Megasquirt Advice and discussion.
 

I have been considering building a megasquirt setup for my car. Considering the alternatives, such as used Haltech units, or RTEK, which ends up at around $750 after all is said and done, and any other alternatives such as a blow-through carb setup for my car, I have arrived at the conclusion that an MS standalone would fit me very well.

After reading over Aaron Cake's guide: http://www.aaroncake.net/rx-7/megasquirt/index.asp

I have priced out all the major components that I will need at roughly $500, plus all the misc stuff like solder, connectors, etc, so figure $700 for the budget...

This price includes the MS 1 V3 kit, An LC-1 wideband kit, and some mod chips and misc items such as fan controllers, boost controller kits, wiring harness, etc.

I have seen used standalones such as Haltec and Microtec sell on the forums for a similar price, most with a complete harness and sensors included. While I would like to build my own setup, I thought that I might need to weigh in the advantages of other options.

As far a tuning, I believe that I can get a rough map going, but in order to REALLY tune the car, I will need to seek help of a pro. How much of this stuff can I get done myself if I really study it, and spend time adjusting the maps? I don't seem to have many tuning options in my area other than Banzai Racing and Chris Ludwig in Indiana, both of which will require me to drive the car over there in order to get it tuned, how scared should I be at this point? :o11:

Opinions, experiences, suggestions, and all are welcome, the stock setup on my TII has aged well, and is in need of replacement sometime soon.


Max.

go with anything but a ms. by far the worst standalone i have ever used.

If you know what you're doing, the Megasquirt is fantastic. Cost to feature ratio is unparalleled, and I've put a hundred thousand miles on my DD while it's been Megasquirt powered. To top it off, it has OEM drivability, never surging or bogging, and you can reach in through the window on the coldest day of the year, turn the key for a half second, and it's running. The hardware does what the hardware does, it's up to you to tune it, though.

As for tuning, there are a few ways to go about it. The easiest is to take it to someone who specializes in it. I'm near Cincinnati, and I have an engine dyno cell setup pretty much just for doing Megasquirt installs that I build and wire, but I'd be more than happy to help you out for pretty cheap; I try to cut forum members price breaks where I can.

Secondly, with a wideband you can run a datalog while driving (assuming you've roughed out the tune to where you can drive it), then import that into excel or openoffice, and go back through and look at the recorded AF ratios at given RPM and MAP points, then do the math to figure out what the cell -should- be at to get your desired AF ratio. It's far from perfect, but I've tuned cars that way that ended up working very well, and without an engine dyno, it's one of the only ways to really tune the regular city driving areas of the map.

The last method would be to recruit a friend to drive around while you sit in the passenger seat with a laptop, and adjust as you see fit. Before I had my dyno, I used a combination of logging and shotgun tuning to get a reasonably good tune, but it is time consuming.

i am going to be converting from distributor to CAS w/ ms controlled spark (already running fuel) over the winter. The ITBs and anything with vacuum control dont get along...

So, what if I were to fully set up my car with the MS, and then trailer it over there to get it tuned?

I love my Microtech...There is a reason some of Australia's fastest rotaries run Microtech

Motec all the way baby. Functionality, configurabiltiy, adjustability is unparelleled.... not to mention the best support I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

You have problems with the MS, where do you turn?

Microtech's Tech Support is good but kinda slow...But half the price of Motec too

Well, if I had $8,000 for your setup, T, I would duplicate it minus the sequentials.

You seem to imply that only MS can do this...

The fact of the matter is that almost any competent aftermarket EMS can do this, and it's not limited to MS.
My Haltech E8 has no problem doing any of the above that you have mentioned unless one of it's sensors dies - I recently had a TPS (*#%& GM sensors) fail on me.
Anyone that has driven my car also comments how "OEM" it feels and drives.

Bottom line...the EMS if only as effective as the tune or how competent the tuner is.
Given the best EMS like a MoTeC in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they are doing, and it's...useless.


-Ted

Actually, that's more or less exactly what I was trying to say. That the MS is directly on par with any other EMS system I've seen as far as in-use functionality.

It's just, every once in a while, you have to build a circuit to do some goofy thing you want to do; and even that isn't a big deal if you're handy with a soldering iron, and know what you're doing.

