ECU Rules.....is it time? HELL YES!!!

[kipv]

What Andy is proposing is the sensible thing to do. And where are people getting these $5000 and even $10000 prices for stand alone aftermarket boxes? Last one I used was CIVINCO for less than $1000; very user freindly and did every thing you would ever need. Heck there are great piggy back units out there for less than $500 and full blown Squirt ECUs for $700. I don't think I would ever go back to Motec.

[tnord]

installation, testing, and tuning is not free my friend.

[Joe Harlan]

Why can't you do what Greg said here but also allow either or the factor harness or the wiring harness that that come with the EMS you purchase? Won't just allowing the factor harness drive the costs up? Since you can only control the same as the factory ecu, does it really matter which harness you use?
[/b]

There you go, say yes to a little and they want the whole thing.......Nope the skys not falling they would never want the next step......... <_<

[mom'sZ]

Does anyone see this as a compromise between full-boat open and Chips/reflash/daughter boards?
[/b]

Andy, not only do I think this is the best compromise, way back in post 219 on page 11 I even posted my suggestion for the wording of the rule.

Nobody paid my post much mind, but I didn&#39;t take it personal, I&#39;m a new guy, no one&#39;s heard of me. What strikes me though is kipv&#39;s posts. Like me he&#39;s a lurker. I joined a year ago last month. Until this thread I had posted twice. He joined a couple months before me and had posted once before this thread, to ask butch krammer which direction nashville speedway runs in. Both of us have sat back for over a year and watched you guy&#39;s bicker over sometimes really idiotic stuff and never said a word. What compelled us to finally speak up? I can&#39;t speak for kipv, but for me it was the importance of this decision and the way a few members have used scare tactics, half truths and insults to further their point of views. Fellas... the club racing world is watching.

Do I want to try to use my 28 year old harness and AFM with no TPS or MAP to run an aftermarket ECU? Heck NO! It&#39;s not the best for me, but I feel it&#39;s the best for my club. My box is as big as a shoe box, I could fit anything in there, but I know alot of guy&#39;s can&#39;t. But this is the fairest thing for everyone.

Look guys, once a racer learns how to do something to go faster, you can&#39;t take that knowledge back. When F1 outlawed active suspension, the teams used what they had learned to make traditional suspensions act like active ones. When you guys took away remote reservoir shocks, the rich guys just went and bought three or four sets of shocks each with different valving. Did you slow them down... no. Did you level the playing field... no. Did you make racing cheaper... no, more expensive. You can&#39;t put the jenie back in the bottle. Rich guys will figure out how to keep their advantage with the rechip/reflash option and others will get further polarized.
sorry.... rant over

[Eagle7]

Marty rather than trying be a jerk with the smokin comments provide me the code in a stock ECU that would let you open the bypass at WOT adn ADD extra fuel.....I don&#39;t care that the rule says its illegal it can be policed unless somebody wants to look at every program in every car with an aftermarket box....So please provide the code for your stock ecu to do that. My guess is from the post above you have little actual knowledge on what can or can&#39;t be done. And BTW do you have a converted box already? [/b]

The "smokin" comment was a feeble attempt at humor that seems to have offended you. I am sorry.



What is illegal about turning on the bypass air valve with it&#39;s stock connection to the intake snorkel (in which all the air goes through the stock AFM)? I&#39;d appreciate chapter and verse, because I haven&#39;t found it. If I thought it was illegal I wouldn&#39;t have tested it. I did test and found no gain from it.



I&#39;ve been an embedded software engineer for 35 years. Unless the ECU code is in a locked ROM, it can be disassembled, and with a lot of work, all the functions in the ECU can be reverse-engineered. Takes a lot of time but it can be done. Once you understand the code, modifying it to work your magic is not so tough. Some ECUs will make this stuff accessible, others won&#39;t. You want my code you&#39;ll have to send a very big check, because it will take a very large effort to produce it.



No, Joe, I haven&#39;t done this for my ECU nor any other because it made no sense to me to do it. It was much more straightforward to build a Megasquirt, which provides me with all the tools to tune the engine properly. I had to do some engineering to stuff it into the box and to make the stock sensors work properly, but I was lucky that my car already had everything I needed (some cars would be more of a challenge). Add a wideband O2 sensor and a PalmPilot, and test days double as tuning days. Disconnect them for race day. I&#39;ve got 2 hours on the dyno. The tune isn&#39;t perfect, but much better than the factory ECU, which wouldn&#39;t run cold, wouldn&#39;t idle, and was giving me an AFR that varied from 16 to 10 and back to 14 through the racing RPM range.



But just because I haven&#39;t done it doesn&#39;t mean I couldn&#39;t do it. And you can be sure the the big-bucks teams will be doing it if you have your way. That scenario looks awfully bleak to me.

