I've had my ECU mounted in the passenger's footwell of my car for close to 10 years and it has never been a problem.
My youngest son is starting to drive the car so I went with him on a few familiarity runs as it's heaps bigger than his Renault Clio R27.
First thing I noticed was I couldn't stretch my (short) legs out in front of me without hitting the ECU behind the carpet.
His girlfriend has long legs and I figured as she will be riding in it I should move the ECU.
I found a new spot that the wiring would reach which is now over 4feet or 1200mm above the ground behind the dashboard.
This entailed passing the wiring trough a 50mm hole I cut under the dash and relocating the ECU, fuses and relays.
All went well until I started the engine.
Nice rough idle that just didn't make sense.
In the meantime I needed the car to be drivable for him to collect the girl as a surprise at the end of her exams.
I inserted a restrictor in the ISCV hose and got the idle down to 700RPM. It drove well and I thought I could live with this solution.
Slept on it overnight and though "no the cars fully electronic and cheating isn't good enough".
Scanned all the diagrams and finally figured out I'd lost the power feed to the ISCV somewhere behind the dash.
Once re-located and reconnected the engine went back to its smooth former self.
Just goes to show how easy it is to make a simple error and make your life hard.
I did make another dumb error whilst doing this.
When I tried to start the engine it would wind over but no sign of firing.
Took about 10 minutes for it to dawn on me the ECU wasn't plugged in!
Plugged it in and away it went.
My youngest son is starting to drive the car so I went with him on a few familiarity runs as it's heaps bigger than his Renault Clio R27.
First thing I noticed was I couldn't stretch my (short) legs out in front of me without hitting the ECU behind the carpet.
His girlfriend has long legs and I figured as she will be riding in it I should move the ECU.
I found a new spot that the wiring would reach which is now over 4feet or 1200mm above the ground behind the dashboard.
This entailed passing the wiring trough a 50mm hole I cut under the dash and relocating the ECU, fuses and relays.
All went well until I started the engine.
Nice rough idle that just didn't make sense.
In the meantime I needed the car to be drivable for him to collect the girl as a surprise at the end of her exams.
I inserted a restrictor in the ISCV hose and got the idle down to 700RPM. It drove well and I thought I could live with this solution.
Slept on it overnight and though "no the cars fully electronic and cheating isn't good enough".
Scanned all the diagrams and finally figured out I'd lost the power feed to the ISCV somewhere behind the dash.
Once re-located and reconnected the engine went back to its smooth former self.
Just goes to show how easy it is to make a simple error and make your life hard.
I did make another dumb error whilst doing this.
When I tried to start the engine it would wind over but no sign of firing.
Took about 10 minutes for it to dawn on me the ECU wasn't plugged in!
Plugged it in and away it went.