Building Track 599 - Help & Progress

Engine ECU's are not VIN specific per se, but they are mated to the immobilizer module. You do however want to make sure you load the same firmware version to guarantee compatibility (i.e. you can't just run the latest and greatest rev and expect it to work). If you take pic of the underside of your engine ECU's with the Ferrari part number, I can tell you what version firmware your car left the factory with.

On the 599, the critical modules would be Body Computer, Dashboard Node, Engine Computers (2x), TCU, ABS, and maybe the immobilizer to get the car running/driving. @360trev what else would Kevin need at bare minimum?

@Kev Midwest what Model Year is your 599 and I assume it is a US spec?

 

Browse the Scuderia Car Parts website and it will give you a sense of all the different ECU's in the 599
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Oem is very incestuous. You cannot run without certain stuff not needed in track car. Oem is a heavy wiring harness nightmare. Way faster to stand alone ecu like a motec plus all the data you can collect to improve your driving. Driver development today is all data driven

 

Don't ditch the factory Bosch Engine management system !

The factory Bosch engine management system is a highly sophisticated piece of equipment that has been developed over many years and with hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development. It is more than capable of handling the demands of a race-spec car. In fact, it is the same system that was used in the Ferrari 599 XX, a car that was designed for racing.

The Bosch Motronic engine management software is one of the most advanced systems on the market. It is a quad-core system with wideband lambda sensors and accurate air flow metering. It has more than 20% of its firmware free for additional features, such as launch control. It can also do real-time telemetry data logging and has dual CAN bus support.

I have spent years developing custom tooling to unlock the full capabilities of Bosch ECUs so I know how capable they are. I can personalize pretty much anything you could ever want to do, including:

• Changing the knock management system
• Deleting the catalytic converter
• Deleting the evaporative system
• Deleting the secondary oxygen sensors
• Disabling the immobilizer

I can even remove all the dependencies on the other ECUs, such as the ABS, Body, Instrument Cluster, etc. This makes the factory ECU just as good as a standalone aftermarket ECU, but with the added benefit of thousands of hours of calibration work that has been done to make it drive perfectly in all conditions.

I have looked at the datasheet of the Emtron KV12 ECU, and I can find nothing that it can do better than the factory Bosch ECU. So, if you are considering replacing your factory ECU, I urge you to reconsider. The factory ECU is the best option for your race-spec car.

Here are some additional benefits of using the factory engine management system:

• It is more reliable than aftermarket systems and your much less likely to blow it up trying to calibrate it to run perfectly.
• It has fantastic diagnostics support built in.
• It is supported by the manufacturer and makes the car easier to repair in the future.
• It will be far easier to certify for road use if you ever decided to put this back on the road

If you are looking for the best possible performance and reliability for your race-spec car, then you should not ditch the factory engine management system.

 

If you don't know how to code things out then it appears like everything is a tightly coupled piece however they are all independent, its just that much of the proxi -coding is hard-coded into the management software. This can be edited of course if you know the right way to do it. wink, wink.

The Bosch system is excellent and much better developed than anything aftermarket. I've used many of these systems and their code is so basic and simple, not taking into account so much stuff done properly by the big boy's highly advanced software modelling. Also how is he ever going to get it to work correctly with the F1 system? Good luck with that using aftermarket stuff!

The Bosch system can also be made to push any parameters you wish back out over fast can for data logging purposes as well as serial too.

 

You are the only one I know who can play with bosch. I know of no other reliable tuners in all of SoCal or anywhere for that matter. There are a few guys who say then can tweek some stuff but to be able to really tune for hardware changes can honestly only be done by a very few.

 

Why I don't like aftermarket Engine Management Control Units (ECUs) for majority of use-cases...

Aftermarket engine management computers are typically not designed for any specific car or engine. They are a generic reprogrammable computer with suitable drivers to control aftermarket sensors and actuators that are commonly used on prototype race engines. These devices in the majority of cases also run proprietary closed-source software that does not take into account the thousands of hours of calibration work done by the car manufacturer and Bosch during the development of the model. Its not like buying a new phone where you can port over your old highly valuable data to your new phone. Its all incompatible or hidden from view.

Engine development work actually costs manufacturers millions of dollars and often involves significant testing of engines to absolute destruction. Often done in an engine test cell connected to hundreds of sensors to ensure that they will run trouble-free for you. The factory computers are extensively developed to ensure that the engine calibrations are good enough to work in all conditions, all fuel qualities and circumstances, all altitudes, all temperatures, and all cases are tested to work for many tens of thousands of miles without problems and still pass emissions standards. Its pretty impressive when you think about the challenges of doing this and still working as sensors and actuators decay, get inefficient and stop working.

Bosch Motronic has multiple layers of safety and often has very sophisticated modeling of all kinds of properties such as wall wetting (look it up) and even component protection to try to prevent your headers overheating or cats from dying too early or engine sooting up over time with carbon buildup. The software even monitors the decay of things like throttle bodies (as they age they get slower and require more power to achieve the same positioning), they do self-learning every power on and sophisticated adaption of fuel and air management in case of failure or leaks, so even if there are faults like intake gasket leaks the car can still adapt and work as normal. All these adaptions and clever wear algorithms are absolutely fantastic news for motorists, as it has led to many less catastrophic engine failures over the years. Very few of these things are present in small aftermarket manufacturers' products, they simply don't have the engineering budget to develop all of these things. Even simple mistakes like charging a coil too many milliseconds can result in their premature failure!

Conversely most aftermarket ECUs I have worked with could end in a catastrophic engine failure if multiple sensors failed at the same time or you something else went wrong and wasn't spotted or even monitored. This is because their built-in diagnostic software is not anywhere near as advanced or as well-developed and tested. Have they implemented safety watchdog timers that are fast enough to reboot the ECU so that if an actual software bug causes a hang of the ECU, the engine can be saved and the software can instantly take over again a few milliseconds later? I doubt it. In racing, none of this is a major concern as you will be rebuilding your engine multiple times anyway, they aren't thinking about an engine running for decades like is expected in road car use cases. Are your pockets big enough to take the potential for more frequent rebuilds?

What happens if you discover a major bug in the software stack? Worst case, you lose your engine. Best case, you put in a bug fix request and hope that they are incentivized to take it seriously. They may not have the bandwidth to get to you anytime soon. It might even be just a single developer working on it, compared to the 100+ engineers that Bosch hired for multiple years to get the job done to the highest possible standard.

It is also very likely that the aftermarket software will not be compatible with the Controller Area Network (CAN) messages that talk to other Bosch ECUs and sensors/actuators. So what happens if you lock up your wheels? Does the engine run on? In Bosch, the traction control and ABS can coordinate with each other to help you get out of even bigger messes. What about the Automated Manual Transmission (AMT) gearbox integration? Torque requests are managed by the engine management and this is tightly integrated over CAN bus. I very much doubt that this will ever be done properly. They may not be able to properly control a fraction of the features of your car's engine management system. This can lead to poor performance, integration issues, and even potentially damage to your engine or worse performance than stock.

Aftermarket ECUs are often not as well-tested as factory ECUs. This means that they may have bugs or other problems that can cause your car to run poorly or even fail. Aftermarket ECUs can be difficult to install and tune. This can lead to mistakes that can damage your engine or make your car run poorly. Aftermarket won't pass emissions testing and won't be road legal, diagnostic tools won't help in fixing issues, I could go on and on about why its just such a bad idea on a road car.. even a 'track focused' road car... A dedicated race car ofcourse is another matter entirely...

Anyway guys, I'm here to help!

 

Very good info Trev!

 

You have a PM.