SHIT...I got to Miami on the 2nd...I am still here you left all ready? Ill be in Florida tull the 16th

 

yeah man I am long gone about 1300plus miles away from florida now

otherwise I would def be calling you, but hey If I head down this year i will def let you know, since I now know where you be at!! I was in Orlando area for the most part and in miami area for couple of days

 

Of the people who already have this ECU, has anyone except for bmeyer gotten the longer harness to install it under the seat?

 

I have...its currently under construction in Rodney's posession.

 

You've driven with the MS3 and the longer cables? No issues?

 

No...i dont have it back yet.
why do u ask?

 

Hey guys, I thought I'd chime in on the subject... I was the first (as far as I know) to have the extended ECU harness and I'm in the process of working though some issues with it.

I had the car to the tuner shop at the end of December and got half-way through the map and just ran out of time. The car runs to the point where I can drive it around town and produce 1-3 p.s.i boost. The issue that I ended up having is that I was getting a LOT of bizarre DTC's thrown on the car. I decided to try to take the MS3 ECU out of the mix and revert back to stock injectors and the stock ECU to see if that alleviated at least some of the issues. The good news is that I verified that the car runs without issues (read: no CEL's) when running off the stock injectors and the stock ECU, but with the MS3 connected, I'm getting issues like crank position A & B sensor failures, random misfires, and other misc. codes.

I had tried to contact Rodney last week to see if he had any available shorter harnesses that I could either purchase or borrow over-night to see if that fixed the issue. I haven't heard anything back from him... My next step is to take the extra length out of the harness myself and see if that fixes it. My hope is that everything will work out after that, but I'll let you all know how it goes.

Wish me luck!

 

^^^ damn....hope u get all the issues fixed....

Btw am just curious, is the longer harness producing issues ? Is that what ur implying ? Can u run the MS3 with the short harness and a base map to isolate the issue to the harness and not as a tuning error...

 

Dude, read his post. All the questions u asked are in there.

Engine runs fine on stock ECU
He is asking Rodney to send him a shorty to try or buy.

There are a lot of signals running between. I know they sell a 12 footer but interference has to play a part.

 

might be able to answer the question about the DLC codes you get while you plug into you car while the J&R ecu is in the car. the J&R ecu piggybacks or cuts into the signal that come to or go out from the stock ecu . so like the crank sensor a/b and the couple other you are getting are because of that . basically the stock ecu is just there to help out with the gauges , anti thief , and transmission .

now i did see you guys were talking about the Flash-pro idea from hondata. well i been working on something similar . the saturn vue has a close electrical system as far as running the engine. i have been working on a adapter that will connect the Vue ecu to the 3.2 and 3.5. why would you do such a thing ? EFI Tuning offers software to reflash the ecu for boost / supercharge . you can change the all the setting but one . it is for the secondary O2 . you cant shut them off completely , but put them to a close loop. i will keep you guys posted about this idea that i work on in a new thread , which i will start soon.

 

@swoosh
That's what I've been trying to find out, but I can't get a response from Rodney about either purchasing (I literally have money falling out of my pockets trying to buy a shorty) or borrowing one to narrow down the issue. And I'm not *implying* anything. I'm simply trying to figure out what's going on here and can only speculate, through physical research, that this is in fact causing an issue. Once I have a shortened harness and am able to run with 0 CEL's then I will know for sure and will gladly report back that there was something else amiss.

@RPM
I would be fine if I knew that having the MS3 in the mix was just going to throw some codes, but the fact is that many other board members are running the same setup (minus the extended harness) with no codes at all. Even though I have many other upgrades to the engine, the fact of the matter is that the stock ECU doesn't throw any codes at all. Meaning that there should be no difference at all by adding the MS3 to my setup.

 

Sounds like a electrical noise nightmare since 12FT is 3-4 times as long as stock engine harness wires. How about some shielding like copper foil tape between the digital signals and high current drivers. Twisting the pairs might also help as well while you are shortening the harness. You can compare before and after by measuring the noise floor of the digital signals with your oscilloscope.

 

Like bmeyer said, some (me being one) is running the ECU with the 1ft harness with no issues.

 

same here short harness 0 issues!

 

i guess u didnt read my post....

i asked him to run MS3 with a shorter harness so that we can isolate the fault to the longer harness....

since he was at the shop trying to get her tuned, maybe some tuning parameter must have been wrong (human error) and hence run a base map with the longer harness.....

by doing these 2 things we can isolate the problem to the longer harness....

the reason am so curious is coz i have ordered the longer harness....and do wanna make sure if the harness is the culprit....

 

Perhaps vary the lengths dependent on location for mounting.
That way the harness is only as long as it needs to be with some slack.

ie) Under Passenger seat or Driver seat

Boston would you mind posting a picture of what is visible with your Passenger Footwell mount?

 

I did read both.

And he's already said he has a email out to Rodney requesting he send him the shorter version to weed out if it's the MS3 or the harness and if too much time passes, he will alter the one he has..........Obviously bmeyer is putting this information out for all of you to benefit. He could have kept the conversation between the two of us.

