standalone ecu for i5?

[DamoM]

That might be it, motronic is just to complicated to get involved in, if you want to do something yourself, unless of course you want to dedicate allot of time and money. That may be why people chose a more accessible solution, with a more open source knowledge. A pity really..

Agree 100%

[Nik0las]

yes I'm talking crap but I'm talking from user point of view and I'm not trying advertise any product but Motronic is not the only one and the BEST.

And of course you will shoot down any opposite opinion after all people should pay you the plane tickets to go and tune their cars

[Nik0las]

Originally Posted by Audiboys4
That might be it, motronic is just to complicated to get involved in, if you want to do something yourself, unless of course you want to dedicate allot of time and money. That may be why people chose a more accessible solution, with a more open source knowledge. A pity really..

Agree 100%
__________________

me too

[A80Avant]

May I just say that if I knew how to tune the motronic, invest time for equipment other than just an old laptop which I already have, and was able to use a newer IAT sensor, the newest bosch wideband which is ultra fast, be able to switch from.MAF to speed density and finally had a simpler boost strategy or gear depended boost, I'd be happy to never swap motronic for anything else.

Reason sometimes (if not most!) we switch to standalones are the tuners and not the hardware.

To me knock sensing is such a big myth that in my mind just doesn't make or brake my choice. I have been told that a lot WRC cars run without them as they are chaotic to get right which is why bosch invested so much time into it and still even on motronic they don't always provide a guarentee that they will do the job. I have read just as many engine failures on stock as in aftermarket engines. Most of the times its the bad tune that will kill the engine no matter how.many safety features you have.

I think this thread is now gone overboard.
My sense is: standalone if you want to get your hands dirty. PRJ if you want the ultimate motronic experience.

But if you are going to be changing bits on the car ever so often, that Is another good reason to learn how to tune yourself.

[prj]

Reason sometimes (if not most!) we switch to standalones are the tuners and not the hardware.

Agreed

To me knock sensing is such a big myth that in my mind just doesn't make or brake my choice. I have been told that a lot WRC cars run without them as they are chaotic to get right which is why bosch invested so much time into it and still even on motronic they don't always provide a guarentee that they will do the job. I have read just as many engine failures on stock as in aftermarket engines. Most of the times its the bad tune that will kill the engine no matter how.many safety features you have.

Knock control is not the ticket to heaven, but it does work very well on the OE ECU, IF it is tuned right.
But if you make a horrible tune you can blow up any engine no matter what knock control you have.
Stock per-cylinder control has a limit of 7.5 deg per cylinder by default (it's of course freely adjustable), and it's easy to exceed that with a careless tune that does not do enough in difficult conditions.

[Jonnybravo]

My personal opinion is choose a ecu based on who you are going to use to map it.

My general issue with the Motronic is that it's components ( although ahead of their time ) are now old, the loom connecting the ecu to the engine is old and I've seen a fair few which for their age are great but were all showing signs of damage somewhere.

Having someone like Dimitri who is capable of doing such a fine job with the oe system is all fine and well but it's not like you can turn on your own laptop and fire a different map or parameter onto the ecu whenever you wish.

Although I will sing Link ecus praises they have again just gone up in price, my "mapper" is now using the Syvecs ecus which although are expensive offer so much more than the Link ever would, it's quite impressive just how much it offers but I guess for the price you would expect it.

[prj]

My general issue with the Motronic is that it's components ( although ahead of their time ) are now old, the loom connecting the ecu to the engine is old and I've seen a fair few which for their age are great but were all showing signs of damage somewhere.

If you use a P&P standalone system, you get exact the same problem with the loom.
Components inside the ECU will work fine for 100 years if need be, but if someone puts water in the ECU or handles it wrong when opening it, it's a different story.
It's built very reliably, and you can short and reverse polarity on pretty much any input, and it will not be irreversibly damaged. More that can be said for most standalones.

It's NLA as of 2010 though, so too bad. But there are a lot of other things that are NLA as well for these cars.
My only point is that the fact that your standalone has "32" or "64" or 3409834905930 bits does not make it better, when it's not using even 1% of it's processing power.
It's like having a game console vs PC, where the game console can provide comparable graphics with a lot worse hardware, because it's not trying to do a million different things at the same time, and is purpose built for something. With micro controllers that are not that powerful from a throughput sense, this difference is a thousand more times pronounced.

Somehow you don't see a lot of people putting standalones on newer cars with ME7, MED9... never mind Diesel.
But then there is a lot more information about those ECU's in the open as well.

[Jonnybravo]

I wouldn't advise anyone to fit a standalone on a old loom, it is ofcourse their choice but it is a backwards step in making sure things are reliable

[A80Avant]

the way i see it, if the problem is in the loom, it will cause problems with either motronic or standalone. Again, let not the ECU get the blame for that