Roy Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 I was just thinking about what to do when ECUs go wrong. Typically they go in the bin and you advertise frantically for another one. Surely in this day and age someone clever with circuits could make a replacement board to attach to the original plug, using modern parts and copy off the map from the original ecu for the relevant vehicle?? You can probably get all the bits from Maplins?! It just needs that clever person.. I have a standard GTE and a 2.4 running on 2.2 carlton injection and it has often worried me what to do when the ECU gives up.. Anyone considered this before? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason b Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 You could repair or build a replica OEM unit but the question would be why bother unless going for concourse. If you're going to the trouble of building something that fits on the OEM loom then you may as well just build a megasquirt DIY PnP backbone onto an original style loom plug and have all the benefits of both modern surface mount electronics and a fully mappable ecu. I was going to do something similar with my C30NE build but decided that as I'm going to design a new loom for the whole car myself anyway then I may as well just use a regular megasquirt ecu board for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roy Posted January 21, 2014 Author Share Posted January 21, 2014 Imagine a complete noob when it comes to electrics (thats me).... If said clever person was to copy the original, all the standard injected mantas and Carlton injected mantas wouldnt have to worry about what to do when their ecus fail! I'd love to have a fully mappable ECU but wouldnt have a clue what to do with it if I had it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason b Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 Is there a shortage of ECUs then? - I'd be surprised if there aren't a fair few on the continent? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roy Posted January 22, 2014 Author Share Posted January 22, 2014 Well there is for the 2.2 Carlton, but I've also been caught out before buying an ebay GTE ecu from germany to find it was nothing of the sort when it arrived. With the cost of postage and hassle its not worth persuing.. So as I said, as time goes by, if its easy to put another one together and stick the map on, has anyone considered doing it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shug Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 There is this guy: http://www.extraefi.co.uk/ Sure I read somewhere he can put a basic map on it to get you started. Ultimately a non oem ecu will need remapped for the car its on to get the best out of it, unless you can extract the map and translate it to whatever megasquirt uses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason b Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 Well, if someone built the unit to plug into OEM looms then all it would take is one person with each standard engine (2.0, 2.2, 2.4 etc) to volunteer to have their car mapped on it. Then you would have a proper base map for each standard engine. Thing is, all the running around to get stuff done takes lots of time and a bit of money. You can actually pull the maps from motronic ECU eeproms quite readily, but the LE Jetronic system on mantas is a bit of a pig. I had a problem with the ecu on the 25NE that came with my cav when I first bought it. Was very easy to identify the issue and fix it as when I took the case apart there was visible defects in the analogue electronics. (always worth taking a broken LE Jet ECU apart as sometimes the issues are very obvious!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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