit is so much better than the instrument cluster, so I am now considering data display alternatives myself. Cost, level of effort, and cost are the 3 considerations keeping this one low on the list.

6) Keyless start - As cool as this seems, the struggle may be real.

7) Color scheme - Even though you have the ability to change your color every season doesn't mean you should. I think you should go at least 2 seasons with each livery (unless it sucks of course and we'll let you know) before changing. I guess if you run out of other stuff to do in the off-season it gives you something to do, but I would let it ride another year before changing it up.
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5 and 6 are really only listed because I already have all the hardware I need. I just need the motivation to put the software side of it together.
 
jamesm

jamesm

Goblin Guru
I guess it depends on your budget. The brake prop valve is like $100. The keyless/pushbutton start is less than $100. Each should be easily installed in an evening after work. As far as data displays, consider one of the inexpensive OBD displays. I run one as my primary cluster and it works really well. Seems like it was $60-70 on Amazon.

The tune would probably be the next this costwise at around $300-350.

Seats and stuff will probably be $1000 easy. The color/wrap will vary widely based on the design
 
Ark :D

Ark :D

Goblin Guru
jamesm said:
I guess it depends on your budget. The brake prop valve is like $100. The keyless/pushbutton start is less than $100. Each should be easily installed in an evening after work. As far as data displays, consider one of the inexpensive OBD displays. I run one as my primary cluster and it works really well. Seems like it was $60-70 on Amazon.

The tune would probably be the next this costwise at around $300-350.

Seats and stuff will probably be $1000 easy. The color/wrap will vary widely based on the design
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The keyless start and data display are of my own creation and may or may not make it into the build, I don't know. I only listed them because everything I need for them is already in my possession, for the most part. The keyless start would be handled by an ESP32 module with a little coding on it to work with a bluetooth BLE (basically, proximity start). The data display would be my existing backup camera screen, with some data being fed to it by a RPi4. Both of these projects have some posts dedicated to them much earlier in this thread, but I don't know if I care enough about either one to actually finish them and add more points of failure into my build.

Regardless, I appreciate everybody's input. The seats/harnesses are getting more push behind them than I expected, to be honest. And the repaint, even less then I expected. That tells me that people who tell me they love the look, in person, aren't lying to me, lol.
 
devianteng

devianteng

Well-Known Member
Ark :D said:
I don't know any more, guys ... with the nightmare @GoblinGuyZ is going through with his ECM's in the other thread, tuning may be 100% off the table, now.
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That's definitely fair, but there is still some benefit to buying into HPT. Once you have the hardware, and the software (VCM Suite) is free, you can read your ECU and see things there, pull codes, do things like cam/crank relearn and similar, as well as log parameters and see what's going on. Great way to learn more about your car, and later buy credits and then start making changes and flashing changes to the ECU. You only need credits to write to the ECU, not read/log. Just my thought, at least.
 
G

Gtstorey

Goblin Guru
If you have a MPVI2 and are running older version of the editor it shouldn't be a problem at all. I flashed mine 5 times the past Tuesday. Even if running the newer version, it is limited to certain ecms. According to his post on HPT, he's has an LSJ. The Turbo ECM is probably as unrelated to the LSJ PCM as you can get so it probably isn't included in the "couple of other flavors of ECM's that were affected and temporarily disabled them till everything gets fixed."

HPT did make a major change to their hardware and software recently and it always takes them a while to get the bugs worked out, or even to find the bugs. Judging by the limited amount of traffic in the GM 4 cylinder section of HPT forum, he may be the first to have tried flashing the LSJ with the new MPVI3.
 
Ark :D

Ark :D

Goblin Guru
Intending no kind of tone in my response here, but I have to say, "probably" isn't good enough. I'll do some research when the time comes of course, but I won't be bricking my ECM, or even risking it.
 
G

Gtstorey

Goblin Guru
That's why I highlighted probably since I don't know for sure. But this is in regard to the newest MPVI3. I guess you are looking at buying one now, not an older version. You really want to wait so you can do some extended driving cycles to tune, so I would wait until spring anyway. It's not really something that you just download the tune and done. You at least need some extended driving to tune the MAF in correctly, and I would check that before making other changes.
 
Ark :D

Ark :D

Goblin Guru
I've got a mild LNF tune file, graciously shared by @JBINTX and I believe by @Indy Lonnie before him, that's been well-tested. I wouldn't be flashing until springtime anyway, your point is dead-on of course.

It looks like generally, MPVI2's are getting hard to come by so I would likely just go with the 3 as long as I can verify there's no issues at that time.
 
Desert Sasqwatch

Desert Sasqwatch

Bigfoot Goblin
A Wiseman once said: never buy the first release of anything with a new software program. Wait a while until they have the bugs worked out of it. ;)

I too was contemplating HPT, but I will take this sage advice and give it some time.
 
Sluggonaut

Sluggonaut

Goblin Guru
Desert Sasqwatch said:
A Wiseman once said: never buy the first release of anything with a new software program. Wait a while until they have the bugs worked out of it. ;)

I too was contemplating HPT, but I will take this sage advice and give it some time.
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The only problem is the availability of the old style. The 2+'s were scarce when I bought mine earlier this year and you couldn't even get the regular version from HPT back then - you had to buy the Pro to get it.
 
G

Gtstorey

Goblin Guru
I would expect HPT to have the bugs worked out in a couple of months on the 3, although you won't have as much ability to turn off DTC's and you have to take a quick training class explaining the emissions laws to use it.

I doubt you will find a 2 anymore except on the used market, and then don't expect much of a discount.
 
Ark :D

Ark :D

Goblin Guru
I will likely just try to locate someone in my area that will do an hour-long session to flash my ECM for me and turn off a few lights. I've no intention to dig deep into tuning.
 
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