I have been tracking my 2000 Audi A4 B5 1.8T Quattro with an ATW engine for about three years now - lots of fun. A couple of years ago I purchased an AIM MXL PISTA digital dash. For those of you who have never seen one it is basically the dash board you see in the GT cars in the Rolex Grand-Am series.

There are two ways to hook this up to your car: 1. Use the CAN connection to connect directly to your car's ECU and let it read that data (otherwise known as the preferred and easy way; OR 2. You manually hook up a bunch of sensors by running wires, drilling holes, and welding things (the unpreferred way!)

AIM told me that the MXL Pista was compatible with the Bosch Audi ECU but what I found out was that the oldest version it is compatible with is Bosch ME7.5 - I have the next older version Bosch M5.9.2.

The nice people at AIM said "hook it up - it should work" but it didn't. There tech support is really poor and no one had given me any guidance.

So - my question - has anyone installed an AIM system in their Audi using the Bosch M5.9.2 ECU? Has anyone aside from the guy with the fancy B7 on another thread (nice car) installed an AIM system?

I would love to hear from anyone else out there. It seems sad that I cannot make this piece of hardware work. Thanks!

 

Pretty sure we ATW owners have ME7.1. Do the 2001 ECU swap, though. That's 7.5. http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=4754307

I can actually sell you the parts including a 2001 ECU because I was going to do the swap and did not. I have the ECU, the pins for the connector, the wideband O2 sensor and the harness-end connector for the sensor. PM if interested. What you will need is just some wire and a resistor to put in place of the VVTI stuff (the link above goes through it).

EDIT: Google says, actually, that 2001 was still 7.1 but that VW had 7.5... Gonna double check and edit this post when I get home. But that swap MIGHT not help.

 

According to the Bentley manual ME7.1 is used for the ATQ2.8L 6 cylinder engine. ME7.5 is used for the AWM 1.8L. AEB and ATW (my car is ATW) uses M5.9.2.

Changing over to wideband is a nice bonus to get my AIM system working. I will IM you to find out about price, etc.

Thanks!

 

Anyone have pics of what this would look like installed?

 

Here's what my ECU says:

4B0 906 018 CH
BENZIN ME7.5 0001
Bosch - Made in Germany
26SA7176 1112 0189
0 261 207 216 (810) BPG MOTRONIC 00-10-06


Reason I didn't do the swap is because Unitronic only offered the tune I wanted for 2001 ECUs, but I found what I wanted elsewhere for cheaper that could do what I wanted on my stock 2000 ECU.

 

If you want to see what the wideband install looks like check out the link dragonrage provided in this thread. If you want to see what a nice AIM MXL Pista installation looks like do a search in this forum for AIM B6 and you should find the links to the guy with a really nice red A4 B6 who did a nice in dash AIM install.

The only thing I take issue with in his install is that he appeared to hardmount the unit to an aluminum bracket whereas you are suppsoed to use rubber vibration dampening mounts that come with the unit.

I am not going to install it getting that fancy. I am rigging an aluminum bracket to the stearing column that can be taken off if I want to. The AIM is a sweet unit - I have checked it out on other people's cars and it is great.

 

Luigi,

I am a technical support representative from AiM. I am sorry that you had such a bad customer service experience. We should have told you from the very begining that we have never had a viable CAN protocol for the B5 model A4. I have successfully installed an MXL Pista into a 2006 B7 Audi A4 first-hand and can confirm that all of the data comes across in the CAN data stream (located at the OBDII port). You're right, the earliest ECU for the A4 that we have a developed protocol for is the Bosch ME 7.5. I am sorry for any "bad" information provided on our part. Here's a link to our online ECU connectivity guide, which will help anyone connecting our systems to supported ECUs... http://aim-sportline.com/pages/downl...m_ecu_audi.htm

Please let me know if you have any other questions. Again, I am really sorry for the confusion.

Regards,
Josh

 

Josh,

At least with the ECU swap I have a solution now that I can live with. I think the Pista is an awesome product and now I can just hook it up to the CAN connection I am happy. The sad thing is that I have owned the Pista for a few years hoping and praying that AIM was going to make it compatible with my ECU.

Thanks for weighing in on this.

LV

 

That would be Jet Jockey.