AU Falcon EECV Interchangeability

[pman92]

Hey guys,

I'm wondering how interchangeable AU Falcon EECV PCM's are.
Can I flash any file onto any PCM?
EG. Turn a 6cyl PCM into a V8? Or a Intech into a VCT? Or a series 1 into a series 2? etc etc.

I've got a couple of them here and I opened them up out of curiosity. One is from a 6cyl intech auto, and the other is from a VCT engine. I noticed the intech one is missing some of the IC's that the VCT one has.

If they aren't all interchangeable, how do I know what PCMs are compatible with what applications?

Thanks in advance

[ATPCR]

I'm in the USA so some answers might be different. I know that a US EEC-V coil-on-plug V-8 PCM has eight coil driver circuits and depending on the application can be programmed to operate say a 300 ci (4.9?) truck straight six. Two o the coil driver circuits get turned off. The factory 6 cylinder PCMs here only have 6 coil drivers. What kind of V-8 do you have?

[DWS]

If you're trying to mix up catch codes, ideally you'd want the same strategy since that's basically the expected "format" for the bin to be in. If you mix up strategies, then the next best thing is to match the hardware id. Sometimes the code can work on unrelated hardware but there's not a super great way to test that besides just trying it. For an example, a v6 computer might only have 6 injector drivers, while a v8 computer has 8. Also possible they were setup as batch fired, so a v8 would have 4, 2, or all 8 fired at once. That's where the wire diagrams come in to validate the designs interchange.

The v6 computers I've worked with (newer ones, 98-03 era) do have provisions for v8 logic, like the firing order has 8 spots to add numbers into, but just because it's in the code doesn't mean the supporting hardware exists in the given computer, they reused sections of code across several computers.

If the ignition system is wildly different, I'd assume they won't interchange, but technically if you want to get into assembly programming it might be possible to get something like that working.

Anyway, I don't really know anything about the Falcons, so not exactly a huge help, I've just been poking at the EEC-V computers in general on and off.

For identifying the strategy, that's right in the bin file when you read a computer, normally it's at the end of the file, but depends which program you used to read it for which format it's in. Search the file for Copyright and the data is right before it. I'll use a Taurus computer for an example. Searching for Copyright brings me to this block of text.

Copyright Ford Motor Co. 1999

Right before it there's this:

BUAE0B8.HEX*
XF1FJD *

In my case, the computer part number (software based) is XF1F-12A650-JD (the 12A650 isn't in the dumps, all eec computers have that though). The .HEX name is the strategy, the first 4 is the strategy family BUAE, the next character is which major version it is, so most people reference it as strategy BUAE0. The ending B8 is this file's exact version so the last 2 can be ignored unless you're trying to reference if 2 computers are the same and one hasn't been updated for example. I can take this bin and write it to any computer that has a BUAE0 strategy and know it will work. Sometimes when they get updated, the strategy does change, so that can make things confusing, but more than one strategy can work with one computer. The actual hardware id on the sticker should also mean all strategies that run on that hardware will interchange. There's often times when the same strategy can be used on more than one hardware id, so that opens up the interchange a reasonable amount. I don't think many people have really documented this kind of info though, generally speaking people take their existing computer, read the stock bin off it, and modify it so it's a 100% known it will work correctly.

Probably clear as mud, but hopefully I'm making some kind of sense lol.

More examples from Taurus computers (I have read a ton of them lol)

Strategy BUAE1 is used on catch codes MYD0 and MYD2 which both have the same HW id ML2-862A

Catch code SYA3 uses Strategy BUAE0, however it also has the same HW id ML2-862A, so a MYD0 bin would work on a SYA3 computer based on the HW ID's matching.

For matches across HW id's I'd have to jump over to crown vic computers since those seemed to change a lot more often, but it's a similar logic. I've tested some of the swaps and it has worked based on HW id, but it's generally best to modify the stock bin when possible.


Good luck with your project, maybe someone that knows more about that model of vehicle can be of more help. Like on the crown vic side of things, it's possible to flash a cop car bin onto a civilian computer when the hw id matches up, there's no real benefit though unless you're running the cop car engine since the calibrations match the cop car version of the engine (some are very close, some had a fairly large jump in design like bigger injectors).