Whats Your MaP (kPa)?

[ChimpOnGas]

For the record I had issues with my Canems fan output, it seemed to pulse one of the fan relays installed up front on the N/S inner wing when I had the Canems sytem fitted some six years ago, the contacts would chatter and like this the same fan relay every time would last roughly 3 months before burning out it's contacts..... the failures were reapeated over and over which was getting expensive!

When the relay burnt out it's contacts would weld themselves shut so the fans would run continiously, this had the very real potential to drain my battery in short order but I was more concerned the issue may end in a fire risk so a solution needed to be found, my fix came in the form of a Divies Craig fan controller.

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

This was back in March last year and since then the Divies Craig fan controller has worked faultlessly, taking the fan control away from the Canems ECU proved to be a wise choice, after fitting my new stand alone fan controller I never had a days trouble and all my relay burn outs ended instantly.

On a seperate note I'm not keen on an electrcally controlled extra air valve however it's triggered because it will highly likely trigger my priming pulse looping issue that no one seems to be willing or able to help me fix once and for all My best option is probably to create a manual idle valve which I freely admit is a laughable solution when talking engine management, but failing any support to fix the issue correctly I guess thats all I'me left with

[spitfire4v8]

ChimpOnGas said:

For the record I had issues with my Canems fan output, it seemed to pulse one of the fan relays installed up front on the N/S inner wing when I had the Canems sytem fitted some six years ago, the contacts would chatter and like this the same fan relay every time would last roughly 3 months before burning out it's contacts..... the failures were reapeated over and over which was getting expensive!

When the relay burnt out it's contacts would weld themselves shut so the fans would run continiously, this had the very real potential to drain my battery in short order but I was more concerned the issue may end in a fire risk so a solution needed to be found, my fix came in the form of a Divies Craig fan controller.

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

This was back in March last year and since then the Divies Craig fan controller has worked faultlessly, taking the fan control away from the Canems ECU proved to be a wise choice, after fitting my new stand alone fan controller I never had a days trouble and all my relay burn outs ended instantly.

On a seperate note I'm not keen on an electrcally controlled extra air valve however it's triggered because it will highly likely trigger my priming pulse looping issue that no one seems to be willing or able to help me fix once and for all My best option is probably to create a manual idle valve which I freely admit is a laughable solution when talking engine management, but failing any support to fix the issue correctly I guess thats all I'me left with

Try installing the N/C relay into your fan control circuit and see if the priming pulse issue remains or whether it's operation returns to correct. If so you can still use that relay to power your extra air valve. You can get relays with quite high resistances and flyback diodes. I'd recommend something in excess of 70 ohms coil resistance anyway. Worth a thought.

If the fan control (as in the temps and the on/off operation) were working to spec, and it was just that when switched to ON the relay chatters then you could try a delay off relay with the time set to much longer than the chatter frequency, ie several seconds.

[ChimpOnGas]

ITVRI said:

5 ECU failures in 5 years must be very frustrating. I’m curious to know do they refurbish/repair the orginal ecu each time or swap for a brand new one?
If they are swapping for a brand new ECU (and assuming other people are not having similar problems) then in my mind it would point to a fault outside the manufacturers control.

I think 5 years on from the original purchase (especially electronics) the manufacturer has likely reached the end of his good will and like anything as a consumer you either cough up for the new model or buy another brand.

To be clear in each case I have been supplied a new ECU, the system was originally wired by the installer and that wiring has been tidied up by them on two occasions since the first install, once I should add at a considerable cost to myself which was gauling but I sucked it up in the hope that better reliability was at the end of it all.

On the second wiring tidy up the car was taken back by the installer a few months ago and the work was done FOC, sadly although I was told it was fixed the looping priming pulse has continued all the same so I think you'll find after five years and five failures my friend, the only person who has any right to run out of good will is me the customer!

With any complex box of hand soldered electronics there will always be room for mistakes, the way to build reliability into something like an ECU is to design a schematic on a computor and send the files to a large scale electronics manufacturer for them to build your boards with repeatable quality on a big expensive modern machine in a proper clean room manufacturing facility.

