mapping ecu
 

Why is it that the 97/98 ecu is unmappable or more to the point why has no one done a chip for it?
I know you can now buy aftermarket ECUs but before these were around,why was this model so un touched.
There must be a market for a cheaper alternative.
I looked into a apexi ECU (new) plus remap plus usual mods it all came to about £1200-£1500,then add that cost, to cars(of these years) that are struggleing to get £2000,I would have thought everybody would have been looking into it.

I'm pretty sure Race Dynamics do a chip for it mate, might b worth checking their website :ok:

I would say ESL daughter Boad(which support Mafless) price is around £550 will be one option or you can buy used Apexi Power FC or or go Mafless route via Simtek,Motec,ESL


Jura

the 97/98 ECU was only around for 2 years and the daughter board that was used to map these back in around 2000/2001 was not cost effective to produce or at least continue to produce for a market that was only a 2 year peiod.

It was also on the verge of ECUTEK where mapping technology took a huge leap forward. The old 97/98 ECU daughterboard/chip was a tweak and try method requiring the board to be removed and reprogrammed each time.

Mappers are now used to doing everything from a laptop and not interested in the time/effort required to remap the older ECU.

The 1993-1996 ECU was different as the rally regs at the time stated the ECU could not be replaced, hence a spare location was provided on the board for easy changes.

This is what I played with for a number of years (probably supplied about 500) and this was further developed by ESL for live mapping via a laptop. they basically relaced the reprogrammable EPROM with a more modern Flash device and supporting software. The ESL is a great modification as it retains all of the safety features of the stock ECU which no other aftermarket ECU for that year can provide.

They were/are developing a 97/98 version but is has taken a long time (around 3 years) and IIRC somethingto do with a 'scrambler chip' that the daughter board has to use to cope with the imobiliser.

You mention the cars are loosing value so why doesn't someone develop something. Well the time and effort required to develop soemthing has to be recouped. This would not be possible on a car ECU that onlyspanned 2 years especially if the cars are getting older, less valuable and being scrapped insome cases.

Your best bet is a 2nd Hand Apexi but the 97/98 car also suffers from small injectors and small turbo, so they would also need upgrading to get the benefit out of any ECU upgrade, be it cheap or expensive.

Or fit a manual or electronic boost controller and get someone to set it to around 1.2bar and check the fuelling and ignition. Anything above 1.2bar will trigger the fuel-cut and also require the larger injectors/turbo as decribed above.

and i suspose that you cant put a different ECU in(MY96 or MY00)?
would it take a lot to graft one in ?

More likely to be possible to graft a MY00 in then a 1996, as alot of the electronics are shared/similar but the MAF and injectors would need an immediate rescale or an MY00 MAF and Injectors wired in.

Off the top of my head I can't think of anything else on the control side that differs between MY97 and MY00.

If you need ECU pinouts give me a shout......

Its all soundimg like alot of work ,might just be easier to sell mine and buy a mappable model or one that has already been done .........................................or i could start saving and buy yours

Sounds like a good plan.......how fast can you save ;)

not that fast .............do you do weekly payments with 0% interest

Of course...spread over 2 weeks.

from info i have had recently ESL are hoping to release their stuff in the next few months.........

Interesting, I'll believe it when I see it........shame it wasn't released when there were a few more customers.

Any idea on price as TBH the sales of the 1993-1996 were low. I think I only fitted 3 in 2 years when I was trading as PolarPerformance.
This was probably mainly due to cost (although it was/is competing against the ECU chip upgrade prices, which have now dropped to £40 from unlnown Ebay sources running grey market remanufactured chips/devices).

Having a 98 sti myself i can relate to this.

Your best bet as others have said is a used apexi power fc + commander

you can pick these up for arround 400 /450 and it will sell again for the same money if you ever decide to sell up. ,

there are no problems on mine running at a little over 300bhp + 1.4bar (vf24) , standard other than a decat straight through + pannel filter

+ the commander is a nice point of refrence for most stuff including a knock sensor display wich is priceless when tunning your impreza + it looks neat on your dash :doubleup:

http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/3791/photo0332t.jpg

ps the above is mapped useing Open source on a laptop ofc