UK Ecu in my import?? Why

[Q-Dog]

A bit of help and guidance please.
I have just bought a 1994 Import WRX GC8B48D and noticed it had the wrong speedo in it, the Rev and speed dials round the wrong way but as it had white dials I assumed someone swapped them to look nice. Went to fit a correct year STi speedo and notice there is no speedo cable and the gearbox albeit still an early Wrx box has electronic rather than cable drive.
Looked at the ecu and it is running a V7 Code UK ecu.
I noticed some of the wiring to the ecu has been spliced into mainly maf, cam and crank sensors from what I can work out
My questions are
Is it easy to put it back right? What sort of wiring should I be looking at doing?
Why would someone go to all that trouble?
I looked inside the box and see it has a carrier for a chip, so can I fit a chip and cut j1 resistor? Will it run ok or will I still need to sort the wiring?

[Mortster]

Ah you bought the red one. Is that 2 or 3 now you have? Did you miss a Scooby that much your making up for it with multiple cars?

I think the wires have been swapped over to allow fitment if the UK ecu. The UK ecu probably looks for a electric speedo signal, hence the install if the speedo sensor rather than the cable.

[Scott.T]

Uk and wrx ecu can be swapped on pre96.
The intelligence for speedo etc is in the sensors/electronics on the back of the dash binnacle, and the output they supply to the ecu.
The cable drive still passes the electronic signal back to the ecu via the binnacle.

Splicing into the maf signal means its probably had a fuel controller such as an apexi safc or similar in the past.

[Mortster]

I'll have a Z4 ECU in a few weeks if you need it. Currently on my Import pushing 262 with just a decat.

[Q-Dog]

Originally Posted by Mortster

Ah you bought the red one. Is that 2 or 3 now you have? Did you miss a Scooby that much your making up for it with multiple cars?

I think the wires have been swapped over to allow fitment if the UK ecu. The UK ecu probably looks for a electric speedo signal, hence the install if the speedo sensor rather than the cable.

Yeah pretty much mate, the non turbo was nice but at £1100 I couldn't pass this one up. Let me know about the Z4, how much etc.

Oh and yeah we have 2 now but makes 10 I've had altogether

[Q-Dog]

Originally Posted by SilverSurfer

Uk and wrx ecu can be swapped on pre96.
The intelligence for speedo etc is in the sensors/electronics on the back of the dash binnacle, and the output they supply to the ecu.
The cable drive still passes the electronic signal back to the ecu via the binnacle.

Splicing into the maf signal means its probably had a fuel controller such as an apexi safc or similar in the past.

Cheers mate, problem is it looks like they have replaced wiring to MAF, crankshaft sensor and camshaft sensor. Will I need to sort that before fitting a jap ecu?
I thought the UK ecu needed the feeds round the other way?

[Q-Dog]

I had heard you needed to swap the live and negative around to run a UK ecu, does it mean I can just plug in a jap ecu? I did think about trying to find a Polar Performance chip or something similar and bypass the UK ecu, would that work? Just finding one that's hard lol

Also does that mean once I get my speedo cable I should be able to just fit the right clocks?

[Scott.T]

97/98 ecu you need to swap cam and crank and also move the fuel pump wire
99/00 ecu you need to swap cam and crank
92-96 ecu require no modifications.

The map in the uk ecu runs similar boost and is a better fuel/ignition map than the pre september 1994 wrx ecu.
In Sept 1994 the z4 ecu arrived which is the best wrx based ecu for a wrx or uk.
The 6k ecu from the STI V2 was the same as the uk supplied Prodrive 'ppp' map.

Polarperformance maps for uk and wrx all used the z4 as a base map as it used the best code/firmware.

[Q-Dog]

Cheers mate you're a legend.
I assume the wiring being spliced into could well have been an Apexi or similar previously.

Z4 here I come