How to tune an ECU

Discussion in 'Other Vehicles' started by MCS02, Nov 16, 2021.

  1. MCS02

    MCS02 Moderator
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    Jul 31, 2009
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    Good Morning!

    The short question…. I would like to learn how to do my own tune and need someone to point me in the right direction.

    The longer story. I have had my Exige a year now. It has a Toyota 2ZZ motor the same one in the MR2 and Celica GT among other cars. In 2006, the year of my car, they were not supercharged. 2007 was the first year of the supercharged Exige. They came with a MP62 SC. The 2ZZ motor is I believe 11:1 before charging so they run really low boost, around 9 psi.

    THE PROBLEM
    The car has lots of mods done by two owners. Owner one put a SC kit on it with the MP62 SC. Owner two had to get a new motor because the first motor dropped a valve. They are known to do this, it happened at 15k miles now the car has about 36k. Anyway he got a new Toyota short block and an up graded head from Monkey Wrench Racing. He also upgraded the SC to a TVS900. Along with other mods. He had some shop do the work and I believe they may have done a tune on it also. There in lays the problem.
    The VF SC kits had bad tunes on them to start with and I don’t know if it was retuned or not.

    The one track day I have done I melted the #1 plug and blew out the CAT and muffler. I scoped the cylinder and did a compression test all was good, that was a year ago. So I put a de-cat pipe on it and added a wide ban O2 sensor and gage to see if it is running lean. At WOT, open loop it is about 11.5, cruising, closed loop it’s 14.6. That is not lean. The problem is I keep getting a code for a #1 misfire, some times on #2 also. You can not tell it is misfiring, it runs like a scalded dog! Yes I have swapped the #1 and #2 coils and it did not move. A friend suggested it may be a knock. I’m not sure but I believe it may be happening on start up.
    Anyway one of the Lotus tuners BOE Fabrication, sales a knock box they say if you tune it’s a must because these motors are easy to cause to knock. So now I need to check my timing. I can do this with my OBDII reader but I don’t know what it should be.

    I am thinking about getting a stand alone ECU.

    https://www.monkeywrenchracing.com/product/ecu-master-plug-n-play-standalone-ecu-lotus-elise-exige-2-eleven-2006-12/

    it’s an ECU Master Black, the same one for the R53. I could send it to a tuner and have them do a caned tune but it’s a long wait and after screwing around with this problem I think I would rather learn to do my own tunes. This way I know what is going on with my car.

    I think @oldbrokenwind does his own tunes, I don’t know of anyone els.

    if any could help I would appreciate it.
     
  2. 00Mini

    00Mini Well-Known Member

    Feb 24, 2013
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    Tuning would be so far out of my knowledge and comfort zone that I cringe even thinking about it. I would think a phone call to the Monkey Wrench Racing folks would be in order and to see what they could provide in the way of a “canned tune” for your setup and and how helpful they would be should you decide to go ahead and attempt tuning yourself. Good luck with noble quest.
     
  3. MCS02

    MCS02 Moderator
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    BOE is the go to tuner but they have a big back log and people have trouble getting them to answer emails. I have called them several times with no call back. MWR I dont believe does tunes. What I would like is a tune done on a dyno.
     

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