Celica Forums General Discussion Engine and Performance Apexi Power FC for the Celica GTS - Q&A

what time did you run b/f the power fc

why the hell won't a power FC work on the Auto???

tune it for me mike!!!

very similar. I havent run with my power fc tuned yet I'd hit better then 13.7 easily

13.7 - I had 172 whp, no pfc 166.5whp, now 183whp

Did I not read somewhere that Monkey wrench racing was coming out with a version of the power FC that engaged lift at 5000 rpms? Please tell me I didn't have a wet dream about this!

I will check but I'm pretty sure that is no true. lowest anyones proven to make power is 6,000. any lower you get MASSIVE power loss.

i heard about the 5K engagement awhile back. but heard nothing about it since.

physically you CAN make it go that far but I dont think it would be safe to try. I can tell it to kick on lift at 2,500 rpms if I was brave enough. lol after playing with it on the dyno we are fairly certain it wouldnt be a good thing could be wrong, so if anyone is brave enough to guinea pig it let me know

I don't have a GTS, but I'll probably be the guinea pig for the Apexi PFC for the GT...I was gonna go with the emanage, but after emailing back and forth with the MWR guys, they've convinced me of the PFC

hehe. that would be coo if you could hit lift at 2500 ha. i dont think it would be good though. and plus you would have to shift all the time.

you wouldnt have to shift until the normal 8600 (for me) so you'd shift the same. you'd just be hella slow. and thats if you dont ruin the engine. lol

^^Mike how come you haven't put all your mods in your profile??

I had a hard time deciding between the PFC and the e-manage. I even called the MWR guy too, and of course he recommended the PFC for my GTS. I finally just bought the e-manage b/c I want to keep my car smog legal as long as I can here in cali, so it's not a pain to spend a lot of time every two years restoring it back to stock. With the e-manage I can be sure that my fuel tuning is working with all my upgrades to be smog legal. I plan on using the $1000 I saved to buy an exhaust gas analyzer so I can occassionally check my emissions.
Lucky, what experience do you have getting your car ready for smog? Because I plan getting 25+ engine mods for my car, I don't want to have to unplug my PFC and plug my stock ECU back in and find I have to yank out 12 or so of the 25 upgrades to be smog legal. This way I can monitor my emissions as I upgrade.

what am I missing??

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Dunno much about smog stuff.

I just moved to Los Angeles from Las Vegas and so I had to get my 02 GTS smogged. It passed BUT I was just under on the maximum allowable emissions of HC at 15 mph. I had 60 ppm (parts per million) where the max is 61! So you can say I am barely street legal. I had to put my stock airbox back in to pass the visual inspection by the way. They looked for that.

I might add that even though your aftermarket Intake may be legally CARB exempt, a lot of smog places are so anti-tuner they won't pass your car or test your car if they see anything in your engine that isn't stock looking. Not fair I know. The reason is that California has undercover agents going around to smog stations to root out the illegal smog techs who take money on the side to pass tuners. These guys go to jail. So the techs are a bit paranoid understandably.

and also driving around with no muffler started to make my ears rings in my gutted car. I started losing my hearing!!! I get almost the same power and more torque with a custom magnaflow muffler w/o the resonator and a high flow magnaflow cat. It's a lot quieter too.

Ok, it turns out...I dreamed all this up. It was nuts I soo belived my dream. I dreamt that Illusive got on this site and started a post about the 5k engagement. Then everyone started responding including me. The crazy thing is...it explained how they got it to work in my dream. However, I am having problems remembering. Yeah So, I had a wet dream about my cars lift engagement.

and of course you have dynoed the car to know this for sure right? this thread is about the power fc NOT smog stuff. feel free to start a thread askin about smog stuff. this isnt the thread for it though

Hey everyone, i was wondering how many ponies to expect to get from the apex-i fc with an AEM Intake.
my car is a 2k gts

i am pretty new when it comes to working on my vehicle, i was just wondering how hard and how much work is it in installing on my 2002 gts
thanx

^^ its just removing a cover some bolts and unplugin the stock ecu and puttin the new one in and pluggin it in the hard part is if you are goin to tune it from what i heard

^thanx i was just hoping there werent gonna be any surprises when i purchase it a couple of months from now

it will depend on who does the tuning

if i order a pretuned ecu, what kind of difference do you think ill see when i install it in 2002 gts, untuned, because thats a lot of money to drop on a single upgrade. ill probably have to wait to tune ecu for a bit
ie power difference, will i be able to whoop up on my friends rsx-s now

Right, but if i understand correctly, doesnt it come with a base map or something? If so, what kind of gain should i expect or do i have to tune it?

you wont have much if any peak power over your current setup with the base map. you will get a lot of down low power though.

don't install the pfc without at least dynoing it to make sure youre not knocking bad or running too lean. which has happened to people with just the base map. you'll want to include tuning when you are figuring out how much it will cost you to get. it's not worth it to buy it and not tune it. you wont be happy.

will i have to purchase more cables and s*** or will any apexi tuner have the neccesary equipment

^^ an authorized tuner should have everything they need. to do it yourself you'll need to buy the datalogit kit which is the cable and software.