You just can't replicate that level of repeatable quality manufacture in the shed at the bottom of your garden hand soldering everything together yourself as a one man band engine management company, it's such a shame Canems operates like this because the design, ideas (dual fuel ECU) and the software David Hampshire came up with is fundimentally outstanding.

If only he would just email his schematics off to one of the super high tech facilities in Hungary which is now the European hub for the very latest technology electronics manufacture. Any number of these high tech Hungarian facilities could produce what they would see as a laughably simple box of electronics to a very high standard, and it could be done for very little money.

This is how the better Eastern European LPG ECUs are produced and in many ways they are way more complex than a Canems ECU, the quality is typically first class and you can buy such ECUs for £150 as a consumer proving just how much profit is made on the after market ECUs used on our cars.

No one making ECUs should be hand soldering their product these days, it's redicuolously time consuming and ultimately completely unnessesary, but most of all it's a process that leaves your product massively open to human error during fabrication which I believe is likely where things have been going wrong for me.

[ChimpOnGas]

spitfire4v8 said:

Try installing the N/C relay into your fan control circuit and see if the priming pulse issue remains or whether it's operation returns to correct. If so you can still use that relay to power your extra air valve. You can get relays with quite high resistances and flyback diodes. I'd recommend something in excess of 70 ohms coil resistance anyway. Worth a thought.

If the fan control (as in the temps and the on/off operation) were working to spec, and it was just that when switched to ON the relay chatters then you could try a delay off relay with the time set to much longer than the chatter frequency, ie several seconds.

Thanks for the tips, but I'm trying to move on to sort the looping priming pulse issue now, the fan issue I solved with the Davies Craig stand alone controller. Other than my manual idle valve arrangement needed because I've now had to remove my pattern part idle air control valve I'm not keen on touching the system for fear of again being accused of bringing issues on myself as I was with regard to my little electric coolant pump.

I've asked the installers for another dual fuel ECU to try which I think is reasonable, as the original installers wiring has been looked at and tidied up by them on two seperate occasions now and pounced fit for purpose, and because the electrical elements that cause the looping like the idle valve are part of the very system they installed I think it's only logical and fair to assume the issue resides within the latest ECU.

This theory is even more compelling when you consider none of my other Canems ECUs presented this fault, so a quick try of a 'known good' dual fuel ECU is surely not an illogical or unreasonable request?

Within minutes we'll know if it is indeed an ECU fault as I suspect, or something else that needs investigating.

Edited by ChimpOnGas on Tuesday 2nd October 15:14

[spitfire4v8]

All understood, was just thinking of work-arounds for you but as you say it shouldn't need it. I wish you well and hope you reach an agreeable resolution.

[ChimpOnGas]

spitfire4v8 said:

All understood, was just thinking of work-arounds for you but as you say it shouldn't need it. I wish you well and hope you reach an agreeable resolution.

Many thanks, I do appreciate your support.

The installers are decent guys and safety issues asside the looping priming pulse isnt the end of the world, I'm sure there's a simple fix but I do suspect we'll need the help of David Hampshire to finally get to the the bottom of it, it's just a shame he's so hard to get hold of which forces me back to the installers.

I think it's possible something like a diode got left out of my latest replacement ECU, but it could just as easily be that a component is not working correctly and needs replacing. The looping pulse might not necessarily be EMI related at all of course because my understanding is most EMI problems can usually be solved with screening of cables or optical isolation. There could be conducted power supply noise on the line or even a bad solder joint on the PCB which I'm reliably informed can cause intermittent problems like this, ast this point we should always keep in mind David Hampshire hand solders his components.

As I keep saying the system currently works brilliantly in all other respects, yes I've had a long history of failures but the period where injector drivers were failing repeatedly (even on the safe as houses 1.9 Ohm LPG injectors) does seem to have passed.... well for now at least.

Lets see if I can get a new ECU sent over which to my logical mind will conclusively prove if the issue is indeed ECU related or not, and I'll go from there.

Thanks again, Dave.

