Programmable ECUs

A special category of ECUs are those which are programmable. These units do not have a fixed behavior, but can be reprogrammed by the user.

Programmable ECUs are required where significant aftermarket modifications have been made to a vehicles engine. Examples include, adding or changing of turbocharger, adding or changing of intercooler, changing of exhaust system, conversion to run on alternative fuel. As a consequence of these changes, the old ECU may not provide appropriate control for the new configuration.

In these situations, a programmable ECU can be wired in. These can be programmed/mapped while the engine is running by connecting a laptop to it using a serial or USB cable.

For example the programmable ECU may control the amount of fuel to be injected into each cylinder. This varies depending on the engine's RPM and the position of the gas pedal (or the manifold air pressure). The engine tuner can adjust this by bringing up a spreadsheet-like page on the laptop where each cell represents an intersection between a specific RPM value and a gas pedal position (or the throttle position, as it is called). In this cell a number corresponding to the amount of fuel to be injected is entered.

By modifying these values while monitoring the exhausts using a wide band lambda probe to see if the engine runs rich or lean, the tuner can find the optimal amount of fuel to inject to the engine at every different combination of RPM and throttle position. This process is often carried out at a dynamometer, giving the tuner a controlled environment to work in.

Other parameters that are often mappable are:

* Ignition : Defines when the spark plug should fire for a cylinder

* Rev limit : Defines the max RPM that the engine is allowed to rev to. After this fuel and/or ignition is cut.

* Water temperature correction : Allows for additional fuel to be added when the engine is cold (choke).

* Transient fueling : Tells the ECU to add a specific amount of fuel when throttle is applied.

* Low fuel pressure modifier : Tells the ECU to increase the injector fire time to compensate for a loss of fuel pressure.

* Closed loop lambda : Lets the ECU monitor a permanently installed lambda probe and modify the fueling to achieve stoichiometric (ideal) combustion.

Some of the more advanced race ECUs include functionality such as launch control, limiting the power of the engine in first gear to avoid burnouts. Other examples of advanced functions are:

* Waste gate control : Sets up the behavior of a turbo waste gate, controlling boost.

* Banked injection : Sets up the behavior of double injectors per cylinder, used to get a finer fuel injection control and atomization over a wide RPM range.

* Variable cam timing : Tells the CPU how to control variable intake and exhaust cams.

* Gear control : Tells the ECU to cut ignition during (sequential gearbox) upshifts or blip the throttle during downshifts.

A race ECU is often equipped with a data logger recording all sensors for later analysis using special software in a PC. This can be useful to track down engine stalls, misfires or other undesired behaviors during a race by downloading the log data and looking for anomalies after the event. The data logger usually has a capacity between 0.5 and 16 Mbytes.

In order to communicate with the driver, a race ECU can often be connected to a "data stack", which is a simple dash board presenting the driver with the current RPM, speed and other basic engine data. These race stacks, which are almost always digital, talk to the ECU using one of several proprietary protocols running over RS232, CANbus or ethernet.