The easy answer would be to say that prodrive got a stock ecu, reflashed it and voila... prodrive ecu. However everyone seems to bang on about how my97/98 ecu's cant be remapped/reflashed? So come on then what did they do? On the early cars they fitted a rom chip into a spare socket, on the later my99/00 cars I believe the ecu's were reflashed on an exchange basis, so they kept your old one, (perhaps to be reflashed for the next customer? bit mean but you never know?) Did STI assemble the my97/8 ones and ship them over? The reason I ask is that if prodrive totally remapped the ecu, then why cant anyone else seem to do it!! There is a whole group of people trying to unpick the my97/98 code but surely if prodrive know what parts of the data dump contain the juicy stuff then its effectively alredy been done... hasn't it?

 

I think I've seen 1 shop do it but his prices were a bit too high so I never looked into it further

 

power engineering offer a phase2 board that allows remapping on 97/98my cars... so does that mean if i crack open my prodrive ecu there will be an extra board inside? Wow if thats gonna be the case I'm taking it to power engineering for a custom map! And the SP ecu just skyrocketed in value!

 

There was a PE ECU on ebay, I missed out getting it as it got a bit expensive.
I wonder if you were the one who did buy it? I spoke to PE in advance and they told me they couldn't remap or support their old phase 2 board daughter board ECUs. Seems like the supplier in Oz failed to provide support to PE in the form of EPROMS/boards or software. So the MY97-98 mystery continues... ESL are the hope but they have been taking their time to say the least.

I also wonder how the SP - Prodrive ECU works remap wise...

 

I tried to buy it but fate was not on my side! feckin work computer froze trying to refresh at 30 seconds to go as I was gonna lump a £160 bid on it. It was a complete steal at the price of £105 or whatever it went for as far as I am concerned. PE used 2 types of daughterboard one was japanese made by techtom (believe phase1?) the latter (phase 2?) by chiptorque in OZ. I didnt know they no longer supported them, I sent them an e-mail asking them all my questions about the 97/98 cars, but as I kinda come over as a nutter sending tech e-mails at 2am, unsurprisingly they havent replied! As for ESL I sent an e-mail about a fortnight ago asking if they could give an estimated date for launch and they replied saying they couldnt say. My guess is we will never see it as its not economically viable compared to the cost of other replacement ecu's and the limited 97/98 market. I can see from the picture of the PE board on the e-bay auction that it has some interesting features. I think there is a socket attached to the board on the edge of the main pcb allowing the daughter to be plugged in. There are what looks like 2 chip sockets on the daughterboard, but cant see the chips, there is also a socket that is marked something like programming and security, its hard to read but this is where the board must be mapped from. thats all i know for now. I'm going to take an SP apart when I can find another (genuine) one (long story-dont ask) and compare it to my 8S to see if there are any phisical differences, perhaps you could take a pic of yours if its out of the car, only 6 screws hold the case together, and a further 2 more attach the pcb to the bottom case allowing you to look underneath the pcb, its not fragile really as its meant to withstand knocks and bumps of driving, just dont stab at it with a screwdriver obviously!

 

IIRC the 97/98 ECU can be mapped its just not a commercially available. I believe Pat Hebron has done a few!

 

if this is pat "the map" that I have seen referred to I believe he used the chiptorque boards to achieve this same as PE.

 

Watching this with interest. I dont see how its not comercially viable when MY99/00 cars are mapped all the time.

 

Just buy a cheap Apexi PFC and be done with it.

 

I would guess that the development costs far outweigh the eventual revenue that might be recouped. Nobody has stated the exact reason why my97/98 cars cant be remapped, I'm not an electronics wizard but I think its something to do with the maps being integrated on the main chip along with a lot of other stuff, and the fact there's no expansion socket present on the board like earlier models. Cheap PFCs dont seem to exist as far as I can find! The cheapest I have seen second hand is £440 and it was snapped up in 1 day of advertising online. Then there is the remapping cost ontop of at least £100, some 94-96 PFC's are cheaper because there are more of them about and less demand due to earlier cars being chippable anyway. The main question remains to be answered how the **** did prodrive find extra horses form an ecu that supposedly cant be remapped. The only way is to open up an SP ecu and have a look I guess.

 

might keep my eye out for an apexi power fc then

 

Yeah, a 2nd hand PFC is currently the only real 'cheap' solution for MY97/98 owners. Unfortunately.

