Standalone for TDI? What all would be necessary (reprogram open source speeduino?)

[she_loves_the_D]

Hi. I am an avid tdi driver/enthusiast.
I ended up picking up a free ALH motor. no ecu. and will be hopefully putting in something cool RWD and pre 75 car or truck. Rusted cylinder. will be my first rebuild.
Anyways i have been looking into how to do the wiring for a non vw car. After some research it looks pretty straight forward. ECU plus any engine sensors. OBD2 plug and accelerator sensor/wire.
So that will be 75 for ecu 150-200 for the harness. Then 500 for kerma tune and 150 for immobilizer delete.
At that rate i will be entering into the standalone price range. The only thing is i cant find any.

I know the diesel works a little different then regular engines with spark plugs. But it should be much easier as there are less components.

I found a really cool open source stand alone ecu called speeduino. I would add a link but im not sure if that is allowed.
It is arduino based. and uses the same tuning software as many other ecus.

I really wish i knew more about coding or all technical aspects of the electronics on the car.

I just wanted to open up the conversation about getting one made for us tdi folk. Maybe there are some tech savvy people on here.
If they can make it for gas then it could definitely be made on an engine that can technically run without electronics.

I guess to start i would ask.
What all channels/sensors would be needed in comparison to a normal gas engine?

hope this draws some attention. Feel free to link it in other sections of this forum if it would do better there.

 

[[486]]

hasenwerk on here sells a stock ecu and stripped down harness, all loaded up to be a standalone
probably the easiest way to do it

links are certainly allowed, unless you're spamming which it seems obvious you aren't

ALH control scheme is pretty simple,
injection quantity is 0-5v across a beefy solenoid (really a quarter turn electric motor, but whatever)
there is a couple potentiometers to monitor the location of the quantity adjuster
the "cold start" solenoid is PWM to set the injection advance, read from a piezo sensor on the 3rd injector, so you'd need a piezo amplifier built in to your deal
crank position is a generic 3-wire sensor, 4+1 notch reluctor
the shut down solenoid is just able to be fed key on power

I wanted to try and run a megasquirt derived ECU at one point, but they're frickin' terrified of drive by wire throttles.

 

[mittzlepick]

Whitbred does it also. Got an ecu in a car guy was going to put in a boat. You can set idle with vagcom not sure if that can do what your need is. Bit this ecu was programmed for optimal fueling at certain rpm for egt temps at set rpm. And extra things were deleted so as to not have codes set.

 

[she_loves_the_D]

hasenwerk on here sells a stock ecu and stripped down harness, all loaded up to be a standalone
probably the easiest way to do it

links are certainly allowed, unless you're spamming which it seems obvious you aren't

ALH control scheme is pretty simple,
injection quantity is 0-5v across a beefy solenoid (really a quarter turn electric motor, but whatever)
there is a couple potentiometers to monitor the location of the quantity adjuster
the "cold start" solenoid is PWM to set the injection advance, read from a piezo sensor on the 3rd injector, so you'd need a piezo amplifier built in to your deal
crank position is a generic 3-wire sensor, 4+1 notch reluctor
the shut down solenoid is just able to be fed key on power

I wanted to try and run a megasquirt derived ECU at one point, but they're frickin' terrified of drive by wire throttles.

Great info.

I wish i knew how to code. mainly trying to get a conversation started.
There is a lot of money to be made considering there is no option aside from stock ecu with immobilizer. and the alh has to be the second most swapped engine behind the Chevy LS.
The problem with that is if you want to tune it, it cost 400$ on top of your ecu+immobilzer delete.
With a standalone you could do it yourself. And eventually there would be amazing open source tunes for different applications.
Speeduino has a open source plug n play for a miata for 150$-250$ (sold out).
if you look at the components they are very inexpensive (like a few $). And im sure the same could be said for a $1000 ecu.
I know someone here knows someone that with the communitie's help could figure it out.

That is something i was wondering if there is any adjustment to fuel timing or if its 100% mechanical.
Does the computer adjust it on the fly or is it just to start?
I was thinking maybe it was mechanical. So realistically for a tune you would only need to increase fuel and boost (nozzles and boost controller).

 

[mittzlepick]

Electromechanical. Since no throttle cable.

 

[[486]]

That is something i was wondering if there is any adjustment to fuel timing or if its 100% mechanical.
Does the computer adjust it on the fly or is it just to start?
I was thinking maybe it was mechanical. So realistically for a tune you would only need to increase fuel and boost (nozzles and boost controller).

injection timing is 100% solenoid controlled
without any input it'll just sit at the base value that you mechanically set the pump to
kind of like any of the larger diesels with fixed injection timing, except tdis are extremely lightly built and operate at such a wide RPM range that you can't dial in enough base advance to get your top end power out of it without having an undriveable mess that blows up frequently

with a mechanical governed injection pump it is RPM and fuel viscosity based, really an inaccurate guessing game, but much better than nothing
but again you run into the lightly built issue, where the torque/smoke limiters are the only thing keeping these engines from destroying themselves any time you flatfoot the throttle.

 

[ManicMechanic]

I made a stand alone out of a factory ECM with zero mods to the ECM. 1998 beetles came TDI and had no immobilizer. That's what I'm
running. I just made a small relay carrier to hold the fuses and few relays needed for the ECM to work. I gave it a 12v signal and a key on signal and it works with nothing else. If you remove the egr and throttle valve you will have some faults set in the ECM but they won't stop it from running fine.

 

[she_loves_the_D]

So i did find a couple of tuners for vw's (or any brand) other than just paying kerma or unitronic (great tunes btw).
They are pretty complicated and expensive. I assume its basically what kerma would use to first find the maps in the ecu.
one is called evc WinOLM if anybody else finds it interesting (ya friggin dorks).
There are a few others out there. Winolm will scan the ecu file and search for anything it thinks looks like a map.
It reads the ecu by touching certain pins on the board (inside the ecu case).
pretty cool but nothing as simple as a stand alone with a simple harness. and also 1000s of $$ plus training.
They do have some videos tuning a tdi so maybe they have a list of the maps you would need.

You see where the pins touch the board. They make different attachments that are arrange for different ecu's.

 

[CasaEd]

You can save money by doing the immo off yourself. Just buy the blue KKL cable off fleabay cheaply to do the 121 pin ecu over obd, it will also read the flash memory and write the flash memory, although there are better tools for that. You can find EDC Suite which can edit the file you download from the ecu and there is plenty of information on the web and youtube about tuning them. I'm no expert and certainly could never make a living chip tuning, but I've managed to do a MAF delete and small tune on my B4 wagon with a 1z, just for fun, future plans include a EDC15VM+ ECU conversion and bigger turbo. By the way the ECU picture you posted is EDC16, a whole different ball game.