Which ECM should you use on your LS swap? OE or Aftermarket?

[Music] hey everybody welcome back to the driveway engineer I'm jr. and today I'm here with my little fluffy dogs we're hanging out say hi peanut we're hanging out in the house I want to make another video today I want to go over which ECM you should use should he use an aftermarket one should you use a factory one so let me fire up the screen capture software here and we'll get started I'm going to do this whole thing on the computer so you guys can see what I'm talking about and hopefully that will help you make some decisions you all right so to sum all that up really and I'll just put a tag in the beginning to tell you where to jump to most people most of the time doing these swaps if you just don't know what to do and you're looking at some of this other stuff because you think it's easier or cheaper or whatever in the end it's really not most people do is stock ECM the stock harness it can run your transmission it can run your fans and can do everything you need and stuff that you probably don't know about it can run turbos it can do two steps there's a lot of stuff the stock computer can do it's more than enough for anybody running up to like nine second quarter miles and 4-digit power it really is so if you've been listening to me and you bought everything together engine harness just do that use the stock II salmon harness and if your donor comes from a vehicle that had drive-by-wire make sure you get the pedal and attack module if you don't want to use them remember out on the driveway engineer Facebook group I will have a list of service numbers for green blue ECMs that do have iuck in the file section so that's all you'll have to do just change to an ECM that has idle air control and you can keep your green blue harness if you're on an extreme budget and you don't have an electronic trends like you have a manual transmission or you're using the turbo 350 or 400 which I don't recommend for most people but if it's like a trail vehicle or a rock buggy or a mud truck or whatever something like that or just a drag racer a weekend drag racer the micro squirt is worth a look it's $380 and it will run again up to like a thousand horsepower vehicle it'll drive the injectors it'll read the map sensor that you need for a big turbo and it'll be a cleaner smaller harness and you'll be able to get into it realistically for cheaper than the stock ECM in harness so if you just went dirt dirt dirt cheap and use the stock truck fuse box the entire stock harness didn't do you Lu many of it didn't you know send it out or anything and had a $40 flash you can do this route cheaper but for most people they're gonna send it out and have a real tune and they're gonna do a standalone harness so at a minimum you're gonna be like 500 bucks for stock ECM and harness and at a minimum you're gonna be like 400 bucks for the micro squirt so if you just truly don't care about overdrive transmission and it's more of an off-road vehicle as in drag race Road race whatever the microsphere is a really good deal if you're gonna go racing and make big power and you really need to be able to do all these different inputs and outputs and have data channels and things like that I think that the MS 3 the mega squirt 3 Pro is the best value other people will disagree with me with that you know there's a Holley Dominator there's other high end stuff but if you're into that you're probably not watching this video anyway but if you're really going to race you're gonna do you know like Drag Week or something like that I think that and you're gonna run twins and you have water math and judging and you're gonna have big power like more than the stock bottom and you'll take then this is where it's at but most people really most people will be fine like my truck mates you know real close to 700 horsepower on a stock ECM and harness so people have push them a lot further than I have so first I'm going to cover the OE Computers and harnesses there's no reason not to run an OE harness our computer period they're just not even if you're racing like if you're making like under a thousand horsepower the factory stuff will work just fine for you and will do everything you needed to do okay and you can do a complete wiring harness drop it on for a thousand bucks for under $700 one thing that I see people get all hung up on is the connector colors the red blue versus the green blue so I want to cover that real quick hopefully I harp on this all the time get an engine with everything get an engine with the fuse block the harness the computer did an engine with everything don't piecemeal this stuff together if you're just trying to get an LS in your vehicle and have 300 tiger horsepower you know and drive around and have overdrive and have modern electronic control just get a truck engine and get everything with it don't get hung up on is it a 6.0 a 4.8 a 6.2 just get a complete truck engine a complete take out now these red blue connectors don't necessarily mean Dennis a 4:11 ECM the 411 ECM was a service replacement for the earlier computers and there's no difference like to you if you're just a guy with a cam swap in a stock engine it doesn't matter whatever one it comes with is fine if you have some weird chassis where you have to use where there's not if you have some weird chassis where it's easier I'm going to be easier for you use a drive by cable pedal then you need to find a green blue connector that can do that okay all red blue connectors can do drive by wire or drive by cable it's just a matter of programming change you just have to tell who programs here ECM that you're doing try by wire and have the pedal that matches this okay so that means the pedal out of your donor trying to mix and match stuff later just it's incredibly difficult and it's easier if you're just starting out to get everything you need however is easiest when you're starting out to just do drive-by cable because you just hook a cable to your pedal in whatever vehicle you have right now and hook you you know get a long enough one and hook to the other end to your throttle body so it's simple is to just stick with drive-by cable just for the same reason is simplest just to stick with the gen three stuff and not go to the gen four stuff um these green blue connectors are what most