Hello everyone, not long come across this forum and im pleased o see the wealth of information here and how willing you all are to help and share.

I'm new to the ECU side of motoring, I've done some basic diagnostics through work, error codes etc but nothing 'interesting' or productive (in my opinion). I'm a service technician for a large automotive retailer in the UK but there isn't much scope for what I want to learn and they are happy to keep me where I am in the company.

That aside, I'd like to learn more on ECU programming and understaning mapping and oher aspects.
When you first got in to work with ECUs where did you begin, what got you in to it and inspired you to carry on?
Could you recommend any good sources of information, books or sites for me to study over the next few weeks?
I have a fairly good grasp of computing and mechanics but I expect I have a lot to learn at this end of it.

I look forward to speaking with you all in the forums!

Hope everyone has had a good new year :D

Mr Weasel :wave:

Turbo Weasel wrote:When you first got in to work with ECUs where did you begin, what got you in to it and inspired you to carry on?

I used to produce tuning boxes for FRP. The first one was a clone by one (probably chinese) tuning box bought in Germany for 250 eur. :crazy: I could make it for less than 10 eur. Then I made 4 or 5 revisions - modified, extended and improved schematics. Those simple devices made miracles! :twisted:

I also had a Steinbauer tuning box - the one that extends injection duration. No reverse engineering was done, I just developed one (NOT digital!!!), but it was never produced. The sick thing is that I sticked to analog circuits, the digital one could be developed in a matter of minutes, the programming should take less than an hour, and it would be 10x easier to solder it together than an analog one. A man never stops to learn.

Then I took the Galletto 1260 clone (that I've had for 2 or 3 years), and tried ECM Titanium. It worked! I learned some things, and kept working on cars - mostly on my Laguna 1.9 dCi. And learned. And read. And tried. And switched to WinOLS. And read some more.

Then I got a fight with a "buddy" who I worked on cars with. I always did the engineering/programming part, and he always did the money part and gave me 30%. I got sick of everything, stopped cooperating with him, and made myself a family. I don't tune cars much now (from time to time only), I rather take care of my daughter.

But I keep learning and keep buying equipment. :D Tuning is fun! :thumbup:

Zok, thanks for the reply :)
Sorry to hear things didn't go that great with your friend but family is a beautiful thing and far more important.
If my daughter was still with us I know what I would choose :D

I came across winols just the other day and I've done a lot of reading (15 hours sleep this week so far, crazy work schedule), I will be starting my learning on an edc16 ecu from my mk5 golf tdi.
Im going to invest in some cables and hardware at the end of the month if I make some solid progress understanding the demo maps.
Its a little crazy how many variables there are to consider when you look in to things closely but I don't know why I expected anything less.

I will be back in a few days with some more knowledge!

Hi Turbo Weasel .

I am in same boat. Bored of mechanics and standard diagnostics, but i m not working to any company, just as hobby.

Id love to know what You have discovered and maybe lead newbies to right direction. :) I have not really much time myself for studying, but would love to see your summaries and sources of information.

One not bad .. source of information is https://sites.google.com/site/1810martin/remap-diy-guide which is overall mostly for vw passat , but also there is some general info about mapping.