It's basically a complete replacement ECU that works on a variety of engines and vehicles. Haltech is well known and has a great history. I used to install them on performance air-cooled VW engines with throttle-body injection back in the very early 90's. Had an old Grid laptop where we could tune the maps while driving the car.

It would be a pretty big job to exchange the ECU, but only from the standpoint of proper wiring. If you've got a good reference for the OEM sensors and harness, you're good-to-go. Then you set up a baseline map and start tuning. Usually it's best to find someone experienced with this and then best again to do it on the road before going on the dyno, so you've got your driveability worked out.

Then the sky's the limit! You can develop and save different profiles for whatever style of driving you want, and swap as needed. Daily driver for the weekly work run, more aggressive for sportier or competitive driving, torquey for off-roading... you name it!

It's a steep learning curve, and hits the wallet pretty good too. But Haltech makes a nice box that gets the job done. There's a '71 Opel GT that competes in our rallycross events that's a full-on rally car and has a Haltech box and injection. I would never equate reliable performance with Opel, but this one has it and a racing history to match.

If you're near an active sports track that caters to performance, stop by on a weekend and ask around the paddock for some enlightenment to modern performance engine management.

If and when I land a third VX, it'll get the model (or whatever the then current equivalent is) I linked to for a full rally build. w00t!


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