Spare parts

[paul_f]

Next month I am driving 2500 miles in my bus back from Norway.  I have European Breakdown cover, my carb setup in a box in case I need it posting to me, and spare EFI hardware.

However I want to take a few spare components, as i will have a small soldering iron with me

It was thinking of ordereing from the webshop a couple of IGBTs and the FETs for the injectors.

Anything else I should get?

[Sprocket]

perhaps the hardware is fragile after all when people are talking about taking spare components and a soldering iron with them when off on a road trip

[rob@vems.co.uk]

Or maybe people focus on the negative comments here, and forget that there's thousands of units installed in on and off-road cars that perform faultlessly.
As it is effectively the longest shake-down run I've ever heard of I think taking the common parts (FET and IGBT) to fail early in an install is a good idea.
Thankfully there are VEMS users in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Belgium - unfortunately I don't have their phone numbers - so some form of internet access might be a good spare part to take too (if you expect trouble that is)

[paul_f]

I always seem to have long shakedown runs every summer holiday in the bus   Never had any problems once in Europe though, though twice had an issue the day before going (valve spring broken the day before with an engine with refreshed heads the week before, and an oil leak on another new engine).

I have never been recovered or used breakdown so far!

I am not expecting it to go wrong as I have followed exactly all the recommendations by Rob - it is just the negative comments on the forum that concern me slightly.

The bus is 44 years old so I take a lot of tools and spares with me, a soldering iron is in my kit (fixed a rotor arm with it)

I seem to remember the ECU coming with a rescue kit, I'll have to see if I can find that to take as well as the FET and IGBT.

[rob@vems.co.uk]

I've never tried to cover up the negative comments about the VEMS gear as I think its essential that people know the full story.
Trouble is one negative comment overrules one hundred positives - I know this myself as we're looking for a last minute holiday and are checking the hotels on Trip Advisor it only takes one "Horrible hotel - dont go there" to kill off all the good ones.

I'm sure that this trip you'll get better fuel economy than any of the previous ones - and that won't be a result of the van being on the back of a tow truck

[paul_f]

I hope so.  On previous engines I have always managed 28-32mpg on long trips but this engine struggles to 20mpg.  It was interesting having the Vems controlling the ignition as I hooked up the lambda and I could see at part loads the fuelling was all over the place.  The problem was that if I leaned the mixture on the carbs it would stumble.  Its quite a long duration cam, so I guess the overlap is the cause.   With VEMS I don't have that problem.

I think the problem with reviews and info on the internet is that often people only post up when they have problems.  VEMS has its own forum so people will post on that.  I often see on VW forums people posting up about problems they have with different ECUs - but unless you are specifically looking for them they will probably come up low ranked in google searches.

A friend has some american ECU, red line - with this it has about 0.5s logging rate and you can't use the software unless you are connected to the ECU.  So its difficult to do anything yourself, and most dynos don't want to touch it as they only know Omex

[PeepPaadam]

Just for general information, my  friend recently had a long  road-trip through Europe which included a three-day racing session in Nordschleife and  VEMS worked  perfectly. Total mileage was around 7000  km's and car was 1993 Porsche 911 Carrera 2 (PnP VEMS+two 3x2  Bosch coil-packs, 12 spark plugs total on this engine, using VEMS IGBT's).

Rule of thumb is that if  VEMS  has  performed well for some time (at least few weeks) and  in different engine conditions,  there is hardly anything that can go wrong with it. Tuning and its consequences are another story though