Aftermarket ecu for nb8a

greenMachine · Postby **greenMachine** » Mon May 24, 2021 12:29 pm

The overwhelming weight of opinion on this board, for those wanting a tuner to either do their tune, or fine-tune one they have installed and set up, is to choose an ECU that their preferred tuner is familiar with (and willing to work on), or preferably recommends. Dare I suggest that the reasons are self-evident? And it is also pretty self-evident why it is not a good idea to get a tuner to work on an ECU he is not familiar with, even if he is happy to do it.

That is how I have operated, with three Haltechs and one Autronic the current score. I know I had a deep discussion with my tuner when considering the ECU to go in the SE, and all he was prepared to tune was Haltech Elite (and PS1000 for legacy tunes such as my racecar) and Autronic. I would have gone with an Elite but I got a good deal on an SM4 Autronic that had been removed from a car gone back to stock. He wouldn't touch an MS, quoting a recent (at that time, three or four years ago) experience with one.

DIY tunes, that is a different ballgame, knock your socks off! Not having done that, I'll leave that to those who have.

:mrgreen:

CrazyRacer · Postby **CrazyRacer** » Wed Jun 02, 2021 3:42 pm

I'm currently in the process of fitting a Haltech Elite 1500 to my NB8A.

I went down the path of cutting off the factory ECU plugs and fitting Haltech ones in their place. Its not all that tricky to do with the right crimping tools, which aren't that expensive. I took the 2 looms out of the car so I could do it on the bench to make it a bit easier.

Mine was somewhat complicated by the fact that I was fitting a VVT motor at the same time. I did look at a complete NB8B VVT loom which would have meant that I could have used the Haltech PnP adapter but there were other issues with that.

I have a lot of the required wiring conversion mapped in a spreadsheet which I'd be happy to share if you want to go down the DIY path on this.

I also have an older Motec M84 from a previous project that I could sell you for less than Elite 1500 dollars. They're a good ECU that most tuners will support. I only didn't use it as it doesn't support vvt. That wouldn't solve your PnP wiring issue though.

I did explore some of the other options that did have PnP like Adaptronic, ME and MS but the local tuners that had a good rep didn't want to touch them. Their preferred ECUs were Haltech, Motec and Link.

bartmanftw · Postby **bartmanftw** » Wed Jun 02, 2021 5:14 pm

I ended up designign a PCB to adapt the 1500 to NB8A so you don't need to hack up the original harness. Just requires the two connectors on the board to be soldered on and a patch harness made up. The pinout matches the 1500 1:1 to make it easier to wire up.

If anyone is interested in one I've got one board left (no harness) and I'd be happy to share the PCB files and pinout so others can make them too as well as share the case CAD to 3D print an enclosure.

CrazyRacer · Postby **CrazyRacer** » Wed Jun 02, 2021 6:14 pm

bartmanftw wrote:I ended up designign a PCB to adapt the 1500 to NB8A so you don't need to hack up the original harness. Just requires the two connectors on the board to be soldered on and a patch harness made up. The pinout matches the 1500 1:1 to make it easier to wire up.

If anyone is interested in one I've got one board left (no harness) and I'd be happy to share the PCB files and pinout so others can make them too as well as share the case CAD to 3D print an enclosure.

Thats awesome. I did look at doing something similar (but dodgier) and even sourced the original ECU plug (so I've got that to sell if anyone wants to go down this path). I was hoping that I could solder the factory style ECU connector onto a regular generic PCB. When I realised that the pin spacing was totally different and I was going to have to do a custom PCB like yours it all became too hard. So well done on following through with this.

If I'd known you had these I would have gone this path instead of hacking into my loom. I did need to change a few things about, but I would think that could have been dealt with in the patch harness.

Please post the relevant files here so anyone searching for this sort of thing in the future can find them.

CrazyRacer · Postby **CrazyRacer** » Wed Jun 02, 2021 6:23 pm

I should follow my own advice and post up potentially usefull information for posterity...

NB8A to Haltech Elite 1500 Wiring Mapping

rascal · Postby **rascal** » Wed Jun 02, 2021 6:46 pm

CrazyRacer wrote:I should follow my own advice and post up potentially usefull information for posterity...

NB8A to Haltech Elite 1500 Wiring Mapping

Awesome, thanks for that...
Might alleviate the need to pay through the nose and wait for ever for a boomslang harness from USA..

bartmanftw · Postby **bartmanftw** » Wed Jun 02, 2021 7:10 pm

CrazyRacer wrote:Please post the relevant files here so anyone searching for this sort of thing in the future can find them.

As requested I've placed the files here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

You'll find the pinout I used, the gerber files to get PCBs manufactured and a .dxfs file for the case. While the case worked I need to make a new revision with slightly thicker walls and an adjustment on the superseal connector end.
Should also note that hte excel file also includes a BOM for the circuit board and adapter harness as well as links to where to buy the parts locally in Aus.

Hope someone finds this useful.