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Some long-term car owners do not like ECUs. Viewing them as unnecessarily complicated, they would rather fiddle with contact breaker points and adjust their ignition dwell angles every few thousand miles. Even so, the motorcar might have been killed off long ago, had accurate means of controlling ignition and fuelling not been found. Yet, many DIYers remain suspicious of the electronics that proliferate modern cars. One reason for this may be communication, in that the languages used by mechanicallyadept motorcar repairers and computer programmers are very different.
When motorcars were purely mechanical beasts, they were harder to drive, considerably less efficient and boasted more harmful exhaust emissions. By replacing carburettors with fuel injection and introducing high-voltage ignition systems, an accurate quantity of fuel could be burnt with the correct quantity of air at precisely the right moment, improving power, economy and exhaust fumes. This exact control is possible only with microprocessors, which are solid-state electrical components,