ENGINE CONTROL DEVICE

To detect a stroke reliably at the time of the start of the engine when a stroke cannot be detected based on crank pulses alone. A stroke is detected based on a difference DELTA N between the engine rotational speeds at top and bottom dead centers and a flag FN is changed depending upon whether a temporary stroke set before a stroke has been detected and the detected stroke coincide with each other or not. Simultaneously, a stroke is detected based on a difference DELTA P between the intake air pressures at two bottom dead centers and a flag FP is changed depending upon whether a temporary stroke set before a stroke has been detected and the detected stroke coincide with each other or not. Then, when the flags FN and FP coincide with each other, the stroke detection is completed. When the detected stroke differs from the temporary stroke, the stroke is shifted by a phase of 360 DEG and the crank pulses are renumbered.