ECU Rumor

The fuel injectors are unique to the 550 not the injection. However, it takes little work to find out the 550 injector specs and source a different injector. And there are enough guys around the country that even I can find a guy who can build an injector to my specs. There is nothing proprietary about the the size of the hole the injector goes in or the length of the injector and the size of the hole where it connects to the fuel rail. There has been no new injectors available for at least 6 years except the odd new old stock sitting on a shelf somewhere. Dave Helms Scuderia Rampante in colo. and I have had discussions on these injectors. There are special enough features that Dave says stick to OEM Ferrari unless you have a good reason not to do so. If the stock injector becomes NLA used to rebuild I would be calling Dave as my 1st call. Repairing so many cars He will have a solution long before the rest of us DIY guys ever need them. Then if I had to, I would make them to order the hard way.

 

Got to love FBB he knows everything

 

The Motronic ECU's for the 550 are the same as the BMW V12's of the same era and should be available for a long time. But somebody needs to figure out how to take a BMW Motronic and give it the 550 Maranello's "personality". That personality is buried in a maskable EPROM that apparently only Jim Conforti (famed BMW ECU tuner) knows how to unmask.

 

There are repair services for obsolete ECUs such as the Bosch Motronic 5.2 used in the 550 (and the 456 and 355, as well as several BMW models). Example: http://www.ecudoctors.com/ferrari-550-ecu-0261204186.html

 

It's my understanding that Rod Drew is working on many different ECU's

 

Maybe not? The 2.7 motronic 348 guys have been very successful with copying and creating different prom chips. The only issue is you have to open the ECU to swap chips. It is not tunable via an OBD port. There are few guys around doing 5.2 tuning chips.

 

Has anyone swapped their ECU's to something more modern for more tuning capabilities? I feel like there's room for improvement on these power plants given what we have seen with just opening up the exhaust via Fabio's 6-1 header system.

 

I think John Cribb is working on something different and he can chime in. His coil on plug conversion is more of a reliability upgrade, but I am sure unlocks a few hp, as well.

You have to remember, though, that the Motronic ECUs do more than just manage fuel and spark. They are hooked into a bunch of subsystems through the CAN, so anything replacing them needs to have provisions for that, too.