360/Strad ECU failure

I thought my experience with ECU failure on my Stradale may be of interest to fellow owners who may find themselves in the same position.

Now that these cars are approaching 20 years old there seems to be an increasing problem with ECU failure across the model range. In my case the tell-tale symptom was a clicking throttle body, with the ignition switches on...and a car that wouldn’t start.

For owners who don’t know, there are 2 ECUs on the 360, the right is the master and is imprinted with the immobiliser data specific to the car and the left is the slave, which is clear of this data. If your right throttle body is clicking, it’s the left ECU that has failed and vice versa. A left hand ECU can be fitted to either side of another 360, but a right hand ECU can only be fitted to the left side of another car; it will work even if it carries the immobiliser imprint of another vehicle.

The fact that ECUs can be swapped between cars is potentially a serious problem because some Independent Specialists are doing this as a cheaper fix than paying Ferrari over £3000 for a new pair, matched to the specific vehicle.

This was the solution offered to me and I know of 2 other independents who are doing the same thing; they are all factory trained, but crucially, not trained in Bosch ECU operation.

Just because your car will run with a second hand ECU doesn’t mean it is fixed. There are safeguards further down the line that act to balance fuel flow, oxygen levels, etc. But if these safeguards fail you’re potentially looking at a catastrophic engine failure. This was the position I’d inadvertently placed myself in, through lack of knowledge on both my part and that of my Specialist.
Then help arrived...in the shape of 360trev !
As I’m sure anyone reading this knows, he has taken a forensic approach to understanding the operation of these cars and took an hour and a half out of his day to telephone me and explain ECU operation and exactly why there was a problem with running unmatched ECUs.
My ECUs were duly removed and posted off to Trev, who took the data from my original ECU and flashed it on to the replacement. They were posted to him on Tuesday afternoon and arrived back on Thursday morning, now perfectly matched and refitted to the car.

I should like to take this opportunity to offer 360trev a very big public thank you for the time he took to sort out this problem for me.

I hope my experience is of some value to fellow owners and, for what it’s worth, my advice would be, please don’t allow a second hand ECU to be fitted to your car without getting it re-flashed with maps specific to your car. I can certainly recommend someone who can sort it out for you...

Cheers all.

 

Thanks Guy for the kind words. I was more than happy to help out a fellow community member and owner when everyone else has 'given up' or wants to charge many thousands to repair.

The Danger of fitted Used ECU's
Some very valid points here for people to take note of.

I'm seeing more and more 'impossible' to diagnose/fix issues where cars are bouncing between official dealerships and independent specialists alike with 'strange' issues like misfires on startup, poor performance and leaning out or enrichment on only one bank despite everything else being swapped or replaced.

The trick of elimination by swapping over coil packs, injectors, plugs, air flow meters and throttle bodies from one bank to another only gets you so far (a costly exercise even in time) only for the problem to not being ever fixed or resolved and the culprit very often is a used ecu fitted with the wrong software installed!

Actually Ferrari main dealers won't 'officially' flash ecu's (it was Bosch who did this on their behalf). In fact Ferrari won't even sell you a single ecu, you have to buy them in pairs for this very reason (not just to make money [which just happens to happen as a convenient by product of the policy!) but to prevent completely different revisions of software which act in different ways ever occurring.

The issue is indeed that the ecu's are not matched. If a used (unpaired) Ignition ECU has been fitted onto a car which isn't the same version as the car was originally destined to be fitted with you get start to get into a whole world of mess/pain/heartache. In the US alone I have traced that Bosch literally every single model year did multiple software revisions so the chances of getting a matched pair are almost like doing the lottery. I.e. not good! Consequences can be dire in the long term with potential huge bills for engine rebuilds if just left. It simply isn't worth taking the risk.

Thankfully there are low cost alternatives to paying for brand new ecu's from Ferrari (in USA its over $6,000 ) for a pair on some Ferrari parts website). They can be re-flashed for a tiny fraction of this. Also when one fails its VERY very rare (in fact I have NEVER seen it happen) where both fail at the same time. Normally one dies first so majority of the time (even if you haven't previously and prudently backed up your firmware) to take a backup copy from the working ECU and clone it onto a used one so you get a perfect match (as it was designed to operate).

Anyway I'm putting together an inexensive package for everyone to be able to do this themselves (and keep a backup of their original software and pairing information. In fact its even possible to virginize a previously paired ecu too so that will be possible as it matures).. Swiss Army Knife, the consumer edition (non techy version) will be a handheld device and super easy to use... Watch this space!

In the meantime if you are forced to swap an ECU contact me for advice. After reverse engineering the code for months there are probably just a few people in the world now who know more about the Ferrari 360 software (and soon F430) and ecu's than me and most of them work for Bosch.

Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Where would one be able to purchase them?

 

Not yet finished development but coming soon...

 

Looking forward to this, particularly the F430 version.

