automatic vr4?

my car started as a 95 base 3kgt n/a atx & is now tt awd atx. the "hard part" of the conversion is really just making the TCU talk to the ECU. the thing is...now that we have flashable ECU's...the difficulty therein might be moot anymore.

of course, if you just want "stock atx vr4", then you don't really even need that. you can just piggyback the stock N/A ecu on an ATX and not worry about it--but you'll be limited on how much fuel you can run.

having been down this route--and given the new options available--i'd say the ideal starting point is a tt/vr4 that you ATX convert. this eliminates the need for injector resistors, and also eliminates the mount-angle on the rear suspension. the latter is what makes using coilovers dicey, due to the rear axle flanges.

p.s.
it's had a 2g r/t rear bumper conversion & a 97 front bumper & 99 headlights added. hence the confusion over what exactly it "is".

So from what your telling me once I get a flashable ecu it's easy to make it talk to the tcu, you can pretty much program it to do anything want not just things related to fuel?

but if I wanted to remain stock how can I piggyback the stock ecu to the auto TCU?

What kind of wiring is involved with this?

and what do you mean by the mount angle on the rear suspension is this different between the vr4 and the bases/ sls?

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Originally Posted by IPD

my car started as a 95 base 3kgt n/a atx & is now tt awd atx. the "hard part" of the conversion is really just making the TCU talk to the ECU. the thing is...now that we have flashable ECU's...the difficulty therein might be moot anymore.
hence the confusion over what exactly it "is".

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Believe you have said before specifically that it is: A pain in your ass.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hyper3000gt

So from what your telling me once I get a flashable ecu it's easy to make it talk to the tcu, you can pretty much program it to do anything want not just things related to fuel?

but if I wanted to remain stock how can I piggyback the stock ecu to the auto TCU?

What kind of wiring is involved with this?

and what do you mean by the mount angle on the rear suspension is this different between the vr4 and the bases/ sls?

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He's saying it's POSSIBLE with a Flashable ECU that it may not be hard to get the ECU and TCU to talk anymore, but that's an unknown. Don't know anyone doing it. The Flashable ECU lets you adjust just about everything related to the car, but you will still have to get the TCU to play nice with it. Theoretically you could get one of the AWD NA auto trans from a GTO with all the wiring and such, but using it with the Chromed ECU is an unknown.

And I believe what he's referring to with the rear suspension is the work that is involved in turning a base/SL into an AWD car with the subframe. Several people have done it, more than a few will tell you that they wish they had just bought a VR4 instead.

If you really want to go through with this, Hans @GZP may be able to answer a few of the questions with an auto AWD TT as I think that they did this before. You may be in over your head though trying to do a swap of this size.

my photo album has a pic or two of the rear axle flange. z11's converted to z15/16's will have a more slack angle on the suspension. this means that there is less clearance between the shock & the axle flange. my coilovers literally touch the axle flange when my car is in the air. this is a known factor for fwd > awd conversions. the stock awd shocks won't have this problem...but the rear end will sit very low. that's not necessarily a bad thing, but with 285 tires, i was scoring the rubber on the fenders each time i'd hit a sizable bump.

Right now there isn't anything that can be done to use the flashed ecu to control the atx. We don't even know if the TCU's are flashable or editable in any way. I don't think Greg is going to mess with it or even see if he can decipher the code even if we were able to read and write to it. Even with a shift kit using the TCU you're still extremely limited on how much power it will handle. Eliminating the TCU and running the two solenoids off a toggle switch is better but I'm sure past TD04 turbo you will see the weakness of the end clutches, etc. 11SecondFWD ran his ATX off of toggle switches to shift which gives 100% fully engaged shifts no slipping that the TCU will use for comfortable OEM driving.

It would be nice to only mess with the switches part of the time when you drag race and I'm sure the DSMers have figured out a way to use both the TCU and direct connection to the solenoids, but at the very least you could wire up your shift toggles to paddles or buttons on the steering wheel. I saw one person with an aftermarket steering wheel that had two NOS buttons. He used those to up/down shift. The paddle shifters would have to be custom made or custom retrofitted off a different car.

I can't quite give up rowing gears since I only have one performance vehicle which will remain manual until I get too old to operate the clutch but if I were to get another 3S I would definitely swap an ATX in to make a quick straight line car. You don't have to spend $2-3k upgrading the drivetrain on an ATX to run 10s whereas you have to do that on either 5 or 6 speed.

who are the DSMers? and even if I have to go paddle shifter this doesn't bother me at all, I have no problem going that rout if that's what it takes.

DSMers = people who own 91-99 Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser. Pretty sure that the AWD turbo versions of those used the same transmission as the GTO AWD tranny.

same internals--different bell housing. 46g3 doesn't bolt up like a 6g72. my w4a33 came from a 92 diamante, iirc.

i don't think a flashable TCU is the way to go. i think that's superfluous. it has to do with the ECU reading the inputs from the TCU--that's it. the ATX doesn't need to be controlled by the ECU, just let the TCU do it's job. this is what i'm unsure of--because to my knowledge, no one has posted up on how to make a flashable ECU read those signals that would normally have to be hard-wired from the TCU.

and yes, the w4a33 is significantly cheaper to "beef up". if you do the labor yourself, it's less than a grand in parts--and that's including a HSTC.

what about the ecu out of 98/99 automatic sl? wouldn't this already be set up for reading the inputs from the tcu IPD? and then it can just be flashed if I need to adjust the fuel to air ratio for further upgrades/ boosting?

I don't know what everyone's issues with the wiring, it's simple. The ecu, and tcu are separate. The only communication needed is some sensor input into the tcu to have the right shift points. If you run a shift box, you don't even need a tcu. Dsm's use the same automatic trans, and it's very simple to do a manual auto swap on them. Lots of the mitsu tcu's are also EPROM, and can be programmed for different shift points.
As far as the ecu is doesn't care if the car is running an auto, or manual trans. The non turbo cars have the same ecu, manual, and auto for each year.