The client’s car was a BMW E46 with a focus on rallysprint. An older M50B25 engine was installed in the car, and there was also a desire to add our Fatech dashboard. The engine was controlled by the original ECU, which lacked modern Canbus protocol. Therefore, a solution had to be developed to retrieve the engine information and display it on the screen.
Typically, we start the installation with creating the dashboard mounting, but in this case, it was first necessary to figure out how to obtain the required information from the sensors. The indicators needed were: RPM, Coolant temperature, Oil pressure, and Battery voltage. Since the Fatech screen is built on the Canbus protocol, which requires only 2 wires, the sensors couldn’t be directly connected there. As a solution, an intermediate data module was built and programmed by us to collect the necessary information from the engine sensors and transmit it directly to the dashboard via Canbus.
On the dashboard side, therefore, no major changes were needed. Only in terms of design, for example, the oil temperature was removed, as the original ECU of the given engine does not measure it.
In addition, a mounting for the screen was created. For this purpose, we used the original dashboard frame of the E46. Then we installed the GPS antenna on the roof. And we also calibrated and connected the fuel level sensors for the dashboard.
Once the job was done we took the car for a shakedown at LaitseRallyPark to assure the functionality of the data module.