ECUs ready for testing with circuit boards installed
SFZ More website info: click
History
Racetech has been in operation since 1987 and is a privately owned corporation. Our main focus then was building cars and performance engines for street and road racing. We prepared and fielded several cars in several different classes until 1994 winning every class at least once. In MP2, a class spanning engines from 2.3 to 3 liters, our cars won the class every year of its existence. Most engines that we raced were turbocharged 4 cylinder types so we have considerable experience in this field. We have been turbocharging engines for over 30 years and have built our own engine dyno and cylinder head flow bench for serious R&D work.
In 1990, preliminary work began on a programmable EFI system designed from the outset for turbocharged engines to replace the standard Weber type carbs being used. In 1992, this system was applied to a 1.7L turbo Toyota installed in a Datsun 240Z road racing car. Results were immediately encouraging with at least 1000 rpm being gained on the lower part of the effective power band over carbs with no loss in top end power.
Following many ergonomic improvements, we introduced the EM-1A in 1993. The A model was followed quickly by the improved B,C,D,E and F models by 1996. In 1997 the new, single chip EM-2 was introduced along with our EIC.
The EM-3 line was introduced in November 1999. It featured a host of hardware and software improvements for improved flexibility in programming and easier installation. Installation and programming manuals have been expanded and improved based on customer feedback. New versions of software were released periodically to expand programming flexibility and increase noise rejection. A new microprocessor controlled LCD programmer was introduced in the summer of 2002.
The EM-4 was introduced in mid Sept. 2002. This is the latest evolution of the EM series featuring even better noise rejection, circuit protection and programming flexibility. The EM-4 installation and tuning manual has been extensively re-written with clearer instructions, photos and a larger troubleshooting section to aid customers.
On Jan. 1, 2005 V14 software was released offering AFR data logging vs. rpm and nitrous ignition retard capabilities at no extra charge. This was in response to customer requests for these features.
In April 2006 we introduced several new products for the experimental aviation market- a bolt on Hall sensor and mount for Subaru EJ series engines, a fuel and spark control system for Suzuki G10 conversions and a 3 1/8 panel mount programmer.
In the Spring of 2007, V16 software was released with improved AFR data logging and diagnostic features including the ability to drive a check engine light.
Feb. 10 2008, V17 software was released with improved ignition timing software and built in two step ignition rev limiting. A complete EFI kit for the Rotax 912 is made available.
July 2008, we release the direct fire 8F system for V8 engines including a plug and play unit for LS1 and LS6 engines.
Design and Manufacturing
Enclosures are CNC'd billet aluminum machined by outside vendors.
ECUs ready for testing with circuit boards installed
Bare ECU board
Circuit board design carried out in-house. Boards manufactured to highest standards by a leading outside vendor
ECU boards are loaded and machine soldered by Alberta Industrial Automation Ltd. in Calgary, Alberta. AIA offers engineering design and production services to the electronics industry.www.aialtd.com
6F coil packs ready for bench testing
Extra injector controllers ready for shipment overseas
All wiring harnesses are built using CSA or UL approved cable and wire. Most connections to the ECU plugs are soldered and individually heat shrunk for strain relief and retention. Outer end connections are crimped for vibration resistance and strain relieved in Weatherpack connectors. Each sensor uses an individual, sheathed cable for ease of routing and abrasion resistance so that there is no rat's nest of separate wires.
Product Testing
Our products go through several QC tests before being shipped to the customer. All ECUs, EICs and coil packs are scope or bench tested individually to check for proper function. As each order is assembled, the ECU, wiring, sensors and mixture knob are tested together as a unit to ensure proper function. Each order has a tag with the system information and options listed. As components are picked or completed, they go in a dedicated order box with the tag.
Tagged order boxes to prevent mixups
6F coil packs undergoing bench test
Scope testing ECU outputs
In addition to bench testing, our products are continually tested on our own shop vehicles under real world conditions. We consider this very important to ensure the highest reliability of our products and allows us to showcase our technology. Lab testing just can't simulate real world conditions, failure modes or first hand tuning and troubleshooting experience. Our fleet of vehicles has accumulated hundreds of thousands of kilometers of stock, performance and racing use with no system failures. Cold weather testing is accomplished in every day Canadian driving in temperatures down to -35C. Hot weather use is well proven in the deserts of the US and Middle East at +50C. Marine use has seen several systems submerged underwater for hours or days. When the ECUs were dried out on the dock for a few hours, they still functioned perfectly. Off road and rally use has pounded our ECUs over very rough terrain with very few problems. Multiple race wins and championships in the Baja 500 and 1000 races and punishing SCORE series show how tough our hardware is. SDS flight testing on our SDS equipped RV6A shows that we have very high confidence in our systems for aircraft use.