If doing it yourself, I suggest buying a wideband O2 sensor with datalogging capability of at least 3 variables: A/F Ratio, RPM, Throttle Position. To measure relative Performance gains between different maps, you can use a Gtech Competition meter. I've also pre-ordered Ben Strader's book "Building and Tuning High Performance Injection Tuning" from walmart.com. If you can, you should attend one of his seminars (efi101.com).

BTW I'm selling my GReddy e-manage, and buying the PFC.

oops...title of the book is "Building and Tuning High-Performance Electronic Fuel Injection." hehe.

yeah, a wide band will help you correct your fuel issues without paying for dyno time. will pay for itself after a few logging days lol

there is a rumour down under that the powerfc can bet installed on an auto, is this true? the rumour is that it will disengage M-mode (triptronic controls) and overdrive (4th gear)..???

I think MWR has tired it? you would want to send them an email cause I honestly dont know. It wouldnt help that much considering the price you'd prolly have to have that bad boy rev to 9K before the tranny would land lift so its better to save the extra 2700 and get the Turbo. then you'll actually have some useful power.

do we have to like reprogram the power fc after you put a new mod on the car. or just program it one time and ur done?

everytime you add stuff you should retune it.

This is off the wall but is it safe to put racing fuel in a stock celica 00 gts? I want to just make sure that if i mix it half 93 and half racing, my engine wont blow up.and to make sure it fits in this forum, can you tune the chip to make it know you are running racing fuel?

its better to use racing fuel. ull get better response and probably a few hp extra. basically ur engine will perform at its peak when you put racing fuel cz celicas are high compression, that means they love high octane. in other countries, racing fuel is normal to them, they got 98 octane everywhere in europe and asia. so yea, better octane gives you better gains.

if its only unleaded racing fuel, NEVER put leaded race gas in your vehicle, it will eat your fuel system alive.

also it makes no change in power putting 100 oct in a stock car.

the only time you see any benefit is if you modify the a/f and ignition maps to compensate for the cleaner burning fuel.

again DO NOT PUT LEADED RACE GAS IN.

just thought i'd give a 2nd stress on that. lol you really dont wanna do it.

Where are places that tune the powerfc?

I'm in Indiana.

i'm assuming it costs money to get it retuned at a dynoshop..so would it be best to make the power fc the LAST modification on your car?

^^ PFC last = like having a supermodel who wants to be your gf but you keep holding out on her. Sure it will cost you something everytime you want to tune her, but the Performance you gain now is worth it.

I've had mine on for awhile before I added anything new so for me getting it first worked best.

if you dont wanna worry bout it then get it last.

makes sense...thanks

The authorized (PowerExcel) tuner will have everything they need, but does this mean they will let you use their datalogit box and Celica software to tune your car yourself on their dyno? (I know you won't be able to run off with their computer and datalogit and switch between different maps when you want.)

I know it has been briefly mentioned in this thread that the PowerFC Commander pales in comparison to the Datalogit kit, and that you can't store and load different maps on the Commander. However, since it is questionable when the FCDatalogit will be available to those on the waitlist - 6 mos or more?, I would like to know what the capability of the Commander is. Although it may be incovenient compared to the Datalogit, would it be possible on the Commander to copy down to paper or computer file the changes you make to the map so that you can make small adjustments on the street to stave off any serious knock you may get? Sorry about the long question but it just came out in one sentence as I was thinking. Whatever the answer, I'm thinking the Commander won't be a complete waste of money anyway when you finally get the Datalogit since it will allow you to monitor knock without hauling your laptop around and having it soar into the door when you take a turn very fast or smash into the dash when you brake hard. Everyone's different but that's how I drive. And I suppose you can always try to strap the laptop in with a seatbelt or racing harness.

I think your question answered itself. and I think you already have your mind made up to get it lol.

^^Hey Mike I have a question Someone might have asked already but I'm not going to go through 148 posts Anyways...Can the power FC be used to lower the RPM's that lift kicks in? Like to 5500?

I wouldnt lower it past 5900 rpms and even thats pushin it.

6K works just fine.

anyways, it can lower it to what ever you want. you just wont many any power doing it.(as far as we've seen)

all i gotta say is wow.is there any special dyno tuning you have to do for that

how much $ is a dyno an hour and how long for a novice to tune it?:)