Which replacement ecu ?

[FFMan]

Have decided the time has come to ditch the land rover ecu and go for something a bit more up to date with some mapping potential.

Emerald seems a popular choice on this forum, and after a chat with Dave Walker it seems like a good proposition.

I also see there is a megajolt/microsquirt system - does anyone have this fitted ?

I'm a competant DIY mechanic and am confident with electrics so I assume these ecu fittings are OK on a DIY basis ? Anyone got any tips. In terms of injector wiring, can i retain the original wiring and disconnect it from the current ecu and wire it to the new, or is half the point of going this route to ditch all old wiring all together ?

Dave said air temp sensor was optional - whats people thoughts on this ?

Still in the planning stage but I like to be thorough !

[Pupp]

Might be worth asking yourself what you want to gain by the exercise.

Having been down this route, and coming from an Adams chipped stock ECU to Emerald, I can see some benefits in keeping the base OEM fuel system but replacing the dizzy with coilpacks controlled by something like a discete Omex mappable ignition module.

Don't get me wrong, the additional flexibility/convenience of being able to easily map fuel and sparks is a great benefit with a combined ECU but unless you plan major changes like forced induction etc, most benefit is IMO on the ignition side. It is doable DIY and plenty have achieved this but don't under-estimate the work involved or the head-scratching that can be involved. There's loads of info on here however and most of the pitfalls will have been flagged. Well worth an evening's happy searching

[dnb]

Talk to some of the people at the Growl (if you are going) about aftermarket systems - there's plenty of experience available and you get to see the finished results too.

[Barkychoc]

Is there any mileage in moving to a later type of Rangie ECU?

These are coming onto the market now secondhand cheap, I'm no expert but I know there's distributor less versions with coilpacks etc. Are they mappable? Most modern ECU's seem to be.

Just curious, I now await the flames.

[Ant.]

Barkychoc said:

Is there any mileage in moving to a later type of Rangie ECU?

These are coming onto the market now secondhand cheap, I'm no expert but I know there's distributor less versions with coilpacks etc. Are they mappable? Most modern ECU's seem to be.

Just curious, I now await the flames.

Further to that, I believe the GEMS is actually self mapping!

[hiltonig]

if planning a full ECU swap just make sure you wire ready for a Idle valve controller, i was told you dont need it but it DOES help idle, if you do a new loom my advise is wire for everything ready incase you want it or not.

[blitzracing]

Ant. said:

Barkychoc said:

Is there any mileage in moving to a later type of Rangie ECU?

These are coming onto the market now secondhand cheap, I'm no expert but I know there's distributor less versions with coilpacks etc. Are they mappable? Most modern ECU's seem to be.

Just curious, I now await the flames.

Further to that, I believe the GEMS is actually self mapping!

Self mapping maybe, but under lambda control all the time, so you cant dump in more fuel like you can on the 14CUX, and not worry about emmissions in open loop to get maximum power, although Mr Adams does do upgrades for them but Im not sure what the gains are. I think theres also a pretty nasty immobiliser included thats keyed in some way to the Range Rover Chassis it was fitted to. I think diag wise its OBD complient so you can get some readings, but its a bit more than multitester electronics.

[sunwharf]

Very happy with my Emerald, the old ecu (14cux) went phut so decided to risk going aftermarket. No idea if it's better or worse than any other make. It maps both fuel and ignition whereas the original only mapped fuel. Has virtually eliminated shunting and the car is much better in slow traffic. The Emerald has built in triple mapping so you can switch on the fly between maps for different purposes e.g Power map, economy map, general driving map. Mapping was done by Dave Walker.

Car is a 4.3 Griff.

Nick

[Ant.]

sunwharf said:

Very happy with my Emerald, the old ecu (14cux) went phut so decided to risk going aftermarket. No idea if it's better or worse than any other make. It maps both fuel and ignition whereas the original only mapped fuel. Has virtually eliminated shunting and the car is much better in slow traffic. The Emerald has built in triple mapping so you can switch on the fly between maps for different purposes e.g Power map, economy map, general driving map. Mapping was done by Dave Walker.

