Hello, this might sound strange but I give you all fair warning. One of my friend's is constructing an engine from scratch and he was wondering if I could construct a program so that his engine could run to his specifications. My questions are: Is it hard to make a program for a car's computer? Is the interface as simple as connecting, say a computer's parallel port, to the car's programming port? Are there any applications out there written to facilitate the transfer of code from the programmer's computer to the car's computer? What language would is a car's program written in? What kind of processor does a car's computer run on? I've done some research before and all I could find are "speed chips" and esoteric snippets but nothing concrete. I know the dangers of wrong values and what could happen but safety measures will be taken. Thank you.
you want to build an ECU? Its not an easy thing to just make you have to know what you are designing it for. Most automotive chips are things like the 68k coldfire series by motorola now freescale. Depending on what you want you mean by "specifications" it would require sensors on the cam shaft and on the intake and exhaust of the car atleast but realy I need a better idea of what you are trying to do. on the programming side these things arent PCs they are custom built units and so you can transfter the data to them in anyway you want.
Thanks for the quick reply. This is some pre-research so that I would at least have a somewhat flaky idea of what my friend is asking. When he comes around again, I will ask him for some specifics. I've programmed for the M68K processor before so that should help a little. I doubt I would be able to do much programming unless the data is organized to the point where it is just change a few of the right values to obtain the desired results. I would never go into programming the car's computer from scratch.
An OBD I ecu from a 5.0 'Stang can be tuned easily with a pc if you can find the cable and software. I'm into Mopar's myself so I couldn't tell you where to find it. I do know the software exists though.
You can buy kits to make your own programable ECU from people called megasquirt here in the UK. They come with all the apropriate software, all you have to do is plug them in a laptop and connect then up to the engines verious sensors and stuff. Theres also alot of people out there sellign programmable ECUs prebuilt. Youve got to be a pretty good programmer to make the software yourself
Thank you all for the links. I have a starting point though I doubt I will be able to get to the end. I will have to see.
I was thinking cheapest would be best if you just want to experiment with it. A junkyard would have most of what you need. OBD1 GM and Ford ecu's are the easiest to tune and find. You could probably give the junkyard $50 and leave with a decent wiring harness, sensors, and ecu. I've seen a few VW engined dune buggies with turbos and early GM efi or tbi ecu's. The program is stored on a chip, though. These guy's tuned the voltage going to and from the sensors...not the program on the chip.
I was thinking you were talking about something like a FAST or Accel DFI system...now I see Megasquirt isn't a $2500 standalone efi computer.. Forget the junkyard. (well...except for the injectors, fuel rails, pump, sensors)
