1st Gen Haltech ECU Discussion

That finer detail evaded me in these discussions so thank you.

 

Yes, that detail evaded me as well when I purchased, so I'm happy to clear that up for others

 

On a 95-97 model the speedo cable turns the apparatus in the cluster and in that apparatus in the cluster is the sensor the passes on the speed as an electrical signal to the ECU. On later models the speed signal is fed to the body harness and distributed to the ECU and Cluster rather than through one or the other.

 

Would you mind sharing a bit about your experience? What did you end up doing? Did you tune yourself? How difficult was the learning curve for you?

 

This was my experience with SNP as well. None of that was spelled out when I purchased the Haltech kit from them.

Just prior to doing the install I asked if he would be available if I ran into issues. I was told they could be if I made financial arrangements and scheduled a tuning appointment.

FWIW, on my truck the base tune was not very good and turned out to be just barely enough to start the truck the first time. Thankfully my friends Zane and Jayson stepped in and were able to fix the tune well enough to make it driveable.

@Speedytech7

 

No if I let off the throttle and coast for a few seconds it resets itself and behaves like normal again. I have a OBD reader that I can use.

 

Just call me Paul Wall cause I'm the peoples' champ!



Lol nah I just really wanted to make a Paul Wall reference, here to help tho

 

Thanks, everyone. When I get up to speed, I will make myself a resource, too. As a newcomer, I like to think I have contributed quite a lot already especially with respect to electrical questions.

 

I have a good amount of technical info on my build page here, but I'll summarize the whole story:

I started with the URD piggyback with my first turbo build and was never happy with it. Went to twins and by that time I had more money to spend on a project truck so I decided to invest in a standalone, but took a while to figure out what was most cost-effective. In the end I decided the 2500 Elite had everything I would want long-term, and it was just a matter of deciding if I would DIY or buy. Ended up waiting for SnP to have a sale and bought the whole package from Gabe at the beginning of this year. With the plug and play harness, initial hardware install was a breeze.

Truck did not start at first. Took a lot of tinkering and some comms with Gabe before it would finally start and idle in the driveway, but mainly it was me sitting in the cab with a laptop playing with different settings, tweaking the base map. Also, the wideband O2 did not work at all at first because the pnp harness had the two CAN wires flipped. (I now have nearly perfect idle control, but occasionally a problem starting mainly when temps outside are hot.) From there, I started lightly driving around, seeing how the truck would respond at different areas of the maps and letting it self-adjust. That part is easy - you just tell it what target lambdas (AFRs) you want and let it tune itself over time starting with the base fuel map. I'm enamored with the precision it allows, so I probably spent exponentially more time than needed tweaking and prodding settings than needed, but I've probably at least spent 20 hours in the HT software just absorbing & contemplating things and making tiny changes.

I did run into some pinging issues that caused me to have to start the tune over a couple times in boost regions, ran into that issue I mentioned earlier of spark plug gap (flame-out), and had some trouble with my boost controller that set me back as well, but those are all growing pains that aren't to do with the Haltech itself. Overall I would say it was the best purchase I could have made. Learning curve wasn't that bad for me - everything was very intuitive if you understand the basics of EFI and spark timing. The trickiest part is probably getting your idle control down, then waiting to see what in the base map needs to be optimized or completely changed.

 

Overall experience with the haltech 750?? I got my supercharger and I want to tune it with haltech.

 

I love it on my truck, it's got a good feature set. What's your truck (year, transmission, engine)?

 

Holy crap, finally!

https://www.haltech.com/news-events/upcoming-firmware-for-the-ic-7-dash/

 

Day 1 sucks. New software, lots of things to setup and learn. Split the grounds in the engine harness near ecu. That kept me at around 3-3500 rpm rev limit until fixed. Transient throttle takes awhile to dial in and is very important for drivability. Keep things simple and slowly work your way around. Save each or almost each tune so you can revert back when you step into the weeds. Definitely get the wideband kit with it. Afr is almost dumb easy, set your target and the ecu will hit it unless you are way off or your fuel pump exploded. Key here is to note how much correction the ecu is using against the VE map to hit that target. If it's adding 10% then you simply add 10% to the VE table for that cell. Rinse, repeat, slowly. Don't be a hero and just floor it out the box rowing the transmission through all the gears.

Kinda wish I got the 2500 for its anti knock capabilitys and more input/output pins.

Overall still very happy and would do it again.

 

The knock mitigation logic in the 2500 can be powerful but it's like every other feature it requires extensive setup it doesn't just work out of the box. This being especially true because it doesn't work with your stock knock sensors and then on top of that you have to calibrate the resonant frequency and figure out what intensities actually equate to a knock event. I still think you're just better off nailing out a good tune with knock ears

 

I sort of feel the same about mine and wishing I had gotten the 1500 or 2500 mostly for the more IO and features. But that's mostly nitpicking smaller stuff. Works perfectly fine for what I need.

 

I hear that epic music playing

 

I/O is the only thing I'm short on too. Have you looked at any of the I/O extenders on the market. The Haltech ones are a bit over priced, but CAN Checked has the MCE18 and now if you were looking for all in one gauge package the IC7 will soon be able to act as an I/O expander, data logger, and small CAN keypad.

 

Looks like Haltech is going to release a new Nexus ECU, it slipped in the NSP update...

 

For anyone struggling with Transient throttle adjustments Haltech appears to have implemented an alternative method now...

 

@Speedytech7 Like mentioned previously, I will be going with SNP's 1500 complete kit for the 3RZ. If I want to add sensors which don't come on the harness provided by Gabe, e.g. knock sensors, fuel composition sensor, and fuel pressure, what in all would that entail? I know how to make great harnesses; that isn't my question. Rather, what would be required for me to add those sensors to the ECU apart from pinning for the Haltech ECU?

Installation does not intimidate me. Tuning does. I am of a mind that I will either need to a) pay Gabe at SNP to do the tune for me, b) drive to Lake Havasu and have Gabe tune my truck for me IRL, or c) take an HP 101 course for learning Haltech.