Volvo Penta ECU’s

nicho said:
No doubt the market may be pretty small, but I can imagine the anguish. If you are one of the few that cannot run their boat due to no ECU available. Anyway, hopefully these units could be independantly made available to keep these boats in operation. Thank God for my AD41’s these days😜
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I didn't know it was a problem for the KAD32, it does make you wonder if this should be considered when looking for a used boat. You see threads asking which boat to buy etc but rarely anyone mentions be aware of ECU availability on KAD engines. Maybe I should think myself lucky I have a AD31 :), but at some point I may upgrade and wonder whether sticking to Volvo engines is a wise move, are other non volvo engines having this problem?
 
Posted on here many years ago when this problem first surfaced.
The boat was a Phantom 46 and the skippers pride and joy, chap is no longer with us.
Virtually immediatly after purchase it started having problems, boat moored in Majorca.
"Something" failed a couple of times en route between the islands and once right in front of a ferry entering a busy port.
Frightened the shit out of him.
There was a long and expensive story of all sorts of things being blamed for the engines going into limp mode.
Tanks cut open and cleaned, fuel lines and filters being changed /swapped, virtually every electrical connection being swapped /cut and hard wired plus loads of other stuff long forgotton about.
All and sundry had a go. Local VP authorised dealer followed by various outfits prepared to take a look going down the food chain.

The ECU finally appeared to be the culprit and eventually the owner summoned up the will to buy a new ECU which believe at the time was several thousands of pounds, other wise a useless and possibly dangerous boat and also impossible to sell in good conscience.
Tiny weeny problem.
That ECU.... none left in stock anywhere, new ...and of course all the secondhand units ....long gone.

A couple of hundred thousands pounds worth of useless boat.
The ECU was eventually bought back to UK in last resort desperation and money was spent on " reprogramming" , unit was reinstalled.
Enough was enough.
It all worked on a short seatrial when tested by a prospective new owner with his surveyor.

About a year later was reported by somebody in the know down there that this very same boat still had problems and required a new ECU.
No idea what happened after that, but replacement ECUs were still a couple of years in the future and then only because some forumites had some clout with VP.
The boat is still out there somewhere.
 
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nicho said:
I remember our failed ECU could not be repaired cause the entire unit was encased in a solid material, that could not be removed without breaking the electronic wizardry. Would VP go to court to prevent any company copying and building an aftermarket unit. It should be the way to go, but………
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Norsk of this parish is able to remove the encapsulation material to enable him to repair broken ECU's.
 
We've had this doom mongering before. VP were unable to procure ECU's due to the worldwide chip shortage. Once that issue was resolved, they were able to re-stock (as they promised to do so in emails to me).

As I've said before, there is safety in numbers here. There are 10's of thousands of engines that use these ECU's so I find it hard to believe that neither VP nor an aftermarket supplier will be unable to supply the ECU's going forward, particularly when the retail price is getting on for £4k.

Note that there are programmable ECU's on the market that would be able to control the VP37 injector pump fitted to KAD engines.

As above, we now have someone who is able to fix these ECU's so that's one solution.

Another solution for the KAD engines is to revert so a manual fuel injection pump (i.e. the one fitted to pre-ECU engines). Not a trivial task as the KAD ECU controls more than the engine, but better than trashing a whole boat.

As for KAD32, it doesn't have an ECU, it has a simple engine speed / kick down controller for the supercharger. So nothing that couldn't easily be replaced with some cheap hardware and simple programming.
 
Momac said:
I would imagine ECU's are not made by Volvo in house. That manufacturer probably exists but isn't interested in selling except if a job lot is ordered.

But perhaps if Volvo aren't really interested in selling these parts they should at least make the design details freely available and effectively authorise the manufacture of ECUs as unbranded items . China would probably make them for £50 each.
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The ecu was made by NIRA automotive , it was believed the supply problem was due to the fact they had not made a single unit for many years and were not interested in getting supply going again because things had moved on .
The old technology to build the units was so out of date that components were unavailable.

