Question:
Can I put one of your ECUs on my road car?
Answer:
The standard management system on your road car not only controls the engine, but a mass of other accessories fitted to the car such as electric windows, central locking, lights, etc. The system is continually monitoring to see if the car in every aspect is performing correctly and if anything is picked up by the standard ECU that is not operating as it should, as a minimum it will turn an engine warning light on and normally put the engine into ‘limp’ mode. Finding all the information that the stock ECU requires is a massively complex job, taking many thousands of hours to decipher with possibility that the next time your car is serviced, Ford update software and maps completely changing everything you have already deciphered. Although there are companies out there that offer that option, the reason we don’t do anything like that on road based cars is that you can spend many of thousands of pounds, if not tens of thousands of pounds for something that only has a short life before the manufacturer stops producing it or change the design. This means that you have little if any chance in re-cooping your development costs, which has to be spread across the number of kits you sell.
All of our systems are now only motorsport based due to the complexity involved of interacting with the standard management systems. For motorsport we replace the standard management system completely then we can control every part of the system and not be hampered by what the evermore complex road based systems.
Category:
MBE Management Systems