The Megasquirt is the option for people who really really know what they're doing, or want to learn. The upside is, it's damned cheap, and works just as well. The downside is, it's more work, at least the first time.

I'm actually curious about how poor a reception the MS gets in a lot of car circles; even those who are thoroughly DIY with their engines are terrified at the thought of doing the same to their ECU.

Better option would be, since I have an engine dyno, not a chassis dyno, just bring the engine, with complete intake and whatnot. The dyno cell has it's own water supply into the water pump, and it's own fuel system that hooks up to the rails. It also has a water-air intercooler to be used to control IAT.

If you're interested in tuning it on the dyno, give me a PM, and we'll talk about it.

Well, I see the only problem with the MS install is that I want to have my car ready for DGRR-10 this spring, so if I can save up the cash, install the hardware, and get it tuned in time, then I will be going with this setup. Otherwise, i will need to put it off and get an RTEK 1.5 chip instead.

There are enough maps out there on the forums that you can have your car drivable with a MS within an hour of initial startup. Help is the MS forum away for anything, Ihad an issue once that took as much time as it took to hit the refresh button for an answer. When I first built one about 4 years ago I think I read for a month before I was comfortable enough to do it. This was before you could buy everything from one place and you had to order stuff from 3 different places.

Aaron Cake's write up is probably the best I've seen for a car specific set up. The only difference I went with is the Zeal daughter card for the extra VR circuit instead of building a circuit in the proto area.

With the MS there are probably 9 ways to do anything. Once you get a hardware setup you like you can stick with it(until MS3 comes out and you want to do a new install...lol)

I have experience with all ECUs mentioned except for Microtech. They are all basically the same when it comes to the basics. Each has a fuel injection duration and ignition timing map that it references based on engine RPM and load (as measured by a MAP sensor, MAF sensor, AFM, or TPS). The available features or adjustments vary widely, but for your first system, simple is better.

Basically, aftermarket EFI is only as good as the time you spend learning about it and the time you spend tuning it.

Dyno tuning is necessary for peak power because the car is either speeding really bad or revving so fast that you can't even get an idea what the AFR is. Dyno tuning for driveabiliy is unnecessary and actually more difficult than tuning while driving.

If I were you, I would learn the Megasquirt with your turbo sitting safely on your bench in the garage. That way you will not hurt the engine when you make a mistake (which you will).

The driveability will be mostly the same with or without the turbo, and the vacuum map will be identical. Really all you will need to tune is the boosted part of the map when you install your turbo (after you are comfortable with the software and your wiring).

No warranty.
No service.
No tech support, unless you count on other enthusiasts who are trying to do the same thing, and you're counting on them to know more than you do.

Was that a serious question?


-Ted

Do you have warranty and tech support on the motor you build, or the turbo you port the wastegate on?

I suppose there are different levels; people who build things, and people who buy and install things. You seem to be implying you're the latter; and that's fine. But if that's the case, you expect to pay more for that luxury. There are those of us out there who prefer to save the money, and do it ourselves. And given the fact that I can crank out a few Megasquirt ECUs for less than the price of most anything else out there, and that once built, nothing is ever likely to go bad (speaking as an embedded systems programmer on similar industrial solid state electronics), I'm not too concerned about a warranty, and as I have Google, I'm not to worried about tech support.

There are plenty of people out there who, even given the circumstances and available tools & materials, would never fabricate a part for their car. The Megasquirt is not for those people.

On a completely separate note, DIYAutoTune has released a kit designed to mount a Megasquirt into a stock S4 or S5 ECU case, and use the stock wiring harness... pretty much a PnP setup. I haven't played with one yet (mostly, I like replacing the stock harness with my own, much smaller and neater one), but it seems like there might be a market for these pre-built.

I've found in my experience that most FC owners don't have the knowledge or skills to fabricate parts themselves, nor do they have the bank accounts to absorb the shock of a high end ECU. Fortuneately for them, they seem to be younger and more in tune (no pun intended) with computers and programming and such. I am not one of those people. It's like foreign language for me, I'm just not that good at it. Just like some people can practice for days on end without a break behind a welding mask and still not be able to lay down a decent bead, I can't pick up on languages and the like. But withen an hour of owning my TIG was I laying down some nice beads. For me, it wasn't the hastle and the time to learn an MS. However, given an unlimited budget or not, I would still opt for the MoTeC though because of the software, both the V3 ECU software and the i2 Interpreter (datalogging) software, and the support offered by the company. Those three things are very VERY important to me.

