To select the ECM

[Brokenrider]

Hi guys.
There are some ECM for my car. for ex PE, Motec, Haltech. But allmost teams don't use the Haltech. What is reason?
www.haltech.com

JAEHYUN MO
KOokmin RAcing
Kookmin university.

[Brokenrider]

Hi guys.
There are some ECM for my car. for ex PE, Motec, Haltech. But allmost teams don't use the Haltech. What is reason?
www.haltech.com

JAEHYUN MO
KOokmin RAcing
Kookmin university.

[jrickert]

We have used Haltech in the past. Its pretty simple. Hardest part is getting all your settings right. Ignitor and trigger settings are critical. The haltech ecus use external ignitors and if you use the wrong ignitors or configure them incorrectly you will fry them.

[wweissin]

Other ECUs to mention and look at are Vipec http://www.vi-pec.com/. The V44 is a very good ecu for the price (~$1500 USD). 5d fuel tables, Flat shifting, antilag, launch control and individual cyl knock control.

Then there is what I consider to to be one of the best ECUs for our series, the Cosworth/Pectel SQ6. It is one of the most flexible ECUs on the market with plently of advanced features which include restrictor based boost control, launch control, gear based traction control, 12 fully configurable analog inputs, 10 digital inputs, 12 injector outputs,and 8 ignition outputs. All unused injector and ignition outputs as well as digital inputs can be used as analog inputs. It also has standard 1MB of logging at rates of up to 2Kh. This makes it a great deal if you want to log you suspension as well as all of you other engine functions.

[Kirby]

I've used my fair share:

"Dragonfire"
Wolf 3D v4 and Wolf V500
GEMS
and Motec

Gotta say, you pay for it but the Motec is a good unit. They have some new models coming out this year as well.

[JeffreyH]

While I'd love the opportunity to use a Cosworth (aka Pi) ECU, I really don't think that's feasible in FSAE without direct support from them.

[wweissin]

What do you consider direct support? Are you talking about tech support or purchasing support?

[JeffreyH]

Purchasing - that's a pretty damn expensive ECU. I don't doubt it's worth that, I'm impressed to see an FPGA being used and the feature set is pretty amazing (so many configurable inputs!), but I know we couldn't really come up with the purchase price for one of them, let alone a pair if we want to continue having a runnable car and an engine on the dyno at the same time.

But hey, I can dream right?

[wweissin]

In all reality depending on you set up now how much more is it? Add to the cost of your ECU a logging dash and your very close if not over the cost of a SQ6. And you wouldn't necessarily need 2 ECUs since the SQ6 has for user selectable fuel and ignition maps. So unless the car and engine dyno are running at the same time it would be a non issue.

[JeffreyH]

It's not a problem of maps, that's easy to change anyway. It's more the problem of "oh crap we can't run the car today, the engine is running on the dyno". Or "Bah, we can't run up our second engine for testing as the other one is at the other campus with the ECU being used". Or trying to run multiple cars when doing driver training.

I agree that a logging dash would bump the cost up, especially with feature upgrades (eg Motecs). However running an EDL3 datalogger (or equivalent) with a separate ECU is better, as you get many more analogue inputs, way more logging memory, etc. The SQ6 alone would not be sufficient for what we run - we use our EDL2 pretty heavily with every analogue input and many other ones used.

As I said, I'd like to run an SQ6 but I'd be surprised if many FSAE teams had the budget for one. If Cosworth offered a FSAE discount it might be viable however - any ideas if they do?