Racelogic Traction Control Install
I've had Racelogic Traction Contol fitted for about a year now and found that it is a useful driver "aid" in that it offers some protection in slippery conditions but also allows for varied settings of slip to offer some movement or "off" altogether. It works by measuring and comparing the front wheel speeds vs the rear wheel speeds but also caters for the differing wheelspeeds when cornering (ie outer wheels travel faster than the inside when cornering).
Install
Essentially the kit comes with an ECU, wiring loom and a controller that sits in the cabin. I fitted the kit over the course of a weekend aiming to have the system fitted so that it's not immediately noticeable either under the bonnet or inside the car.
The ECU
The Racelogic ECU (wiring connectors facing towards the bulkhead in the ECU box) does squeeze into the ECU box but it is a very tight squeeze. I had to trim a bit off the mounting bracket/case off the ECU for it to sit low enough down; there is a taper at the bottom front end of the ECU box so the Racelogic ecu wouldn't sit flat at first ; I cut the opposite side to the silver tamper label just incase I caught that by sawing too far). This will make more sense when you try fitting the ECU in the box!
Wiring
It was quite easy to work on getting the cables through the bulkhead really. The tightest bit is cramming the extra wiring in the ECU box and feeding it through the grommet/rubber boot coming of the ecu box so it didn't look out of place/sealed properly. There is a large white plastic cap/grommet visible when you remove the lower panel covering the pedals (under the steering column) and pull the carpet back a bit. It has a phillips cross head on it but it just pushes outwards into the engine bay (just under the brake servo). I drilled two holes in this for the control unit and the diagnostic loom. You could also drill a third hole for the ABS loom so all the wiring goes into the cabin through here (I'd already fitted the ABS loom by this point via the passenger side bulkhead).
ABS
The ABS control unit is under the glove box. I routed the ABS loom following the factory harness around and over the bulkhead over the engine and down past the coolant expansion tank; if you remove the lower cover under the glovebox (the glovebox doesn't need removing!) and peel the carpet back you'll see a spare black grommet about 1" diameter; this is where I fed the ABS loom through but laterly realised it might have been easier/neater to send it with the control and diagnostic loom through the white grommet on the drivers side and across the back of the centre console, but either way it's quite neat and tidy (the ABS wire lead is quite tough and braided too so will be fine across the bulkhead).
Twisted Pairs - Connect Onto
Yellow/Brown > Yellow/Black
Brown > Yellow
Blue > Blue
Brown > Brown/Red
Injectors
My kit didn't come with the connectors for the injector wiring (I bought it off a friend) so I bought some PC hard disc conenctors from Maplin; the injector wiring isn't heavy gauge so this will be fine IMO and they fit together tightly so won't come undone. Essentially what you are doing is splicing the Racelogic injector wires inbetween the factory injector wires so that the injector signals pass through the racelogic box. As the connectors I bought are only 4-pole I had to use 2 sets for each side of the connection. I fitted them male to female so that without the racelogic loom "inbetween" the loom can be connected back together and returned to standard. There are, I found, a couple of extra wires with the same colouring as the injector wires but they are a thinner gauge so it's easy to identify the injector wires as there are only 6 wires of the same thickness and right colours. The injector wires are in the right hand loom out of the ECU box (relay side).
Injector - Pin - Colour
1 - 3 - Brown/White
2 - 5 - Brown/Red
3 - 4 - Brown/Yellow
4 - 33 - Brown/Blue
5 - 31 - Brown/Green
6 - 32 - Brown/Purple
Other Wires
Switched power positive is the thicker red/white wire from the ECU (54 Red/White)
The earth leads can be tacked on to the thick brown earth lead (which goes to the suspension turret) - I tacked it on inside the box so you can't see the extra wiring.
The RPM signal is a very thin plain black wire coming from the ECU (Pin 47, main ECU "left" loom); there are three plain black wires in the loom; two thicker gauge and one very thin - it's the thinner gauge wire you want to tack on to. This is better/neater than wiring up to the pin 1 off the BMW diagnostic plug (the wire from the ECU leads to this pin anyway)
The ABS wiring was the hardest to do as the loom for the ABS unit isn't very long when it's unplugged so it's a case of soldering part upside down to very thin wires! You have to be carefull to be quick with the soldering here, otherwise you will start to melt the outer! I was tempted to use scotchlocks but as the wiring is so thin I didn't want to risk a bad connection. The wiring is also twisted pairs which makes it even more difficult as it's hard to unwind then as they're fix in the plug.
The Controller
The controller is a small box around 80mmx60mmx25mm (it fits perfectly in the centre console storage space BTW). I didn't want this fitted in the car like this so carefully took it apart so that the adjuster dial sits on the steering column and the button and status LED is in a switch blank under the centre console gauges.
The steering column has one screw on the top and pretty much unclips apart and needs a bit if jiggling to get around and over the steering wheel. I had to be careful with this as it's quite brittle plastic to drill a small hole for the dial to screw on to. The dial is plain black and there is no calibration on the steering column but you don't really need it as you can feel which setting you're on and can use the LED a reference for which way to turn it.
I used the blank switch cover to house the LED and launch button. I had t o extend some cabling to get this to reach and use the PC connectors again so that everything can be removed easily without having to strip out the whole lot.
There is a datalogging facility which traces graphs of cornerning and speeds so it should theoretically be able to trace a lap of a circuit for example which can be done in realtime with a laptop or saved onto a memory chip in the ECU for downloading later. There is software that comes with the system that allows you to configure pretty much everything from individual tyre sizes through to the injector phasing. All of these features I've not used as the ECU self-calibrates on the first short journey in diagnostic mode (with a dongle plugged into the diagnostic loom).