One ECU on a test bench has now run for over 80,000 hours continuously with no problems.
07/19/06 Client Feedback
One of the most important tools we have to improve our products is feedback from the field. This not only allows us to bring out new features that our customers want but also to improve the software and hardware and identify problems that occur in applications outside of our normal testing means. We'd like to thank Tim Rodda from TCR Auto Performance in Tucson, AZ for his contributions, insights and experiences with SDS over the years.
Racetech Test Vehicles
1989 Nissan 240SX turbo. 2.4L SOHC inline four. EM-4 4F. 240hp at 5.5psi, 440cc injectors. Suspension stock. SDS mileage to date 80,000km. Mileage city 25-27 (imperial), 34-38 highway. Fuel 92 octane. 06/20/06 Now fitted with latest spec 4F coil pack and V16 for testing. Testing new noise suppression hardware in ECU.
1984 Toyota Supra atmo. 2.8L DOHC inline six. 02/02/07 Now fitted with EM-4 6F V17 system for testing. 45,000 km with 6F system to date. City mileage 28 (imperial).
Our aviation R&D facility is at Springbank airport, west of Calgary. This houses our EM-4 4F/ Subaru powered RV6A which is used for aviation systems testing/R&D and showcasing our units. Details on this project at: RV6A Project
08/14/08
The 8F system is available now in two versions. One is a direct fit for LS1 and LS6 engines using factory sensors and coils. The other comes with coil packs and crank sensor for other V8 applications.
LS6 on test stand
Rear view
See the video of our LS6 running on the new 8F: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ygV-9X3j2w
New Racetech/ SDS projects in the pipeline: Van's RV10
Sales, Advertising and Marketing
Racetech relies primarily on internet and word of mouth advertising to sell our products. You will see very few print ads for SDS. This strategy reduces advertising costs considerably which reduces the end cost to the customer. We both direct sell to the public and through our dealer network.
We have shipped systems to all corners of the globe with around 20% of total sales being outside of North America. We have a strong presence in Asia and the Middle East. SDS products continue to sell well in the face of lower priced DIY products and more expensive laptop programmable systems. We believe that this is due to customers embracing our reliable, easy to use system and our excellent service and tech support. Aviation sales have spiked rapidly upwards in the last two years, now becoming a sizeable percentage of annual sales overall.
Business Philosophy
Unlike some companies in the performance products world, we don't believe in sensationalism or hype to sell our products. If something seems too good to be true in an ad, it probably is. We try to give you the facts and as much information as possible so that you can make an informed buying decision. This is a primary reason for our extensive web site. If we don't think that our product is suitable for your project or goals, we will tell you so. We realize that if you are not happy, that bad word hurts our future sales and reputation, which we have worked very hard to establish. A satisfied customer is more important to us than just a sale. We realize that our customers, in effect, sign our paychecks and try to treat them accordingly. We don't just talk the talk like many companies today. We walk the walk as well.
When it comes to service and tech help, we are second to none. When you make a fax or E-mail enquiry, you will always get a reply in less than 24 hours on weekdays and on Monday morning if over the weekend. We can give an exact quote on the order as well as shipping costs by fax or E-mail. We try to answer E-mail 7 days a week. We will give you phone tech help for as long as you need it and we don't make you wait on hold.
We don't BS people and we get right to work on your order once the funds are transferred. Most orders are on their way within 1-2 days unless we have a large backlog. We can provide you with an estimated shipping date before you order and supply your package tracking number by fax, voice or E-mail. 99% of our products are shipped by air so that you have it ASAP. We will contact you if there is any delay in shipping for unforseen reasons.
This all sounds pretty good but being human, we do sometimes goof. If we do, our pledge is to make it right ASAP, at our expense.
About our Website 08/06/99 SFZ
Our website is our primary marketing and information tool. It also allows us to update technical details and provide installation manuals online. We have a simple, straightforward approach on our site. Just like the EFI systems that we make, we don't believe in useless, complicated or hard to use websites. Unlike many competitors, we publish complete installation manuals online. We publish price lists so that you can decide if the system is suitable and within your price range without phoning or E-mailing someone.
