AUTOMOTIVE SOLUTIONS

about us

My name is Albert Welledits, I am a mechanical engineer specialisted in High Tech Brewery Plants and since 1999 I am owning a Toyota Land Cruiser 100, so far almost 360.000km on the odometer. I never experienced any kind of serious problems except one time a defective converter clutch (didn't open when vehicle stopped) and that was fixed under warranty.

 

This positive experience was the basis that I ordered the new V8 in November 2007 blind. At that time neither my dealer nor any other Toyota Rep had photos, but I got them from the net and collected information from various publications about the vehicle.

 

After the blind order I visited the Tokyo Motor Show and saw the new Land Cruiser as a petrol version. Later I got the opportunity to test drive this vehicle and I was amazed. The difference was, not only the V8 gasoline engine but also the 5-speed automatic gearbox, which was taken from the previous LC100 after the facelift in 2003.

 

The LC200 was finally delivered in February 2008 and immediately after taking over the vehicle, I realized, that something was not working as expected. Up to 100km/h in “D” I never realized any converter lockup. The fuel consumption was extremely high at speeds between 60 and 100km/h. The further investigation into this matter finally lead me to the fact, that the software for the ECU was wrong programmed.

 

I tried to convince Toyota for more than 16months to improve the software for this issue, but I have been totally ignored. You can read more about this story at www.tptms.com

 

Since Toyota was unwilling to improve the software, I had the choice in either returning the vehicle at full compensation (which has been a generious offer by Toyota) and to buy something else, or to fix the problem myself.

 

In April 2010 the final decision was made, to fix this problem with a separate controller box, connected to the CAN-system via the OBD-socket and to be plugged between ECU and gearbox.

 

Thanks to our electronic expert, Dipl.Ing.Alexander Lukianov, we developed a unique mapping for the lockup function.

 

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The use of original connectors from Toyota, which unfortunately cost a furtune, make the installation very easy. Power connection to the IGNATION circuit, Datacable connected to the OBD-socket and the control wire connected between ECU and gearbox takes less than 30min.

ECON*LOCK has been successfully tested in a DAKAR-LC200 with 960Nm.

Many parameters are retrieved from the CAN system to control the converter lockup. Vehicle speed, gear shift lever position, gear in action, engine load factor, acceleration pedal position, throttle position, engine temperature, ATF temperature, slip monitoring and many others are collected and implemented into the mathematical calculation of the perfect mapping. This is needed to avoid damages to the converter clutch, which is a highly sensible unit.

 

ECON*LOCK was not designed to become a business, it is manufactured at small quantities and carefully testet and available as a “retrofit kit”. It is understandable, that we can´t give any guarantees and we have to warn, that warranties of the gearbox might become expired when using ECON*LOCK.

 

ECON*LOCK is designed not to be detectable via the OBD-Diagnosis