I am pretty sure this is the closest mounting position except for the footwell. Even the passenger side will be about the same as the drivers side. It's not 12 feet for sure and the harness is cut much shorter than that.

If you cut out the foam in the upper footwell, it fit's pretty flush.

 

I'm in the process or rewiring the harness now, and apart from some shoddy splices in my harness, I came across something potentially MUCH scarrier... An improperly configured harness.

Here's what I found while creating a pinout chart to use during the rewiring:
Injector 1 is wired up to the INJ A output
Injector 2 is wired up to the INJ C output
Injector 3 is wired up to the INJ E output
Injector 4 is wired up to the INJ B output
Injector 5 is wired up to the INJ D output
Injector 6 is wired up to the INJ F output

This isn't that interesting (though it is quite odd) until you have another key piece of information...

The firing order for the engine is 1-4-2-5-3-6 and the TunerStudio is setup to fire in the following order: A-C-E-B-D-F. So if I'm reading that right, it's firing the engine like this: 1-2-3-4-5-6. What the fuck?? I just hope it didn't hurt my engine... I'll be beyond PISSED.

 

And this engine ever ran BEFORE the longer harness? Sounds like you should have been stumbling off your ass since you ever used that particular map. Perhaps check any older maps? Or maps before the firmware upgrade?

Mine is set up correctly in all of the base tunes Rodney gave me, though I never did upgrade the firmware revision if that has a role to play in the Basic/Load settings ---> Load and sequential settings "menu" values you have.

poop.

 

Read the post above. The car runs beautifully with the stock injectors and the stock ECU. No codes thrown at all.

The firing order is off, but it's not THAT far off. The 1 and 6 cylinders would fire on time, and the rest were probably close enough that they were firing on the down stroke. But it's certainly enough to throw the multiple misfire codes that it is.

The software wasn't the issue. Trust me on that. I have not only the base map that Rodney sent me, but also the base map of another member (both of which were created before the firmware update) and the settings are identical.

The fact of the matter is that the injector as well as the coil pack wiring was completely fucked up in the harness.

I'll post some pictures later on to show you just how poorly the harness was built. There were multiple clipped wires that were just dangling, no solder on several others (just wires wrapped around each other with some electrical tape holding them in place), the knock box had the +/- wires flipped... the list goes on and on.

 

sure I can post a pic but you won't be able to tell as there is nothing visible only thing you will see is a slight bulge toward front of footwell by firewall/bulkhead...And I mean slight as my wife sitting on the passenger side did not pick it up that the box was under the carpet! I asked her he she noticed something different on her side and she said no so that goes to show you that it really is not a big issue, unless you are super anal and a perfectionist with that sort of stuff.......

But as KN_TL stated you cut out the foam piece the size of the box and it sits in there really flush!!!

I will still post a pic next time I am in there as I need to still pull the knock monitor wiring out and locate it somewhere on the console....Does anyone of any ideas for where to place the light for the monitor?? I have few locations in mind but just wanted to see what some have already done as far as locating their knock monitor light!

 

The thing i couldnt figure out was where to place the rather large bypass harness connector. To make matters worse, there was very little length to the oem harness to do any type of manupation... to the point where i was forced to remove the factory ecu and set it in the footwell as well. How did you get around these issues?

 

Pics of the harness:

Keep in mind that these pictures were snapped right after removing the existing shrink wrapping. No wires were cut and no other modifications were made to the wires prior to me taking the pictures. They are exactly as they were discovered by me today.

Here were see one of the many leads that were apparently connected to something at one point, but the wire was then clipped and left hanging with an exposed contact area on the end of it. Also note the excessive amount of exposed wire.


4 pieces of wire used to make a single tap connection.


Another dangling lead. Too much exposed wire for the tap. Also note the 1" piece of wire used before switching to another piece of wire.


Another exposed lead. This time, it's coming from the main 12v+ to the ECU. Imagine if this had rolled slightly and shorted out against the chassis...


This is what I discovered underneath the previous splice.


Here are 2 splices on one wire. One of which was clipped and electrical tape was put over it. The other actually goes somewhere. Note how there is no solder on either connection. I actually just unwrapped the wire to remove the connection.


The shielded wire for the knock box was the same as this last picture. The wire was simply wrapped around another wire and then shrink wrapping was placed over the top. No solder was used.

Rodney, where are you, man? I need you to return some of my emails so that we can get this straightened out!

 

wow...that's rough man. looks like a 3 year old assembled that.

hope everything gets straightened out for you.

anything like this resemble the ECU wiring itself or just the harness? I'm starting to get nervous since I just bought the ECU in the group buy.

BTW nice use of a white background to show detail.

 

I didn't remove my stock ecu. All of the wiring fit nicely along the center hump just as I have it pictured here:

 

KN_TL, you screwed a metal plate on the J&R ecu right? Is that necessary to protect it from the passenger's feet? Or will the ecu by itself be strong enough?

