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HOW TO: Wire Speeduino standalone ecu to your Honda

48K views 43 replies 9 participants last post by  evo_lucian 
#1 · (Edited)
Still Under Construction.....

How to: Install Speeduino Standalone ECU into Honda/Acura

Edit: October 2021.
I made a plug and play adapter board for the OBD1 Honda so no need to mess with any wiring. You can pick it up here https://wtmtronics.com/product/honda-ss-obd1/

Here is an overview video on the Honda plug and play adapter board:

Disclaimer: I am not an engineer or professional mechanic, tuner or mechanic, use the information here at your own risk. I am not responsible for any damage that may be caused to you or your car. Lastly check your local laws, as this may not be a legal modification in some areas.


I have had quite a few requests in the past to make a write up on installing Speeduino into a Honda D series B series or pretty much any OBD 1 Honda. The info here can be used in an obd2 Honda with a few tweaks.
In this write up I will be covering the v0.4 series of Speeduino but the same information can be used with the V0.3 series. The only difference is the pin orientation/naming on the board, but it’s all the same.

What is Speeduino?

Speeduino is a low cost engine Standalone Management System (EMS) based on the Arduino platform. The project was created by a gentle man by the name of Josh Stewart from Australia. The project is open source which means that it is free to be modified while respecting the terms of the license. The majority of the development and testing thus far has been done by members of the community.

What will I need to fit Speeduino into my car?

You will need a few things to get speeduino to working on your car. Some of which you need to purchase and some are optional since they can be borrowed or are just not needed.
  • Assembled Speeduino V0.4 PCB board
  • Arduino Mega 2560
  • Assembled VR conditioner PCB
  • Laptop with TunerStudio and Arduino IDE installed
  • Soldering Iron and multicolour 20-22 ga Automotive wires length will be dependent on you but 24 inches will do
  • 40 pin IDC Breakout kit
  • Good soldering iron
  • Solder
  • Solder sucker
  • Ignition timing light
  • Time and lots of patience
  • Ecu Pinout and wiring diagram for your car/engine
  • Time and lots of patience…………

The Speeduino PCB, VR Conditioner PCB can all be purchased assembled from the Speeduino store ***link. Read below for links for Tunerstudio and Arduino IDE software download. Soldering iron, solder, solder sucker and timing light can all be found at most automotive stores or amazon. Pinouts and diagrams can be found with a google search.

Wiring it all up

Here are the connections from Speeduino and where they are supposed to go on your Car. The V0.4 uses two pins to carry the fuel injector wire so are gonna have to add a small piece of wire to your existing injector wire from your harness to essentially double the wire. You can do it this way or just use one pin like I did. It’s up to you. The V0.4 has 4 pins for ground. I only used 2 of them; you can use any 2 of your choice and leave the other 2 unused.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3l0rsby2fboese8/V0.4 Mapping.xlsx?dl=0

To connect the Speeduino to you stock harness you will need some sort of patch harness to join the two. There are many ways to do this as long as it gets the job done. On my car I currents have a “RPi GPIO Cobbler Plus Breakout Board Kit with 8" 40 Pin Ribbon Cable for Raspberry Pi 3 / Zero 1.3 / 2 / B+ / A+ (Unassembled)”

You basically solder up 2 feet long 20 or 22ga wire to the holes in the PCB which correspond to pins listed in the excel file and solder up the supplied female IDC 40 pin connector. Now you are half done with your patch harness. The other end of wires you soldered connects to your cars stock wiring harness. I spliced and soldered my harness directly to my stock harness. If you don’t want anything permanent then you can use an old ecu and cut off the connector, and solder your wires to the wires to the connector and just plug it to your stock harness.

Another method is if your car is obd2 then you and just get an obd2 o odb1 ecu jumper, cut off the male plugs and solder it to the IDC 40 pin Break out PCB and cut down your work in half.

Another method is to just get an old ecu which can connect to your stock harness, cut out the Circuit Board from the Ecu and you will be left an empty case with a female connector, install the speeduino into the case and just solder the wires to the connector to essentially have yourself a plug and play Standalone ecu.

Over the last few months I have tried a few ways of connecting the Speeduino to my stock harness and all of them have worked pretty well and all with pros and cons. You decide which is easier and more practical for you.

Getting it all working together

Now you have your New Speeduino Ecu wired in you will need go get your laptop and flash some firmware to your Speeduino. Here is how
http://speeduino.com/wiki/index.php/Compiling_and_Installing_Firmware

Now we have the firmware installed and working we need to verify that your ignition trigger is spot on. Unplug the fuel injectors, and remove your spark plugs to make it easier on your starter motor Set Cranking Advance in Tunerstudio to 16 degrees. With the timing light hooked up have a friend turn the car over and look to see how far off your timing is. Increase/decrease the trigger offset angle to get the ignition timing dead on. When this is done reconnect the injectors and spark plugs and attempt to start the car.
Here is a .msq (tune file) that will help you get going quicker.



TO BE CONTINUED……………
 
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#4 ·
whoa, i read this because i didnt recognize this and this year i started putzing around with crome, im definitely going to follow this, saw a dude on youtube running a suby coilpack and wires and a oem dizzy for cam sensing. definitely intrigued specially if it utilizes Pi
 
#10 · (Edited)
If you planning on doing the installation in a stock ecu case ,I would do a P06 since they are cheap and plentiful.