Our pages load all text first, then the image files so that you have something to read while the photos are loading. We use contrasting type on light backgrounds so it is easy to read. We don't use solid title graphics which waste ink when printing. We don't use flashy graphics which waste time downloading and are basically useless. We won't place annoying banner ads on our site. We try to keep image files reasonably small for fast downloading. We could post huge pictures at maximum resolution but it would take 5 minutes to download each picture over dialup connection which some people still have. This is not practical in our minds. We do not share or sell E-mail addresses or order information with anyone, except with your consent. We feel that this is a sleazy practice and a violation of your privacy. Finally, we refuse to send cookies or add code to create pop-ups to other related sites. This is another annoying and sleazy practice that we don't agree with.
We feel that a website should be like a book with pictures. Click on the page that you want and read it. It should contain factual, useful information which is broken down into logical sections. It should be updated frequently with dates listed at the top of the home page. We will continue to use this philosophy in the future until we think of something better.
E-mail response
We treat E-mail queries like telephone calls if we can by answering them as soon as possible. We check our E-mail first thing in the morning and usually at least 3 more times during working days. Whenever possible we also check it on Saturdays and Sundays. The same goes for fax queries. In this electronic age, we feel that these things need to be answered in a timely fashion, not discarded or forgotten about for several days as many companies seem to do.
Chat Groups/ Forum Pages
We carefully track our site demographics, watching where hits are coming from and the popularity of various pages. Chat groups or forum pages make up many of these users. Unfortunately there seem to many self proclaimed "experts" out there on SDS who have never owned one and never read our website. We make complete information available to everyone about our systems to help educate people. We'd appreciate it if you'd publish factual information in your forums rather than speculation. We read some pretty funny stuff like our systems are not programmable, that they don't use a full complement of engine sensors and are not suitable for street use (look at our Project Page). All of these statements are incorrect.
Business Ethics and Exposing the Bad Apples
We report things as we see them and we won't sugar coat bad experiences that we have with products, services or other companies like many automotive magazines do to attract advertising these days. This isn't honest reporting, it is bullshit. We have no vested interest in anyone else's products. If you have a good one, we'll say so. If you have a bad one, we'll also say so. We are not out to "get" anyone, just to report the facts and maybe save our customers from a bad experience. Please remember the power of the web if you decide to rip us or any of our customers off. Do you really want 11 million people to see what you or your company did over the next year? Probably not. Treat everyone honorably and you will receive the same treatment in return.
Winners and Losers
These are our OPINIONS about companies or organizations policies and services. Some are not related to our business activities.
Winners:
Turbo Technology This Tacoma, WA company sells turbochargers. Some of the best customer service and quick response I've ever received from Nick here. Highly recommended.
Lattof Chevrolet Also known as Crateenginedepot.com. Sells GM crate engines. We received oustanding service on our crate engine order. Highly recommended.
William Busto Designer of Model Airplane Color Design programs. These low cost programs allow people to test different color schemes and colors. William is a great guy to deal with and responsive to requests. Van's RV models are well represented. http://www.airplanecolor.com
PTM&W, makers of Aeropoxy products I got a batch of filler which was very slow to cure. These guys got right on it and had their Canadian distributor, Composites Canada, ship out replacement product plus some additional samples at no charge. Excellent service from both companies.
Bell Intercoolers Excellent service on their wide range of intercooler cores.
Razor Performance Manufactures dry sump pumps for race applications. Excellent, personalized service. The best new company we have dealt with in the last year. Highly recommended.
Selectabed Manufactures and direct markets memory foam mattresses. Excellent, fast service and shipping.
Troll Avionics Builds aircraft avionics. Excellent, fast, helpful tech support.
3M Trim Line of Calgary Graphics, decals, computer cut lettering. Super efficient, nice, courteous people and fair prices.
Transport Canada Gave us helpful, fast, friendly service when reserving aircraft registration marks.
MSN Hotmail SPAM Abuse Center 24 hours after we reported cases of spam, MSN revoked the offenders account privileges. Bravo!
Monroy Aerospace Corp. Manufactures the ATD-200 air traffic detector. I had mine 48 hours after ordering it.