 

And here lies the problem with modern cars. I have a 1956 190SL and it has and will run forever, no electronics anything! My 1991 Twin-Turbo 300ZX had an ECU failure; a capacitor blew. Finding parts for a TT is difficult. I was able to source an ECU and bought 2 additional ones for backup. Long term the degradation of the components will result in even these parts failing. At some point the ECU on my 2006 F430 will have issues and I'm not looking forward to that.

 

hey, fellow z32er. buying a 300zx ecu is a breeze, there are literally a lot of them. pm me and i'd give u some sources.

 

Making good progress on the F430 front and after Christmas home to have caught it up to the same level as the 360 version so parity...

 

I'd love to (time permitting) create a virtualized ME7 ECU running within an FPGA with exact cycle timing so it would be 100% accurate then I could produce an endless supply of much cheaper ECUs which would be a direct replacement. It's a lot of work to do this and essentially how many older home computers have now been "recreated". One of the many challenge will end up being to source the original ECU connectors themselves... Or have them remanufactured. Since the FPGA code is portable it could end up being maintained for as long as their exists cars, and all without having to involve Bosch at all...

 

360trev I have the clicking throttle body problem on a 2002 360. I see you can help. Can you please tell me what I need to do?

 

i ha e same issue now

 

I stumbled across this video of a bosch abs ecu rebuild. They bring it down to the bare metal and build it back up. I would assume given this ability that they would be able to rebuild an ignition ecu.

 

Can you send me your contact details please ,I have a 360 that needs some ecu replacement, my email is [email protected]
Kindest Regards Joe

 

A year or so ago, my right ECU died. Dealer recommended replacing the left side, too. I was quoted $10,000 for a new pair (to be ordered from the factory).
Decided to try this place in Florida:
https://www.ecudoctors.com/
They charged $1100 for the repair and my car has been fine since (fingers crossed).

 

Ecu doctors appear not to even know the difference between "c.m" and "c.e." on the sticky labels of a Ferrari ecu! I would hardly call them experts that they project themselves to be!

FYI.. M stands for manual BTW and e for electronic amt.

A while back ago they did a video where they used a commercially available tool called IoTerminal to read and write famous YouTuber Samcracs ecus. They then charged Samcrac for a new ecu when all they needed to do was just reflash one of his ecus with his original software!

The back story to this is that in the past before Sam got his green 360 someone had obviously replaced a failed ecu on his car with the one from a wrong ( different incompatible firmware) used car and so he was getting CELs because one was running in gated and another in F1! Doh.. So actually No ecus needed replacing at all, just a reflash so that they both ran the same software. They claimed some illegitimate reason despite inadvertently showing the labels on the video.

I've spent years reverse engineering the software in 360 ecus now so there isn't much I don't know about them, I think there are very few people outside of Bosch engineering team who know more.

My advice is don't believe everything you read or see. These 360 ecus are pretty tough to repair due to being designed to be "throw away". They are manufactured on die substrate and have a gooey gel over the top of the components. As they get harder to find obviously some will get repaired but the most common fault which is the ticking throttle body failure is actually due to a failure in the H bridge Ic circuit which powers the DC motors for the throttle control using pwm modulation under the microcontrollers direction. In the future I could fix this but not by messing around repairing the ecu circuitry, I would patch the software inside the ecu to send the Throttle data over CAN instead and use a small external box to manage the control of the TBs). I just haven't done this yet as the work required is a lot and until the supply of used ecus dries up I didn't feel the pressing need to do it but I probably will do it in the future.

Most problems are much easier to fix reliably by swapping the ecus so the majority of used ecus have now dried up on the used marketplace. Good luck finding any more used 360 ecus inexpensively. I seriously doubt you'll get the same used ecus under $1000 now.. If you find one buy it!

Trev

Sent from my VOG-L29 using Tapatalk

 

It's very hard to reliability repair die substrate faults. I am working on a relocation kit to put ecus outside of the hash engine environment within the cabin which is exactly what Ferrari did in the end on the F430. In the case of ticking throttle bodies the fault is with the h bridge circuitry power which is a custom chip that bosch produced themselves. It just powers the DC motors of the throttle bodies, when it fails it cannot power them.

The smart way to repair this isn't to risk touching the hardware at all, it's to upgrade the software to use CAN control of the throttle bodies and then use an external box to listen for the can signals and act on them accordingly. I will do such an upgrade once we run out of used and new ecus which is rapidly becoming the case..

If anyone wants ecu repair reach out to Aldous at AV Engineering. Please don't pm me I simply don't have the bandwidth to respond to all the questions and requests I get daily.

Thanks

Trevor

Sent from my VOG-L29 using Tapatalk

 

Hi 360trev. I’m in Australia and have a 360 spider 6 speed manual. I’m having the throttle body clicking issue on the left side so assume it’s the right ECU is the problem. Question: if I buy a new slave and put it on the left side and take my current slave and put in on the right side, does the new slave need to be specific to an F1 or manual gearbox?