Mines ecu

[Paradox]

Hey all. I have recently converted my bg5 gt legacy from auto to manual. Didn\'t realise at the time, but the conversion came with a mines chipped ecu. Can someone please tell me if they are safe to use, or should I find a stock ecu? Thanks in advance

**Also, thought I\'d better mention, the ecu is in the car, car is running alot better then it did before the conversion. Just worried now that the engine won\'t last, or something like that. Please enlighten me **

[Marky]

They tend to be a case of slightly advanced timing, dump more fuel in, remove boost/fuel cuts, raise boost - problem is they are a "blanket" sort of a tune meant to be a one-size-fits-all - generally to suit simple mods (exhaust, pod filter) and definately need high octane fuel.

It wouldn\'t hurt to get it run up on the dyno just to check it\'s safe. Most people who use them report they feel like they wake the car up a bit and reduce the VOD between turbos a bit, haven\'t ever heard of one actually causing a car to ping, have however heard of them not actually achieving anything over stock as well haha

[Paradox]

Fair call, was thinking of running it on the dyno. I can tell you, it certainly boosts harder, rips through vod easily etc. It\'s being run on 95-96 octane, as it was before the conversion. Might fill the tank with some 98, see if that helps it along. Have a new walbro pump to go in soon, that should help.

Also, I already have pod filter, and full exhaust installed, so that will help with the tune.

[lachlan]

half the problem is if you try to google anything about them you find everysingle car forum has them and all of them say its not good and it will blow up . but in reality i have seen plenty of cars with them in and they go good .

like on one hand yes it is a blanket upgrade but on the other hand mines dont make shit do they ?

its a pretty safe bet to rock it . youd soon notice if it was not right . and yeah chuck it on they dyno when it suits

[Paradox]

Cheers for that. Yea, I\'ve decided to keep it. The car is running sweet with it. Boosts hard as. Now I\'ve got to put my mint BH turbos on and I\'ll be away laughing. Walbro pump went in tonight. Things coming along nicely

[Durty-Sanchez]

I\'ve had a good look at the maps from these ECU\'s and they\'re pretty good. The tweaks I found were mainly to the ignition map. The ECU firmware at the time had two maps - a base map and an advance map. The two maps sat on top of each other if you will in that they were additive. The base map may dictate 10° of timing for a particular load/rpm cell and the advance map would apply another 10° giving a total of 20° timing in that cell. The ECU had the authority to remove timing from the advance map only so the minimum your ECU would run would always be the base map (you\'d need to be doing something very wrong for this to happen).

Anyway, the stock base map is pretty rank, especially at low RPM and all loads. I noticed that Mines ECU\'s didn\'t advance the overall ignition so much as they migrated timing from the advance map to the base map to prevent the ECU from pulling back the timing. Further, looking at the noise the knock sensor puts out at low RPM I can see why they did this. There\'s most definitely something that sounds a lot like detonation happening at low RPM but if it was detonation or not is another thing entirely. My guess is that the ECU hears this noise too, interprets it as det and pulls the low-rpm timing back. This is most likely why your car feels gutless when you put your foot down until you reset the ECU again (mine does anyhow). Anyway, the net result of the Mines change is that you keep a decent timing map at all times so it feels more responsive.

They did also tweak the timing a little, there\'s advances here and there so use good fuel. The fuel map got a small tweaking too but very minor. Speed cut was set to something stupid like 300km/h and there\'s a RPM increase of 500rpm too I think (from memory). I think there was a few other tweaked tables, not sure what they were, boost and misc. throttle related tables I suspect.

TL;DR

Good ECU upgrade, pretty safe still, A+ would recommend.

[Paradox]

Cheers for that. Seems to do the job a lot better then the factory unit, so no complaints there. Glad I stuck with it.

[D-Style]

Durty-Sanchez you still alive!!!!

[Paradox]

Also one more thing, if they did tweak the boost, does that show straight away, or do I need a boost controller to up the boost to the tuned level? If you understand that lol

[Durty-Sanchez]

 D-Style']

Durty-Sanchez you still alive!!!!

Heh, came back to study up for the legacy refurb

[quote name='Paradox said:

Also one more thing, if they did tweak the boost, does that show straight away, or do I need a boost controller to up the boost to the tuned level? If you understand that lol

The ECU doesn\'t manage boost very well I\'m afraid so any serious tweaks are a bit like flogging a dead horse. My understanding is that ECU has some pre-defined load/rpm map that manages the boost control solenoid. This just kind of delays the onset of the wastegate more than anything (those little restrictor pills in the vac lines really mess with it too). Anyway, if you\'re serious about running good stable boost then just run a decent electronic boost controller with sensors and what not

[Paradox]

Cheers for that. Been told ya can remove restrictor pill and run a mbc place to get a consistent flow through both turbos (mate has done something like this to his bg5b) But ebc would be the way to go. Thanks for your help. Much appreciated