So who wants their ECU's "Chromed"?

So anyway... I have some good news for your 96/97 guys!!

If you leave all your emissions equipment & O2 sensors hooked up, everything except the purge solinoid will work. This will need to be disabled. Unfortunately, you can't disable the periphery for this without there being a side effect. I am testing this patch out on my car and it will be available for V2.

If you leave the purge solinoid Hooked up and don't disable it, it'll click nonstop. There is some hardware difference in the board. I have not tried hooking up a 98/99 purge solinoid in place of the 96/97 to see of that fixes the issue. Would someone like to test?? I need a clean and STOCK 96/97 car to test. I will provide the parts needed.

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Originally Posted by aaronatstate

I had ~20,000 miles over 1.5 years on the ORIGINAL converted Montero ECU. We used de-soldered and resoldered surface mount parts from spare computer boards Jeff had lying around the house. My car is still running just fine now, on a converted Montero Sport ECU with desoldered and resoldered parts.

Well I agree its not a good idea to reuse parts a bunch of times, I dont see it being a problem to swap them over from one board to another once for the conversion, as long as you are careful to not put to much heat into the parts, that's the biggest issue with resoldering parts.

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Let's re-group here. No one said it won't work, some people are just voicing the concern over it not being the best way to do it, that's all.

I remember testing a non-modified diamante ecu in my car back around the time you first started using your Montero ecu. This was when non-3/s ecu options were being flushed out. If I knew then what I know now I never would have done that. And if somebody wanted to point out that I should have approached it differently for valid reasons, like maybe some important circuits are not the same, can I really bawk at their logic. I could argue that I didn't blow my motor up so my way was the right way, but the truth is that my way just so happened to work, lucky for me.

The fact that conversion harnesses and clone ecu's can now be made is awesome. And the fact that Greg is cranking out cool features via software updates is even more awesome.

The fact that Jeff spent enough time messing with the ecu's to get this whole thing rolling is priceless.

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Originally Posted by 95gto

My only hope is that those modding/cloning the ecu's are not ignoring the very nature of surface mount components and their reduced life expectancy related to multiple soldering and de-soldering.

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Curious how you would weight the fact of outright chronological age versus/in addition to the soldering/desoldering/duty-cycle aging, when, in my case, the car is driven much less frequently?

In other words, from a purely practical point of view, how much of a concern is this?

I just don't see the honest motivation here to basically attempt to eliminate any possible ecu candidates for the swap. Certainly there is risk in any ecu modification or even running anything buy a true vr4 ecu, but our options are limited here. We could go on and on for years about why I shouldn't be running an SL ecu, but I'd rather have the car running and driving than try to think about problems with the solution.

The "real" vr4 ecu is basically like finding a gold nugget in your sock drawer, so until the day comes when an affordable alternative is available I'll be happy going down the road.

Certainly the risk of serious problems with a 99 type ecu is less than running a 20 year old stock ecu with a clusterf*ck of piggybacks lying to the ecu trying to get a reasonable afr and timing map.

I mean what do you guys want? Even brand new AEM's fail. SAFC's fail. Everything can and will fail eventually. You just have to recognize when there is a problem in your tune or your hardware and stop before you blow things up.

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Originally Posted by Forest Gump

I just don't see the honest motivation here to basically attempt to eliminate any possible ecu candidates for the swap. Certainly there is risk in any ecu modification or even running anything buy a true vr4 ecu, but our options are limited here. We could go on and on for years about why I shouldn't be running an SL ecu, but I'd rather have the car running and driving than try to think about problems with the solution.

The "real" vr4 ecu is basically like finding a gold nugget in your sock drawer, so until the day comes when an affordable alternative is available I'll be happy going down the road.

Certainly the risk of serious problems with a 99 type ecu is less than running a 20 year old stock ecu with a clusterf*ck of piggybacks lying to the ecu trying to get a reasonable afr and timing map.

I mean what do you guys want? Even brand new AEM's fail. SAFC's fail. Everything can and will fail eventually. You just have to recognize when there is a problem in your tune or your hardware and stop before you blow things up.

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Good point and all this with no reported or documented failures of any of the modified ecus people have made or are running.... hmmmm.
The only failure I have heard of is a 98 vr4 ECu unmodified, but it was something completely unrelated.

I wish I had an ODB2 car.


Noob question alert!!!

Basically, this would eliminate the need for a piggy back right? Like the Emanage and ARC2 right?

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Originally Posted by FeaRpb

I wish I had an ODB2 car.


Noob question alert!!!

Basically, this would eliminate the need for a piggy back right? Like the Emanage and ARC2 right?

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yes, keep in mind currently you will have to use the stock or evo maf if you have piggybacks. Not really a problem for most.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 95gto

My only hope is that those modding/cloning the ecu's are not ignoring the very nature of surface mount components and their reduced life expectancy related to multiple soldering and de-soldering.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by aaronatstate

I had ~20,000 miles over 1.5 years on the ORIGINAL converted Montero ECU. We used de-soldered and resoldered surface mount parts from spare computer boards Jeff had lying around the house. My car is still running just fine now, on a converted Montero Sport ECU with desoldered and resoldered parts.

Well I agree its not a good idea to reuse parts a bunch of times, I dont see it being a problem to swap them over from one board to another once for the conversion, as long as you are careful to not put to much heat into the parts, that's the biggest issue with resoldering parts.

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As a professional in HW design I can say these parts can be used MANY times without degradation when properly handled. That said, new passive components are typically pennies if purchased in 10s or 100s. Anyone making a business out of converting ECUs should definitely guarantee new components are used.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FeaRpb

I wish I had an ODB2 car.


Noob question alert!!!

Basically, this would eliminate the need for a piggy back right? Like the Emanage and ARC2 right?

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You can do this with an OBD1 car, just need a conversion harness. Aaron has been running one of, if not the first modified flashable ECUs in his 1st gen Stealth for a couple of years now.

And yes, this eliminates the need for piggybacks.

-John

I heard by a guy at a swedish forum that it might be possible to set the original MAF to read in a larger range or something like that. What do you experienced tuners think. Can't you change what range the MAF reads or is there some other limitation to the MAF that can't be tuned by the ECU?