Fagin

From being a numpty originally (ok.. perhaps I still am), I have gained a fair bit of awareness over the last several months on what goes on in ECU's.

Obviously not of the FORD ones, but of the Subaru variety.

Not knowing anything about other OEM ecu's, do people appreciate how complicated and advanced some of these have become?

The newage Scoob ECU coupled with a programming application called "ECUTEK" is one hot bit of kit.

Full datalogging facilities as standard (and I mean FULL, like whatever you can map for, you can also log).

Excellent driveability mapping areas like in-gear boost compensation.

Many people may have realised with a Turbo car, is that different gears produce different boost levels and different boost climb rates. This is one area that ECUTEK can help with. Boost levels and climb rates are not static, as it depends on engine load. The greater the load the quicker the boost will climb and the more effeciently a boost target will be met. This can be seen on cars without this facility, as boost achieved (and the way it climbs) will be less (and slower) in say gears 1st, 2nd & 3rd as it is to 4th, 5th (and of course 6th). By adjusting facilities in ECUTEK (which allows certain trim levels of boost control & boost controller duty cycle whilst in specific gears) it is now possible to achieve close on exactly the same boost levels and climb in 2nd, 3rd (for example) as in 4th, 5th and 6th. Sound's rather simple doesnt it.... but the difference this makes to driveability is amazing.

Other things it allows is live adjustment of the target map for say ignition. At each load site it will constantly check to see if it can advance at that load site (up to or over the base ignition map) or whether it needs to retard at that load site.

Also the ECU has an over riding advance multiplier, which when everything is fine will be set to 16, but once it detects something that it can't allow for via the trim levels it reduces everything to say multiplier 14 (tries the trim levels again if needed), if not trys 11, if not trys 4 etc (I'm not sure whether it is a straight X reduction across the board though).

Again the above 2 facilities are available as a live data log, which shows all the load sites (dynamically) and present you with any ignition retard and what the multiplier is set to.

Obviously the above is only the simple stuff that I understand, but the features available are supposed to be plentiful.

There are even rumours of anti-lag and launch control being available somewhere in the standard ECU...... but finding the code areas that relate to that and supplying the application changes to feed this is another thing.

Are the latest FORD ECU's the same as this (RS FOCUS I suspect)?

Mike Rainbird

iTrader: (3)

The Audi ECUs for the 1.8 VAG Turbo engine have been like this since the launch of this engine. The Ford EECV is similarly sophisticated, but no-one seems to have adequately cracked the codes yet, as there is no call for doing so at present.

FezzR

all the stuff you have desciribed is by no means new technology
alot depends on manufactures choices of cost and quality, obviously each manufacture and even as far as each model will vary with what features they feel they need to include.
The big advance has been the networking like CAN bus networks that allows the information to be transmitted quickly; and the OBDII which has standardised information between manufactures. Obviously the faster the networking the more data logging you can do more frequently.

Ford EEC-IV was very advanced for its time and most people (in this country at least) still havent realised its full potential, so i have no dout the modern Focus RS ECU has lots of tricks althought i havent worked with it i spend life playing with the VAG system mike mentioned above which is very good altho already been partially replaced / modernised

GARETH T

great topic,,,

welcome FezzR to the site,,

if in doubt, pectel it out

Fagin

Gareth,
The ones that seem great, seem to die though...... probably got something to do with the intelligence required (but then I started it, so that one is out of the window)

Fagin

FezzR & Mike,
I wasn't insinuating that this was the bee's knee's or new technology, but it didn't seem many years ago that features like this were only available via motorsport ECU's (if at all), costing £1k's..... well that was my view.

I was just pretty amazed at what OEM ECU's were now capable of, with the appropriate software.

GARETH T

i think the new m5 ecu has one or two nice features so ive been told

Rene

that's just an incar swicht wich says 405 bhp or 505 bhp a bloke i know thinks its funny to get a switch 605bhp (offcourse with the mods)

GARETH T

i think its a little more clever than just a switch mate