ECU Upgrade for 500

[JimTC]

Hi,

I've got a Chim 500 that had a Stealth cam fitted around 7K miles ago.

Drives really well other than at low speeds where it's difficult to make smooth progress - there's a tendency for it to shunt.

In view of this, am considering a complete change to the ECU to something like Canems or Emerald, or a Mark Adams upgrade to the existing Lucas ECU.

However, before spending the cash would appreciate any feedback on the various options - in particular whether smoothness is improved.

Many thanks.

[blitzracing]

Your options are very limited if you keep the standard ECU, as even if its remapped will will still try and control the mixture for emmission standards, that you simply cant map out, whatever you do, and this is at least part of the reason for shunting. You could run the non catalyst fuel map if you remove the catalysts, and this does alow some mixture control, but again it will still need the correct fuel map, and there are a few maps floating around for the non cat 500 you could simply try as an experiment before spending big money.

[QBee]

JimTC said:

Hi,

I've got a Chim 500 that had a Stealth cam fitted around 7K miles ago.

Drives really well other than at low speeds where it's difficult to make smooth progress - there's a tendency for it to shunt.

In view of this, am considering a complete change to the ECU to something like Canems or Emerald, or a Mark Adams upgrade to the existing Lucas ECU.

However, before spending the cash would appreciate any feedback on the various options - in particular whether smoothness is improved.

Many thanks.

Mine is a 500 on a stealth cam and runs fine on the 14CUX after a remap by Mark Adams, plus new injectors, bigger AFM etc. Having said that, that lot cost me most of the cost of an aftermarket ECU.....
I would have a chat with Jools (Spitfire4V8 on here) as he may even be abe to tweak what you have for very little cost.

[gmw9666]

Another thumbs up for Mark Adams.......he rebuilt my ECU and managed to screw 287 BHP out of my 4.5 Wedge

Here he is at work :-) click to view video

[carsy]

Ecu wise speak with the potential mapper and go with their preferred.

You will not regret an aftermarket ecu.

[ChimpOnGas]

It's fair to say all the usual after market ECU suspects will give you what you need, so in my experience a lot of it will come down to personal choice based on your own list of pros and cons.

The truth is there seems to be an endless list of after market ECU manufacturers, I started with eight for heavens sake!!! So as a starting point it really helped me to whittle things down a bit.

I did a lot of research before making my decision, quite quickly I ended up with the following three:

1) MegaSquirt

2) Canems

3) Emerald

Once I'd narrowed it down to the above three I refined things further by evaluating the pros & cons based on a number of requirements which I weighted in order of importance:

1) Support (Manufacturer/Supplier)

2) Software (Ease of use & functionality)

3) Wiring (Availability of bespoke Chimaera loom & it's cost)

4) ECU features (number of inputs & outputs)

5) Availability of mappers that can work with the system

6) Price

7) Geographic location (distance from me)

The MegaSquirt as a full plug & play package with loom certainly wins the price element hands down. MegaSquirt is very feature rich & the software appeared user friendly too, so early on it was looking like a winner.

Saying that Emerald was also very tempting, it has a great reputation for customer service & support, and just about any mapper in the country is happy to work with it.

However, at the time I was looking at having a loom built loom by Paul Dove from Lotus which was coming in at £5-600 alone, so after adding in all the sensors ect it certainly came out as the most expensive of the three ECU options. But that was a while ago now and I believe there are trusted people out there that will build you a decent loom, fit the Emerald ECU & map it for you, all at a reasonable cost.

Using one company to take ownership of the whole project is essential in my book, if you sub contract to two or three companies you could just end up with them all blaming each other if things go wrong.

TBH I agonised for ages over which way to go, the decision made all the more difficult because (from what I could see) all three are basically the equal of each other in terms of performance benefits.

I concluded I needed a package that included a quality loom, a proven engine management system, fitting & mapping. And I needed it to all come from a single trusted source that would take complete responsibility for that full package, a true "Drive in - Drive Out" service that included ongoing backup if things needed tweaking.

The decision was a very close run thing, and each person's requirements will be slightly different from mine so don't just follow what I did, and I encourage you to make your own list of pros & cons that are important to you not me.

Whichever system you decide on, it's the wiring & mapping that can really let an installation down, one of the key benefits of fitting an after marker ECU is it presents you with the opportunity to rip out a good chunk of the 20 year old crispy TVR to Range Rover spliced loom. But be warned a badly wired & mapped Emerald, MegaSquirt or Canems could easily end up being worse than the old Lucas 14CUX & distributor.

It took me some time to decide on what ECU package to go for, in the end I had to write down my list of pros & cons to clearly reveal the winner, and like I say your pros & cons may be different from mine or you may just prioritise them differently.

Eventually I settled on the Canems dual fuel system from Lloyd Specialist Developments, and simply because it ticked more of my boxes on the pros side of my list than anything else.

And no regrets either

The team at Lloyd Specialist Developments have been fantastic to work with and it always brings a smile to my face when I hit my hidden LPG switch and immediately start enjoying the average cost equivalent of 40mpg+ knowing the same car on the Lucas 14CUX system gave me an average of 23mpg

Good luck making your decision, if you take the time to get it right first time an after market ECU will be the best thing you'll ever do to improve your TVR, and it'll open up so many doors for future improvements too

http://www.pistonheads.com/Gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

[Sardonicus]

What C.O.G said.