[Eagle7]

installation, testing, and tuning is not free my friend. [/b]

So how do you tune now? And how do you tune with the rechip scenario? Do you really think some outfit on the other side of the country is going to give you a chip that is optimized to your intake, your exhaust, your .040 over pistons, your compression bump? I&#39;d be amazed. They&#39;ll get you in the ballpark, tell you to go to the dyno and return the charts to them, and send you another chip. Then you go back to the dyno and try again. Maybe you get lucky and they hit it on the 2nd or 3rd try. Probably not, and you will never optimize your tune. And it won&#39;t be cheap. If you had a carb you could try lots of things with instant feedback. Not so lucky with your rechip ECU scenario.



Don&#39;t want to tune? Then you&#39;re not interested in a fully-prepped car. That&#39;s fine, but don&#39;t try to change the rules so it&#39;s a royal pain for those that are.

[mom'sZ]

Marty. like you said a few posts back about the air regulator, it&#39;s still got to pass through the AFM (or MAF whatever) which is the main restriction. Just more scare tactics. Sequential injection will cause huge power gains, people will use open ECUs to implement traction control, yeah right, on low powered IT cars that makes sense.

[Eagle7]

For the experts...what limitations would the following introduce?

Open ECU (no stock box rule) but connected to the factory wiring harness using all factory sensors. [/b]

I&#39;m no expert, but that won&#39;t stop me. The "speed density" based ECUs (Megasquirt and others) use (or at least prefer) a MAP (manifold absolute pressure) sensor to measure engine load. If your car doesn&#39;t have one, and you don&#39;t allow a vacuum hose going to the ECU, then it is more challenging to make them work. Megasquirt can alternatively use a MAF sensor, but that&#39;s not the mainstream approach, and I don&#39;t know if just any MAF can be used.



You also need some kind of crank angle sensor. Megasquirt can work with many types, but there may be ones out there that aren&#39;t currently supported, or that just won&#39;t work.



I expect that there might be some cars out there that just can&#39;t be made to work with just the stock equipment. Maybe someone knows of examples that could be evaluated.

[Joe Harlan]

No, Joe, I haven&#39;t done this for my ECU nor any other because it made no sense to me to do it. It was much more straightforward to build a Megasquirt, which provides me with all the tools to tune the engine properly. I had to do some engineering to stuff it into the box and to make the stock sensors work properly, but I was lucky that my car already had everything I needed (some cars would be more of a challenge). Add a wideband O2 sensor and a PalmPilot, and test days double as tuning days. [/b]

So the answer to my question was yes then you have a megasquirt stuffed in the stock box? So you are arguing from the stand point of someone that has already exploited the rule as written. I am sure there maybe a way to turn the airbypass on in a stock ECU but I am also sure nobody has done it with the software available currently to burn and prog these chips. I am also certain that none of the current factory ECU&#39;s have the hardware to handle TC of any kind internally. The current 350z uses a completely external ECU to handle is VDC and TC functions. All of this has been stated before so I will wait and get the letters written against open ECU&#39;s and Open harnesses when the time comes. I believe tuning the factory stuff is well with in the philosophy of IT and I will stick to that.

[Banzai240]

I believe tuning the factory stuff is well with in the philosophy of IT and I will stick to that.
[/b]

You mean you actually prefer "Improved Touring" rather than "Replace-it Touring"???

[mom'sZ]

... So you are arguing from the stand point of someone that has already exploited the rule as written.[/b]

no Joe, he didn&#39;t exploit anything, the rule said he could replace the ECU within the box and he did. What was he suppose to say &#39; it says I can replace it, but the true spirit of IT is reflash only so... I&#39;m not going to do what the rule book says because I don&#39;t want to pervert the possible intention of the rule&#39;
I can hear George saying &#39;if it says you can... you bloody well can&#39;

... I am sure there maybe a way to turn the airbypass on in a stock ECU but I am also sure nobody has done it with the software available currently to burn and prog these chips...[/b]

Joe, mute point... it still has to pass through the AFM or MAF

... I am also certain that none of the current factory ECU&#39;s have the hardware to handle TC of any kind internally. [/b]

Joe traction control can be done with the open ignition and a stock ECU. Why not argue for points ignition only.

[Andy Bettencourt]

Actually, the way I read it, he said he has the knowledge to crack some codes and do a &#39;chip and burn&#39; but it was faster and cheaper to do a Squirt.

I might have read between some lines...

This topic does have two legitimate sides IMHO.

[Eagle7]

You mean you actually prefer "Improved Touring" rather than "Replace-it Touring"???
[/b]

OK Darin, I&#39;m calling you out. You keep saying "replace" is totally contrary to the intent and philosopy of the catagory like everyone should inherently know that. Are you saying that you would like to outlaw all "replace" items in the current ruleset? Shocks, springs, bars, intake, exhaust, wheels, gauges, radiators, oil coolers, fuel pump, fuel pressure regulator, ignition, in some cases carburator come to mind without thinking about it. You (and some others) keep trotting the phrase out, but it makes no sense to me in light of all the other ways that we "replace" in order to "improve". If your deal is that you are dead-set against "replace", then shouldn&#39;t you be focused on some other catagory? Please enlighten me.

[shwah]

For the experts...what limitations would the following introduce?

