360 360 ecu protection

Hi Trev, I believe we discussed this before, but how hot does the ECU enclosure get at ambient, without taking into consideration the increased temperature from the engine. I can't recall Iof you had measured it in a bench test.

 

What about capturing the air flow from the lower body intakes and ducting it behind the fender panels and up to the ECU area?????

 

That's a good idea just as long as it was designed in such a way that it didn't bring in streams of water in heavy wet weather conditions or that water was managed so as not to impact the ECU itself which isn't waterproof.



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Exactly! That's why a set of pc case fans would be great. Anyone know where a good source for power is on the harness? Or maybe a solar panel with batteries? As far as airflow goes, I have added stacks of fender washers to the sides and rear of my under panel to allow for more airflow while stopped in traffic. The front is lap jointed under the front panel so opening it there is difficult. The NACA ducts don't do much when standing still. And those ducts are meant for the headers so I wouldn't skimp there at all.

 

Use Tunnel Heat Shield on the back side of the engine bay covers should work great .


https://www.summitracing.com/parts/dei-050502?seid=srese1&gclid=CjwKCAjwjdOIBhA_EiwAHz8xm--G-MonKfaE7_KjDSa464l3wc0972jg4bRCq4DgI46Zhb2XLHoiORoCc8IQAvD_BwE

 

Randy: Just purchase this yesterday and received it today! Like how thick it is. Should work great!

 

ECU heat protection with Tunnel Shield. Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I remove the cables and found that it can be extended to at least 1 feet from where it was, away from the heat.

so if we can make a bracket of something , (on the outer side of the fuel tank, underneath the intake duct), it can be a solution, or a half-assed one

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I was looking for something else when I stumbled across a pic of a Cadillac ecu from the 2004-2007 era that appears identical to the Ferrari part. Any chance these could be reformatted to run a 360? It's available under multiple part numbers for ~$100 used.

Cadillac part
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Unfortunately no, none of the Alfa ones work either...

 

360 s/w will NOT run on Cadillac ECU (or Opel ECUs, that's where Cadillac pulled it from).

I tried that long time ago when I was naive enough to think that just because various ECUs look identical on the outside, they could possibly work. Look at the photo below of a Cadillac ECU which I opened up and compare to the photos of opened 360 ECUs @360trev posted long time ago - the circuitry does not even look close. And the 360 software does not install and does not run either.



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In other words it looks like 360 ECU has about twice as many components inside as Cadillac. Fiat/Alfa etc and their derivatives have already been covered extensively in other threads - no luck, no other car ECU works despite looking the same.

 

Bummer. Thanks for the info.

 

Great thread! Love the idea of the extra heat shielding.

If any of the heat shielding ideas has become something we can purchase please chime in, thanks!

 

Hi folks, relaunching this topic as have a 360 Spider from 2001 which seems to have been very well maintained (the dealer in Switzerland Changed the TCU to the latest version for free apparently). Decided to take the belt and braces approach with the following:
- On both sides 1.5mm thick aluminium sheet bent at 90 degres and placed on the side and bottom of TCU, "cisored" to very tightly fit the roof housing
- On Right side: added tunnel shielding on the bottom of the aluminium plate
- On both sides, laid self-adhesive tunnel shielding on original aluminium shielding

The auto-adhesive tunnel shield used comes from https://www.heatshieldings.com/en/heat-resistant-shield-aluminum-self-adhesive.html. Testing remains to be done but looks like top quality product.

Should you do this, make sure that the aluminium sheet is bent towards the rear of the car as otherwise would push (maybe even damage) the hydraulic line leading to the roof mechanism hydraulic system.

In ordered to have a proper idea of the impact on the temperature reduction, I ordered 4 cheap thermometers with 2m long probes and will measure the temperatures of the following areas once car is at operating temperature
- between the original Ferrari Shield and the aluminium plate created (both sides)
- Near the ECUs (both sides)

Will report as soon as done so we can have a better understanding of the effect of each element of shielding (except that I won't have the measure without any additional shielding).

Overall cost is c. EUR 90 (EUR 75 for tunnel shield and EUR 15 for 1.5mm thick aluminium plate) so would be a no brainer to do if indeed can keep the ECU at much lower temperature.

 

I managed to take some measures of the temperature in 4 places and the conclusion is that our cherished ECUs would greatly benefit from the modifications I made.