I am more than happy to explain anything that is still unclear. I have another Speeduino ecu that I am planning on installing in a stock ecu case, I suppose I can get a few pics and make it a full DIY write up for you guys.

Very awesome and informative post! Any idea what the rough total cost of all this ended up being for you?

I assembled and soldered my ecu myself so it was a bit cheaper for me but this is what it cost as far as I can recall

V0.4 PCB $15
Components for PCB $85
IDC breakout board $8
VR conditioner $20

So about $130 give or take but I did all the assembly and soldering myself. Now a days you can buy fully assembled boards for about $145 and it comes with a free assembled VR conditioner IIRC. Throw in another $50 for misc stuff and you set.
 
#14 ·
Fantastic Post. Seriously.

The idea of being able to switch back to your stock ECU makes taking the jump to a stand alone seem less scary. I wonder if that is even practical given the modifications needed to get the speeduino to run the ignition system and tune off the wideband o2 sensor.
 
#16 ·
I went into my Speeduino experience about a year ago. At the time I had never installed or played with any standalone installation or wiring before hand. I had helped one or two friends with start up issues with other ecu like AEM EMS4 once or twice but that's it as far as ecu , wiring or tuning experience for me, total noob.

A standalone installation is nothing to be scared of, if you take your time and do your research and homework, you will never need to plug in your stock ecu again. I had speeduino on my car with a stock d15 for .months without issue.

No modifications are needed to your stock ignition system for speeduino. You can omit your stock o2 sensor all together and just use a wideband even if you go back to a stock ecu. Most widebands work with stock ecu just fine
 
#17 ·
This is fantastic!!!

KUDOS to you. The ecu case insert style is a fantastic and clean way of making it a plug and play.




I now wish there was a direct method to maintain my built-in TCM on my obd2a 97 auto dx.

Would be cool to be able to play around a bit for a bit more power and gasmileage without breaking the bank.



How is the response time? is it faster than the stock ecu as far as reactions?
 
#20 ·
with a vehicle where the stock ecu controls the stock transmission , I would do a parallel installation. what this means is that you leave the stock ecu in place and just tap the distributor and other sensor wires and connect them to speeduino. that way speeduino is essentially just doing fuel and spark or whatever you need it do and the stock ecu can do transmission control. It's not that difficult.

Response time although I have never done an intelligent side by side comparison, I can say it works as fast as needed and I have had zero issues. Perhaps one of the smarter guys on the Speeduino forums can tell you exactly how fast it is, as I'm just not that smart to know these things. I simply install them, tune them and have fun with them.
 
#18 ·
BTW, ebay is chock full of these arduino mega 2560 boards! and some are kits with extra accessories
 
#22 ·
I know the miata 1.6liter cars used the same plastic plug base

diy-autotune has a list of comparable plugs, or at least used to, if its gone.
 
#23 ·
for sure, luckily up here by Rapids FVIM salvage has a ton of honda acura's in the yard i can probably snag a ecu for $5. i cot a rear disc conversion for my coupe off a gsr for $40 if i pulled it which i did, pillows were shot and it had megan camber, motors are $150 for acles harness and trans included they have a z6 there with vtec blocked off i wanna take a closer look at before i decide to pull it, they pull them for you also but not guaranteed no damage when they do it
 
#29 ·
From the Wiki page..."6x6 3D individual cylinder trim on engines up to 4 cylinders"

What does the 6x6 mean? Individual cylinder trim is sorta self explanatory.

It doesn't say on the Wiki page but the forum says it now supports ethanol sensor input. If so that's pretty handy.
 
#30 ·
6x6 individual cylinder trim means that you get a 6x6 table where you can use that yo add or remove fuel from any particular cylinder. So if cylinder 3 is running lean then you can choose to add 10 % fuel yo just that cylinder.

Ethanol or fuel support is now available so you can do flex fuel control so the ecu can automatically compensate for ethanol content in your fuel tank
 
#33 ·
Autotune is working great, it makes the tuning process a lot quicker and easier. Tips for autotune ? Always start off with a rich fuel map and trim from there. Another tip for autotune, don't use autotune to tune idle portion of the map. Set that manually and then lock the cells you idle at and lock 1 row of cells above and below the cells you idle in. Does that make any sense ?
 
#35 ·
I have had it tune idle and it generally gets get 80% there but it always almost needs a lil tweaking to get it just right.

I usually tune idle for highest vacuum (lowest number) within my target idle speed ( about 900 rpm) . right now my car idles at 24kpa at about 950 rpm. AFR is somewhere around 14.2:1 IIRC.

Despite what the internet says you do not tune idle for any specific AFR. You tune for greatest vacuum within your target idle speed
 
#37 ·
I don't have an idle control valve hooked up so 950 rpm is a happy medium since if I go any lower, the rpm would be too low to keep the car running on cold starts. When I eventually hook up the idle control valve soon, I will definitely tune it for lower idle.

I had my car running and tuned naturally aspirated before I went turbo. It doesn't really make a difference really since I can wipe my MAP and start from scratch and still end up with similar tunes.

I don't have AC so I can't tell if it affects idle but I can tell you that if it did , I am sure you can tune around it
 
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