Using a '93 3SGTE ECU on a '91 3SGTE Engine and Harness Options

[Dr_Tweak]

Some weeks back I had a customer doing a 3SGTE swap into a '91 Celica that I did a wiring conversion for. After he got it back and installed, I asked him for the part number on his ECU since I've seen many situations where the importers send the wrong ECU for the year of the harness. Sure enough, he had a '91 Harness but a '93 ECU. I advised him to get a '91 ECU, but he was having a hard time locating one.

About the same time, I started gathering parts and doing research for making jumper harnesses for various Toyota applications. I located the supplier for the female ECU plugs for a few different Toyota harnesses. When I got one in that matched the 3SGTE harnesses, I though, why not make a jumper harness that goes from a '91 harness to a '93 ECU, or a '93 harness to a '91 ECU? Then customers who run into this situation don't have to find another ECU or repin the whole harness.

Since I had this customer, Bryant, who had this very situation at hand, and since I happened to be going near where he lived on a recent road trip, I decided to whip up a prototype and give it a try.







There it is plugged into a 3SGE ECU as an example. This first one came out a little rough, the production model will be cleaner.

And here it is plugged into the car:



The jumper harness worked PERFECTLY. It fired up the first try and is running great, no codes and no problems at all

If anyone wants one of these jumper harnesses let me know, I'm currently building them to order.

Other applications for this setup include plug and play jumper harnesses for standalone units that don't already have a plug and play setup, like perhaps 3SGTE/Autronic, and so on.

-Doc

[Dr_Tweak]

Woah, how did you find the PCB part number? I've spent hours looking for it and talking to Toyota to try to find it and I've never been able to, I had to get them from the manufacturer.

At any rate WannabeGT4, you're making a real jerk of yourself trying to say that I'm making such a fortune on these. Gary knows exactly what he's talking about when he says how hard they are to make. In fact, I'm going to call you out on this right now. You go and get the parts needed to make these, the PCB header and the three plugs, all the pins and wires, solder, epoxy, and heatshrink, and then keep track of exactly how long it takes you to put one of these together at the SAME level of quality that these are, and then multiply what your time is worth by the number of hours it took you to build it AND include the hours that you spent researching and ordering the parts, plus the time to test them to make sure they are right, plus the cost of all materials, and see what number you come up with. I'm really curious, because if you think you can do them so cheap, I'LL FREAKING HAVE YOU MAKE THEM AND BUY THEM FROM YOU!!!

-Doc

This post has been edited by Dr_Tweak: Jan 2, 2008 - 11:51 AM

[WannabeGT4]

Woah, how did you find the PCB part number? I've spent hours looking for it and talking to Toyota to try to find it and I've never been able to, I had to get them from the manufacturer.

At any rate WannabeGT4, you're making a real jerk of yourself trying to say that I'm making such a fortune on these. Gary knows exactly what he's talking about when he says how hard they are to make. In fact, I'm going to call you out on this right now. You go and get the parts needed to make these, the PCB header and the three plugs, all the pins and wires, solder, epoxy, and heatshrink, and then keep track of exactly how long it takes you to put one of these together at the SAME level of quality that these are, and then multiply what your time is worth by the number of hours it took you to build it AND include the hours that you spent researching and ordering the parts, plus the time to test them to make sure they are right, plus the cost of all materials, and see what number you come up with. I'm really curious, because if you think you can do them so cheap, I'LL FREAKING HAVE YOU MAKE THEM AND BUY THEM FROM YOU!!!

-Doc

Calm down. I said in my post with part numbers that the price must be in the time it takes to make these. Everyone knows that there is an investment in R&D that isn't recovered until a few units are sold. Then it's all about the profit margin. With the prices I came up with for connectors and assuming a reasonable $.10 per terminal connection, those materials should cost about $30. Add wire, solder, heatshrink tubing, and postage and the total can be rounded to about $50 (high estimate) and that's a $150.00 difference which is left to labor(pure profit if you're building these yourself.. Take longer than two hours to build this and there's something wrong with you. Unless you think your time is worth more than $75.00 per hour this is quite profittable. Prove me wrong and post your itemized pricing... Yeah, didn't think so.

I can understand your defensiveness but calling me a jerk for providing a possible alternative is not very professional. Everyone knows you're making money on these or you wouldn't be selling them. Some people would rather do it themselves than pay someone. Others won't mind paying for the service.

This post has been edited by WannabeGT4: Jan 2, 2008 - 4:06 PM