I have no idea who has made them for Volvo in recent times, I listened to all the different excuses as to why there was no intention of production for months , eventually a few appeared one in my direction which was down to Mike an independent yacht broker who kicked up a fuss in Sweden.
A few months later a new 73p ecu was handed to me in a Jiffy bag at my supplying dealer FOC , I fitted it and the boat in question was up and running .
After that the supply totally dried up for a long time , I had 2. 74L units on order for what seemed ages , they eventually arrived.
The rest is just another day in the office , would I buy an early engine ? Yes I would as they only need one ecu unlike the newer D range .
 
I assume ( and it really is assumption ) that an ecu at is heart is quite simple.

It controls the timing and volume of fuel delivered to the engine based on a series of inputs ( throttle /temperatures / pressures / turbo pressures etc ).

To do this it uses a map.

Given there are other ecu presumably if you are in that business determining that map is relatively straightforward.

Likewise then putting this map into a generic ecu is likewise likely quite simple if you are in that line of business.

Does anyone know if the above is correct ? If so finding someone to do the work should not be that difficult given there are lots of car tuning companies about.


Edit.

The Ultimate Guide to ECU Cloning: Advantages and Case Study Insights

Seems to suggest it is quite doable.
 
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jrudge said:
I assume ( and it really is assumption ) that an ecu at is heart is quite simple.

It controls the timing and volume of fuel delivered to the engine based on a series of inputs ( throttle /temperatures / pressures / turbo pressures etc ).

To do this it uses a map.

Given there are other ecu presumably if you are in that business determining that map is relatively straightforward.

Likewise then putting this map into a generic ecu is likewise likely quite simple if you are in that line of business.

Does anyone know if the above is correct ? If so finding someone to do the work should not be that difficult given there are lots of car tuning companies about.


Edit.

The Ultimate Guide to ECU Cloning: Advantages and Case Study Insights

Seems to suggest it is quite doable.
Click to expand...
Yes and no , it also controls the forward and reverse gear , has its safe failure modes and fault code analysis all built to be overcome anything both user and component failure safety . Plus for its day it was very compact and it worked with many standard automotive parts .
 
The question remains. If you were made aware of the problem and had a choice of boat would you knowingly buy a boat with these ECUs.
Do wonder if this problem is as rare as is suggested. The owner was desperate that the fault on his boat did not become general knowlege, lest it seriously affect any chance of getting rid of the boat without having to give it away.
No doubt all the major builders of engines have their own little faults Caterpillar, Mann, Cummins et al.
All VP had to do was to sort a supply of the required part, price probably irrelevant, for any skipper desperately wanting to get his boat underway. ?
 
petem said:
As for KAD32, it doesn't have an ECU, it has a simple engine speed / kick down controller for the supercharger. So nothing that couldn't easily be replaced with some cheap hardware and simple programming.
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I think it should be like the same system of the Kad43, electronic clutch system which engages and turns off the super charger on its setting. That should be an easy fix.
I spent 150 Euros to fix one some years ago on a Kad43, by a Volvo tech, removing it for him and taking it to his premises.
Volvo used to make a repair kit for these.
 
oldgit said:
The question remains. If you were made aware of the problem and had a choice of boat would you knowingly buy a boat with these ECUs.
Do wonder if this problem is as rare as is suggested. The owner was desperate that the fault on his boat did not become general knowlege, lest it seriously affect any chance of getting rid of the boat without having to give it away.
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So you think someone is not going to buy their preferred boat in case an ECU fails, and said ECU is unrepairable and the ECU can't be bought second hand and Volvo cease production of them (despite there being 10's of thousands of engines out there with the same ECU?

As for this being a common occurrence, take a look at the Volvo FB Groups and you'll see that ECU failures are rare. KAD32 compressor controller issues are ore common but that's a repairable module too.

oldgit said:
No doubt all the major builders of engines have their own little faults Caterpillar, Mann, Cummins et al.
All VP had to do was to sort a supply of the required part, price probably irrelevant, for any skipper desperately wanting to get his boat underway. ?
Click to expand...

