A Prius ECT Spoofer MCU Controlled

Realy? this is a myriad of information at once. Too busy for my taste but I do not have the final words....

 

Hey ccdisce, I would like to buy a spoofer for my 2005 2nd gen, i couldn't find a way to PM you, so hopefully you'll see this! You can reach me at hypermiler1995@gmail (can't post links!)

 

Just a quick update that the spoofer still works well after all these years. Also this summer I had the CEL on for a month with DTC P011B and P1116, probably because of the hot weather making the car computer confused again. A few weeks later the codes came back again. I then stopped using EBH in the morning and turned the spoofer off (easy to do thanks to the switch!). A week later the CEL turned off by itself. I think I will leave things off until it gets cooler.

 

Mine has never had problems, even if we got an unusually hot summer here, in South-Germany, up to 40°C!

Many people from Priusfreunde.de will order one, and I'll help a french person with the install, soon.

Jan

 

Just received my spoofer on Tuesday of this week, so I've had it installed about three days... Thought I'd post a few initial impressions.

Installation

- The instructions that came with the device left me a bit confused as to which connector I was going to be tapping into. I found this post - A Prius ECT Spoofer MCU Controlled | Page 8 | PriusChat - very helpful in figuring it out. Top connector of the middle of the three blocks, just below the sticker... Which apparently has different letter/number combos on it for different cars.

- I learned the hard way that using the right type of pliers can make one heck of a difference to getting a good connection with those scotchlocks. Struggled with a pair of needle nose pliers for a while and got all sorts of weird behavior, then switched to a pair of adjustable snub nose pliers and got it working reliably pretty quickly. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread (and in my PM's with Winston) you very definitely want a pair of pliers that are able to have both ends parallel so they can apply equal pressure simultaneously on the whole of the scotchloc.

- Edit: Also possibly noteworthy, in my car the white wire did not have blue stripes on it. Because it was white and in the correct position compared to the photos in the guide Winston provided and in the post I linked to above, I took a gamble. Both Torque and the device's LEDs confirm it was indeed the thermistor wire.

Functionality

- The device appears to function just as described. I've been watching over it with Torque and once ECT temp hits 115 or so, it kicks on and your temp will go to around 170. And then once your actual temperature goes above 170 it seamlessly starts letting the real temp pass through again.

- I did have one occasion where I ended up at a particularly long red light just after spoofing started and the engine cooled enough to go below 115. I can confirm that the spoofer dutifully turned off and my ICE came back on.

- I noticed that when starting the car up with an engine that's already warm enough to be inside spoofing range, the ICE comes on 7 seconds after Ready, the spoofer comes on a few seconds after that (indicated by both the spoofer LED's and the ECT temp Torque shows) but the car will still keep the ICE on for another minute or so, even though it's seeing the 170 temp. Is everyone else seeing this behavior too?

Overall Affect

- Thus far my mpg gain seems to be a very modest 3-4 mpg, from around 41mpg to around 44-45mpg. Admittedly this is based on very little data at this point. I'm at a loss as to how Winston's managing 60mpg+... Do I need my HV pack reconditioned? New plugs? Is it all about my driving style? Is it about the ridiculous number of closely spaced traffic lights in my neighborhood, which end up meaning I need to speed up and slow down over and over again regardless of anything else?

- The most noticeably improvement of course is during the warm up period. As many of you have said, the ICE does seem to be turning off by the time I reach the first red light, about half a mile from my home. I'd imagine this would make more of a difference during the heart of winter, when my warm-up can sometimes take a good 15-20 minutes otherwise. I'm still going to block my grill during the colder months too.

- Also noticed improved behavior when stuck in traffic jams bad enough to have prolonged periods where speeds are slow enough to not need the ICE to come on. So I suppose people who regularly deal with bad traffic jams as part of their commute might be a good market for these.

I'm very happy with this device. Even though the initial improvement seems relatively small, the car is definitely spending noticeably more time with the ICE off and I'm very very fond of the glidey feeling it has when running electric only. And I'm thinking I'll have a much less frustrating driving experience during winter with it. Having watched over it with Torque for a few days I'm feeling much more confident that it'll correctly pass the higher temperatures to the ECU so the cooling fans will come on reliably when they're needed. I'd say it's very definitely worth what I paid for it!

 

I don't have a spoofer, but my Prius will run the ICE for about a minute after turning on even if the coolant temp is 170+. The biggest difference I've seen is that I don't have to sit at a stop and wait ~5 seconds for the ICE to quit to put me in stage 4, it seems to go straight there after the short warm up. The Five Stages of Prius Hybrid Operation | PriusChat

Your mileage is probably low because of your driving style and conditions. While the Prius does better than other cars with the driving you do, that isn't where it shines. You might want to try timing the lights better so you don't have to slow down as much or stop (provided traffic allows).

 

Very difficult task where I live. I'm a suburb that has seen a large population growth in recent years... The roads weren't really designed to handle the amount of traffic they currently see, the city keeps adding more traffic lights because they're concerned about people speeding through residential areas... A lot of very aggressive drivers in giant trucks and SUV's on the road, many of them sporting "**** Your Prius" stickers. (Prii are very popular in neighboring Portland Oregon...) I think they tailgate Prii just to make some sort of point.

Nevertheless I do think I do a good job of staying in the rightmost lane and coasting towards most red lights from quite far away. I'm thinking it's probably the accelerating after the red lights that are hurting me. My neighborhood is the sort of suburban neighborhood where they deliberately time the lights so you pretty much have to stop over and over again, the question is how much gas you spend between those stops.

Edit: Decided to go out today, stay in the right lane and ignore the tailgaters, regardless of how aggressive they got, how many of them there were and how large their cars were. After close to an hour driving around with a constant stream of V8's being revved at my left ear as cars with decals that said things like Titan and Jimmy and Explorer on them sped past, I figured out my car definitely does perform as well as you guys' when driven correctly. With the exception of 1-2 bars that included lengthy steep uphill drives, every bar was at least in the mid 50's, most of them in the 60's. I even had one trip where (and I'm guessing the spoofer was helping here) the first bar was a little over 75.

I think I'm going to try to get used to the idea that it's okay being the annoying Prius owner that everyone constantly passes.

 

too much.

 

Too little.

 

too little gas spent between lights?

 

Can never spend too little gas!

 

Just a question, it appears that spoofing may be more beneficial in the winter, how beneficial is this to locations with all year round high temperatures?

 

Really, no much beneficial at all.
This device work well with the extreme temperatures changes

 

How can I buy a ECT spoofer.
Thank you.

 

Hello,
I would also like to to buy spoofer for my PIII.

How can i buy one

 

Scroll up to the last post from "ccdisce" and click the "Start a conversation" link under his name. Let him know if you have a Gen 2 (2004-2009) or a Gen 3 (2010-2015)... He'll send you a PayPal link to make payment.

 

Starting into my second winter with the spoofer and just saw P1116 for the first time. Didn't pop once last winter! I always keep my Bluetooth ELM327 connected to my diagnostic port all the time anyway, so it took less than 5 minutes to pull over, pull up Torque on my phone, check and clear the code... Still, odd that I didn't see it once last winter and then this year I saw it while it was still in the 50's out...