...Until ESL pull their finger out lol

 

I've been contacting ESL for about 18 months now and at one point they had a finished product that was awaiting 'E' approval, then for some reason they did a U turn and decided to re-make the boards using a different programming code. Last reply I had said they had no idea when it will be ready.

I can't understand why they do not want to sell this product, soon there will be no customers left to buy the thing.

 

I agree completely. It seems crazy, there are a whole host of potential buyers who have been waiting for ages..

 

I even offered to buy the rights to the product they already had but they were not interested.

 

So which cars can and can't be mapped?

STI III
STI IV
STI V

Thanks.

PS - for the ones that can be, where are some good places.

 

It's only the MY97/98 v.III/IV (Sep 96 to Aug 98) - and not just STi's! - that you currently can't do anything with the OEM ECU...

 

ESL's main business is serving the MOD with electronics and software for radar, the ECU stuff is a sideline, and has to take a back seat to the main money earning stuff.

 

is this how prodrive did it?
PPP Fitting Instructions

 

i'm sure the ecu shown by danog is a 2001 uk V3 ecu so a bit later than we have all been discussing. However it is a real surprise to see a piggyback board going in there. I was informed these were remapped using ecutek or similar?

I did see this item on an auction site which has a little box attached that I didnt recognise. It says prodrive on it and a part No. anyone know what it is?

SUBARU IMPREZA P1 ECU + PRODRIVE PIGGYBACK ECU REMAP on eBay (end time 13-Sep-09 17:18:09 BST)

 

Recently, I found a photo of Mine's VXROM ECU. It apparently uses a Daughter Board and was(is) available for v3 and V4 JDM STi. As far as I know it was not remapable but proves the OEM ECU can accept daughter board as pre-96 ECUs do.

This is a link to Legacy Mine's ECU, which although has 4 plugs is quite similar to V4 ECU:

MINES VX ECU Subaru BG5 GT-B BD5 BD BG Legacy EJ20TT on eBay (end time 11-Sep-09 21:07:03 BST)

 

yes I thought it was strange too. I have a MY05 prodrived ecu and that hasnt got a piggyback board in it so I guess they must of ecutecked it

 

The mines ecu add ons can be found here Mine's click on the English tab ot it could be difficult to read

 

can I suggest the theory that from what I understand the ecutek way of remapping was developed in conjunction with (or maybe by?) power engineering David Powers and made comercially available in around 2002. Prior to this the sister (techtom) board was possibly the way prodrive hiked up the power. Basically I am saying I think there was a year or two 'window' of time between the newer ecu's coming out and the ecutek style of tuning being adopted by prodrive. During this window of time they were still adding these boards. Seems very likely to me.

 

Ecutek is part owned by David Power.

The Prodrive ECU for 97-98 does not have a daughterboard on, it is pre programmed with a map at a the factory developed by STI, this is why it has a pink label.

The Prodrive ECU for 96 ECU was a plug in Eprom that went in a socket purpose made for such a device, the rom code was also developed by STI and was a slight tweak of a Z4 JDM ecu map.

The techtom style boards have never been available for any ECU that has been Ecutekable. When the 99 ECU came out, Stephen done (1/3 of what is now ecutek) worked hard on his own, with a little help resource wise from Power Engineering. Then we he had pretty much cracked it, it went commercial with help from David POwer and Mervyn carroll.

In 2001 the PPP Ecu for the bug eye used a GEMS manufactured addon board that was a glorified fuel cut defender and boost controller.

 

Thanks for finally clearing that up Pavlo, I knew someone would have the answers. I dont fully understand the later ecu's as all I know is what little I've learnt about what you can/cant do with the 97/98 models as thats what I have. I hope to update to a newer model someday so am keen to learn about them so I can hit the ground running so to speak. So were prodrive reflashing via obd2 for the 99 models right from the start, in otherwords using their own version of the latterly developed ecutek? Its rather upsetting to hear that the fabled 'prodrive' ecu for the 2001on is basically a FCD & bleedvalve. When you do this to a 97/98 people frown upon it as a cheapskate bodge job. I have always thought as long as the fuelling is safe then its a valid way of upping things, certainly for the miniscule cost involved vs the results.

 

Prodrive 99 ecu was an STI programmed item I believe. Not until about 2002 were prodrive using ecutek. Prodrive got no support from subaru to sort out the PPP.

 

Of course it was, now you mention it I have seen them on fleabay. I think they were badged SP same as the 97/98 ones only with a different plug configration.