I have a 427 small block Chevy that I just installed in my car. I decided to add an accel dfi system. I bought the full thruster system including the intake,injectors ect. I also bought accel wide band O2, dual sync distributor, Accel pro 7 ignition box and coil. I spent some serious money on this stuff. I hooked it all up and put the ECM and the ignition box in the floor of the passenger seat. The car will start up and run fine but when it comes to fine tuning the computer get an error. It says ECM communication error. I hit the retry but on the computer and it will reconnect for a minute than the error will appear again. I can keep hitting the retry button but it will just error out. Please help any ideas what to do. I don’t want to burn up my new engine.

 

I would post your Q also on Accel forum or Email them.

 

Greeny,

I would call David at Accel Tech Support. He should be able to hook you up with the answer your looking for. His # is 1-248-380-2780. Good luck.

 

So an update to the issue that I was having. I was told several things to do check/change my plug wire to a 1500 per ft ohms rating (it is a large number but they sell race wires that have shielding) and check all the grounds. My ignition box is mounted 12" or so away from my ECU which is mounted directly next to my wide band O2.I checked all my grounds and they all check out satisfactory. I bought new wires and there was no change so I took them off and sent them back. Then got talking to a buddy and he had the old key with the 4 pin plug that adapted to the RS232 serial port instead of the 4 pin to usb supplied by Accel. I found one of my older computers that had the RS232 port on it (It has 9 pins in a rectangular shape 5 pins on top and 4 pins on bottom). Guess what, as soon as I turned the ignition on the computer instantly link. (No port issues). Then I started the car and it ran fine just as it did before but this time after a couple of minutes of running it never lost its connection/communication. I went through the screen and it stayed connected the whole time. Granted I have not started to tune it in but I am happy to not be losing connection/communication every 5 seconds.

 

Glad you got jit sorted out, I've run into that more than once on all different systems. Contrary to popular belief the USB isn't the best way to transfer information.

 

Tell me about it. Serial (RS-232 based) has a much higher noise immunity (EMI/RFI) then USB. Which in a noise ridden environment such as a car is needed.

The only reason USB is popular is because the laptop manufactures have removed the serial ports. So users want USB, because that is what they are used to as every thing new out there uses it.

And, even worse, the serial ports that are found on some of the new PC and laptops don't work correctly. Dell notebooks with a serial port are slow and can cause timeout issues. Even the Intel MB that I installed in my workstation this past January, the serial port is slower and doesn't always work correctly.

The older/slower MB (~5 years old) that was there previously the serial port actually worked.

RBob.