At 1989 was originally introduced the 183 MTU engine to cover the request of mid-size motor for yacht market. There are some different electronic systems managing this engine depending on time or applications, as old Horn LOP, MCS-183, GAC, ECS-183/S, ECS-183/R, BlueLine… but today I show you the common marine application ECS-183/S with its ECU brain ECB3 board and also the BlueLine version.
Many years ago I had to work in the field solving problems on this old ECS-183/S, very commonly working with Mathers Microcommander remote control levers to control the boat. I saw this system in example in a lot of Ferretti yachts with around 20 meters length.
This electronic system use normally a LOP without display, although I also have seen LOP with display in some boats, inside it uses 2 PIM, MLA board and the most important unit to control the fuel rack of the 183 engine, the Engine Control Board ECB3. Since 2017 we have repaired around 30 of these important ECU units, sometimes with holes on the multilayer PCB due to explosions at Switch Mode Power Supply circuit, sometimes with all logic side completely damaged due to overvoltage in low 5V line, so not easy repairs involving a lot of tests in our laboratory.
Nowadays we are able to simulate the start of the engine in the laboratory emulating the speed signals, fuel rack position, etc, at ECB3 unit. You can see in the video still some prototypes units connected to the ECB3 which we have to convert in a final Restoretronic PCB test unit used for this board, which we will design soon.
In 2021 MTU had sold a total of around 10.000 of these MTU engines since it was introduced. When BlueLine system appeared in the market, a version for 183 engine series was also designed called ECS-5, MCS-5 and RCS-5 for 183 marine applications. Then the old ECB3 was replaced, so inside the LOP5 of this BlueLine system we can find a PCB called ECB9, connected at motherboard of LOP. In this case the internal structure of LOP is totally different to the ECS-183, but the phylosophy of ECB is exactly the same to control the engine, fuel demand and injection pump.
In this video you can see first our engineer working at some ECB3 with problems coming from a service company customer from a yacht in Mexico. Just one week ago we supplied another successfully repaired board to a greek service company customer with also problems on ECB3 at booting process. This means, still a lot of yachts using this system around the world, with the added problem that MTU doesn´t supply ECB3 anymore as spare because it is obsolete device.
We think these customer service companies and finally end user are very lucky to have our technical support on these issues, because even to find used units in the market is really difficult. Last week we received also some request from China and Germany looking for ECB3 units…
In the video, you can also see one of our engineers working in the BlueLine version of 183 marine application, in this case, after helping a charter customer in Singapur by WhatsApp to troubleshoot some problems in the MTU electronic system, he decided to send all the equipment to be tested and repaired, then we received 2 x LOP5, 2 x PIM-MCS, 2 x PIM-RCS and ROS7. In this case we interconnect all units, at the bench or at simulator passing different communication test and repairing all the issues we find in all the process.
Also in this case of BlueLine, with obsolete units, LOP5 and ECB9, we think some customers are in a dead end with limited support and sometimes with proposed solution of replacing complete electronic system as alternative, which means long time and a lot of money to finish the project, so finally a better and fast solution is to use our repair service.
As you notice, we are already in new facilities, very happy and ready to face this 2024 with a lot of projects coming. Soon I will share a post with history of Restoretronic, all steps done before and during all these last 10 years, improving step by step.
