Having battled with my ye'olde Apexi PFC on my turbo 1zz car I was at a crossroads. What I needed was a proper ecu that runs speed density with VE based tuning. The Apexi PFC has been good to get off the ground but its pretty terrible to tune and it has no closed loop wideband control and lots of other mission critical features that make a half modern ECU functional.
I already run an ECUMaster EMU Black on my other car, and I'm very familiar with all the standalones on the market. Something that has always bothered me is why is there no cost effective ECU on the market for the zzw30 - the MX5 guys are all over their low cost ecus, albeit it is simpler on an MX5 to implement due to Toyota has "Bean MPX" data that makes the cluster work on the MR2, thus I made the Bean Banger to make the ECUMaster work on my MR2 without all the silly piggy back dual ECU stuff.
Now I was introduced to an other open source ECU project by a fellow MR2 1zz turbo owner who is running speeduino - he suggested I looked into RusEFi who do an ecu board called UAEfi:-
(https://i.ibb.co/d0X8dx5m/uaefi-a-top.png) (https://ibb.co/d0X8dx5m)
https://wiki.rusefi.com/uaEFI/ (https://wiki.rusefi.com/uaEFI/)
So about easter this year I got into RusEfi, and make a very terrible prototype plug and play pcb that fits inside the MR2 ecu case, after some faffing about I am running that on my car as a daily driver and it works really really well, and its brilliant to tune.
There has been quite a bit of interest in this project, and its been tested to be very robust and reliable.... and it also integrates with the uaDash project which there is a bit about here:-
Now this is just a post to say there is a proper PCB in development now, another MR2 owner in the Netherlands has stepped forward who is a properly skilled PCB and electronics design engineer. I've given him all the stuff I've figured out, and he is working on making it a proper job!
So in a few months time there will be an ECU that will allow people to run either MAF or MAP, for their Throttle Bodies, Turbos, Superchargers etc etc and it will literally just plug in to the Mk3 MR2 and work. It supports 1zz and 2zz, and it has some clever features that makes wiring in lift solenoids, wideband, CAN, analogue inputs etc all very accessible.
Last weekend I have reverse engineered all the Aircon functionality, so it will support the factory aircon straight out the box.
To get one of these ECU's it should be about £350 roughly speaking, which should be a game changer, and there will be some base maps that support boosted 1zz, NA 2zz, Boosted 2zz and whatever else that grows with it.
Also this is not a commercial operation, there is no business here, this is an open source project that will be documented on Github which you can build yourself, but when I get PCB's made etc I will get 50 done in one hit as that is sensible and cost effective. This is a self tune system for people, there is no commercial support etc :) , this is not for profit, its for the love of MR2's! And the dream of there being more turbo cars out there >:D ;D
Is there anyone here who in interested in the project?
interested in the project? - Yes, in so far as I find it fascinating what you can do and have already done. Bravo!
But I would not be looking to buy and replace the oem tte kit, even if it came with the option of more ponies.
But I fully support the intent behind the project.
Very cool. The MR2 community needs this. 8)
I am also a TTE turbo owner, and I would love to have a more modern ECU with new and modern capabilities.