I've had Racelogic Traction Contol fitted for about a year now and found that it is a useful driver "aid" in that it offers some protection in slippery conditions but also allows for varied settings of slip to offer some movement or "off" altogether. It works by measuring and comparing the front wheel speeds vs the rear wheel speeds but also caters for the differing wheelspeeds when cornering (ie outer wheels travel faster than the inside when cornering).
Install
Essentially the kit comes with an ECU, wiring loom and a controller that sits in the cabin. I fitted the kit over the course of a weekend aiming to have the system fitted so that it's not immediately noticeable either under the bonnet or inside the car.
The ECU
The Racelogic ECU (wiring connectors facing towards the bulkhead in the ECU box) does squeeze into the ECU box but it is a very tight squeeze. I had to trim a bit off the mounting bracket/case off the ECU for it to sit low enough down; there is a taper at the bottom front end of the ECU box so the Racelogic ecu wouldn't sit flat at first ; I cut the opposite side to the silver tamper label just incase I caught that by sawing too far). This will make more sense when you try fitting the ECU in the box!
Wiring
It was quite easy to work on getting the cables through the bulkhead really. The tightest bit is cramming the extra wiring in the ECU box and feeding it through the grommet/rubber boot coming of the ecu box so it didn't look out of place/sealed properly. There is a large white plastic cap/grommet visible when you remove the lower panel covering the pedals (under the steering column) and pull the carpet back a bit. It has a phillips cross head on it but it just pushes outwards into the engine bay (just under the brake servo). I drilled two holes in this for the control unit and the diagnostic loom. You could also drill a third hole for the ABS loom so all the wiring goes into the cabin through here (I'd already fitted the ABS loom by this point via the passenger side bulkhead).
ABS
The ABS control unit is under the glove box. I routed the ABS loom following the factory harness around and over the bulkhead over the engine and down past the coolant expansion tank; if you remove the lower cover under the glovebox (the glovebox doesn't need removing!) and peel the carpet back you'll see a spare black grommet about 1" diameter; this is where I fed the ABS loom through but laterly realised it might have been easier/neater to send it with the control and diagnostic loom through the white grommet on the drivers side and across the back of the centre console, but either way it's quite neat and tidy (the ABS wire lead is quite tough and braided too so will be fine across the bulkhead).
Twisted Pairs - Connect Onto
Yellow/Brown > Yellow/Black
Brown > Yellow
Blue > Blue
Brown > Brown/Red
Injectors
My kit didn't come with the connectors for the injector wiring (I bought it off a friend) so I bought some PC hard disc conenctors from Maplin; the injector wiring isn't heavy gauge so this will be fine IMO and they fit together tightly so won't come undone. Essentially what you are doing is splicing the Racelogic injector wires inbetween the factory injector wires so that the injector signals pass through the racelogic box. As the connectors I bought are only 4-pole I had to use 2 sets for each side of the connection. I fitted them male to female so that without the racelogic loom "inbetween" the loom can be connected back together and returned to standard. There are, I found, a couple of extra wires with the same colouring as the injector wires but they are a thinner gauge so it's easy to identify the injector wires as there are only 6 wires of the same thickness and right colours. The injector wires are in the right hand loom out of the ECU box (relay side).
Injector - Pin - Colour
1 - 3 - Brown/White
2 - 5 - Brown/Red
3 - 4 - Brown/Yellow
4 - 33 - Brown/Blue
5 - 31 - Brown/Green
6 - 32 - Brown/Purple
Other Wires
Switched power positive is the thicker red/white wire from the ECU (54 Red/White)
The earth leads can be tacked on to the thick brown earth lead (which goes to the suspension turret) - I tacked it on inside the box so you can't see the extra wiring.
The RPM signal is a very thin plain black wire coming from the ECU (Pin 47, main ECU "left" loom); there are three plain black wires in the loom; two thicker gauge and one very thin - it's the thinner gauge wire you want to tack on to. This is better/neater than wiring up to the pin 1 off the BMW diagnostic plug (the wire from the ECU leads to this pin anyway)
The ABS wiring was the hardest to do as the loom for the ABS unit isn't very long when it's unplugged so it's a case of soldering part upside down to very thin wires! You have to be carefull to be quick with the soldering here, otherwise you will start to melt the outer! I was tempted to use scotchlocks but as the wiring is so thin I didn't want to risk a bad connection. The wiring is also twisted pairs which makes it even more difficult as it's hard to unwind then as they're fix in the plug.
The Controller
The controller is a small box around 80mmx60mmx25mm (it fits perfectly in the centre console storage space BTW). I didn't want this fitted in the car like this so carefully took it apart so that the adjuster dial sits on the steering column and the button and status LED is in a switch blank under the centre console gauges.
The steering column has one screw on the top and pretty much unclips apart and needs a bit if jiggling to get around and over the steering wheel. I had to be careful with this as it's quite brittle plastic to drill a small hole for the dial to screw on to. The dial is plain black and there is no calibration on the steering column but you don't really need it as you can feel which setting you're on and can use the LED a reference for which way to turn it.
I used the blank switch cover to house the LED and launch button. I had t o extend some cabling to get this to reach and use the PC connectors again so that everything can be removed easily without having to strip out the whole lot.
There is a datalogging facility which traces graphs of cornerning and speeds so it should theoretically be able to trace a lap of a circuit for example which can be done in realtime with a laptop or saved onto a memory chip in the ECU for downloading later. There is software that comes with the system that allows you to configure pretty much everything from individual tyre sizes through to the injector phasing. All of these features I've not used as the ECU self-calibrates on the first short journey in diagnostic mode (with a dongle plugged into the diagnostic loom).
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