The External temperature was c. 22.5 degrees Celsius (all in Celsius) and I drove the car until the oil temperature reached its operating level and in total for a good 1h, including at the end c. 5 minutes of traffic jam and also a few feel throttle flooring to make sure the engine surrounding environment was in normal utilisation.

I attach a pdf with all the details of the temperatures but basically:
- The simple shield between the OEM Ferrari shield and the ECU seems to help reduce temp by 7-8 degrees
- The addition of a tunnel shield below the additional aluminium plate seems to allow an additional 1-2 degrees reduction
- The Left ECU reached a maximum temperature of 46 degrees while driving and up to 59 degrees once the engine was stopped and as temperature continues to rise for c. 14 minutes
- The Right ECU reached a maximum temperature of 53 degrees while driving and up to 62.7 degrees once the engine was stopped and as temperature continues to rise for c. 14 minutes. The latter compares favourably to c. 71 degrees the ECU would have reached assuming only the OEM shield had been used in addition to the tunnel shielding on it

I would conclude that with the OEM Ferrari aluminium shield, the Right ECU probably reaches 65.-70 degrees while driving and probably 75 degrees or more after stopping the engine.

Immediately after parking the car, Engine on


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5 Minutes after stopping the engine:
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If those are the max temperature then the ECUs shouldn't see a problem. Most automotive electronics for engine compartment should be rated at +85C.
Do you know what the temperatures were prior to the changes made?

 

Nope I do not know what the temperatures were but as 360Trev suggests (1) it is over 70 degres without modifications (kind of confirmed with the temps I checked between the 2 shields) and (2) clearly Ferrari did their tests with "Italian degrees" since so many ECUs get problems due to over-heating when temps are higher than in my modified settings.

Hard to argue that spending USD 100 on these mods for 10-15 degrees reduction is not a good way to reduce the risk of having a 1.5 ton paper weight.

 

Great work gvanrenterghem...

Sorry that I have not updated you guys with the work that I have been involved in since I last posted on this subject. I am seeing more ecu's fail as time goes on due to heat issues so this subject requires far more attention paid to it than in previous years, in particular because of lack of replacements and the fact there are no more new ecu's available in the world to buy.

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With testing it was easy to see times when the ecu's would get close to 100 degree's C !!!

A heatshield helps to reduce that down to by about 10 degree's but this can still suffer from heat soak so I worked with some partners to produce a heatsink in the same fashion as the engineers at Bosch did for the die substrate motorsport ecu's of this vintage. That is they used billet as a heatsink in the similar fashion to a cpu cooler. The only thing is you need good airflow for this to work well so to improve performance more a ram air concept with a feed from the airbox was tested too...

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These mock up 3d printed ecu's had thermal temperate sensors fitted to assist with data logging.
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A different version is required for the Spider than the Modena due to fitment differences but this is where we've got to so far...

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Hopefully will be able to get these R&D results concluded soon and then I will post final findings.

 

In for these when you finish testing and produce them. Great contribution to the 360 community!


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...... but in the meantime I hope you have done the mod to drop the temp. I have and it was cheap to do with HD parts

 

Hi Trev, interesting idea but not too sure where the fresh air would be coming from. Where are these ducts heading towards? Also, does not seem that these ducts are installed on the car, are they?

To be honest I think that simple heat shields the way I did are probably good enough, otherwise wouldn't that make sense to add large PC fans inside the ducts to suck up fresh air from outside (my guess being that maybe the ducts could head through the black metallic protection and face up to the grill between the engine bay glass and the metallic structure (and make sure there is a water drainer to drain water down to the engine rather than towards the PC fans.

Not sure how much heat these PC fans can withstand though.

 

Good work trav,

but my idea was to put both ECUs in the cabine for protection. the only question in my mind about this is, where to get this contact housing for the ecus. the rest is only clean work, to build an extended ECU connection, and at best the same colored cables.

But again, good work trav. it makes a difference but when the car is really hot in the summer, my cats produce hot air even the engine flap is hot about 76 C. yes.The manifolds are Capristo manifolds. with heat protection wrapping. Maybe a ceramic coating would have been worthwhile.

The hot air comes from the cats... that is here the point.

Very likely a different underbody panel with openings where the hot air would be sucked out through the drive similar to the Venturi principle would be much more efficient.

or additional underbody modification with air extraction through the diffuser would be a good solution.

The Stradale grill alone draws air out of the engine compartment. A plastic standard 360 behind the fairing is hell for the Ecus in the standard 360