Open ECU (no stock box rule) but connected to the factory wiring harness using all factory sensors.
[/b]

This looks like the closest thing to common ground that I have seen in 25 pages between the two legitimate positions.

However I grow tired of this
I think I will go read about insurance :snow_cool:

[Banzai240]

Are you saying that you would like to outlaw all "replace" items in the current ruleset?
[/b]

After all the time I spent on the ITAC, and everything we got done, you&#39;d think that some of you could give me a little more credit than that... FOCUS ON THE BALL guys!

The word "replace" should have NEVER BEEN INCLUDED in the current ECU rule... Couple that with the mentality you guys have that when something is difficult to define, just give up trying and open it up... "Heck with it... just replace the whole thing..." REPLACING the ECU is NOT part of the INTENT of IT... IMPROVING on it is... People have gotten so lazy... all they want to do is bolt it on a go drive... Heck with understanding their car... the technology...

Had those words NEVER been put into the rule in the first place, this would be an entirely different discussion. Maybe not a discussion at all... You have all gotten comfortable with this allowance, and now want to push it further open "because it&#39;s already being done"... You might just as well have simply posted in Fastrack the following question:

"How many of you are in favour of HAVING to spend $1,000 more to field an IT car? It won&#39;t make you any more competitive, but will be necessary to maintain status-quo."

Opening this up will simply make EVERYONE have to spend more money to even build a BASELINE IT car...

The rules need to be more restictive, no less...

I&#39;ve said enough on this... The small subset of people here fighting to move IT to Production by opening up these rules toward the higher prep level end of things can keep hashing it out... When this comes out in Fastrack and the rest of the membership sees it... the majority of which do NOT post here, I&#39;m confortable that the right thing will be done...

[seckerich]

[

"How many of you are in favour of HAVING to spend $1,000 more to field an IT car? It won&#39;t make you any more competitive, but will be necessary to maintain status-quo."

And here is the big hole in your arguement in your own words. It won&#39;t make you more competitive? You will HAVE to spend $1000.00 more to keep up? If it it not more competitive then your whole arguement is bogus. Spend if you like--or not. Your words.

[dj10]

After all the time I spent on the ITAC, and everything we got done, you&#39;d think that some of you could give me a little more credit than that... FOCUS ON THE BALL guys!



So you are responsible for the current ecu rule as written!?!?


"How many of you are in favour of HAVING to spend $1,000 more to field an IT car? It won&#39;t make you any more competitive, but will be necessary to maintain status-quo."

Opening this up will simply make EVERYONE have to spend more money to even build a BASELINE IT car...


Were you not arguing that flashed ecu&#39;s will be as effective as EMS? If people have flashed ecu now and like them they won&#39;t have to change if they don&#39;t want to.


I&#39;m confortable that the right thing will be done... [/b]

Me too.

Improve (v) advance for the better, enhance, develop, advance

[Banzai240]

If it it not more competitive then your whole arguement is bogus. Spend if you like--or not. Your words.
[/b]

Really...??? BS.... if everyone follows the same rules, than all you are doing is maintaining staus-quo... Those with the means will have even more options available, and those who use the same tires all season will get by with a plug in chip, or some piggy back setup that&#39;s "guaranteed to make 20% more HP"...

I would even argue that the gap will get even bigger...

But you guys believe what you will... I know HISTORY doesn&#39;t mean anything, so why bother learning from it...

[bldn10]

"How many of you are in favour of HAVING to spend $1,000 more to field an IT car? It won&#39;t make you any more competitive, but will be necessary to maintain status-quo."

"And here is the big hole in your arguement in your own words. It won&#39;t make you more competitive? You will HAVE to spend $1000.00 more to keep up? If it it not more competitive then your whole arguement is bogus. Spend if you like--or not. Your words."

Steve, I think you misunderstood what Darin is saying, which I believe is exactly what I explained from my point of view a few posts back. The problem is w/ the meaning of "competitive." To me that means that you are able to run w/ a given set of other cars - it has nothing to do w/ how fast the bunch may be going. E.g. a "competitive" ITC car is not the same as a "competitive" ITS car. What we mean is that if everyone in the bunch you run w/ upgrades to whatever the new rule will allow, the whole bunch will still be pretty much running together as they did before spending the addition $. The relative "competitiveness" will not have changed. So why bother? On the other hand, if you don&#39;t upgrade you will no longer be "competitive" w/ that bunch. So you have to spend more $ just to keep up w/ the guys who you are perfectly content racing w/ now.

BTW, Steve, isn&#39;t Andy&#39;s latest proposal pretty much the one you made some time ago? And to which I expressed preference (if we have to open it up at all? That gives at least lip service to the characteristics inherent in the various cars in the classes.

[its66]

Really...??? BS.... if everyone follows the same rules, than all you are doing is maintaining staus-quo... Those with the means will have even more options available, and those who use the same tires all season will get by with a plug in chip, or some piggy back setup that&#39;s "guaranteed to make 20% more HP"...

I would even argue that the gap will get even bigger...


[/b]

Why would I want a rule that would widen the gap between the "have&#39;s and the have not&#39;s"???