Anyone using an AIM Datalogger with CAN bus Ethanol Content Analyzers?

[detroitm2]

Cross-posted from the F87 forum.

After recently installing my Zeitronix ECA-2 unit in my car, and getting a flex-fuel tune via Ecutek, I wanted a nice way to display my ethanol content. I did purchase one of the Zeitronix Gauges, but i couldnt find any nice place to mount it, and honestly I didn't want yet another gauge in my car.

I run an AIM Solo 2 DL datalogger when im at the track to collect metrics from my car and to track laptimes. Largely for putting in my track videos on youtube, but its also useful for logging other bits of data for later analysis. Since this unit connects directly to the CAN bus on the car, it should be able to pickup any data going over the wire, including the ethanol content and fuel temp being sent from the Zeitronix unit.

AIM does provide a configuration (XC1) file with the parameters for reading the data. However, the software AIM provides for mapping the ECU values to displays does not allow you to combine ECU files.

What this means is, if you want to use these values from the ECA-2, you'll have to rebuild the entire F Series ECU file from scratch. The ECU files included with the AIM units (any AIM unit) are password protected and there is no way to edit them.

Obviously I did not want to try and recreate those files, even if I knew how to do it, it would take a massive amount of time and I'd probably do something wrong.

I decided to email AIM about this. They were very responsive, and offered to combine the files for me. It took them maybe 3-4 days and I got a new F Series XC1 file with the Zeitronix parameters added ready to be imported into the AIM software. The first iteration they sent me had the Ethanol percentage shown as a "Number" value, instead of a percentage. This was actually exactly what was in the file provided by Zeitronix. It was mildly annoying, so I emailed AIM back and asked if they could change the unit of measurement to Percentage instead. They emailed me back a new file within a couple hours.

After importing the ECU file and rebuilding my displays, I got everything working.

I'm posting this in case anyone else is running this same setup. Shoot me a PM and I can send over the XC1 file that AIM provided to me. This should work with any ECA that sends the data to the CAN bus in the same way the ECA-2 does. I'd imagine most of the units on the market use the same CAN ID's. Additionally, this file should work with most of the AIM data loggers and dashboards.

I realize this is probably a pretty narrow market on the F Series, but thought I'd post it up anyways.