Since the age of about 6 or 7 I’d say, I’ve had glasses almost permanently attached to my face. The first thing I do in the morning is reach over and put them on, and the last thing I do at night before falling asleep is take them off. The only time I don’t wear [...]
Posts Tagged ‘engine management’
Installing ECMLink for early Evos
Posted By Dave on August 8th, 2009
So you’ve heard about ECMLink for the early Evos and really want to try it out? Well one of the things to note with the early Evo version is that installation is slightly different from what you might initially expect. Not necessarily more difficult but just with an added step than normal.
The package will come with a EPROM chip that goes into your ECU, but you will need to do 2 small modifications to your existing ECU if it’s completely stock. The first one will be to remove the existing main chip on the ECU and install a socket in its place. If you have modified the ECU with chips before then it will most likely already be fitted with a socket, but if the ECU is completely stock then the modification will need carrying out. Anyone with electrical knowledge, steady hands and a soldering iron should be able to carry this out, but if you have any doubts then take it to a professional to have modified. The chip you need to remove will be at the bottom right if you open up the ECU and position it so that the connector is at the top. Below you can see the ECMLink chip installed in my ECU and the socket socket that it’s installed in.
Now if you look to the left of the chip on the image above you’ll see a “J1″ and “J2″ with a bit of makeshift soldering work. That is the second modification that is required for running ECMLink on early Evos. The ECU is normally made to handle 32k chips, but the amount of information held on the ECMLink system means that this is not enough, and a 64k chip is needed. From here there is good news and bad news. The good news is that Mitsubishi decided to make it possible to switch from 32k chip support to 64k chip support with the changing of a single jumper. The bad news is that they decided to solder the jumper to the board!
Once again, someone with steady hands and a soldering iron or 2 should be able to move this jumper with almost no problems. Even without flux, my buddy managed to move this jumper in about 5-10 minutes. You can a close-up of the switched jumper position below.
Once that jumper is switched you’re ready to drop the ECMlink chip in and perform final checks before firing the engine up into life. More information about this modification is given here on the ECMLink Wiki. I’ll be reporting much more on my experiences using ECMLink in the very near future so stay tuned and let me know if you have any questions about the setup.
Posted in Cars
DSMLink/ECMLink for Early Evos
Posted By Dave on August 5th, 2009
Life has been crazily hectic over the past few weeks so I sincerely apologize for the lack of updates. Ending one job, starting another and a few other personal bits going on so I haven’t had the time and energy to sit down and write on here, despite having plenty to talk about. But I have a few minutes now and an update that some of you might have an interest in.
A few weeks ago I was contacted by a Mr Thomas Dorris of ECMTuning. ECMTuning is a company well known in the US within the DSM community. Their flagship product DSMLink (now ECMLink) is THE tuning solution for 1G and 2G DSMs if you don’t want to go all out on a standalone engine management system. The system uses the stock ECU and sensors, but replaces the main ECU chip with one of its own, and allows you to manipulate almost every part engine management, whether you’re just using the car as a daily driver, or running it into low 10s passes for the 1/4 mile and beyond, this syetm can handle it.
Anyway, as one of the few members on the DSM Forums site who actually owns an early Evo rather than a DSM, I had attracted his attention. This was in addition to the fact that I’d sent him an early Evo ECU through a friend a while ago for them to do testing on. He had read a few of my tuning threads and was enquiring as to whether I would be interested in beta testing the latest version of ECMLink for them, which would be the first version to support the early Evos. I didn’t need asking twice. I’d looked a few times before at DSMLink and had wished it was available for my Evo so I could compare it to the Ostrich chip emulator and Tunerpro RT software combination that I currently use. Now I had the chance to be involved in the testing of a full engine management and logging system.
I replied, giving my address here in Japan as well as a few details about my car and barely a day later a package was sent out to me in the mail. In future updates I’m going to explain more about ECMLink, its main features and how I have gone on with installation and testing. My car hasn’t blown up (yet) so I can report that early testing is going pretty well, and it’s actually fun for me learning a new system and having a hand in its development and, no pun intended, evolution. A new entry into the market for early Evo engine management is definitely a welcome sight though, and especially one with such a strong community support base behind it.
Finally, I want to note that even though I will be involved in the testing of this product and will be reporting back on it here, I’m going to call things as I see them. If I find a feature that’s great then I’ll go on about it; similarly, if there’s something I really don’t like about the software or hardware then it will get mentioned here in the interests of fairness and equality. Want to try and give people as unbiased a view on this setup as possible.
Posted in Cars
