08 Yaris 'S' Turbo Build

[06YarisRS]

Nice! That's the location I used for my F/IC. I drilled a little hole in my glovebox and threaded the USB cable through. Sure, it would have been easier to put it in the engine bay from a wiring perspective, but I didn't trust it under there in the 'elements'.

Sucks about the nail. Do you replace the whole tire, or patch it from the inside?

[scarsofcarma]

Originally Posted by 06YarisRS

Nice! That's the location I used for my F/IC. I drilled a little hole in my glovebox and threaded the USB cable through. Sure, it would have been easier to put it in the engine bay from a wiring perspective, but I didn't trust it under there in the 'elements'.

Sucks about the nail. Do you replace the whole tire, or patch it from the inside?

I didn't have time to dismount the tire and patch it from the inside. I just used a plug.

Well the auto-x yesterday didn't go as planned. 😕 In the middle of my second run I lost all throttle response on the pedal. (Same as what happened at the first event) When this happens the engine still runs, but you have to stop and turn the ignition off-and-on again before the pedal response comes back.

Because I moved the ECU I no longer think this is an ECU related issue at all. It must be an issue in the drive-by-wire system, not the programming. Probably a faulty pedal assembly or throttle body actuator?

Anyway I had the car stopped and going again in just 20 seconds or whatever, but each time somebody stops on course they have to throw the red flag 🚩 just in case I can't get the car started again. I didn't want to keep blocking others or delaying the event if this was gonna be a recurring issue so I parked the Yaris for the rest of the event and just did my corner-working duties.

But the good news is the Yaris was already putting down a faster lap then the Mini Cooper 'S' or the Fiesta ST that were in the same 'extreme street' category. By the end of the day I can usually improve my first lap pace by about 4 seconds. It would be interesting to see what pace it would ultimately have done. 🏁

The new control arms work great. Very stiff. I can even feel a difference on the highway by the way the bumps are fed into the suspension. I might have to adjust the coilovers a bit to smooth them out again.

The hood risers work great also. I noticed lower temps on the highway and in the paddock by about 20 degrees F°. Most importantly, the Redline MT90 really helped the first gear synchro issue. There was no longer much drama downshifting into first gear. I am happy about that 😊

On the way back from the track, there was also a few moments of a 'throttle flare' where the revs would randomly kick up a couple thousand rpms in a parking lot just creeping along. This also indicates a drive-by-wire issue.

I am downloading the Haltech software into my roommates laptop. I intend to observe live data for the throttle pedal and throttle body actuator to see if I can catch a glitch in the voltage sweeps.

Does anyone else know of any typical drive-by-wire issues with these vehicles?

[scarsofcarma]

So I got the Haltech communicating with the laptop. The trick was buying a USB cable direct from Haltech. Don't ask me why that mattered, but apparently it does.

The Haltech ESP interface looks something like this...



Obviously there's a lot going on with this. There is as much access to every control, input or output to run this standalone that I could ever hope for. It will take a while to fully understand its capabilities. The first thing I checked was DTC codes. The Haltech does store them like a regular OEM ECU. I had nothing 'Current' for drive by wire but I did have some listed as 'Past'.

So I brought up the live data for the pedal and watched the sweep. Haltech makes it very convenient how to observe the live data. There are several options. You can do Gauges (Like I did here) or bar graphs, data-plots, whatever suites your fancy. As an additional option, you can also select different units of measurement. (Fahrenheit instead of Celcius, etc.)



Here is the LAMBDA MAP (The little blue circle tells you where the engine is at while its idling)



Here is the IGNITION MAP



Here is the FUEL LOAD MAP



Here is the INTAKE CAM CONTROL MAP




The Haltech also allows you to do DATA LOGGING while the laptop is disconnected. So you can go drive it, do some laps on the track or whatever, and hook it back up to observe what it recorded later which is very convenient. It can also 'back up' and observe the past data before a DTC code is set, after it is set, so you can figure out what the running conditions were prior to setting a DTC. (As many expensive aftermarket scan tools can also do with an OEM ECU)

What I intend to do next is go do some test drives with my roommate in the passenger seat watching the live data while I drive. If there is an issue we can see in the data with the drive by wire, we should be able to record it as a snapshot. (This is basically the same stuff I do as a dealership technician with a factory scan tool.)

Yesterday I took a 9 hour road trip in the Yaris to go visit Road Atlanta Motorsports Park in Georgia. There were a few occasions during that drive that I could feel something funky going on with the DBW, but thankfully nothing that locked up the pedal completely or forced me to pull over and do a shutdown-restart. The real question at this point is which component specifically is malfunctioning. The pedal or the throttle body?

[CrankyOldMan]

Originally Posted by scarsofcarma

So I got the Haltech communicating with the laptop. The trick was buying a USB cable direct from Haltech. Don't ask me why that mattered, but apparently it does.

I would guess that they've done something silly with their communication protocol and have to use a specific chip to interface with the ECU. I had the opposite situation with my UHF handheld radio where I bought a USB interface cable that had an off-brand RS232 chip and required disassembling it to find the make/model number so that I could download drivers for it from their (entirely in Mandarin) website. I've also had issues at work where someone who didn't understand how a communication protocol worked developed their own unique interpretation that will only work with their homebrewed software and doesn't work with most hardware.

Could be deliberate to keep counterfeits from messing things up, could be someone didn't know what they were doing when they cooked it up in the R&D department.

I'm afraid I don't have any feedback on the DBW issues, despite having read the report on the "unintended acceleration" issues that came up about a decade ago.