Bought a Lot Car or from Chris Pearson for a friend of mine with a EMERALD installed.
But he came only 200km and then the Emerald stopped his drive.
We recognized, that the Emerald Hardware destroyed the mapping-data.
I sent the ECU to Emerald for repairing. came back after 2 weeks with invoice for repair, but it lasted only 50km and then had the same problem again. Comment from Emerald - that�s Emerald (( I shouldn�t mount it in a car but in my living room, where it�s dry and there are no vibrations.(???)
Bought a new Emerald and installed. Now after one season in LCE the Emerald is again down.
Anybody knows a replacement for the damn Emerald ECU that is direct replacement but is constructed to work in car?
I have Hondata in my car and never had Problems with the ECU, so why is this not possible with Rover?
Thanks for Help
Hundereds and hundreds of people run Emeralds without problems. Yes them “forgetting” the map can happen, and it had happened to me when the battery hads been disconnected for 6 months, or if their is any interference when pumping the map into the ECU, but in normal use no problems at all ever and I think you will find a lot of people who will say exactly the same.
I would look at how you have the power feed to the ECU, does it get a good strong current when the car is cranking, things like that.
@ Sean
There seems to be a great differnece between Austria and GB regarding Quality Standards. When anyone sells something in Austria he feels responsible for the quality. Emerald has a very diferent point of view regarding quality and customer relationship:
it is an ECU but not meant to work in a car where it can get wet.
we repair ECUs and take money for it, but this doesn�t mean it should work longer than 5 minutes then.
If anyone drives a Lotus and even worse in a race, he is an idiot. So you can take money for waste.
Sorry Peter, bit of an “in” joke. Nigel used to prepare Chris’s racecars (usually very well), but occasionally if there was a problem, Nigel would get the blame.
We had no installation Problem, as it worked, perfect for about 1.000km when we installed the new one and we hade no error-code.
We also banned water with a plastic cover.
EMERALD seems to be really rubbish “quality”. In addition the reaction from Emerald is really disappointing after buying 2 ECUs from them and both died within 2 years the secound after just half a year (((
Peter
In both cases it was definitely a failure of the EMERALD ECU and not a battery failure. It�s simply that EMERALD knows that it�s hard for a Austrian to get his guarantee rights.
EMERALDS point of view: come 1400km to the Island and try to get your guarantee replacement - it will be cheaper to throw away the EMERALD ECU.
I’ll wager that if you replace it with another ECU (like a Link, Motec etc) you’ll have either exactly the same problems as you had with the emerald… either that or you’ll inadvertently fix the fault that was killing the emerald when you wire in the new ECU.
As Sean says, there are HUNDREDS of Emeralds in Elises out there (probably over a thousand) and many more thousands of Emeralds out there in other cars… faults like the one you’ve described are pretty much unheard of… which suggests that something’s wrong with the installation rather than the ECU itself.
But we have different problems with the different ECUs.
1st EMERALD: problems with mapping destroyed by ECU
2nd EMERALD: problems with cooler fan controller
so where is the Problem with installation???
You have an opinion like EMERALD:
customers are idiots, who install the ECU wrong
But the fact remains that HUNDREDS of these are in service without fault… not saying the ECU can’t be at fault, just that the wiring is far more likely to be. A relay drawing too much current or something I’d guess.
Our EMERALD specialist here in Austria who installed several EmETALDS checkedthe installation and said it�s ok. The secound EMERALD rund now, but the cooler-fan relay connector doesn�t work since 2 month. 2 EMERALDS 2 different problems, where is the installation problem???
And one thing remains: EMERALD takes money for repair and the “repaired” ECU only works for some miles and have the same problem again (( - is this serious business???
I’ve installed over 200 Emerald ECUs, many of these on Exiges. I have had one problem with a single ECU, all the others as far as I know are working just fine in various environments and have been doing so for years and years.
If it were me I would be looking carefully at the wiring.
(( I shouldn�t mount it in a car but in my living room, where it�s dry and there are no vibrations.(???)