Yep, and you won't have the "safety in numbers" that you have for TAMD / KAD engines.

oldgit said:
All VP had to do was to sort a supply of the required part, price probably irrelevant, for any skipper desperately wanting to get his boat underway. ?
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Which is what they did once the worldwide Covid shortage of PCB's was resolved.
 
PowerYachtBlog said:
I think it should be like the same system of the Kad43, electronic clutch system which engages and turns off the super charger on its setting. That should be an easy fix.
I spent 150 Euros to fix one some years ago on a Kad43, by a Volvo tech, removing it for him and taking it to his premises.
Volvo used to make a repair kit for these.
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There are people who repair the compressor / speed controllers now (it's usually just a failed mosfet component).
 
jrudge said:
I assume ( and it really is assumption ) that an ecu at is heart is quite simple.

It controls the timing and volume of fuel delivered to the engine based on a series of inputs ( throttle /temperatures / pressures / turbo pressures etc ).

To do this it uses a map.

Given there are other ecu presumably if you are in that business determining that map is relatively straightforward.

Likewise then putting this map into a generic ecu is likewise likely quite simple if you are in that line of business.

Does anyone know if the above is correct ? If so finding someone to do the work should not be that difficult given there are lots of car tuning companies about.


Edit.

The Ultimate Guide to ECU Cloning: Advantages and Case Study Insights

Seems to suggest it is quite doable.
Click to expand...
Remember that the TAMD/KAD engines aren't like modern engines. The purpose of the ECU (as well as controlling the gears and diagnostics as @volvopaul states above) is to control the compressor and the fuel rod in the high pressure injection pump (based on throttle setting, boost pressure, fuel and engine temperature, etc),

It's not like a modern ECU that controls the ignition, individual injectors, etc.

Also, modern engines use OBD2 and Canbus. TAMD/KAD's don't.

Despite the above, there are off the shelf ECU's that could be made to work if the need arose. But there's wont be a demand for that until VP officially confirm that they will no longer supply ECU's.
 
The KAD32 speed relay contains about 40 components, of that there are only 2 items that are not available off the shelf - The Volvo connector and a resistor array.
The switching transistor that fails is discontinued, but there are alternatives for this part.

These will be repairable for a long time provided they have not suffered excessive heat during the failure that melts the connector or damages the board too much.

Just need people to not throw bad ones away and get them repaired. I am sure there are people with faulty ones in their garage but they no longer own the boat.
 
FatherTed said:
The KAD32 speed relay contains about 40 components, of that there are only 2 items that are not available off the shelf - The Volvo connector and a resistor array.
The switching transistor that fails is discontinued, but there are alternatives for this part.

These will be repairable for a long time provided they have not suffered excessive heat during the failure that melts the connector or damages the board too much.

Just need people to not throw bad ones away and get them repaired. I am sure there are people with faulty ones in their garage but they no longer own the boat.
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Yep, and the same goes for ECU's.

In fact I had a broken ECU for one of our engines. I sent it to a well know boat parts place in Dover to be re-programmed but never saw it again. It's probably working perfectly well on somebody else's boat :(.
 
Or buy a boat with Yanmar, Sabres or even better Cummins engines. I personally would not buy another boat with a Volvo engine, this factory determined obsolescence being the primary reason, with expense of the OE parts being the second reason. And whilst slightly off topic, in my opinion only a fool would buy a secondhand boat with IVS drives - if they become unserviceable the entire boat is completely useless, whereas at least with TAMD/KAD/KAM engines you can at least drop something else in.
 
superheat6k said:
Or buy a boat with Yanmar, Sabres or even better Cummins engines. I personally would not buy another boat with a Volvo engine, this factory determined obsolescence being the primary reason, with expense of the OE parts being the second reason. And whilst slightly off topic, in my opinion only a fool would buy a secondhand boat with IVS drives - if they become unserviceable the entire boat is completely useless, whereas at least with TAMD/KAD/KAM engines you can at least drop something else in.
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IVS , is that a typo.
 
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