Car is a 4.3 Griff.

Nick

Another Precat griff here with Emerald. (although it now has serp front end-ish).

It is nice knowing there is now no stepper motor, no dizzy, no ignition amp,no afm.


























Oh and 295 ponies....

[neal1980]

megasquirt

[cinquecento]

FFMan said:

I'm a competant DIY mechanic and am confident with electrics so I assume these ecu fittings are OK on a DIY basis ?

I'm a incompetant DIY mechanic and am not confident with electrics .. and have built and installed a Megasquirt into my Griff.

Its been a fantastic learning curve and an absorbing experience. If you are in any way DIY inclined, Megasquirt is a great option.

[FFMan]

so how good is megasquirt on the road ?

Did you get it mapped on a dyno ?

Did you keep the dizzy, or just use it for HT with a crank sensor ?

Be good to see some of these installations at the Growl

[cinquecento]

FFMan said:

so how good is megasquirt on the road ?

It's been 100% reliable over 2+ years.

FFMan said:

Did you get it mapped on a dyno ?

It did all the mapping myself with the help of the datalogger on tuning s/w.. but did get it dyno'ed. There was minimal improvement in power (+3% IIRC) after replacing the lucas ECU. I hadn't done the coil packs at that stage.

FFMan said:

Did you keep the dizzy, or just use it for HT with a crank sensor ?

Initially, now have Ford CP/EDIS/Trigger wheel ignition. More of a performance improvement after dumping the dizzy. I have since then changed the Plenum, air intake and only 2 weeks ago got rid of the rubbish Lucas injectors in favour of Chev 5.7 type III injectors. This has helped with more torque. Cam change is next

FFMan said:

Be good to see some of these installations at the Growl

That's a problem.. car is in Australia.. however I will be at the growl.. Happy to chat then..

Edited by cinquecento on Thursday 23 July 00:25

[steve-V8s]

Like all these things a good starting point is to work out what you want to achieve from the mod, what benefits are you looking for ? If it is used as a standard road car and has a fairly standard cam the benefits may be fairly limited other than having better control of the timing which you could do by just fitting a mapped timing unit. If you are a habitual tinkerer and like the idea of three switchable maps, the ability to control when one or both of your fans start, adaptive mapping, data logging, gear change light, soft and hard cut rev limiter and lots of other things then it is worth doing. It is particularly worth doing if you have a wilder than standard cam or it is not just a road car.

I went for the Emerald over others mostly because you can phone Dave and get sensible practical advice without any pressure to buy anything. He talks to you like the engineer and enthusiast he is rather than a salesman. Just to go off topic V8D also have the same approach, they simply chat about engines and various options without a hint of selling which to my mind is the best way of selling, anyway I digress...

Reusing the old Loom.
Well yes you could do that but to my mind it rather misses the point. The standard loom is a LandRover part and has loads of extra wires that are not used. Some people have been clever and wired it so you can fit either ECU which seems a lot of work. Once you get it all out in a big heap on the floor you will see what I am getting at. You will need to reuse (or need to find) the two connectors that link the engine loom to the main chassis loom, one orange and one white hidden up under the dash. Only slight snag here is the loom passes into the engine bay via a big grommet right behind the passenger side cylinder head / rocker cover. It is easy to access with the engine out but slightly more challenging with it in place.

Air Temp sensor.
You can run without it and map for an assumed temperature but the sensor cost is low, it is only two wires and the ECU has a dedicated input so seems odd not to fit it.

Crank Sensor.
Biggest stumbling block for me was the Crank sensor. There are various approaches but having already snapped a crank I was concerned not to alter the front pulley balance so delayed the install until I had proper internally balanced bottom end, others have found ways round this or not worried about it.

Air Bypass valve.
Don’t have one on mine and it ticks over just fine. It needs a little help on the throttle for the first 10 seconds, after that it looks after itself. Just a case of enabling the control idle by ignition timing function, however I guess not all engines are the same To be fair my warm up mapping is a little on the rich side and I am gradually leaning it up, don’t know if that will eventually upset the idle.

