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ECU – The brains of your car.

July 29, 2010 by fadhli
Filed under: Reviews

These days virtually all new cars manufactured come with electronic fuel injection as compared to carburettors from the old days. Controlling the operation of this technology is the ECU (Engine Control Unit). An ECU can be simply thought as a cars computer, which controls bread and butter operations such as fuel mixture, ignition timing and idle speed.

A typical ECU

The inside of an ECU

A modern car is equipped with a large variety of sensors of which the information is sent to the ECU to interpret and subsequently execute the proper actions. Have you ever noticed when you start your car in the morning it tends to idle at a higher RPM than when already warmed up? Well thats your ECU at work. The ECU senses that the engine temperature is cold and feeds more fuel to the engine to warm it up quicker. In a carburettor equipped car, a person would have to manually adjust the choke to richen the air/fuel ratio for the same effect.

Car tuners also look the ECU when it comes to increasing an engines performance. When modifications such as performance intake/exhaust systems or agressive profiled camshafts are installed, tuners usually look to aftermarket ECU’s to alter crucial parameters to enhance performance in tandem with the modifications made to the engine. The aftermarket ECU’s are programmable and allow the used to set their desired parameters for maximum performance.

An aftermarket ECU

In today’s world of ultramodern and hi-tech cars, ECU’s are not limited to engine management alone.Features such as airbags and traction control require their own ECU’s to function, so in many cases a car would have more than one ECU.

Picture Source: www.haltech.com