Motec ecu

Hello, Im looking to buy motec ecu for use on lancer evo 4.

I found few M4 goldbox with prices ranging from 350-1100 EUR.

I never owned any motec product before so Im wondering if anybody could tell me if there is a way to differ fake ecu from original one.

Thanks

I have never heard of a fake MoTeC ECU.

If you want to have the best possible experience I would recommend purchasing from an authorised MoTeC dealer.

The original gold box ECUs were released in the early 90s and while they are quite capable you must use an operating system no newer than Windows 7 32-bit to run the PC software.

A current M1 ECU would be your best bet, however if your budget can't strech this far an M400, M600 or M800 would be a better option than an M4.

I've seen a couple of Evos with Motec and to me you don't need one unless you're in professional motorsport... It's very good, very reliable unit but it's overkill for a regular car where the same performance can be achieved just by converting your harness to stock Evo 7-8 ECU which has all the features you need to tune an Evo up whilst with Motec you'll might need to pay extra for unlocking those options.

Example of harness converting is attached.

Thank you both for replying,

Im building this project for sale and occasional track days until its sold. I want to go with motec mostly because I think it might be a good investment since I restored rest of the car from ground up. If you guys were in my position would you go for standalone and if yes which one would you choose if your primary goal was good balance of quality and performance for reasonable price ? In case emtron, motec M1 and such were off the table.

Thanks

Just check out all the videos from this guy to find out what stock ECU from Evo 7-9 is capable of. Sometimes it even surpasses stand alone units. Once again- if you have no experience with tuning Motec I would not recommend it at your level of experience - instead of driving the car you'll be spending your time searching information on forums how to tune it...

https://youtube.com/@pisyakot?si=axN-W61B6QbEfln6

If I were you I'd put a Link plug and play standalone in it. They're modern, affordable, capable, and have safety features to help you protect your investment. They have one that suits Evo 4-8.

I've came across Link g4 plug'n' play too. Pretty much the same story like with Motec -it is a great product but requires experience with it.. A guy from Ukraine asked me to help out with tuning his 4g63 remotely for free since he couldn't do it himself and local guys were asking way too much for doing it for him. It's something you need to be fully aware of when dealing with stand alone units- you absolutely have to be prepared a) to spend lots of your time trying to learn how to tune with this specific stand alone unit or b) be ready to pay for it to someone else and be dependant on that person all the time (if you're lucky enough to find a real professional in your area- most of the time that isn't the case). That is the real truth behind it and this is how it usually goes in vast majority of cases when stand alone unit is chosen over stock ECU for a street Evo...

The best advice still is whatever your tuner of choice is best at using, use that unless there's features their brand of choice doesn't have. And don't go with the local guy(s) just because hes local, find a somebody good. A good remote tuner is still better than a bad in person tuner.

A stock ecu with a tuner software is way more complicated to use then Link/Haltech/Ecumasters etc, all of which have great tech support, plug and play options, base maps and community support. They also offer CAN, safety features, additional sensors, logging and a host of other things an OEM ecu's hardware doesn't support.

Decide what features you deem most important and find a tuner that you can work with, then pick an ecu. If you want to tune it yourself, you've started in a great place but be warned the learning curve for any platform is steep. And there's a cost associated with time even if the hardware appears cheap.

I've boosted up about 50+ of Evos, Airtreks and other cars with 4g63 with stock ECUs and stand along units and from my experience it takes just a few hours to tune stock ECU for boost up level. You don't need stand along unit up until 400+ whp - it works just fine. And it has built in hardware for CAN channel and empty slots for additional sensors. It can be used for Live map tuning and can be tuned for all kinds of safety features just like stand alone unit. The only thing it can't do is handling 4 chanels for ignition - there is no hardware for it which can be a problem when you're using NOS with large camshafts. Other than that it's not worse than most of stand alonе units let along the fact it was designed for that engine from very begging... People just underestimate what stock EVO ECU is capable of providing from factory...