 

The reason I did that was to create a cover for the connectors on each end. I was worried that someone really pushing hard on the floor could put pressure on the harness connectors and the USB cable that will be constantly connected.

The case itself is very well made and can handle a lot of abuse.

With my extra power, people get a little spooked when I really get on it.

 

Ha! And yea, that makes good sense, I'll definitely be doing something similar...

 

holy shit....that harness looks messed up.....

glad your trying to dig deeper and i hope all of us would benefit from this.....

 

Semi good news for me. After cleaning up the harness and fixing many more mistakes (such as the knock sensor wire not being connected to the stock ECU), the car is running smoother than ever. I'm only throwing one engine code at the moment which is a CKP B Sensor Intermittent Failure which is most likely related to me disconnecting the crank sensor while the engine was out. I'm hoping that it's a simple process of breaking out my HDS and reprogramming the sensor to have that one taken care of.

Also worth noting is that all of my cylinder misfires have been cleared up. Unfortunately it's not certain whether it was the extra length in the harness that was causing so many issues, or if it was any of the dozen or so F-ups in the wiring.

If anyone else is having any issues with their ECU, hit me up and I can send you a copy of the finalized wiring diagram that I put together.

EDIT: It's also worth noting that one major concern with the extended harness is that the shielded wire coming from the MS3 harness for the crank sensor was not extended the full length of the harness. It was only about 1' long and then a regular, small gauge, wire was soldered to it which extended about 4' to the AEM extension harness. I'm pretty sure that would have picked up all sorts of electrical noise.

Long story short, the extended harness is probably feasible, but more care has to be taken to ensure the proper connections are used and that the correct wire is used.

 

^^^

am looking to buy the harness, that should be fine right ?

 

I added an edit to the last post which explains some of my concerns. Unless J&R addresses those issues, I'd stay away from the extra length. I would also HIGHLY encourage everyone else buying this harness to verify ALL connections. Do not trust that it was done right when you get it. You could cause irreparable damage to your engine.

 

^^^ thanks a lot buddy for figuring that out.....i bet Rodney will address the issue....

if not imma holla at you Thanks man

 

I just got an email from Rodney. Seems like I was sent a development harness and should have never received this one in the first place. He said he's going to test each and every harness personally on future orders. Hopefully that takes care of any potential issues for future buyers.

 

@bmeyer

Not sure if I am asking this so you understand, but from the d-sub connector, how long was the black encased cable? I am trying to figure out if he took a 1ft cable and just extended it with wires and wrapped it or if the extended cable that is available was used.

Did you shorten it so it's going in the footwell instead of under the seat?

 

The harness that I got had the standard ms3 plugs and wires for approximately 1 foot from the d-sub connectors. After that, regular 16+ gauge wire was spliced in to extend the wiring for a total length of about 5 feet.

I shortened it so that the wires that come with the ms3 are connected directly to the AEM extension harness. I didn't try to test fit it anywhere yet. I was mainly concerned with getting th car to run before I did anything like that. My plan was to buy a brand new AEM harness and make all of the splices myself so that I ended up with a clean harness once I verified that all connections were correct. Now that I'll be getting a new harness, I'm not sure what I'll do. It all depends on the quality of th next harness.
By the way, I also received word that the injector/spark wires were actually correct in being out of order. Still not sure if I understand totally how that works with the configuration in the ms3, but it's right regardless.

 

Would have cleared up this issue if bmeyer had sent me a pic of harness as it definetly is one of our test unit ,im quiet quick on answering emails as I advised bmeyer I did not recieve an email since his last email that I did reply to him which he had car up and running with a slight surge ect ,all harness will be assembled by me and tested as we are equipped with both models tl and tls to do such testing ..as far as wiring all harness will betested and as far as firing order theres nothing wrong with configuration ..

Sure the firing order is 1,4,2,5,3,6 & in controller we have a,b,,c,,d,e,f, Therefore the harness is config to follow A _ inj 1 B _ inj 4 Ect this unit has been tested for more than a year just like our Turbo kits and has been working .....

bmeyer again totally sorry about the harness it will be replaced but as far as destroying your engine im glad I kept in contact with you regarding your build as the fuel pressure drop that you were experiencing would have certainly blow your motor and I know the ecu would have most.likely be the one to blame ,as weve worked with tl for so long identifing an issue before it arisesas far as engine performance and upgrade bmeyer sorry for mishap again ...

I usually answer my emails at tl20046speed@yahoo.com promptly and address

 

I did indeed send you an email to the email address you had specified and never got a response. The email was sent on the 6th. I forwarded you another copy for you to look at.

 

Rodney and I have had some email issues before. If I don't hear back from his within a day or two, I always ask if he's been getting my emails. We had a case one time where he was sending me all kinds of emails and I never got them. It happened to be when I got my ECU too.

 

Rodney we need to get you a new phone or some like that....ur current phone loves to push my mails to SPAM....if i every see you, imma drive over that phone !!!

well...glad everything was resolved....