Tuned ECM's and Piggybacks Options

[Fastbird]

The wife and I are looking forward to the (for now) wanted CT27 upgrade from ATS w/the ported fuel rail and 550CC injectors. We are wanting to push the car over the 300 HP mark and call it done until something breaks.

So I'm sitting here learning about the functionality of the SMT6 in the car and realizing that I've no idea what the stock computer is set up for, so the though struck me and I thought I'd check in and see what you great minds here think.

Would it work to do the ATS Racing Tuned ECU as part of the package, zero out the SMT6, and then make changes as necessary on the dyno to correct any inadequacies as necessary?? I want to say yes, but then again piggybacks are a new evil to me.

Thoughts???

[Fastbird]

I think the CT27 would be up to the task of 300 HP based on the fact that it will hold more boost and carry it longer than the CT26. With everything working in sync I honestly don't see it being a problem.

Now, the reason I don't want to tune for a larger turbo directly off of the SMT6 is because no one seems to have any idea what the spark tables in the stock ECU look like. I simply do NOT like the idea of playing with spark tables without knowing where they are starting or ending up. Sure, the functionality is there, take away or advance one degree at a time, but without a baseline starting point, you're shooting in the blind. ATS seems to know what they're talking about and definitely seem to be the people to go to for the 3S-GTE work, so why the assumption that their ECU tunes aren't worth it. I personally think that their ECU would make an outstanding starting point to fine tune (as much as possible at least) once installed. I also feel that the piggyback will do it's job as advertised, it's just a little more troublesome to tune than a standalone based on the fact that you don't have actual numbers sitting in front of you. The end result is the same, it's just how you get there and not as feature laden.

Reason we're shooting for the CT27 is that it's not going to kill our bottom end as much as the TD06 or comparable but will still carry 17-19 PSI all the way to the top. Looking at our dyno graph from the past week is the CT26 would have held the 16 PSI boost through 6300 RPM, based on the curve of the graph we most likely would have seen 275 HP at 6300 RPM instead of a peak of 249 about 600-700 RPM earlier (and if we can take care of that dip too...... ). Plus it seems to cough up the same type of powerband that the CT26 does, only with more power across the board and without the sharp spike as seen in the TD05/06 series where it ramps up really fast.

Cliff notes: I think the CT27 will do what we're looking for, I personally think ATS knows what they're doing with the tunes, I don't like tuning in the blind without having a baseline for where things are set at.