Ray Allen Company (formerly Menzimer Aircraft) Manufactures aircraft trim systems. Fast, knowledgeable response. Quality products. Does what they say they will.
Garmin. Manufactures GPSs and avionics. Answered my E-mail in less than 15 minutes and gave me the file I needed to download a manual.
Calgary Motor Products. Supplies GM parts. Very efficient, on time. A company that you can count on.
AirTransat. Well organized, efficient, friendly. I'd fly with them again.
Bahia Principe Resort, Tulum, Mexico. Impeccably maintained, friendly, helpful staff, awesome food, beautiful facility.
Ivoprop Corp. Quick service, no quibbling about exchanging blades for a different set months later.
Camtech II Circuits. On time, reasonably priced, efficient.
Digi-Key. Electronic products. Super efficient, ontime. Really good service.
Losers:
Turbochargers.com This company sells turbochargers. We ordered a turbo for a customer and were told it would take 3-4 days to get the unit and parts. Fine. A week passed, nothing. Phoned no less than 3 more times over the next month and were given various stories. Sometimes it was ready to go and would be shipped out the next day. Then they were waiting for parts still next time we phoned. Complete BS. They never phoned to inform us what was going on. Finally after over a month of bugging them, we got the turbo. We would not recommend dealing with this company as a result of this experience.
Purolator Courier This company destroyed an expensive cylinder head in shipping through gross negligence and declined to cover the replacement costs. We are out $1000. Beware. Any high cost items, no matter how well packaged and how robust should be fully insured with this carrier. Better yet, don't use them at all. When they drop a 65 pound box off a truck onto the concrete and think it is good business to give you $2/ pound, maybe they should be sent a message that this is not ok.
Robie Carlisle Blair (robietherobot.com) BlairCraft LLC, RTR Performance This fellow stole copyrighted content from our website for use on his commercial site. He was asked to remove it but did not comply. He claims to be a web developer and designer. Our advice would be not to use his services since he has no respect for copyrighted property and his actions may compromise any work done for you. He also claims to offer parts for Geo/ Isuzu cars. I recommend using your judgement before ordering from this company.
Wolf EMS This competitor in the EMS market spammed all of our dealers listed on our site in an attempt to lure them to the "dark side" and become dealers for their product. How original. They must be pretty desperate. You don't need many qualifications to become a Wolf dealer so it would seem they are more interested in selling product than being able to assist people with tech support. Years ago, we had Wolf dealers asking us if we could assist their customers in tuning Wolf products. Huh?
Luepertz Motorsport/ Heinz- Peter Lupertz This company used to be our SDS dealer in Europe but has failed to pay their bills and has ripped off several other clients by not shipping parts after payments or deposits have been made. Their dealer status has been revoked. Credit collection agencies have been unable to get them to pay up. Be very careful in dealing with this company as you may never get your goods. Be aware that this company is in possession of fraudulently obtained SDS products.
DynoCraft Supercars/ Marion/Ricky Perkins in Maryland This now defunct business ripped us off by putting through a credit card chargeback for parts they ordered, received and signed for. Be suspect of any dealings with this company or individual. They are in possession of fraudulently obtained goods which they may try to sell on the used market.
On May 27/99, we were set up with Internet Secure to offer secure, online, credit card purchasing on our website. We are the only company in the industry which offers direct sales over the net via a secure server in addition to sales by conventional dealers. Racetech continues to lead the industry in all aspects of internet information, E-mail response and customer convenience.
As of January 1999, we began a policy of recycling cardboard products and shipping materials to become more environmentally friendly. As a result, you may get your system shipped in a previously used box. This helps a bit in keeping costs down and our planet a little greener.
We get many people asking us where Calgary is and what kind of weather we have. Calgary is located about 150 miles north of the Montana border and has a population of around 1 million. We are about 50 miles east of the Rocky Mountains and located at an elevation of 3500 feet. The weather can be unpredictable here due to the proximity of the mountains but summer temperatures range from +10C to +35C usually with light to moderate rainfall. In the winter, temperatures can range from +10C to -30C with light to moderate snowfall. Generally, we have plenty of sunshine year around. If you are into sports like mountain biking, skiing, hiking and climbing, this area is a paradise.
We get many requests to do custom software or hardware for special applications. We are constantly working on new R&D projects so we simply don't have the time to develop other new products or software in most cases.