[Sardonicus]

It is however the onus of the installer to chase up this Mr Hampshire Dave example scenario ....... if I fit a DSG Mechatronic unit to a Golf/Audi for example and it fails or develops a fault its my responsibility to deal with the VAG dealer or VAG uk direct and NOT for the customer direct , I feel they should be doing more and quite frankly I would want a customer with issues out of my hair rather than eating my dinner at home and mulling over how I can aatdeal with this customers issue or on going problems I would want to move on You may need to stamp your feet harder

[ChimpOnGas]

Sardonicus said:

It is however the onus of the installer to chase up this Mr Hampshire Dave example scenario ....... if I fit a DSG Mechatronic unit to a Golf/Audi for example and it fails or develops a fault its my responsibility to deal with the VAG dealer or VAG uk direct and NOT for the customer direct , I feel they should be doing more and quite frankly I would want a customer with issues out of my hair rather than eating my dinner at home and mulling over how I can aatdeal with this customers issue or on going problems I would want to move on You may need to stamp your feet harder

Simon, you have to appreciate I've needed to approach this from both angles as David Hampshire diectly supplied me the latest ECU that came with the looping fualt.

We are afterall just talking about a plug and play box of electronics than can easily be posted, this 'post me a replacement' system has worked well in the past including when I was left stranden in the South of France on 5 cylinders. So if ithe post it system works with over 1,000 miles between me and the manufacturer with the French postal service in between, it shouldnt be an issue from one UK address to another right

To me the resolution to all this is no more complex than someone popping a replacement ECU in the post to me, I don't really care who posts it, I just pray for a new ECU to try which I really don't feel is an unreasonable request.

If it turns out to effect no improvement I would of course pop it straight back in the post to either David or Lloyds, whichever kindly sent it.

In the face of complex issues its often best to stop, take stock, and adopt the simple approach.... in this case we just need a new dual fuel ECU and a helpful postman, so how hard can it be

[Sardonicus]

ChimpOnGas said:

Sardonicus said:

It is however the onus of the installer to chase up this Mr Hampshire Dave example scenario ....... if I fit a DSG Mechatronic unit to a Golf/Audi for example and it fails or develops a fault its my responsibility to deal with the VAG dealer or VAG uk direct and NOT for the customer direct , I feel they should be doing more and quite frankly I would want a customer with issues out of my hair rather than eating my dinner at home and mulling over how I can aatdeal with this customers issue or on going problems I would want to move on You may need to stamp your feet harder

Simon, you have to appreciate I've needed to approach this from both angles as David Hampshire diectly supplied me the latest ECU that came with the looping fualt.

We are afterall just talking about a plug and play box of electronics than can easily be posted, this 'post me a replacement' system has worked well in the past including when I was left stranden in the South of France on 5 cylinders. So if ithe post it system works with over 1,000 miles between me and the manufacturer with the French postal service in between, it shouldnt be an issue from one UK address to another right

To me the resolution to all this is no more complex than someone popping a replacement ECU in the post to me, I don't really care who posts it, I just pray for a new ECU to try which I really don't feel is an unreasonable request.

If it turns out to effect no improvement I would of course pop it straight back in the post to either David or Lloyds, whichever kindly sent it.

In the face of complex issues its often best to stop, take stock, and adopt the simple approach.... in this case we just need a new dual fuel ECU and a helpful postman, so how hard can it be

Fair enough moving forward I agree you need to be sent a replacement ECU

[ChimpOnGas]

Sardonicus said:

air enough moving forward I agree you need to be sent a replacement ECU

And 10 minutes ago I was informed one is on its way Simon!

I have just been informed I can expect to receive my new ECU early next week.

This may have looked easy to some, but trust me it wasn’t.

I am grateful the installers and the manufacturer are back to supporting me properly.

Dave.

[Matthew Poxon]

Great news Dave, I hope the new ECU includes the revisions required to resolve your issues. Let us know how you get on.

[lancelin]

Id be interested in the difference in the ecu revisions? The way my car drives is inconsistent. I recorded sensor signals using the canems software and noticed random glitches!