Posted: December 22nd, 2005, 12:49 pm
BTW, the BB has begun a week ago on Probetalk, FWIW.
Gro Harlem wrote:its not a "scam"
By paying him (he is one person on probetalk) $400 for a "packaged unit" you are basically pissing away 70 dollars by adding a bunch of features you can add yourself for 0 dollars.
$25 - Launch Control
$15 - each or $40 for 3 - Up to 3 programmable outputs
$15 – Fan Relay Control
$25 - Switchable Tables
$15 - PWM Idle to control stock IAC
$25 – Water Injection
$40 - Nitrous Control
Pretty much most-to-all of these can be added via software with little to no effort, yet he's charging high amounts of money for them to be added prior to shipping the unit to you. I'm not sure if you need to solder in additional stuff for those outputs, I'd have to read more into it so that might require some effort on your part & a 10 cent resistor or peice of wire. Either way, most people don't realize how simple & easy it is to update their software with these additional features, thus they'll pay his BS fee's to add them to their unit. In other words he's profiting even more from peoples ignorance which I think is wrong.
Either way, you are basically paying for the knowledge of the probetalk community by buying this unit. The dood wrote up his own installation manual & some other tips that he himself wrote, but pretty much all of that stuff is already posted on probetalk one way or another so its basically info you could access for free.
If you want to buy a decently made MS go for it! I just can't see how this guy is "in it for the community" when he's basically raising his prices nearly 50-80 dollars from the last GB & still pulling this crap where he profits from ppls ignorance.
The best thing you can do is read up on MS's if you want a MS. If you educate yourself about whats involved & all that stuff then you won't be prone to being "had" by people like this. There are quite a few ppl on ProbeTalk who have soldered & built their own MS but not nearly as many as who have bought from this Groupbuy guy. Those people basically paid to be spoon-fed everything they need to know to hook up their MS for THEIR particular car. If these people had read about this crap beforehand they would realize you could buy pretty much ANY packaged MS from ANY dealer and use it on ANY engine and likely saved a few dollars in teh process.
Its all up to you. if you don't want to read up on this crap, then this guy is a good choice. You are basically paying for knowledge that you can obtain for free w/out much effort. Its all up to you.
One thing you dont mention, is that lots of the code in the PT BB is written by Ryan, and it`s not available for download anywhere.
Among other stuff, the coilpack part is totally rewritten, and doesnt use EDIS,etc etc.
Some of those mods do involve modifying the PCB with other resistors etc.
This is also the first true plug n play ECU for the 2.5 V6 (and most likely the 1.8 too). Theres actually no work needed in the engine compartment (not even for the coilpack solution). Imho I think this is a great offer.
Of course, it would probably be cheaper to get a kit and build it yourself, but then you would not get coilpacks etc.
That, and the plug n play is gold imho.
oh, and ask Babybluemx3 about his MS, he got one from an earlier gb.
I pretty sure those are not the same.
nope-mx3