You had a different, never used new ecu and the same problem existed, so in my mind I might consider that it’s not the ecu. Rather, possibly the engine wiring harness instead, but all that is based off your explanations and assuming the information stated is correct.

 

My concern is that I didn't play around enough with it, but correct, it didn't seem to change anything driving wise. I will however note that I was seeing a different charge voltage with the spare ECU, but I'm not sure how significant that would even be.

So is it normal to see voltage on the ECU pin that should be grounding the injector?

I'm noticing that I'm seeing voltage on the ECU pin (the pin right on the ecu, not through the harness) on most sensor grounds of between 1.5 and 4V is that normal?

 

Also can confirm my ECU is grounded as per the factory ECU. Power grounds are all grounded via the joint connector up by the passenger fender near the washer bottle... so not directly to battery but based on this the ECU was never meant to be grounded directly to the battery (I'm not saying that isn't better, just stating the obvious with a PNP ECU).

 

Have you addressed the battery grounds and the other chassis ground? The ECU ground is 1 aspect of the entire system. Take the ECU out of the equation and check power from the relays. The multimeter is only a tool to tell you something is wrong all those numbers aren't actually gonna fix the issues.

 

No I'm just referring to my original assessment, the grounds for the injectors inside the ECU are obviously getting some voltage from somewhere is what the multimeter is telling me, and by disconnecting connector 5 it is something obviously related to those circuits.

What I plan to do going forward here is try to ground all my ECU power grounds directly to the battery and see where that gets me (remove JC-01 from fender and run a temp wire to the battery negative terminal). I will also move the ground strap that is currently from the battery negative to the trans somewhere directly to the chassis. I will also move my ground strap from the block to a more direct chassis ground.

I will also need to confirm where all my sensor grounds are currently mounted (I assume there is likely more than one) and make sure they are grounded the chassis (which is likely they already are from the factory).


If I still see this voltage "bleed" into the ECU grounds for the injectors after this, my next step will be to de-pin each of the wires from connector 5 one at a time to see if I can isolate a specific circuit that is causing this "bleed" over.

If this work doesn't produce or indicate anything meaningful.... I'll likely install the new ID1050x injectors, put the car back together and see if the fueling issue is any better when re-tuning with the new injectors.

IF ALL OF THIS FAILS...... I think I won't have much more option than to look at the Adaptronic itself and think about a replacement. As time goes on and the more I hear about Adaptronic, it seems more people are having issues that are solved by a new ECU (Haltech of course being extremely popular at the moment).

Appreciate your guys' input!

 

 

well hopefully the same thing doesn’t occur …

remembering Strokercharged’s own issue with one; the REW RX8 I now own, think I’d try swapping a different one in first before a more expensive ECU swap. As usual, I may have one on the shelf if you want to give it a try, lmk.
.

 

Thanks Team, appreciate that!

For anyone interested I had a short discussion here with an AEM Electronics Engineer. He has provided me a little more insight and a bit of testing to do.:

https://www.rx7club.com/general-rota...c-ecu-1165856/

I think between revising and nailing down grounding throughout the whole car (I'm doing a lot of digging into star-point grounding at the moment), then performing some more testing, and ultimately giving the new injectors a chance; I'll be able to make a better decision about the ECU itself. I want to ensure I'm doing all that I can to confirm I have a proper system in place before I start throwing money around at new parts (ie Haltech + Harness mods to accommodate); so I'm not taking that lightly.

 

I bought a new Cosmo thin/intermediate iron plate (used on both Cosmo 13B-RE & 20B-RE) and if it hadn’t have been for me seeing this thread/post, would’ve likely experienced the same problem.

The Cosmo iron plate has two holes; one on each side of the plate near the base of the flanged oil sump fill/breather neck.

According to a buddy on RX7Club, the FC plate only has it on the one rear-facing side. He said it’s plumbed to a pipe in the firewall that goes to a charcoal filter.



^^FC parts diagram …
.

 

Glad you caught it, I ended up tapping and plugging the hole in mine since my filler neck is vented anyways. One thing I can say now after I did the rebuild myself is there's never been a single drop of any fluid under the car since!

I've replaced my primary injectors with the ID1050X's and redid all my grounding in the car. Should be ready to give it the first start for this season this weekend to see if any of these changes have made a difference.

