Turbo ECU in a Wagon question

[Hipcrostino]

Hi,

I'm prepping to turbo charge my 04 BA wagon. Its currently stock and has traction control (3R23-2C353-AB ABS unit). I have managed to get an 04 BA turbo sedan ECU, but know that the ABS won't play happy with it.

However I was reading the how to guides here, and I was wondering. If I take the image off my current ECU (ABU-242) and flash it into the Turbo ECU (ABU-244), then would it be perfectly happy to run the current non turbo engine? My reasoning is that this should mean the ABS will be happy (just like replacing the PCM in a like for like scenario), and then when the turbo motor goes in I edit the maps using values from a turbo firmware, and when I enable turbo logic, the hardware is actually there to allow boost control to work.

The other obvious routes are to change the ABS unit, or retain the non turbo ECU and use external boost control.

So given I haven't seen read of anyone else doing the ecu firmware swap, its probably not possible. But I wanted to see if anyone here had heard of it happening?

Thanks Paul.

Ps. I am aware that PCMTech can't give me official advise on this, but was hoping I could get a "it won't work" or a "could be possible".

[Roland@pcmtec]

Be simpler to reprogram your ABS module (assuming it is compatible) to suit the turbo. Check out this group https://www.facebook.com/groups/australianforscanusersgroup/?ref=share

Alternatively what you said might work but I'm fairly sure the turbo logic enabled switch is transmitted to the ABS module and that is what triggers the incompatibility. 

[Hipcrostino]

Hi Roland, Thanks for the reply.

Unfortunatly the ABS unit isn't on the canbus, just iso. Car appears to be too old   

The turbo logic causing the issue would explain why I haven't read about this being done. Did you ever have success altering the packet sent out by the PCM? Saw a ancient post about it somewhere but lost it.

 

[Roland@pcmtec]

No we won't be doing anything regarding the canbus packets. You could try CANBarra and see if they are interested in it. 

[BeerTurbo]

On 3/30/2021 at 6:06 AM, Hipcrostino said:

Hi Roland, Thanks for the reply.

Unfortunatly the ABS unit isn't on the canbus, just iso. Car appears to be too old   

The turbo logic causing the issue would explain why I haven't read about this being done. Did you ever have success altering the packet sent out by the PCM? Saw a ancient post about it somewhere but lost it.

 

I put a BF Barra and ZF into R31 Skyline.  The PCM did not seem to care there was no longer an ABS module to talk to, however it did not love the lack of speed input. The transmission absolutely hated the lack of ABS module and would go straight into limp mode...regardless of things i changed. Nigel from canbarra said the bf series ZF has a hard time if there is no abs module to bounce torque reduction requests from it will go into limp mode. I got a canbarra module to emulate ABS and basically takes the oss from gearbox and translates it into a ABS speed across the can... this keeps the trans and the ecu happy. 

 

now.....if your ba wagons TRC/ABS is not on the canbus? (strange) then its getting speed from the gearbox speed sensor i would assume. There is no reason why you cant tell the turbo PCM to use that particular speed sensor instead of the abs.

If your keeping the BTR then it shouldn't care about the lack of ABS as the btr is run from the PCM.

I would personally try the turbo pcm and see if you can make it work. you can disable the abs torque requestors to, so it shouldn't affect it running the motor. 

Alternatively you could try install the canbus trc/abs unit but it will mean doing some wiring changes and splicing into the canbus...its all posible it just comes down to how comfortable you feel about it.