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Engine management for white block swap

Test Poll

  • Total voters
    19
  • Poll closed .
What about ECU masters? Their emu black has knock input and is reasonably affordable. I don't see many people running it though...
 
pick your poison. link, maxxecu, ecu master, haltech, etc. it doesn't matter, they all do about the same thing for similar money and all have their own idiosyncrasies. pick something a local can help you with or just make a vibes based assessment.
 
Ne7RideR said:
What about ECU masters? Their emu black has knock input and is reasonably affordable. I don't see many people running it though...
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The classic also has 2 knock channels, but doesnt do drive by wire. It was the best priced ecu that had on board wideband and 2 knock channels.
 
AnthonyHardy2 said:
My vote is for Motronic if it'll work for you since I think it would take a lot of effort to tune Maxxecu or any other aftermarket system to work as well in all situations as stock Motronic does. Also unless you're spending $1500 on a MaxxEcu Race you won't have built in knock sensor support which seems like a pretty important failsafe to me on a daily driven car, especially if it might ever get driven by someone who will ignore bad noises and keep driving.

Motronic overall is pretty robust and will handle emissions related stuff being missing just fine and the sensors and wiring required for it to run well is overall quite similar to what you'd need on an aftermarket ECU anyway. Getting rid of the perpetual check engine light on Motronic is however quite a bit of extra work unless you have VAST delete the checks for stuff like the EVAP system.

As far as I can tell the Motronic VVT control VAST offers is open loop which won't work nearly as well as MaxxECU or stock 1999+ closed loop VVT control. Since the speed of the VVT adjuster is dependent on oil pressure and oil viscosity among other things it's really not possible to get precise cam control without some kind of sensor for feedback. With a turbo engine VVT control is much less important than on a NA engine but since the VVT cams have less duration than the non VVT ones, it's probably a good idea to plan to control the cam if you're using an engine with a VVT head.

For controlling the 960 auto trans you can probably use the stock 960 controller with Motronic or Maxxecu. The transmission controller expects a load signal, a torque limit request acknowledgment during shifting, and an analog throttle position from the ECU so as long as MaxxEcu can replicate those outputs it should work like stock. Using a 850 ECU automatic ECU with a 960 transmission computer should be as simple as connecting the correct wires between the computers. There's only 4 solenoids(two shift solenoids, a line pressure solenoid, and a lockup solenoid) in the transmission itself so basic control is simple but if you want it to work like a smooth stock automatic transmission it would take some work to tune any aftermarket controller to work as well as the stock one.
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Meh, not really. If you’ve the slightest experience with tuning it’s not that big of a deal. Further, there farther away from a stock setup, the harder me4.4 is going to be to deal with. Further, you are talking about nearly 30 year old Motronic wiring at this point and taking the whole harness apart to convert to RWD. I had a steerable tune into my urs6 within a day, messed with it here and there for a week, and then didn’t connect a laptop to it for nearly a year after that. That was on a car running 25 psi and getting 25mpg freeway on id1000s and a maxx race.
 
One major advantage I haven’t seen mentioned is that MaxxECU has a base tune available for the whiteblock 5 cylinders. Don’t think there’s another aftermarket option that can do that.
 
I have a MaxxECU for my 240 swap, but I'm also planning a 5cyl swap into a non-Volvo application. I'm going to use the M4.4 for that.
I've been mucking about with the M4.4 stuff in our 850s for a few years now in the DIY format, so I'm comfortable enough to make it go.
( I have some of VAST's DIY bins for the COP, etc and did the DIY route for setting things up from the old VS stuff)
 
Chuck W said:
I have a MaxxECU for my 240 swap, but I'm also planning a 5cyl swap into a non-Volvo application. I'm going to use the M4.4 for that.
I've been mucking about with the M4.4 stuff in our 850s for a few years now in the DIY format, so I'm comfortable enough to make it go.
( I have some of VAST's DIY bins for the COP, etc and did the DIY route for setting things up from the old VS stuff)
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How do you like the maxxecu in your 240?
 
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