Grounding I brought a 2AWG cable up from the battery negative terminal and am using the top of the rear housing as a star point. Everything is essentially grounded back to this point. I also ran a 4AWG from a good chassis spot back to this star point. In the process I spliced the Pin B wiring from my Rywire AEM IGN-1A harness and pulled those all the way back to a sensor ground pin on my ECU (my coils are now wired exactly as the AEM diagram dictates). In the process of all this I also pulled my engine harness out and tested every connector on it and mapped out all the pins to confirm everything was kosher there.

 

Update: pulled the trigger on an Elite 1500. Just waiting on a few more parts here then I'll be repinning my harness from the Adaptronic to the Haltech connectors. Purchased a Tuned By Shawn body harness jumper that I'm utilizing as well. Will post more when I have significant updates, right now I'm just waiting for my local supplier to receive my Haltech connector kit and WB1 controller.

 

Small update on progress:

Stripped my main engine harness out again to modify it for the Elite 1500. Decided to strip the harness itself right down to the wires and give it all a good once over. Ended up finding a few wires that seemed to be missing insulation on them, they were all even and very cleanly done, almost like it had been that way from the factory (see pics below). Anyways 2 of the 3 were on unused wires so I repaired the one (was for TPS 2 signal) and cleaned a bunch of dead weight out of the harness. After that I mocked up where the ECU, TBS jumper, and harness connectors were all going to sit in my ECU box. Then I went to town labelling, cutting, and repinning all the wires for the Haltech AMP connectors. Currently I have the main engine harness all pinned up and I just now need to crimp and pin all of the TBS Jumper Harness wiring. Once that is completed I have a few random sensor wires that are external to the harness I need to wire in and then I'll continuity test every pin before re-installing the harness. So far everything has gone smoothly and the time I spent prepping/mapping things out (spreadsheeting lol) has been well worth it.

Photo of harness when it came out of car:



Photo of the spots with missing wire insulation:



Harness after cleaning up and removing many unused wires:



ECU and TBS Jumper mocked up in the ECU box:




Harness re-pinned to the Haltech AMP connectors:





Once I remove all my wire labels I should be able to tidy things up quite a bit too.

 

So the ECU in the OEM location may be an issue. I have been having some issues with the ECU hitting max temps and I am working out if I want to cut a whole in the firewall to move it in the cabin. It seems to mainly be an issue if I have the laptop plugged in try to street tune. However it's in the mid 90s where I live. For now I'm looking into hood vent just to get the heat out the bay.

 

If you do go this route I'd love to see where you end up placing the ECU and where you penetrate the firewall. I really wanted to reuse the stock harness without having to extend it so giving this a go for now. I do have the advantage of a cooler Canadian climate in general but that's not to say we don't get into the 90's every now and then. I'd say we had plenty of days this summer that peaked right at 90C but typically we sit around that 80F ambient for most of the summer.

Do you have the "snorkel" on the factory ECU box still? I have mine but a long time ago I had to trim it shorter to fit my Greddy intercooler when I boosted my Renesis; so mine is likely not as effective as it should be either.

Not sure if this is you posting this but I saw someone saying the same thing on the Haltech Facebook page and they ended up installing some heat sinks to try and deal with it. Not sure what the outcome was in the end.

 

I do not have the snorkel. And that post on the Haltech page is mine. I am still working through some issues so I haven't gotten many miles in yet. But I am leaning into the PC being plugged into the Haltech causing the overheating.

 

So it's still overheating even with the heat sinks? Personally, I pretty much always have my laptop plugged in when driving, I used the gauge page from Adaptronic to monitor everything I didn't have a physical display for (coolant temp, voltage, oil press, etc) so hoping I can do the same with Haltech.

 

Same. I don't have any gauges and really planned on doing most of my tuning on the street. I think that at the very least on hot days above 90 it will overheat. The heat sinks do seem to help though. Getting hood vents which I think will be fix and I might get the OEM snorkel as well and modify. Air flow over and around the ECU is needed.

 

I must have missed your post on the Haltech FB page.
Do you have an OEM hood? I'd suggest getting some snorkels.

If so, heatsinks unfortunately wont help much in your case. without a vented hood, and some extra inlet ducting to the engine bay, those heatsinks will not be transferring much heat away from the Elite; Ironically I wouldn't be surprised if it is making it worse. If you have the OEM hood an easy thing to try is to add spacers to the hood hinges (I know not a fan of spaced hoods, but people do it for a reason) And see if it helps cool it off.

Even then, there isn't going to be much airflow up that area, but with more airflow you could help create some negative pressure to pull the heat away, Especially if you have the ECU box snorkels installed and drilled a few holes in the ECU cover.

