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MS3-Pro vs VEMS?

adrianpike

adrianpike

🔥
Joined
Dec 1, 2002
Location
Seattle, WA
Hey gang,

My hoopt's been "running" on a hacked up old MS2.2 for something like ten+ years now - it's time to make the switch to something I trust a little more. I've been comparing VEMS and MS3-Pro, and I'd love to hear some TB'ers experiences.

I know Nathan's been happy with MS3-Pro, and Homer, Karl, and Alex love them some VEMS, but who else has been running either?

Long term, I'll probably be changing to something with 8 cylinders, so I'd like to be able to run sequential - both options are good to go there.

TIA!
 
I don't know anything about the Vems, but I can send you my current .msq so you can see what the latest beta ms3 has to offer. Its about to be released as a stable version, so you cant go wrong.
 
nathaninwa said:
I don't know anything about the Vems, but I can send you my current .msq so you can see what the latest beta ms3 has to offer. Its about to be released as a stable version, so you cant go wrong.
Click to expand...

That would be sweet - I'm mostly interested in the new hardware, especially around the VR conditioner. That's always been a constant source of flakiness for me, and I'd love to just plop down the cash one time and stop having to twiddle around with different daughtercards, VR sensors, wiring hacks, etc. Also moving from the lowres MS1-e stuff to the new stuff would be damn nice.
 
adrianpike said:
That would be sweet - I'm mostly interested in the new hardware, especially around the VR conditioner. That's always been a constant source of flakiness for me, and I'd love to just plop down the cash one time and stop having to twiddle around with different daughtercards, VR sensors, wiring hacks, etc. Also moving from the lowres MS1-e stuff to the new stuff would be damn nice.
Click to expand...

:cameron:
 
If you want to do a straight feature comparison of MS3-Pro and VEMS, there are a few places where VEMS comes out on top: It has built in support for two wideband sensors, an LCD output, internal MAP sensor, built in e-throttle support (new feature, NO documentation, pretty fuzzy at this point IMO), two EGT inputs, and up to eight built in coil driver FETs.

The latter may even be moot if you're running coils with built in driver FETs.

Other than that I think MS3-Pro kicks the **** out of VEMS. The physical packaging is better (actually waterproof, not sort of water resistant), built in USB, CAN support, much better documentation, more development transparency, larger user base, etc.

The software advantages with MS3 are pretty damn good. Flexible table blending (for flex fuel or whatever), per-injector deadtime compensation, per-cylinder EGO correction, traction control, and so on.

As far as VE/spark tuning goes, it's basically a crap shoot. VEMStune is actually pretty good nowadays, on par with TunerStudio. The logviewer and VE analyzer stuff is built in to VEMStune for no additional charge.

As of writing this, a VEMS speced out as closely to an MS3-Pro as possible (no coil drivers, onboard SD card, dual knock channels, offboard MAP, no EGT, flying lead harness) comes in at $860 (vs. $1200 for the MS3).

Alex and I are going MS3 on the V8 project. Mostly because it can do four channels of VVT and the CAN bus support (four channel VVT requires hardware mods, aka MS3+MS3X). The choice of VEMS for the 16v+t was mainly driven by the fact that we had a VEMS sitting on the shelf.

I probably wouldn't buy an MS3+MS3X because I think the V3/V3.57 boards are complete and utter ****.

I would recommend the MS3-Pro. I think it's already ahead of VEMS in a lot of important areas and that divide is only going to get larger with time.
 
Karl summed it up pretty good. One nice thing about the Pro, is it does come with registered versions of TS and MLV. If using canbus, you can input up to 8 wideband/egt inputs.

Anyways, they did update the vr conditioner over the ms3x. I can find the post on supraforums where Matt Cramer describes. Once i got my install conditioned (10k on vr positive, and 1k shunted to ground on the ground side) i have had zero vr issues on the stock Toyota stuff.

Im not sure about VEMS in the firmware updates, but i started on preAlpha1.3.4 last Febuary. Were on 1.3.10 now with alot of cool new features that were added. A couple of them were my idea too. Speaking of that, I need to rebump the dwell time based on load feature, that would really be cool.

Im using table blending and injector staging in my setup. I switch to race gas at 5psi, and have an effective 26x31 ve table.

Edit, I was curious about the egt/wideband logging. I took a peak into TS and you can input more than one wideband into MS, and define what cylinders it will control. But I think I do only see one input for egt, if more than one you need the canbus.

James has also developed a small 2-1/16 digital guage that can be configured to show the readings that TS can show. I have one but have not hooked it up yet.
 
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Any way to get one of those gauges, Nathan?
I've been wanting something like that for a while now.
 
small update, i havent seen the TS screen shot yet, but the load based dwell control was added and should be out in prealpha1.3.11.
 
I'm hoping they release a replacement for MS3+MS3X so I don't have to waste time spinning my own mainboard. I need to make hardware mods that aren't practical on an MS3-Pro and I refuse to spend a dime on a V3/V3.57 board.
 
What's the deal with the V3 board? I have MS2 V3 on the V8 car and I was considering upgrading it to MS3 with the expansion board for sequential injection.

Would I be throwing good money after bad?

M.
 
Karl Buchka said:
I'm hoping they release a replacement for MS3+MS3X so I don't have to waste time spinning my own mainboard. I need to make hardware mods that aren't practical on an MS3-Pro and I refuse to spend a dime on a V3/V3.57 board.
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Pretty much where I'm at, however, it seems there won't be any other boards made for MS3 other than the 3.0/3.57 and PRO boards.
 
Mark said:
What's the deal with the V3 board? I have MS2 V3 on the V8 car and I was considering upgrading it to MS3 with the expansion board for sequential injection.

Would I be throwing good money after bad?

M.
Click to expand...

works fine in my 940, however I'm going pro on the gold car.
 
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