people would call a P 59 or you know drive-by wire they're not all drive-by wire if you get one of these green blue from a van it will be dry by cable it will have the iock drivers I've never seen one that doesn't have the iock drivers in it for the idle air control that's what that's war it's like your choke it's what makes the engine idle okay all red blue have idle air control they have that so that it'll idle cold and that's what you need to have a drive-by cable pedal okay otherwise there's nothing to control to hold the throttle blade open while you're idling when it's cold so the truck green and blue never have the idle air control I never see them I'm sure it's the Internet and these videos are popular somebody's going to pop up seven whatever if you have this you can turn this harness into this harness or this harness into this harness doesn't matter it's best to just use everything so if you have this the easiest thing to do is either tell your harness builder that you want this and you'll convert it and you can go get a 411 ECM and they're like 40 bucks or 20 bucks at the junkyard literally every van from like 2000 has this until oh three when they all went to this or go find Amanda Sano three and it'll have the Iook controllers and you can keep this so if you have a van ECM and you want to do drive by cable you can use this if you want to do drive by cable and you have a truck ECM you need you either go get a van ECM or go get a 411 ECM and switch your harness to this it's only a few wires that move it's not that difficult trust me you can do it and it's not that hard so moving on I mean they both have like OS upgrades and stuff like that if you're in the turbo stuff or nitrous or want to do trance brakes or want to do flex feel both of these are capable of doing that so there's really nothing that you're gonna do under a thousand horsepower that either one of these can't do so don't get hung up on real time tuning I never do it I have it I tried it I never do it you still have to pull over and write in the flash so you might as well pull over and write the whole to change anyway it doesn't matter um just don't get hung up on this stuff get everything you need and if you can adapt your drive by cable pedal or your drive by wire pedal it'll be even easier to just use the drive by wire it's cleaner you don't have to mess with the cable if you can make the drive by wire pedal fit in your chassis then use that for sure it's the way to go every hundred percent of the time cruise control works so much easier all you need to do is run a layer to the ECM for cruise it's just way easier I don't want to get into wiring in this video but I mean I want to save that for a separate video so I just want to cover ECM changes and the biggest benefit of either one of these is they will run an overdrive electronic automatic transmission so they will run a 60 they will run at 80 they'll do it natively you don't need a $600 add-on to do it when it comes like what I want to my goal with these videos is to give you guys options okay there are like I said in the last video there are many ways to skin a cat and most of them work but also my goal is to kind of wade through some of those flipping you know offhanded comments you get on facebook where some guys like oh you need this or you don't you got to have that or you know if you do it like that it's gonna be junk or whatever so to just get to the point like what I recommend for 99% of people 99% of the time is you use the factory computer and the factory harness and you can do that for six seven hundred bucks depending on how you go it's gonna be cheaper and it's gonna work for you okay there are a lot of people are like oh you can't make changes or whatever well like really how often do you make changes that's you got to step back from some of the nonsense going on like you're driving around right now right how often you just whip out your laptop and make changes I have HP tuners and I still don't make that many changes you know I screw around and I try stuff as I learned but for the most part I just drive around the way it is but nevertheless you know some people are going for certain things certain look whatever so I'm gonna go through you know your common options there are of course more than these but I don't want to make an hour-long video you know I know people don't really watch much longer than 10 minutes so and I just want to get to the point so first of all the first option for aftermarket stuff is going to be Phi Tech and the Phi Tech this one right here the ultimate LS now this doesn't include the intake but it does have transmission control so this will control your 4 L 60 65 70 or 80 transmission whatever you have this will run it it has a whole harness injectors coils everything so you don't have to add in the cost of a harness you don't have to add in cost of tuning everything's here in one kit so this is a pretty good option I think I like it I haven't used it I've used a fight ech in the past and their customer support was basically non-existent they'd like to say that you know they self tune or whatever but really they don't and I think that that's why a lot of people go with them is because a they're intimidated by wiring so this does provide a wiring harness with everything labeled and B they're intimidated by tuning or they don't have a tuner in their area you know that they have confidence in so you're still gonna have to learn the tunas there's user groups on Facebook and stuff like that if you want to use it and I think that this is the best option the seven zero zero five one as of December of 2018 these other ones like this 795 one doesn't do transmission control and you obviously want that and then this $1,500 one includes a cool-looking intake but it actually is going to kill power for you so you probably don't want to mess with that either so the next big option to everybody uses is the Holley here the HP EFI and this includes everything you need it has the harness it has two Holley EFI software that you need all that kind of stuff it has a lot of features it has a lot of really cool stuff that it can do it can do up to 5 bar map you can do a handheld programmer a touchscreen you can do booth control progressive nitrous control water injection it has a lot of features on it that are pretty easy to