'96 850 estate turbo fcr wont read ecu

[Reys]

Hey guys, first time running Volvo fcr on my 96 850 turbo, the ecu to computer connection doesn't work, it connects to the trans ecu, abs, power seats etc... but not the engine ecu, my guess is I have a motronic 4.3 which the program doesn't read.. But i have no way of telling what type of ecu it is, I posted a pic of the numbers on it, hoping someone knows which specific ecu this is, it'd be a big help. If Volvo fcr doesn't read 4.3 is there a program out there that does?

its kind of blurry, sorry

[mfagus]

I recently upgraded my ECU and went with ARD. All I can say is AWESOME.
my car is a 95 Turbo wagon. Under the Bosch name it looks like the last 3 digits are 072 which is the same as on my car. I had a friend that had an IPD ECU but it was off a later year 97 and when I installed it car started and ran fine but tripped the Engine light. After research I found the later ones have more sensors than the 95 so when the ECU looked for those my car did not have them so the light came on.

[Reys]

Alright, so your original ecu was a 4.3?

Havent looked into upgraded ecus yet, what I was after was being able to read the coolant temp, idle rpm, all that detailed engine stuff, any1 have a way you can hookup a laptop via serial/obd cable with some other program that can do all this with a motronic 4.3.?

[Reys]

Will I have problems if I hunted down a 4.4 ecu and swapped it with the 4.3?, assuming that's what I have..

[mfagus]

I think the IPD i temporarily installed was for a 4.4 and that is what tripped all the warnings and the CEL.

Do yourself a favor and look up Robert aka Lucky at ARD Tuning and contact him. He can tell you what your options are and what will work best in your situation.
He and his ECU's are the real deal. I now have endless amounts of throttle, a super smooth idle, the car accelerates like never before, and my MPG has increased from 21 to a consistent 24.

Mark

[mercuric]

VOL-FCR indeed will not read M4.3.

M4.3 supports blink codes as well as OBD-II. Even though the 96 models did not have the diagnostics box under the hood, the ECU pin for blink codes is wired to the OBD-II port.

You can either use an OBD-II scanner or roll your own blink code reader. The idea is:



Note that you should place a resistor between the LED and pin 16, value is not terribly important, something in the range of 1k-5k ohms will do.

Operation of this is like the diagnostics box; depress the switch for ~1 second with the car in key on, engine off mode, and read the blinks.

The codes are the same as for socket A2 on the old-style diags box: https://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/read-codes-volvo-850

As far as reading data from M4.3, limited data can be had via the OBD-II interface using an ELM327 interface and something like Torque or CarGauge pro on Android. ScanXL is an option on Windows. Any tool capable of reading generic OBD-II live data will talk to M4.3, the PIDs used are standard.

Supported PIDs include coolant temp, ignition advance, MAF flow, short term fuel trim, long term fuel trim, front O2 voltage, engine RPM, and throttle position. There may be a few others I'm forgetting, it's been a while since I've used OBD-II. Don't expect blazing fast data - you will likely see 2-4 parameters retrieved per second. Probably the most valuable data available here is the fuel trims, which can help alert you fueling problems and vacuum leaks.

M4.4 is a nice upgrade, indeed M4.4 expects a bunch of sensors your 850T doesn't have, but that can be fixed in software.

[Reys]

Thanks mercuric, you answered all the questions floating in my head about what I can possibly do to read my cars ecu. The later on your post about OBD-2 and supported PIDs is exactly what I was after.

Anyone recommendations on obd-2 hardware with live data streaming that's reasonably priced? I'd like to plug in a device that actually will work unlike my last 2 attempts..

appreciate all the info/help I've gotten so far

[Reys]

Mark thanks for ecu guys info, your car sounds just like where I want mine to be

[mercuric]

I'm honestly not sure on hardware, but Torque is a great solution if you have an Android. It's only a few bucks from the Android market, and the ELM327 adapters are <$20. Any stand-alone hardware will be significantly more $$, and likely larger.

No idea if you're into tinkering with ECUs, but if you like that sort of thing, check out this thread: http://volvospeed.com/vs_forum/topic/15 ... g-for-m44/

Still a bit of a WIP, just starting to pull together some documentation that sums up the long, somewhat scattered thread, but in a nutshell Motronic 4.4 is pretty well busted open at this point. I've also created a modified firmware image that provides high-speed data logging to TunerPro/RT. Besides data logging, you get control over pretty much all the running parameters (fuel, ignition, limiters, diagnostics disables, boost control, etc) if you are into tuning your own car.

If you're not so much into tinkering, ARD does provide probably the best pre-tuned ECUs for these cars at quite a reasonable cost... But I like to hack stuff, so..

[Reys]

I'm going to try this Elm327 stuff out, Anyone try the mini adapters I'm seeing on amazon??

https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-CAN-BUS ... ds=elm+327