Reverse Lockout and Coolant Temp Gauge with Haltech Platinum PRO Plugin on an EP3 Civic Type R

Hello everyone.

This is my first time using an Haltech at all. So I bought this ECU for a customer's UKDM EP3 (Uses narrowband o2 sensor instead of wideband like the US), thinking it would actually be a straight plugin.

Little did I know I would lose the coolant temp gauge and reverse lockout activation.

There is nothing on Haltech's website that mentions these two issues when using the ECU. How are you guys getting this to work?

Also another thing is the fact that I cannot use the factory O2 signal wire as a wideband input like on other EMS. Is this really it? Am I actually forced to waste an aux input just for this?

Thank you.

support@haltech.zohodesk.com

Hi Dom. I was trying to avoid contacting them and mainly just see if I was the only one with this issue or not.

Thank you.

Haltech tech support is very good.

I dunno how different the plat pnp is - but my elite ran the lockout ok and yes it needed an output to do that - and the factor o2 sensors it did not run at all - they have to be removed before they foul up - i needed to run the wbo2 module that haltech sells.

The aircon button and the dashboard water temp gauge are run through the multiplexer and do not work on my elite ecu - i ended up getting a digital dash instead and the can keypad to control aircon and a few other options that i wanted to use. You could get a 3rd party water temp gauge and mount that in a gauge pod in the dash / centerconsole / airvent etc - and you could try hardwiring a switch to switch the aircon on and off - i just lived without aircon for ages and still havnt tested it to make sure that the ecu telling aircon to turn on cycles properly and wont blow the system up or over chill things.

I also HIGHLY recommend that you run the haltech air temp sensor instead of the plastic factory one heat soaks.

In traffic the factory plastic sensor can read as high as 60c which is a garbage reading.

Install the smaller of the haltech air temp sensors into the same location as the factor air temp sensor (may need to dremel a rubber lip on the inside of the factory intake pipe to seat the sensor properly but its worth it) - it even has the same calibration curve as the honda sensor.

I guess we can come to the conclusion that this isn't really a PnP solution. I am quite sure the owner will not buy anything else to make this work. This should've been a simple affair.

Nothing on their website or documents mention this.

I bought this at the same price as a K-Pro thinking it would be a nice upgrade, and now I'm left to give my customer a very unpleasant phone call to tell him that I made a bad choice on the ECU because of wrong advertising.

To summarise: this costs more (I just happen to catch a very good deal on this unit - yea turns out it really wasn't), takes more time to set up, takes away features and doesn't really bring in anything of value over what the other OEM ECU solutions offer.

And worst part is the owner already sold the OEM ECU. So now needless to say I will not be pushing anything Haltech anymore.

kpro for a honda on a customer car is probably the nicest solution yes - i was annoyed about a few things with the elite but it was a path i wanted to go down to make sure if i swap cars later on that i can take the ecu and other bits with me to the new car.

From what i can understand now after using the haltech compared to what a kpro would do:

- haltech doesn't control the cam angle as accurately on plat, and the kpro doesn't touch that system and it works as factory intended.

- haltech dash water temp gauge, aircon control button and the o2 sensors are not supported out of the box - not an issue with kpro.

The two things that stopped me buying a kpro over my elite2500 was that the dealers never got back to me when i said i wanted to buy kpro already installed in an ecu (i didn't want to modify my jdm k20a ecu) and that there was no base map for the jdm k20a based off a rom dump from the jdm k20a ecu (knock levels / cam angle maps / timing requirements etc - all different to the k20a2 / k24)

You can get good results with a plat ecu - no question about that - but yeah - a kpro or that russian kpro clone board that works with their software (lol) on a k20a2 is the way.

At least over in the UK parts for ep3's are easy to come by so getting another ecu over there shouldnt be too hard - and the plat ecu should be able to be sold for what you got it for on yahoo japan or ebay.

Sorry to hear its not a personal car and a customer car - that sucks :(

So I posted the coolant reading issue on Haltech's Facebook group and got a reply from someone that works there. He says it should in fact work with this ecu and that it should be sent back. Have sent an email on thursday so will be waiting for a reply.

The issue is, this is getting dyno tuned on the 25th, to go on a ferry the very next morning to another country and never coming back.

Going out of pocket to install an OEM ecu with K-PRO. Keeping a faulty aftermarket ecu and losing a customer. Madness.