Protecting ECU from damage ??

[roborangefd3s]

Hi, my wheel wore through the wiring loom in the wheel arch, the resulting short from the wires touch blew my ECU - now I have to buy a new ECU because Apexi dont want to know and I cant find anyone to repair it, there is no visible damage to the ECU when opened.

Is there a circuit breaker or something I can get ? this car likes to continuously break itself and I cant keep buying new ECU`s at 500 a pop.

Any help or comments appreciated, thank you

[Prof]

Depends which inputs it\'s taking out - ECU designers should protect the 5v sensor inputs from +12v wiring faults and shorts, as a stray tester could otherwise kill the ECU - but you woudl be suprised how badly protected some of them are !
 
It\'s only a few pence worth of components on each input to do that, but I guess they want to save every penny.
 
As for 12V inputs and 12V / 0V outputs for switching solenoids and steppers and injectors - again protection isn\'t as good as it could be.  A hard wiring fault will quite likely take this out, but it shouldn\'t.
 
There\'s no simple way to protect every pin of an ECU, as they need different protection depeneding on their function, but it is theoretically possible to make an ECU virtually bomb proof from an electrical point of view.