Always seeing hot rod programs with some conversion going on - along with the use of an automatic mapping ECU.

Wonder whether or not they actually work and secondly whether they would work on our engines?

It will work perfectly fine if you have a Hemi or an SBC...

Rich

I doubt any of the ones you see in articles or advertised are analog. That kills the whole idea.

The Cap'n

It will work fine you you do all the fab work. Any ECU will work on Any engine if... All required sensors are in place AND the fuel map is tuned to the engine. ECU's like F.A.S.T. have wideband O2 sensors and with a basic system setup will learn on the fly. The ECU needs to know: Intake air temp, Engine temp and how much air is going through the engine. With these basic sensors you can make any ECU work great. Some better than others. If you want to fab a top of the line EFI system in a 914. Prepare to spend $5k for electronics, fabrication and tuning. OR, spend $2k on the CB Performance bolt in system...

Thanks, that was my experience as well. I can't remember what the Link system cost, but add all the "stuff" you have to install to allow it to work and it's a bunch of money.

Not not least of which is developing the map. Two days on the dyno with some special tuning people = $$.

In my build thread, I am using a Haltech ECU. The ECU was $1k with harness and software. I then needed to buy sensors. Some I had already from previous EFI work. Some I scored at a junk yard. Haltech uses GM sensors or can callibrate for various types. I have two advantages with my current project. 1. the old V8 I pulled out had EFI and 2. The engine (Turbo Wankel) going in is set up for EFI already. I have done full custom EFI systems in the past. The one for my Dodge Super Bee cost me $5k. I had to take a manifold and weld injector bungs, fab up fuel rails, etc...

I will never own a carb again. EFI is fun! If you want to play, I have a Megasquirt ECU I'll let go cheap.

Stop drinking the coolaid. In case anyone has any misconceptions, the algorithms used for "autotuning" do not care what kind of motor you are running. Adaptive learning is a much better decriptor than autotune as they work to optimize towards a set of predefined parameters, but cannot actually fully tune. In most cases the optimizations is only on the fuel side and seeks to reach a desired equivance (air-fuel) ratio. Off-the-shelf ECU's typically do not have the ability to optimize multiple parameters (ie: torque, fuel economy, and injector timing for equivalence ratio), simulatneously. Such processing either requires a pretty advanced goodness function or fuzzy logic capabilties. For that reason, real tuning for power and response is done by people.

Some ECU's autolearn quite well. I work with a group who has had great sucess with the ECU's and autolearn functions from the Australian company Adaptronic. I have also heard that MoTeC's autolearning functions are quite good.

Autolearn functions really come in handy when you want a somewhat safe base tune and either are driving alone or running your motor in somewhat steady state conditions on a dyno. They really can speed up the tuning process as any time that is normally spend on mundane map filling can instead be retasked to looking further into transients or timing.

Yep, I agree with the posted prices. Any good ECU is easily $1k+, and unless you have the fabrication capabilties to modify stock components (or the stock components work as-is), the remainder of the setup get very expensive very fast.