Purge valve.
The Emerald will drive that if you want to keep it, or it could simply go in the bin.

Lambda sensor(s).
You will probably end up with a wide band sensor and a controller to run the unit in adaptive or closed loop mode. You can use the old narrow band ones but it soon becomes obvious that wide band with an AFR meter on the dash is the way to go. Particularly if you plan to play with the mapping. Mounting it / them requires some thought as the bush size needs changing.

Coils.
Presumably you would ditch the coil and Dizzy and go wasted spark. You can mount them behind the plenum which makes a very neat install but is a right pain if you want to get to them later.

Taco drive.
You will need a simple bit of electronics to drive the taco which is looking for big spikes off the coil rather than clean 12v pulses, quite easy to do with a relay coil and a transistor.

Mapping
If you say what the engine spec is they will pre load a map that will get you going, or ask on here and someone will probably send you one. However you can always take the car over to Dave and watch him work his magic, the speed with which he drives the software is nothing short of astonishing. With the added benefit that he seems to know what he is about as well.

[FFMan]

thanks steve for you long reply.

The reasons for wanting to make this are firstly, there is an electrical gremlin somewhere that causes occasional rough running, but mostly as someone who knows and races cars, I can;t help feeling the ignition and fuelling as it stands is a little agricultural for a super-car, and having seen the wiring close-up, i don't care much for it. I would rather have something in there that is tunable and properly installed.

So it seems if one is going to do it, then ditching the dizzy seems sensible also, likewise an air temp sensor as air density can vary quite a lot and to not take advantage is to do your self out of some BHP.

regards tacho drive, i can build what you suggest.

so when you disconnect the engine loom, does one make a new loom to use the existing 2 connectors to the main loom, or bypass all that ?

thanks - i feel a plan coming on.

If anyone with this setup is going to the growl I'd love to have a chat and take some snaps of on installation - please PM me so we can hook up.

[steve-V8s]

FFMan said:

So when you disconnect the engine loom, does one make a new loom to use the existing 2 connectors to the main loom, or bypass all that ?

Once you have unplugged everything in the engine bay, the two connectors ( which on my car were annoyingly lying under the transmission cover tunnel ) the ECU plug and a few earth wires the entire loom will come out as a great pile of plastic spaghetti.

The best solution would be to either locate some new connector shells, or as a second best some pins to go in the shells. I couldn’t find either so cut the connectors off the old loom and put a selection of Bullets and spades on the relevant wires (more than half of them are not needed). These two connectors are not all engine related but do come from the engine bay, things like charge light, Oil pressure, Coolant temp, Starter sol feed, tacho drive and a few more, I have the pin out if you need it.

There is plenty of cable on the body loom so you can relocate the two plugs to behined the radio hole, if you are lucky that is where they will be already.

I would think the main challenge without the engine out would be getting at the hole were the loom passes into the engine bay. In the pic you can see the engine bay side of the loom coiled up (there is about the same amount again on the inside) and where the hole is located.

[pic]
[/pic]

These are the two connectors

[pic] [/pic]

Oh, and yes I did paint the chassis before droping the engine back in.

[shpub]

dnb said:

Talk to some of the people at the Growl (if you are going) about aftermarket systems - there's plenty of experience available and you get to see the finished results too.

Having done more ECU changes than...

I am planning to launch some low cost diagnostic kit at the Growl that allows you to test ignition and injectors and sensors without having to have the engine running in the first place. Should have an MBE setup running as a demo. The diagnostic stuff is ECU independent though and will work on any ECU system.

I developed them to help with the LS conversions I am doing so that I could check the wiring loom and ECU were functioning without even running the engine or needing to turn it over. They have proved invaluable in tracking down several wiring faults this week.

[Del 203]

shpub said:

I am planning to launch some low cost diagnostic kit at the Growl that allows you to test ignition and injectors and sensors without having to have the engine running in the first place.

Steve, i would like to offer my car as a demo if needed