Earlier I mentioned that we really didn't keep meticulous track of fuel economy results for each and every modification. The reason is that for whatever we did, we would initially see a dramatic improvement in fuel efficiency proportional to the science backing the modification. However, within less-than-a-tank, most of those gains disappeared. (Thank you ECU software engineers!)
We quickly realized that if we were to prevent that dastardly ECU from stealing our hard-earned gains, we had to take matters into our own hands! Our first attempt was an extremely expensive ($7000+) MOTEC Controller. The objective was to have the MOTEC control fuel injectors and ignition coil timing, but let the factory ECU handle the transmission, gauges, and everything else. I wired it in, spent hours and hours tuning it, but when I went for a drive, the display would occasionally read 19,000 RPM -- and it would dump fuel as if that lie were true! (This cost us a set of catalytic converters eventually.) I got on the phone with the East Coast MOTEC Technical representative, the West Coast rep, and eventually gave up. Since I already had a LINK PC G2, I installed that. Guess what?? Same phenomenon! Out of desperation, we tried a MegaSquirt MS3.1. Somehow we got the exact same "glitch" with that!!
Grabbing at straws, with only an elementary understanding of analog electronics (at that time), I created a controller that influenced sensors and such to try to salvage the whole thing. This controller is what was "gettin' 'er dun" for the Roush testing. Curiously, it was the final day of the X-Prize event (July, 2010), I was sipping my morning coffee at a couple ticks past 8 am, and I realized why three different stand-alone controllers failed in the exact same way. I opted for Sequential control of both ignition coils and fuel injectors. This required implementing the CMP cam sensor signal. The Sonata has a variable cam timing feature. The CMP is bolted to the cam that twists. Every time the factory ECU would adjust cam timing, the aftermarket ECU would freak out!
Post X-Prize, I used the Sonata for much development work. I learned much about electronics, got a functional grasp on programming microcontrollers, learned how to create PCB boards, and was able to work out many of the gremlins that plagued us leading up to the actual X-Prize competition.
