The other day I was playing around and hooked up a pressure sender to the ECU to see how it would function as a compression tester. I built a tester years ago by installing a sender in an old spark plug body that I had cut down. I have a datalogger that normally reads the sender. It was easy enough to make up a cable to connect the sender to the ECU's AUX2 input. Configured the input as oil pressure (could use any pressure type) and calibrated the input. Hooked it all up and cranked the engine. The resolution isn't as good as my datalogger, but the results were good enough to determine the health of the engine. Logger is recording RPM and pressure. Best of all, if you have the ECU already, all you need is the sender, some wire, and a couple connectors. The harness shown has a Weatherpack connector on it, which obviously will not mate to the AMP connector used on the Sport harnesses. The particular car I tried this on has an old E8 patch loom with the Weatherpack connector. You will need the AMP connector to work with Sport harnesses.

Compression of this particular engine was very lousy.

 

that's pretty neat actually.

some enterprising young turbo rotary owner should just run a pair of those instead of spark plugs, that way you'd know the exact moment the engine popped

actually would it work for combustion pressure?

 

It could, if you had the right sensor. But the logging rate of the ECU is not going to be up to the task.

 

Hmm.
I wonder of you could make a patch long enough and use it like a big Jumper cable.
That way you could test the car beside you if it did NOT have the Sport ECU.
..so PS1000 Chris?

 

You could get pressure readings but not RPM. You could get RPM but it would require quite a bit more harness work.

 

cool.. now run out a batch of senders in plug so we can all have one