Andre: It's Andre for the High Performance Academy,
and we're here to do a product evaluation
of MoTeC's brand new M150 plug and play ECU,
suited to the Toyota 86, Scion FRS, and Subaru BRZ.
Now before I go any further, I just want to point out
this ECU is definitely not going to be suited for everyone.
There are much cheaper options on the market
that are gonna suit the mainstream customer.
This ECU is aimed at the competition and profession level
of customer that's going to be using these cars
in a motorsport application.
So why have MoTeC decided to develop this ECU for the 86?
There's already quite a ot of support out there
in terms of reflashing of the factory ECU.
We've got products from companys like EcuTek,
BRZ-Edit, OpenFlash,
and there's also open source compatability
which is coming pretty soon.
The problem with all of these products
is they rely on the architecture of the factory ECU,
and the results are only going to be
as smart as the people decoding how that factory ECU works.
In reality, what this means is quite often
you get inconsistencies in the tune
because we don't really know what's going on
in the background,
and what Toyota and Subaru wanted to do
in the background with that code.
A standalone ECU on the other hand
is much more consistent and reliable
once you've programmed it for a certain air-fuel ratio.
You know that's exactly what you're going to get.
Now, the other problem with reflashing
is it's quite a slow process.
We can't tune the ECU live.
We can only make changes and then flash into the ECU.
Now, for a slightly modified car,
maybe an exhaust, headers, intake,
even a basic supercharger kit,
this works pretty well,
and the results are great, generally.
If you want to do a much more involved application,
maybe something where you've got larger cams,
ported head, or a really involved tune,
this is a very time-consuming process,
and it makes it difficult to tune the car thoroughly
and very accurately.
A standalone ECU on the other hand
makes this job a cinch.
We can tune the car live,
and it's very fast to do.
Now, the Toyota 86, FA20 engine
is quite an unusual engine,
which has meant that so far,
support from standalone ECU manufacturers has been limited.
The engine uses a combination of direct injection
and port injection.
Other complexities include the CAN bus communications
with the rest of the car,
so the factory ECU is integrated with this CAN bus
to run aspects such as the factory dash
and stability control among other things.
With MoTeC's new M150,
the guys have been able to reverse engineer
the factory ECU and that CAN bus.
Basically it replicates everything the factory ECU does.
What this means is you can plug it in.
Basically, your car's going to run.
You wouldn't know that anything had been changed.
The electronic power steer, the ABS, the air conditioning,
the stability control and the factory dashboard
will all work as normal.
In addition, MoTeC's M150 adds some extra features,
which are pretty cool.
Adds support for superchargers or turbochargers.
It adds proper competition spec traction control
and launch control, which is infinitely configurable,
and if you're looking at putting
a flash sequential gearbox in your car,
it will also do gear change ignition cut for you.
So, we're going to get the ECU installed,
and we'll talk about the functions, how well it works,
and we'll see the results of how it tunes on the dyno.
Before we go too far, we're going to have a look
at what exactly you get for your money
when you purchase this M150 kit for the Toyota 86.
When we open the box, the first thing we get
is a couple of stickers.
That's great to show off your affiliation to the MoTeC brand.
It's a really nicely-packaged box,
which is something we don't see from a lot of
aftermarket ECU manufacturers.
In the first layer, we've got the M150 ECU itself.
Now, this is a clear departure
from MoTeC's existing gold box strategy,
which we've seen over the years.
It's a very different-looking ECU.
It's really light and really brings it up to sort of modern spec
and looks quite professional.
We've also got a USB stick,
which contains all of MoTeC's current firmware,
software, as well as user manuals,
so basically, you've got the entire MoTeC directory
right there on a USB stick.
That's the software that we're going to need to tune it.
If we go into the next layer down,
we've got the adapter loom that comes with this kit.
Now, as I say, it comes with this kit.
This is optional.
You can choose to buy it,
which will make it a complete plug-and-play kit.
It works for both left-hand drive
and right-hand drive vehicles.
However, if you want to,
you can buy just the connectors from MoTeC,
and they supply the pin-out information.
You're welcome to make your own loom.
So, that's what we've got in the box.
Before we can get the car up and running
on the MoTeC M150,
the first job is to actually get to the factory ECU
and disconnect the header plug
so we can plug in the adapter loom.
We start by removing the glove box,
so we can get access to the ECU.
Regardless of whether your car's a left-hand drive
or right-hand drive,
the ECU's situated above the PEC panel
on the passenger's side of the vehicle.
Access to it's pretty tight.
There's a lot going on in there.
Tools you'll need are a 10mm or 1/4-inch drive socket,
a 1/4-inch drive ratchet,
and I also found that a long extension
and a universal joint for the 1/4-inch drive socket set
worked really well.
If you start low by actually unplugging the 4 connectors
from the factory ECU,
this is going to make it a lot easier to remove the ECU.
If you try and remove the computer
with these still plugged in,
it's very, very difficult to maneuver it around
and unplug them later.
Once we've disconnected the factory harness,
there's time to plug in the adapter loom.
Now, MoTeC's adapter loom comes with
a few extra plugs on it to allow you to do extra functions
that the factory ECU doesn't include.
These connectors include a connector for a MoTeC LTC
or Lamda to CAN module
for monitoring air-fuel ratio in the exhaust.
There's also a plug for a GPS sensor,
so you can do track mapping and track timing and logging.
There's also another connector for auxiliary inputs to the ECU,
so we can use these for driver switches
for boost, traction control,
and just about anything else you can think of.
Now, the loom itself, I must admit,
while there's nothing wrong with it,
it's made from proper mil-spec wiring.
It probably wasn't quite at the standard
that I would have expected from a kit at this sort of level.
Doesn't really matter too much,
certainly not going to be a reliability problem,
and once everything's installed,
chances are no one's ever going to see it again anyway.
It's just something I thought was worth mentioning in passing.
As a bit of a wiring nerd,
we kind of like to see that real high-quality mil-spec wiring harness,
and it's what we have kind of expected here.
The other point I'll make at this area here of the installation
is there's no way of easily mounting the ECU, the M150,
in this kit, so we're kind of left with
no way of mounting it back where the factory ECU was,
and again, that would have just been a nice little feature.
It's not the end of the world.
It's no big deal.
We can make do,
but the last thing we want is a really nice flash M150 ECU
held in with a few zip ties,
so something that I would have thought
MoTeC may have worked on there.
For our testing purposes,
we're just going to plug the adapter harness
and the M150 into the factory harness,
and leave it sitting here on the passenger's foot well,
so we can see it and we can get to everything.
You'll also notice another connector on the ECU harness
is the ehternet adapter,
which is what we plug into
to actually tune the ECU, look at logging, etcetera.
Now that we've got the ECU installed in the car,
one of the really good features
with the M150 plug-and-play unit is it comes with a basemap
that's good enough to start the car,
and just about replicates the factory driveability
and factory tune everywhere.
All this means is you can just press the button,
start the car, and drive to the dyno.
Let's do that now.
(engine starts)
So, that concludes our unboxing
and initial examination of the M150 plug and play.
Tune in next time.
We're going to talk through the software features,
what the M150 offers,
and we're going to have the car on the dyno
to tune the M150.
Voiceover: For online tuning courses,
visit learntotune.com.