Currently Motec are selling a 1.5 NA harness for the fit. It only runs the Motec computer and engine components. You lose a lot of interior function (I'm guessing by looking at it). I'm guessing you'll get a Christmas tree of dash lights and you know... I think it's $3500. There is a lot of Fit racing in China btw. I got all the engine harness connectors for under $200 off Ballenger Motorsports. You can go crazy with your type of wire. I'm paying $2000 to have it wired to a cannon plug in the firewall.

 

I'm glad there are people like you willing to go the extra mile for car projects, your work with the Fit so far is very impressive. Definitely more so than anything I've done on any other car.

Isn't the Motec kind of a top line standalone meant for racing cars? Not sure it's a fair comparison to a factory ecu, or the cost of a harness built for a proprietary unit compared to a factory unit.

There probably isn't a really fair comparison, because if I look at k swap harness pricing, none of those guys have to deal with any of the CANBUS complication. Probably an order of magnitude less complicated than this GK swap. Definitely not an apples to apples kind of deal. In the end, though, the only thing that matters is whether people are willing to buy it. I'd be thrilled to see this really become popular, but if it costs the price of the car again to do it, then it probably won't.

 

Yes Motec is high end, and I misspoke, it's Emtron and it's a military grade racing harness plus high end stand alone ECU for $6500. I'm running the Link G4 GDI ECU. The fact that Axion did the work to get the dash running from the civic ECU is wonderful. I'm running a Powertune Digital dash. It's can bus and I'll run one or two can bus controllers. But I'm never running the car on the street again...
There is a racing company I think FDF that made a harness for the JZ motors that would run a stand alone ecu for engine swap to turbo and enabled all the Lexus creature comforts. That is the holy grail, but they have to price it commensurate with their intellectual property.
If it took two man years effort to figure out and build the prototype, that's?? $300k for automotive electrical engineers. So if they cost $300 for parts connectors and they sell at $3000 each for easy math, and cost $1,000 parts and labor to assemble, they have to sell like 1500 units. It's really tough to get people to pay for great work.
Thailand have some advanced looking Fits. There's a market over there...
HP Academy have great videos on wiring harnesses. They do concentric twisting which makes a whole engine harness about a fat as your pinkie. stronger, bends better... there's the txl wiring that is extra thin wall... so much... you can go crazy. I'm way further down the road than I thought. I kinda wish I waited for the B7 swap, but my next swap will probably be crv awd into fit jeez! Either that or kswap with a sequential. That is the winning formula in time attack...

 

I hope you're not taking this as an argument, because I'm definitely not on my end, just an interesting debate between car enthusiasts.

When people are willing to take the plunge and build actual race cars rather than hot street cars, the planning, quality, and definitely cost can go up far beyond anything most drivers could justify for the street. Needing more performance to be competitive in a particular class isn't always easy, usually not cheap, and neither is real safety gear, I'd bet. What you're talking about doesn't have to be worth it to me, because you're a one of a kind niche market as far as I'm aware (except the overseas stuff that gets posted once in a while where the labor costs are way cheaper). And I have no idea if you're working on particular class regs or just for the satisfaction, just trying to say I know the costs can add up quickly.

In a way, I'm taking this as kind of similar to the last generations of cars like the RX-7, 3000GT, Supra, where they had reached a point that nobody wanted to pay for them, so it didn't matter how good they were. Were they worth the engineering expense? Yes, because the level of technology and development that went into them made them amazing. But at the same time, no, because they were all cancelled. Because as you said, it's really tough to get people to pay for great work.

Maybe I shouldn't have said anything, without knowing how complicated a wiring job it is- if someone had to crack the CANBUS code and reprogram something to get the signals to interface, then that probably is electrical or software engineer level and of course those guys cost what they cost. If, on the other hand, it's a harness with a substantially larger number of wires and a long struggle to get the pin to pin configuration right with an adapter, then it can still be complicated, but reading electrical diagrams isn't the same as programming.

On the other hand, nobody needed to know the 90s Japanese sports cars were high tech or well engineered to decide not to buy them, either. I guess if I have to sum up my thoughts here, I hope the project didn't cost them so much that they have to price it in a way that kills sales. You're not wrong, good work is expensive. But I don't think I'm wrong either. It might be too expensive for the market. I hope I'm wrong, though. I want to see a bunch of these running around.

 

You have very good and factually based points in here. The work type does matter. For my Fit I am building to time attack unlimited spec. Toughest safety, widest open modifications. But tough competition too. I just want to see what the 1.5L fit motor and trans can do. Pushing boundaries. @axion_industries sorry for the long tangent, just wanting to bring awareness to what a great thing you're doing for the community and how tough it is to get things to the market that are affordable and high quality. Best of luck guys, hope you take it to the track!!

 

Its a custom harness that we have made, its $2500 I will have a break down when everything is running and go over every aspect of what it takes to do the swap

 

Thanks man, its been tough. If I went motec is honestly would have been easy or any other full standalone. We wanted to bring a product that used Ktuner since most people dont want to spend $8000 on an ecu

 

Very few options for GDI. LINK canceled the G4 GDI. Maxx supports GDI -- i know because i bought one for $3500. You have to add the Toyota 86 BRZ amplifier unit which are in ebay for $100. I also got the BMW unit but that one is more wiring. Turns out Maxx only support GM style high pressure fuel pump and they're not adding honda style any time soon. The new Link supports GDI with the amp unit, but I don't know if GM Honda or both. Emtron is the easy button for NA tuning but $6500 for ECU and harness, and without a power adder, not better than ktuner... Hard out here for us GK5 pimps!

 

The Fit is all done and running good, just need to wash and detail since it has sat for 5 years. Huge thanks to Hasport, Bryant Robinson for all the wiring mess and hassles and Ktuner

 

Congrats guys. What all works, doesn't work inside regarding safety features and stuff? Is the Fit ECU present at all? Cheers!

 

You have no idea how gitty inside I am after seeing this. I've yet to sit down and really look at your updated posts on FB and I think YouTube regarding this project as I'm currently moving.

How much of a chore was it to get the CanBus system to work with both the GK and the donor car's PCM?

 

We are running the 10th gen Civic ecu, zero codes. Only thing we lost was the power steering

 

Its Alive

 

interested if you can share any challenges here. I am planning on using the factory power steering unit in my Link ECU managed L15B1 turbo setup. Aside from running a direct power link to support the high current, I thought it would be pretty academic. is it something between the civic ECU and the Fit p/s unit? Best regards and great job!!

 

Main challenge is the wiring and ecu making things work and was not cheap at all. Much better doing a full standalone and custom harness but the swap electrically is one of the hardest ones our wiring guy has messed with