My suggestions:

1. Drill holes in the top of the ECU box IF you have the snorkels still installed
2. Add spacers to the hood to see how much air flow it is restricting
3. Mount a PC Fan to the ECU cover

 

I still have the OEM hood and I will be getting vents for it soon. I do not have the snorkel. I am mixed on if the heatsinks make the situation worse; if the car is sitting off it will definitely make heat soak worse. Considered adding a PC fan.

Will be testing removing and adding back the heatsinks to see if it does anything at all. Want to reiterate that if the PC is not plugged in the ECU does not overheat. Drove the car in 95 degree stop and go traffic and it seemed fine, I say seemed because I did not get the check engine light which is solid instead of flashing if the ECU overheats but I also can't get an accurate temp without plugging in the PC.

Literally only have 40-50 miles driven so far and I have been working through some other issues. EPS not working, climate control not working, and oil pan leak I just resealed this week. Will be filling back up with oil this weekend and hoping for the best.

 

Appreciate you sharing this info, let us know how it goes! Curious, with your laptop plugged in on a hot day, how long does it take for the ECU to overheat once the car is up to operating temps? Is it instantaneous, a matter of minutes, or after driving for an hour? Have you tried running the car with the ECU box lid off? I know you have low mileage so maybe haven't had time to monitor to this depth but I'll ask regardless lol.

Gave mine a test fit this weekend. I just need to pick up a 6 pin DTM connector to make a jumper for my ignition sub-harness then I can continuity test every pin on the entire harness, clean up the wires/routing, re-tape it, and get it installed for real. The other jumper harness' I built (the 3 lines with braided loom on them) are for IAT Sensor, fuel pressure, and Oil Pressure sensors. I had all of these pinned directly to my stock ECU connectors prior, figured I'd make them easier to separate so I don't have to de-pin them any time I want to pull this main engine harness out again.

Lastly I'll just need to wire in 12v Power and Ground for my WB1 controller (TBS harness conveniently has accommodation for these two wires) and plug that into the front of the ECU along with finding a spot to mount the controller and routing the O2 sensor down to my exhaust.

The ECU itself with the TBS jumper fits into the factory box like a glove!

 

So preliminarily the ECU seemed to overheat with the car just sitting after about 15 minutes or so. It doesn't take much time with the hood closed. I would say with the lid off there is a chance it could be better, I have the ECU mounted to the lid of the box so I actually don't know.

Snorkel and duct on the way, and I have sealed the fan around the lid to pull air past the heatsinks better. My headlight module just so happened to die so will be replacing the module and testing some more probably next week.

 

Well I can't be the only one having this minor issue, but ECU box lid will not fit in place with the PC cable plugged into the ECU, it is too tall.... what is anyone else doing? Certainly I can leave the lid off when I have the laptop plugged in but my intent was to have the laptop cable permanently plugged into the ECU, are there any adapters that may work for this? @1nsight how does yours look with the ECU being "upside down" in your ECU box?

I'm assuming there should be no issue using something like this:

All I need to do is mount the WB1 and do some minor wiring. I'm still debating pulling my washer fluid bottle/pump out of the car; likely will do this. Harness is run but I don't' have anything plugged in yet as I want to get under the car and plug the reverse and neutral switches in first and work my way back to the ECU.

 

The lid will not close completely for me either. I do not intend to keep the plug permanently in the ECU so it's not a problem. I will keep the wire there just not plugged in. The ECU will continue to overheat with the PC plugged in. After a few more drives I have determined that the ECU will heat soak once the car is off, which is fine as long as the PC is not plugged in. For example, take the car for a drive with PC connected, then turn off the engine and keep PC connection on, the ECU will overheat.

Also the ECU tends to disconnect a lot while driving, which I attribute to the vibration so it's kinda pointless to keep the ECU plugged when it's gonna disconnect every few minutes or seconds while driving. Once the car is tuned I don't know why you would need to keep the PC connected.

 

I have not tried to plug the USB cable in yet but I was hoping there would be room for this. Could you find a different cable that would allow you a little more room, there typically is variation in the firmness of the cable coming out of the connector that can allow you a little adjustment? How much is it off? Are you using a special heat resistant cable?

 

I was planning of leaving the cable connected and accessible from the cabin when needed. I would not have the computer plugged into the ECU all the time, just the leave the cable connected so I would not have to open the hood.