use and pretty easy to work with but it does not do trans control and it is $1700 or whatever you can find it for online I didn't shop for best price but so I imagine you can get a little bit off but it doesn't do trans control and you're gonna pay at least five hundred dollars for standalone trans control or at least four hundred dollars if you go with the micro squirt which a lot of people don't know about and I will touch on that right now so next up is the ms3 Pro you may have seen that half will use these there are a lot of mega squirt different stuff that you can do and I don't want to get into all of them but there are you can do these uh like the original mega squirt the kits and for 500 bucks this is a ECU that you literally build it comes with a bunch of resistors and like you have to sit down with this board and solder all that stuff in and for me it looked pretty fun and I really like to do one but uh I understand that most people are not going to do that and are going to be intimidated by it so I'm not recommending these for the average person just because it's more than the average person wants to do if you're willing to do all that and then you're not watching these videos about LS swap basics so the ms3 pro it's going to have a lot of the same features as the holley efi it has a bunch of different inputs and outputs it had a canoe speed density and can do alpha and it can do math it can run up to 12 cylinders they can do VVT control it can do flex fuel it can run on a wide band all these aftermarket ones can run on a wide band and is how they suppose do we sell to and what they really you really have to make changes to the bass tune anyway you're not gonna just hook this up and let go Drive and again if you're racing you know these are features that you might need but if you're not if you're just like trying to drive around in a more modern chart it's really not you know stuff you're gonna use so why pay for it and again this does not do trans control for 1,500 bucks now this one brings me to the micro squirt and this one's really interesting I really like the micro squirt like if you just want an LS engine and you don't care at all about electronic transcon troll and you don't care at all about any of the other stuff like for three hundred eighty bucks you get this little mic her square in this harness that you hook into your factory harness and it'll run it'll run the car and will run the engine so if you're gonna use the turbo 350 turbo 400 if you're just racing or have an off-road toy or off-road buggy or whatever um this is definitely an interesting little swap because you know it's like the size of a credit card seriously it's smaller than my cell phone so these are really neat and and they do the self tuning thing and whatever they got a lot of the same options they'll do up to three bar map one thing that they don't have is idle air control natively so they're a little cold blooded I've used one before it was fine I was able to tune around it this is a really simple straightforward you know thing to do if you're just trying to get on the road I may very well do this in my wife's olds 98 because I think I might just stick an LS in it with a turbo 400 and let it go at that because it's got 256 gears and I'm not going to change and there is an aftermarket idler controller add-on that you can get for these if idler controls just absolutely important to you but these are really interesting and they're really cheap and I think they're a pretty good option now that brings me to the last point which is the cost of a standalone controller so I want to cover this real quick because you'll see these and you'll be like well jr. said there are six hundred dollars and this is three hundred dollars this is a full manual TCM okay and it is at full line pressure all the time so you have to shift it up you have to shift it down it's not gonna work you know seamlessly like you should and you can actually achieve this by shorting a couple pins and and maybe I'll do a video on that if there's enough interest but it's actually even if you don't care and you just want to manually control it you can short the solenoids without this so it's pointless just forget about that the common ones are like the TCI auto ECU you see it's six hundred and fifteen dollars there's a few other ones this us shift one I'll just scroll through these I'm Jegs real quick so the performance automatic standalone $840 the TCI easy easy TCU $615 the GMP P or whatever they're calling themselves now $1,200 MSD standalone $600 you get the point they're quite expensive one thing you can do that's not so expensive is using micro squirt which I just showed as a transmission controller and DIY auto-tune offers these so you can actually link this through their hand controller to another micro squirt or a mega squirt so that they're seamlessly integrated so that it's not actually standalone it's just the TCM but all in all in my opinion for 99% of people 99% of the time you know you're putting in an engine with a cam and you're not like in headers you know and that's it you're not really changing anything so I don't think it's necessary for most people to go to an aftermarket standalone system so I'm gonna go ahead and end this video here that's really it the next video I think I'm gonna do wiring of course I'm open to suggestions you can leave them in the comments below be sure to hit the like button the subscribe button I appreciate it and be sure to check me out on my facebook group at the driveway engineer on Facebook and that's where it's easiest to get in touch with me um if you have more questions or more suggestions or wanna tell me I'm stupid or whatever so yeah until next time this is JR the draggling engineer thanks for watching

Channel: The Driveway Engineer

Views: 151,797

Keywords: Ls swap, how to, c10, cheap, budget, wow, believe, sloppy, mechanics, boost, squarebody, chevy, holley, edelbrock, vortec, silverado, gmc, the world, The Driveway Engineer, lsx, gt45, cam, heads, lq4, lq9, lm7, 5.3, J.R., honda, nissan, camaro, nova, mustang, faLcon, bel, air, c20, k10, k5, jeep, trans, am, firebird, pontiac, olds, oldsmobile, buick, kenne, bell, swap, Fitech, hp, ms3, ecm, 411, P59, dbc, dbw

Id: ZecqY21D7IE

Length: 23min 0sec (1380 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 11 2018