But what to reprogram the factory ECU with? Reprogram the original 1.2L TDI program to eliminate undesired CAN communications? That turned out to be an option that had a slim chance of success. Understanding the original program then modifying the inner workings would be a difficult endeavor.
So, back to the drawing board and a few sleepless nights. Perhaps we could put our desired injection maps in a similar host program and use that to control the 1.2L TDI. Here again, the problem was what to use as a host. The solution was staring us in the face all along.
In Europe the Lupo came in a few different flavors. The ones of interest are the diesel variety. There was the Lupo 3L, a 1.2L TDI model with automatic manual transmission (where all of the CAN requirements come from), and the regular Lupo, a 1.4L TDI with plain jane manual transmission (with no CAN requirements). Realising this was the eureka moment. After checking the wiring diagrams for each model (they were nearly identical) the decision was made to use a 1.4L TDI software set as the host program. Now all we had to do was find someone who could do something that probably few if any people have asked for before.
As it turns out, a VW computer programmer in Washington state named Mike Lane knew exactly what we were talking about and how to do what we were interested in. The man said that after he was done with our application the engine would run just fine. And for $550 total cost we have an engine control computer that will now run the engine no matter what vehicle we install it in. Believe me, this is a steal compared to the $10k racing unit available from Bosch that would accomplish the same thing after months of work developing the correct computer mapping. So, to say that I'm impressed with Mike the computer guy would be a drastic understatement. This was a make-or-break solution. No engine control computer to run the VW diesel engine no Honda Insight 1G!
