Anyone into DIY ECU tuning?

[Saibot]

Im looking to start a potential venture in regards to ECU tuning. Maybe come out with a plug and play kit.

Wondering if anyone here on these forums has had experience with hacking into the ecu or anything simmilar.

[Tad_07]

Subaru ecu's are pretty awesome. You should look at openecu and romraiders if you haven't already.

[trackmagic]

I just checked out that open ECU forum. Pretty cool stuff. Does anybody know if there are typically some cool hidden options that can be accessed in the ECU (permanently turning off TC?)

[trackmagic]

One thing I would like to do is reprogram my "modes". my standard mode would basically be the sport mode (everything off). I would like a "rain mode" that I could turn on certain things (ABS and one of the TC computers, but probally not all).

That would be tight.


I'm not sure I would get too aggressive with tuning since I'm afraid to blow up my car.

[Spaceywilly]

Originally Posted by trackmagic

(permanently turning off TC?)

Are you secretly working for the insurance companies?

Anyways, I did a "DIY" tune on my WRX and it was pretty simple, but definitely not for everyone. Some of the cool things you can do are launch control and flat foot shifting (really only helpful for turbo cars) and switching off CEL codes for emissions. My car doesn't have traction control so I'm not sure if it has that ability.

[trackmagic]

I'm not. I'm sure you are joking, but I'm sure an insurance company could find out this information if they wanted to.

I just hate traction control and I don't like pushing buttons to turn it off when I get in my car. I normally don't decide I am going to do something that my TC will try and correct when I get in my car, but I always get annoyed when it does kick in. And no, I am not happy that it did kick in because I am not worried about loosing control in my 200HP car by spinning the rear wheels.

[trackmagic]

By the way, Its good to know it does sound like there are a few settings to play with. It gives me hope that we could do some customizing.

[AJ PwR]

This could be a Noob question, is the ECU of the BRZ made by Subaru ? Or Toyota ?

Open ECU Forums, are you referring to ECUFLASH ?

[Turbowned]

ECU is made by DENSO. (I'm not yelling, they just capitalize their name)

This is something interesting that Moto-P posted on Club4AG a while ago:

"Nikkei Japan articles releases details about the TOYOTA 86 "CAN-BUS - Bluetooth/USB systems being developed for user interfacing of data in 30+ parameters, including engine ECU data, Geo location data, yaw and g-force sensors, and chassis sensors. It will be open sourced for licensed and registered software developers and make it's way to smartphone applications for social interconnections, as well as more specific uses such as tuner development, black-box loggers, and even gaming devices interfacing such as GT5 for replay and simulations.

This is basically something I wanted to leak long ago, but have been keeping my mouth shut from our meetings with the Chief, and now I'd like to say that it has been in development for quite a while now, and that it will be a reality, and a reasonably ready state for consumer use.
At least for unregulated states and countries, and on raceways, we might see a future in more readily customizable ECU's as well as development with much greater information parameters from our cars, not just in the FT86 siblings but for many of the future sports cars? I would love to believe so...

What do you think about lifestyle in which we share ECU parameters on the web? and racing our virtual data of actual driving and putting them against each other on GT5? or even testing new engine and chassis parameters on such devices?? World is limitless when it comes to digital integration of cars to modern networked computing.

Perhaps this is one of the very necessary ingredient and by-product of future autonomous cars, but it's exciting to think that such technology will also make possible, more ways to enjoy sports cars and automobile customizations in a whole new way as well.

Lastly, President of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, also thinks so as well, and takes part, first hand, in development of devices like this, as well as classic art of tuning the cars the old fashioned way, by taking it for a blast on race tracks all over the world."

[Droopy]

the "modes" your talking are possibly, my older brother tunes pulling trucks for people and he said you can have multi-tunes on one ECU and with a flick of a switch change between the two. as for prementaly turning off TC, no unless you have a tune that is your standard one that does it. As for cars not sure if this applies

[trackmagic]

When I said mode I was referring to the standard and sport driving modes the car has (not sure what the actual names are)

[arghx7]

Originally Posted by Turbowned

ECU is made by DENSO. (I'm not yelling, they just capitalize their name)

This is something interesting that Moto-P posted on Club4AG a while ago:

"Nikkei Japan articles releases details about the TOYOTA 86 "CAN-BUS - Bluetooth/USB systems being developed for user interfacing of data in 30+ parameters, including engine ECU data, Geo location data, yaw and g-force sensors, and chassis sensors. It will be open sourced for licensed and registered software developers and make it's way to smartphone applications for social interconnections, as well as more specific uses such as tuner development, black-box loggers, and even gaming devices interfacing such as GT5 for replay and simulations.

This is basically something I wanted to leak long ago, but have been keeping my mouth shut from our meetings with the Chief, and now I'd like to say that it has been in development for quite a while now, and that it will be a reality, and a reasonably ready state for consumer use.
At least for unregulated states and countries, and on raceways, we might see a future in more readily customizable ECU's as well as development with much greater information parameters from our cars, not just in the FT86 siblings but for many of the future sports cars? I would love to believe so...

What do you think about lifestyle in which we share ECU parameters on the web? and racing our virtual data of actual driving and putting them against each other on GT5? or even testing new engine and chassis parameters on such devices?? World is limitless when it comes to digital integration of cars to modern networked computing.

Perhaps this is one of the very necessary ingredient and by-product of future autonomous cars, but it's exciting to think that such technology will also make possible, more ways to enjoy sports cars and automobile customizations in a whole new way as well.

Lastly, President of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, also thinks so as well, and takes part, first hand, in development of devices like this, as well as classic art of tuning the cars the old fashioned way, by taking it for a blast on race tracks all over the world."

I wouldn't expect them to actually release proprietary information. There are a large number of engine parameters reported through the OBD diagnostic protocol as required by law. SAE J1979 appendix contains them. Toyota might encourage the development of products which use certain ones, but that's it. They're not going to give out definitions of RAM addresses in the ECU; you can be sure that only a very small number of actual Toyota/Subaru employees have access to that.

As for CAN signals from other modules along the bus, well anyone with a universal tool can listen to them. You have to know what the data is actually saying though, otherwise it's just a bunch of hexadecimal nonsense. I don't see Toyota revealing anything that isn't somehow required to be available by law.

[SkullWorks]

the whole OPEN source ECU is interesting, and i actually believe it does mean that Toyota will release RAM addresses for (at least some) look up tables, there are companies that do this anyway so I can see toyota doing this to help ensure tuners atleast have good info that they weren't gorged for.


Now for the bad news, in the US (california for sure) you aren't allowed to have a programmable ECU, so for the US market (all have california code that i have seen) we will be getting locked ECU's, atleast as far as plug and tune via Toyota (or subaru) supported channels.

But don't worry I already have started on a soloution (full standalone) and I'm sure we will all benefit from whatever they layout for open source use.

[AVOturboworld]

All ECU's are re-flashable at the dealer, so I'm not sure what you mean by not being allowed to have a programmable ECU. If that was the case, all of the current Subaru ECU's are illegal from the factory.

Standalones are great for making the most from a heavily built engine, but are not fun at all to program. If you are not going too far, reflashing the stock ecu is a lot easier and maintains a lot of the daily driver stuff that keeps it all sane.

Regards,

Paul Hansen
www.avoturboworld.com
www.facebook.com/BRZSportsCarClub