ECU / Eprom tuning on E30s...

[Street Surgeon]

My cousin owns an '88 SuperETA with some work done (a hybrid of sorts) and though he has a dinan eprom'd ecu, we were wondering if there is a program available that lets you tune your own ecu... Fuel, timing, injectors, etc. For my car ('94 Talon) there's a program that's freeware, and totally lets me have full control over pretty much ever aspect of the ecu. I merely put in the information I want (redline, maf type, injector size, rev limit, fuel map, timing maps) and then burn a chip for her.

Is there something like this available for the BMW ecm/ecu? Thanks for the help.

[Rob ITR1035]

SMT6, Mega Squirt, etc can do that sort of thing.

[Street Surgeon]

Well sure, but companies like Dinan and such make a living tuning the eprom in your stock ecu/ecm. I'm looking basically for the program they use when they modify the timing, fuel etc. I'm guessing the E30 community doesn't have one yet eh?

All the things you mentioned were full on standalone ECU's

[Rob ITR1035]

actually they're piggyback type computers.

So you want the actual chip burning software? I think that so few people have it because the hardware is so expensive

[Street Surgeon]

The hardware required to burn an eprom or flash chip is about 100 bucks for a decent burner, the chips themselves are about 5 to 10. I know because I burn my own for Nissan and Mitsu ECU's. The eprom chip that holds the fuel, timing etc. Information is the same type used in our ECU's.

Mega Squirt is a full standalone ECM that controls all the fuel and timing (among other things) for any given vehicle once you whip up the sensor harness' for it, I have a friend that builds mega-squirt boards and they actually are running it on Jim's turbo E30, Parish's 10 second Silverado truck etc. They can be run as a piggyback, but only if you want to fight the original ecu/m

[Rob ITR1035]

well, since you know everything, whats the problem?

[m42technic]

The SMT6 is designed and built as a piggyback unit. I dont know about you, but I'd rather just play with settings on the fly with something like an SMT6 than burn a new EPROM every time I wanted to fine tune.

SMT6 Webpage

[Street Surgeon]

Originally Posted by Rob ITR1035

well, since you know everything, whats the problem?

Thanks for all your invaluable help in this thread The "problem" is that I'm trying to find software to tune the factory eprom, or at least an address file to show me the locations on the fuel / timing map so I can modify the .bin file from the eprom myself in a hex editor...

The SMT6 is designed and built as a piggyback unit. I dont know about you, but I'd rather just play with settings on the fly with something like an SMT6 than burn a new EPROM every time I wanted to fine tune.

Yeah, I should've clarified, I was speaking about the squirt. Of course it would be nice to adjust on the fly, but I'm not a huge fan of running a piggyback when there are cheaper alternatives that don't involve "tricking" the factory ecm, not to mention you can actually run an emulator to a flash eprom (29C256) and then just modify the code on the fly anyway if you want to be able to adjust the code in real time.

[SouthernBimma85]

my dad just got a chip burner so he can make custom eproms for our motorhome, since he is upgrading it to direct port fuel injection. So is Squirt the only program where you can make eproms for bmw?

[greateratlanta]

Post this question over on www.e30tech.com and you will get a much better response. Since the car is a hybrid, guessing a stroker or "i" head conversition, it might be best just to get the alpina 2.7 chip. I know there is a guy on there who's friend is burning copies of his alpina 2.7 chip. Of course this would mean swapping out the ETA ecu with the "i" ecu.