[ChimpOnGas]

Sardonicus said:

What C.O.G said.

But did ya read it all Simon?

You know there's a test later

[Hoofa]

carsy said:

Ecu wise speak with the potential mapper and go with their preferred.

You will not regret an aftermarket ecu.

Oh yes you will , even done the above and its a crap map, been there done that, took mapper number three to get it spot on

Good luck and don't go to emerald for the mapping

I went emerald and ditched it, in the end went motec

If I was you talk to jools

Edited by Hoofa on Tuesday 11th November 18:33

[JimTC]

Wow - as ever a great response from the forum. Thanks for your comments.

Clearly I need to stand back, find out more, review my requirements, before making a decision.

I appreciate the advice

Jim

[Mr Supercharged]

I had the same dilemma, if you have the skills and time to do a good job installing it yourself will teach you how it works and be very satisfying. One thing to note is that several, including me have had fun and games getting the tacho to give an accurate and stable reading when controlled by an aftermarket ECU. There are a number of fixes for this which are documented on here, but if you are stuck or want advice on DIY give me a shout. Happy to help / provide a wiring diagram…… :-)

[ChimpOnGas]

Mr Supercharged said:

I had the same dilemma, if you have the skills and time to do a good job installing it yourself will teach you how it works and be very satisfying. One thing to note is that several, including me have had fun and games getting the tacho to give an accurate and stable reading when controlled by an aftermarket ECU. There are a number of fixes for this which are documented on here, but if you are stuck or want advice on DIY give me a shout. Happy to help / provide a wiring diagram…… :-)

Canems (through Lloyd Specialist Developments) now offer a cost effective solution for the rev counter problem to all their Canems customers.

The device is configured specifically to work with the TVR Caerbont tacho and I suspect will become a standard addition to all future Canems installations completed by LSD.

My ECU is of an early serial number that means the tacho module is not compatible, so Canems offered to build me a brand new exchange dual fuel ECU to solve this while also adding two additional inputs for LPG temp & volume sensors so we can make the system even better.

That's the type of after care & backup you can expect from Lloyd Specialist Developments & Canems, total support and dedication to delivering the very best levels of service.

[str]

I went to the guys at Lloyds based on what I read on this forum to instal the Canems and am very pleased with the outcome -- shunting is a thing of the past and the 500 is happily running on 95 Octane -- easy to change the map if you want to get a few more horses and run 97 octane.. but the key was the quality of installation of the loom and the setting up after. Interestingly the standard plenum looks a bit small at 4k rpm plus judging by the read outs Lloyds carried out but for me its just made a great car even better. We took the opportunity to put the battery in the boot as well which the Lloyds guys also did very well. Usual disclaimer!

[JimTC]

str said:

I went to the guys at Lloyds based on what I read on this forum to instal the Canems and am very pleased with the outcome -- shunting is a thing of the past and the 500 is happily running on 95 Octane -- easy to change the map if you want to get a few more horses and run 97 octane.. but the key was the quality of installation of the loom and the setting up after. Interestingly the standard plenum looks a bit small at 4k rpm plus judging by the read outs Lloyds carried out but for me its just made a great car even better. We took the opportunity to put the battery in the boot as well which the Lloyds guys also did very well. Usual disclaimer!

Good to hear. I had a good discussion with the Lloyds guys at the recent Neil Garner Open Day plus had a look round the Griff they had on display. As you say, the installation looked very neat.

Just out of interest, what cam do you have in your 500?

Thanks.

[QBee]

JimTC said:

str said:

I went to the guys at Lloyds based on what I read on this forum to instal the Canems and am very pleased with the outcome -- shunting is a thing of the past and the 500 is happily running on 95 Octane -- easy to change the map if you want to get a few more horses and run 97 octane.. but the key was the quality of installation of the loom and the setting up after. Interestingly the standard plenum looks a bit small at 4k rpm plus judging by the read outs Lloyds carried out but for me its just made a great car even better. We took the opportunity to put the battery in the boot as well which the Lloyds guys also did very well. Usual disclaimer!

Good to hear. I had a good discussion with the Lloyds guys at the recent Neil Garner Open Day plus had a look round the Griff they had on display. As you say, the installation looked very neat.

Just out of interest, what cam do you have in your 500?

Thanks.

My V8D 500 had a 72mm plenum specified, together with Bosch red top injectors and a 20 AM AFM.....FWIW.

[JimTC]

Has anyone added the traction control feature to the Emerald as I believe it can do this?

Not sure about the Canems system - does this also offer a traction control feature?

Thanks

[blitzracing]

JimTC said:

Has anyone added the traction control feature to the Emerald as I believe it can do this?

Not sure about the Canems system - does this also offer a traction control feature?

Thanks

I should think this hard to do on a TVR as you dont have any ABS sensors on each wheel to pick up when the wheels are spinning or otherwise.

[Hoofa]

JimTC said:

Has anyone added the traction control feature to the Emerald as I believe it can do this?

Not sure about the Canems system - does this also offer a traction control feature?

Thanks

The emerald doesn't do this although it's there , better off fitting a racelogic system