Autosport Labs

Ford 4 cyl x-flow engine (Escort MK2, now fitted to a Lotus Super-Seven).

we installed the ECU around 2 years ago. at the beginning it was running well...since several months we have the following poblem:

suddenly the car starts spluttering and is loosing power. when we connect the laptop to check the mapping we find a toally strange mapping...values look like randomly set.

after downloading the original mapping to the ecu, the car is running again...sometimes for several weeks, days or even only a few hours until the same happens again.


the ecu is mounted on an ally panel from the cars body (so wll earthed), also mounted away from any heat.

the ecu is a ready built one bought from a well known megajolt distributor in UK. we already tested another ECU, the same problem.



do you have any ideas?

re-flashed both ECU´s and it looks better now..even the one which did not work at all, is now accepting again the mapping.

Your issue is weird. Once we've burnt data in flash memory, it should not be erased like this.
Somehow, it means something happened.
Could a loose connection create such condition to affect flash memory? such as short somewhere or a bad connection on controller?
It could be software related but you wouldn't be the only one with such issue then since we're all using the same one.

I'm curious to see how it goes overtime. good luck!

we successfully flashed our 2 faulty ECU´s , but due to the weather conditions we couldn’t test drive the car yet. fact is, even the 1st ECU which didn’t accept any mapping anymore, is now again accepting a mapping.

but very bad news, the 3rd ECU which worked now for approx. 2 years (in a differnt car, with a different engine) was showing exactly the same symptoms (as the 2 other ones) this weekend.

the car was running fine, but suddenly with lack of power. when we arrived home, connecting the laptop the ECU had a kind of “emergency” mapping, with max. 26degress advance.(similar the 2 other faulty ECU´s)

we can upload the correct mapping again onto the ECU, start the car, check again the advance curve on the laptop under different engine loads, disconnect the laptop, and test drive the car…everything fine. once the ignition has been turned of, the mapping is gone.

we are wondering why:

all 3 ECU´s worked fine for approx 1.5 to 2 years

all 3 ECU´s are showing the same problems

for us it looks like a systematic error.