Fuel Injection where to fit ECU?

[bob_rich]

Have been following the other recent post on the subject of fuel injection. Thinking about fitting it to my +2s 130 when I rebuild it this year . What is the general view of where to fit the ECU? Looking at using the Emerald Unit, and will be doing my own loom so not tied to restrictions of bought in looms

cheers

Bob

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

My now rather ancient & largish Dunnell ECU fits nicely inside my S4 behind the Dash in the side of the Passenger Foot well.
It slides nicely between the Body outer Skin & the Steel Door opening reinforcement.
Keeps cool, clean & dry there.
It can also be unplugged & taken with me if I leave the Car, thus immobilising it totally.

Cheers
John

[gerrym]

Bob, similar to DJ Pelly, my Emerald ECU is mounted up high inside the wheel arch (body compartment side). The other side of the fibreglass to where the wiper motor is mounted. There's quite a bit of room up there but you will need to make up a mounting cradle. Main issue is getting a good clean 12V feed, good earth back to battery and no interference on the crank sensor wiring.

Gerry

[seaandmoor]

Yes on my other car I have the Megasquirt ECU mounted behind the passenger dash. It's also a glassfibre car and interference is an issue so the man's right... a perfect 12v supply is essential.
The cable from the trigger wheel must be fully screened with particular care taken on it's routing and at the connections to the sensor and ECU.
You should also use 'resistive' spark plugs as any other type of spark plug will cause interference.
Also you must avoid any slight voltage differences caused by having earths down onto different places - this isn't good enough and again will cause interferences. ALL earths have to go back to one identical fixing point, preferably the -ve on the battery.
Good luck with it.

[kcrossle]

In the passenger footwell makes a tidy, accessible installation. The only very small hassle is that you have to drape the cable over the door to plug in then attend to engine matters. It's normally out of sight - you have to get down on the floor for this view.

The fuse box in the glove box came out rather tidily too, I think.

One thing to think about / look for: I've got an Emerald ECU that's got a standard small serial port. And all our laptops (that sounds a bit funny) are USB only. Had to spend (more!) money for a cable & software.


Keith

[seaandmoor]

Just have the cable from the ECU straight to laptop on passenger seat.

VERY IMPORTANT...
The ECU's have the standard 9 pin ports for a reason -
so that they can ONLY plug into a 9 pin port on a laptop.
I don't know the exact cause of the problem and it's not generally known, but four of us have found that USB's cause errors and using a cable which converts 9 pin to USB (even fully screened) also causes problems. (variously spikes, different voltages, erroneous data etc)

SOLUTION... buy a second hand laptop with the required 9 pin port and all problems miraculously vanish.

[kcrossle]

Yeah - I have no idea why I felt that the cable was a hassle: just a residual memory. All I've used it for so far was the initial setup of the throttle pot and idle. Fortunately the COM to USB cable seemed to do the job fine for this brief experience.

The old serial connections were dead simple. USB is a bit of a black art for me, but I do like the connectivity and don't miss the old hassles. But, I do have a tubfull of old serial, parallel and SCSI cables down the basement and wish I could make myself part with them ("never throw anything away").

Keith

[bob_rich]

Thanks for all the comments. Towards the top Passengers footwell area seems to be the location of preference. Thanks also for the comments on the PC -- re the serial link. I was thinking that as PC's are so cheap (especially second hand ones with older interfaces) that I would have a laptop just for use on the car.

regards

Bob

[john.p.clegg]

Bob
Can't recomment mine/this highly enough,lots of interfaces,good piece of kit

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quic ... 30_na.HTML

Plenty on Fleabay

John

as if I knew what an Express card slot was??

[kcrossle]

First, thanks for the lead on the laptop - exactly what I've been looking for. btw - does it have an ExpressCard slot or do you need the docking station for that?

Then, about the COM / USB topic. I thought it odd that the install docs for my Emerald unit said nothing about this, so I emailed them. Here's the reply:

Hi Keith,

There was a problem with USB adapters where you needed an adapter with an FTDI chip but that has long been sorted. I have been using an adapter here for the last 7 years and never have a problem.

Dave Walker

Hope that helps all understand what's happened. Nice to see a company so responsive, too.


Keith

[seaandmoor]

I didn't THINK I had problems with an adaptor either for quite some time and neither did the person who 1st mapped it and it's perhaps easier to dismiss inherent small problems isn't it. Just found by accident (having to use old laptop) that it was glitch free.

I can't argue with the great DW. However, I'm not one to relish the time/grief of making a square peg fit a round hole, I just take the quick/easy option and go straight for the round peg. After all, as earlier post said they are very cheap on fleabay and it doesn't matter if you drop them on the garage floor

[lsdweb]

Emerald sell a USB to 9 pin adaptor - I had huge problems connecting to my Emerald ECU (bike engine) with a cheaper cable and when I bought the Emerald one all the problems went away. Karl at Emerald is brilliant - he managed to get my ECU and my RaceTechnology datalogger and dash 'talking' via CANBUS - took a while though!