Standalone ECU A610

[BIG_MVS]

Hi Alan,

Yes good thinking and I had exactly the same thing happen to me with my first GTA Turbo. The A610 did away with this potential issue though and binned the swirl pot and just had the one fuel pump located at the front of the car. It still kept both filters though, a small pre filter at the front and a larger one in the drivers side rear wheel arch.

Thought I’d just add to the thread. It’s not meant as a sales advertising, only to get the correct info out there.

Like every car the Alpines have ultimately been designed by accountants not engineers, I guess they must be extra penny pinching in France.. All of the looms I come across on the Alpines I look after are looking a little worse for wear. I can repair them, splice in new sections, fit new multiplugs and the like but replacing by far is the best option.

So my idea was to update the ecu and loom as one. Not for everyone but it is without doubt the best way to go. I’ve designed it so the original loom can be reinstated in a few hours if the car were to be sold to a ‘purist’.

The loom uses excellent quality components throughout. I researched motorsport/aerospace looms and settled on Raychem, Deutche and Neptune for the multi connectors and sleeving. All the connectors have label markers to make installation easy and the wiring is heatshrunk and the run in braided trunking.

Our new looms are created to take full advantage of the many new features of a standalone ecu, something a standard loom couldn’t do. Things such as running fully sequential or batch injectors and 6 individual coils, digital boost control, modern 5 wire Idle control valve. We’ve not just thrown an old 610 loom into an automotive electrical shop and knocked a few out, lots of thought have gone into them.

We have over 4 years of testing with the K6 Emerald ecu and it is a great product. I have used and fitted all the flagship models from Emerald, DTA and Omex ecus and they are all good and all have similar great features. Unless you want to go Motec, Life or another big budget ecu these three are in my opinion the best. I chose Emerald as their customer service is great- if you need specific software written they will help out. Someone is on the other end of a phone which is worth its weight in my opinion.

Comparing modern standalone management to the original ecu is like comparing a 1980s mobile phone to a smartphone. Its worlds away.

750 K6 Emerald ECU including base map for either 2.5 or 3 litre turbos or n/a.
750 JLE loom tailored to application.

We can also offer 10% off the ECU for club members.

In regards to running the fuel pump with the earth strap- this is a terrible idea. A petrol fire is awful, if the worst were to happen the car would be gone in minutes. Dave Walker nearly lost his whole unit when a fuel line burst on his rollers this year, it took 12 extinguishers to get it under control.  

A few photos of mocking up and prototype looms.

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Agrree, good points, and looking forward, there is much to consider.

I think the main aspect for the after market ecus is they are accessible. If the old ecus were accessible everybody would be tuning them, as it is already in there, much like anything that is OBD these days... Of course the technology has moved on, but for the majority of people and applications they wouldn't tell the difference, certainly nothing sub 6500 / 7000 rpm. I can see it from both sides as I can reprogramme the old ecus and have done successfully, but on balance in a trader situation you could not afford to spend the time I have to get to that position, would never make sense, and I do and would select aftermarket if the additional functionality of coil packs, launch control, anti-lag, and programmable boost control were needed individually or combination there of. If not, it then really only cones down to accessibility... once the atomised fuel is in the cylinder, you only have firing the spark, the engine doesn't know anything else... the tuning is in the rest of the hardware in reality, once you have optimised fuel and timing, there is nothing else you can do with the ecu. I don't know if anyone has cracked maintaining the signals to the on-board computer with an aftermarket ecu, pretty sure the guys in Europe haven't cracked it yet, or simply not bothered, pity really. If you are racing it doesn't matter, but I guess more of an issue for the A610 and OE spec owners?

Hardware wise... yeah, the build is just cheap... horrid in the way it was done, the joints mid loom, nasty unscreened tacho signals running up and down, loop backs everywhere, and multiple connections all over the place... but hey ho... So anything that improves this situation is good, and real benefit to improving and maintaining the integrity of the cars long term.

I'm pretty sure the nuisance cut can be cured as the fuel relay pull down ouput from the ecu is only dropped for a limited number of reasons. The ecu enables the relay by pulling the output down to ground, and the circuit is mostly hardware than software based. The sensor fault cut counter I mentioned is for specific faults, and the count is simply increment to a trip level, it only appears to cut the output at idle, and this is set at threshold of around 1000 rpm, past this point this behaviour is disabled. Likely to stop a mistuned engine creating emissions at idle for extended periods. I haven't hooked up to the fault diagnostic socket at the same time to see what was going on however. I will look at the code again, and give you all the list of sensors, because it is not all of them, and you can then hone down to those items reducing scope. The wire from the ecu to the relay is less than a couple of feet long, and a strap connected in the middle as BigM has, proves anything mid return wire through the relay out to the positive feed is 100%, so it's either a out of spec signal into the ecu, or the ecu itself causing the problem. The ground return for the relay is the same for the ecu, so it is not that either; a missing return on the ecu, and it would drop all it's drive signals including ignition, and hence a fault on this path would still result in the strapped cars cutting out, which it doesn't.

Nothing is 100% safe, it would be imposible to live, and in fact everything these days is worked out on the basis of acceptable risk, and as low as reasonably practical...

The biggest single improvement of changing to modern management over the standard ecu are the massive benefits in throttle response and driveability in my opinion. It transforms the car totally. 32 speed sites adjustable to a resolution of 1 rpm lets you iron out driveability no end. This really helped on Rupert's when the throttle input on 6 individual throttle bodies made such a big increase in airflow. How many speed sites does the Renix have to work with and I cant imagine they are resolution adjustable? Mapping for full throttle is the easiest part.

I would love to finally get to the bottom of the 610 cutting out though. Hedley's 610 does it after a run when has some heat in it. I've changed the fuel pump and TDC sensor which made a big difference and I don't think it has cut out since. This is without the strap on the earth. He hasn't used it much though so needs more testing time on the road.

I've got a new Renault engine loom which could be used to check if someone thinks they have a loom problem. I think it could be a combination of things that can all cause or contribute to the cutting out.

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Hi John,

On the D502 and A610 version of the Renix, there are 15 speed sites and think there were versions with 19. These can be moved to where ever you need them, and 1rpm resolution. I've not tried it that tight to see how effective it would actually be at that though. Plug and play programmable is lovely though I must say... but doing the Renix bashing means you are a true PRVert with honours though that or just mad, or odd as some put it

Hedley's, did you change one thing at a time, or swapped out the TDC and pump at the same time? If it's the TDC sensor it will eventually come back... so that will be interesting.

Cheers,
Martin