01hammer

lighting headers recommend tuning the ecm on efi motors.. i have an 01 454 mpi motor is there a place i could send the ecm for a tune.

kennyo

I wouldn't waste the money. Those engines are a little fat anyway. You should be ok.

Hardin Marine

We can help you out with this, print out this form and fill it out the best you can and then give us a call to place the order. I would say this in combination with a fuel pressure regulator would be a great upgrade for your application.

Thanks,
Hardin Marine

stevesxm

you are wasting your money. unless the motor has had a significant compression ratio increase or other genuine and meaningful mechanical reconfiguration, thye fuel and iginition tables in the stock programming are very good , gains from the hot rod ecu tuners are generally minimal and often, depending on the shop, cause more issues than they resolve.

the smart move is to leave it stock.

Hardin Marine

There is a great deal of truth in modifying a ECU on a engine that has not been modified there seldom are any real substantial gains. But in the event you install a high flow tubular exhaust system it is rare that the factory programming will support the fuel and spark requirements caused by releasing the engines exhaust back pressure. Often the factory tuning develops a lean condition that results in some driveability issues as well as possible engine failure.

Hardin Marine

So here's a thought the Manufacture (Not us) Lightning MFG. makes a suggestion to re-program even though they don't do it themselves?(So no gain for them) Even though they have a Dyno and do testing of there own product(So they do have knowledge). So you take some friendly forum members advice and decide not to reprogram your ecu and you lift the ring lands off of the pistons or deteriorate an exhaust valve caused by the additional cylinder temps from the maybe lean condition. Who's fault will it be that you burned your motor down after you didn't follow the manufactures directions?. Granted the manufacture maybe isn't the end all be all of every situation but traditionally the suggestions are made to provide you and your boat a level of security it seems obvious to me that the manufacture has your best interest at heart. Why not just follow the manufactures direction? The loss of an engine seems huge as apposed to the minimal cost savings ($300.00).

stevesxm

i have put probably 300 sets of exhaust on efi motors from 1600 cc to 8.4 litre. of those at least half were done on the dyno with carte blanc to do anything that was required. in no case have i ever seen an exhaust only change change the egts in any significant fashion. not once. and in at least 50 % of the cases where motors crossed my dyno with reprogrammed ecus, the results were worse than stock with those that did make improvements at the extreme top where the stock systems tend to lean a bit , the sacrifices made elsewhere in the curve gave less total area under the curve.

are there magic bean ecu's for stock motors? i suppose.

but ive never seen one. what i see are a lot of " gee... i had my ecu reprogrammed and now the boat belches black smoke and is slower "

how many times on here has tyler crockett had to get IN the boat to re program in service after he's done it on the dyno... and thats a knowledgeable guy with his own motors... yet somehow some third party box is going to arrive in the mail and be better then what the guys at the factory did very specifically for that motor when their whole job was to do nothing than spec what that motor needed ?

i suppose. but not with my money and not with my motor.

Hardin Marine

Steve it seems as if you have provided a great deal of valuable advice to a large number of OSO family members. So I do have a great deal of admiration. On this particular engine I need to respectfully disagree. As an exhaust manufacture this particular claim appears incorrect based on our true testing of the 7.4L 454 Mercury Magnum marine engine in question when going from the 2.5" outlet cast manifolds to a 2" primary tube 4" collector style of marine header. We have seen at least 8% EGT climbs on this application during testing on the Superflow SF902 Dyno. Now is that to much temperature? well from our experience we would like to be back down in the parameters of the OEM tuning program.

No sir I don't know of magic bean ECU's either. Just engine's that run better when they are properly tuned to a particular specification? As opposed to a OEM base tuned ecu on a modified engine application. Like everything in our industry theres quality work and then theres........

I like you have seen many improperly reprogammed ecu's we get the call nearly every day from one customer to another. And like you don't believe nor do we promote the service on unmodified engines. I have also seen the Pro's guys like Tyler Crocket, Jim at ASM, and Precision as well as a couple of others with a great deal of "In The Boat" tuning experience take those programs and provide them to consumers NO not Dyno tunes but real world tunes in a boat. All of our exhaust testing is first performed on the Dyno and our ECU tuning from real world applications so that we have the ability to provide this service to our customers.

Whipple Charged

Actually, when you change the stock, ugly, non-flowing, milk carton looking exhaust with a long runner tubular header, you will see a noticable gain in low rpm torque (up to 4000rpm). You will see a slight gain in power.

Because this is slightly different, it will still run for the most part fine with stock computer, but, Hardin is correct, you can gain even more and benefit from the proper calibration. First, you can bump the rpm limit, always help squeek a few ponies out of her, then you can bump the spark, because Mercury ran hardly any spark in the 01 454 MEFI3 computer at WOT, only a bunch at part throttle. Next, you can actually richen the AF below 4000rpm, because it will be slightly lean here with the tubular header change. All in all, you can certainly make the package better with a properly programmed ECM and tubular headers. Last, they can modify the map, because changing the headers DOES change the engine volumetric efficiency, enough that I agree, a proper tune should be done.

Just my .02

Thanks,
Dustin

tunertech

Make sure that whoever changes your ECU for any reason that they provide you with the bin file and do not lock your ECU else you are capative to the tuner,


www.mefituning.com no lock and furnishes bin file.

PS your changes do not require a reflash to perform