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Cortex boost by gear EBC electronic boost controller

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Old Nov 6, 2018 | 10:20 PM
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Default Cortex boost by gear EBC electronic boost controller

So my fellas. As some of you know, I’ve recently turbo charged my goat. Well that has made first gear useless and second gear useless under 50-60mph when I’m on my street tires. Actually a bit scary at times because I went to pass someone once and it swapped lanes on me. It would spike 9psi at low rpm and throttle angle, made my butt pucker up lol. So I did some searching. And some asking. One of the guys suggested I check into a electronic boost controller called a cortex. I found the website but not much at all from customers. So after emailing cortex a few times back and forth (very helpful too) answering my questions, I decided on it instead of the eboost2. Heck it was cheaper than the eboost also. I received it in about 4 days. When I opened it up and started reading on it, I felt overwhelmed. Only because in my mind I was seeking a quick solution.
Well once I got past that, I decided to start installing this past weekend. It was actually extremely simple to install. Christopher at cortex sent me the links I need for my install. They actually had direct instructions and setting needed for my gto. No guesswork there except on dialing in the speed detection and gear signal. Easy. Go for a drive and log the eve number it shows while your in each gear. Plug those numbers in an bam. It knows what gear your in. So I finally got to drive the car tonight because it’s been raining. Once I figured out that I needed higher duty cycle numbers than normal because of my 4lb spring, it worked like a champ. First gear I could keep it under 2psi and then it ramped in in 2nd as soon as I shifted. I’m really liking this. It’s time to up my spring now!

So basically what you can do is set your desired pressure for each gear. That’s using the basic setting. You have other options. Another neat one is the rpm vs tps. You can set boost at whatever rpm you want it to come in and what throttle percentage. Each gear has its own settings. Has overboost protection of course. I’m not even scratching the surface of what it can do in my car, but it’s alot of different options. If your looking for a boost controller that does real boost by gear, this unit is definitely worth checking out. I’m going to try and get some video of it for you guys. In the meantime here’s some pics

What comes in the box





Display. It does light up red but I’m getting a green one made to match my gauges





Here’s the control box

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Old Nov 7, 2018 | 09:37 AM
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Has anyone had any experience with this boost controller?
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Old Nov 7, 2018 | 09:46 AM
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Sounds promising. Also great to hear that the customer service is good. I'm not doing a stock trans, so I'll need to do some slight rigging to make it read speed from either the front wheel speed sensor or tail of the TH400 trans.
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Old Nov 7, 2018 | 10:01 AM
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Originally Posted by Photochop
Sounds promising. Also great to hear that the customer service is good. I'm not doing a stock trans, so I'll need to do some slight rigging to make it read speed from either the front wheel speed sensor or tail of the TH400 trans.
If you search really hard, there is an electronic sensor and reluctor for the TH400. They came in trucks/vans 88-90 that had ABS.
Plugs right into the VSS input. Requires some recalibration in the speedo section. Works great.
Very hard to find though.

Ron
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Old Nov 7, 2018 | 10:10 AM
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Originally Posted by Photochop
Sounds promising. Also great to hear that the customer service is good. I'm not doing a stock trans, so I'll need to do some slight rigging to make it read speed from either the front wheel speed sensor or tail of the TH400 trans.
I’m pretty sure there’s easy ways around it. It doesn’t actually read the gear it in, it has something to do with the speed signal but some odd way it knows what gear your in at any tps or speed and rpm. The has switchable readouts tgat allow you to see:

boost
rpm
tps
gear your in
afr
to name a few
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Old Nov 7, 2018 | 12:21 PM
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There's nothing odd.

You give it a speed signal, tell it your gearing and from rpm and speed it will know what gear you're in.

Although with an auto, it may not be so clear cut if there is TC slippage involved.
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Old Nov 7, 2018 | 12:46 PM
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Originally Posted by stevieturbo
There's nothing odd.

You give it a speed signal, tell it your gearing and from rpm and speed it will know what gear you're in.

Although with an auto, it may not be so clear cut if there is TC slippage involved.
it said that in the destructions. But what I did is cruised in 1st gear, noted the number and rounded it to the nearest 10. Which was 52 it was showing so I put 50 in. Then in second I did the same thing. Ended up with 30. 3rd was 15 and fourth was 12. Evidently that worked because I can put the display in gear mode and it’s picking it up like it should. And I stomp it, little to no boost in first gear and immediately starts boosting in second. You guys just don’t know how excited I am. This is going to help greatly especially since the best tires I have right now are nitto nt05r
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Old Nov 7, 2018 | 08:04 PM
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Originally Posted by RonSSNova


If you search really hard, there is an electronic sensor and reluctor for the TH400. They came in trucks/vans 88-90 that had ABS.
Plugs right into the VSS input. Requires some recalibration in the speedo section. Works great.
Very hard to find though.

Ron
This core is an '86 model with the electronic speedo connector. Any idea if this one works or would I have to swap it? Havent tried to hook up the harness to it yet.

Originally Posted by Kfxguy

it said that in the destructions. But what I did is cruised in 1st gear, noted the number and rounded it to the nearest 10. Which was 52 it was showing so I put 50 in. Then in second I did the same thing. Ended up with 30. 3rd was 15 and fourth was 12. Evidently that worked because I can put the display in gear mode and it’s picking it up like it should. And I stomp it, little to no boost in first gear and immediately starts boosting in second. You guys just don’t know how excited I am. This is going to help greatly especially since the best tires I have right now are nitto nt05r
That's fantastic man, sounds like a great device. Can't wait to get this thing together and get one. I'm going to run around on 315/35r17 Toyo R888Rs as my street setup for most action so it'll be nice to bring the power in as the tires can handle it even with just 3 gears.
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Old Nov 7, 2018 | 09:56 PM
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I’ve used them on imports with stock ecus, they work very well.

plex makes one that works off canbus but not sure if it’s compatible with GMs
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Old Nov 8, 2018 | 10:44 AM
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Originally Posted by Photochop
This core is an '86 model with the electronic speedo connector. Any idea if this one works or would I have to swap it? Havent tried to hook up the harness to it yet.



That's fantastic man, sounds like a great device. Can't wait to get this thing together and get one. I'm going to run around on 315/35r17 Toyo R888Rs as my street setup for most action so it'll be nice to bring the power in as the tires can handle it even with just 3 gears.
I dont even worry about 4th in my car. I'll never have a need to go WOT in overdrive. If it dont go as fast as i need in 3rd, i'll lower the gears (numerically). I just keep thinking about how the other night on my first drive how it felt like an all motor pass in first gear, didnt annihilate the tires, and soon as it shifted to 2nd it felt like i had a 150 shot of nitrous kick in. was quite cool! And not to mention, No stupid nitrous bottles to refill! It pulled a 1.7 60ft naturally aspirated so if i can pull that off again, I see no problem dipping into the 10's
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Old Nov 14, 2018 | 10:43 AM
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Check this out guys. My gauges are green and the red didn’t match so I asked for a green one. Chris at cortex made me a green one. Here’s the pic he just emailed me. That’s pretty awesome of him! I’m excited! Check it


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