Hell, I sent an email to to gent @ Motec that had been helping me along the way just giving him a final score from the dyno, and MENTIONED what I had in mind for the winter months. 3 hours later on a SATURDAY where detailed answers to the "questions" that I had mentioned.

Motecs support and software is better than all in my opinion, and those are important to me and worth the cost. Especially seeing as how there would be a tremendous learning curve for me with the MS. I do however think that there would be a market for people like yourself that could crank out an MS, install it and tune it, for less than the price of a full blown ECU or close to it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/MICRO...item1c0617928f

Do it. Same people I got mine from. $1100 shipped is a great deal for a brand new Microtech. Took a few weeks to get but worth the wait. Best part on a Microtech is the base map is already set where the car will run and drive damn well unless really heavily modded.

WTF does that have anything to do with aftermarket EMS and support of them?

BTW, I stand by 100% behind all my paid builds and any other work I do.
Since you mention it, I back all my work with a LIFETIME WARRANTY (yes, until I die) - any defect or failure due to my work will be taken care of by me at no cost to the customer.

You seem to have a pretty twisted view on how things work in the real world in terms of economics.
People PAY for (tech and service) support.
People PAY for warranties and guarantees - think INSURANCE.
Warranty / guarantee / insurance is a bazillion dollar industry.
Tech and service support isn't too far behind - think Best Buy's Geek Squad or Sears home repair.
Hey, YOU were the one that was asking why your MS isn't doing so well...remember?


Sure, and you're talking about a teeny tiny minority.
I can count on one hand the number of you MS experts for RX-7's...
Care you guess how many RX-7's run AEM / Autronic / Electromotive / Haltech / Microtech / MoTeC / Wolf / (insert YOUR favorite aftermarket EMS here)...?
(Don't read too much into how I listed those brands, cause I tried to list them in alphabetical order - that's all.)


-Ted

The way I see it: If you have the know-how (electrical basics) and the patience then you can learn/build the MS system to so what you need it to do.

If you're compromising for the MS because of money then I think you should wait longer and save more for a system you'll be happy with and won't want/need to upgrade later.

We should have a Beginners Guide To ECU Tuning thread....i know I'd benefit from it greatly.

Well, just like coilovers, I guess that this will have to be another one of those "wait until I got $$$$$$$$$$$$" mods.

Clearly, you're not getting the point I'm making. I'm saying (quite clearly, I thought), that the same people who will build an engine with no second thoughts would never think of building their own EMS, and for a very DIY hobby, I thought that that was somewhat strange.

You seem almost personally offended by the concept of a DIY EMS. WTF does economics have to do with it? Yes, people pay for those things. Hell, I work in field service for a national provider of cash registers... and ATM machines. Field service/warranty work is the biggest chunk of their profit. What I'm saying is, it seems less likely (assuming you know what you're doing, obviously the MS isn't for people who don't) that your EMS is going to blow up and need a warranty repair than your engine, and many many people build their own engines.

I would agree with that; if you have the know-how, you can save a lot of money with the MS. Even buying one pre-built is almost dirt cheap... $425 or so for a new generation one with a wiring harness (you have to wire the harness in, but still, that's very little labor in comparison). But if you're going to be tuning it yourself, and you don't know what you're doing, you need to be using a brand with customer service to help you out when you get stuck.

The people who give the MS a bad rep are generally people who got it because of the low price point, and have no idea what to do to get it running. Any competent tuner should be able to sit down with the controls, familiarize themselves with how things work, and be tuning in a reasonably short time-frame; the features are all there, it's just the button names that change, really.

Well said. I think that once the ECU is installed in the car, reading crank signal and pulsing ignition coils and injectors correctly, any competent tuner can tune any ECU (Including Megasquirt) about as easily as another one. Most aftermarket ECUs will require some changes to the wiring and will require some effort to get connected to the engine and firing all the appropriate drivers at the appropriate times.

Unfortunately, I think that this will be a rather deep dive for Max. Soldering surface-mount components on a circuit board is not very similar to turning a bolt. However, a pre-built megasquirt is not that much different than any other ECU.

I have successfully tuned engines with megasquirt ECUs and even built one, yet I chose a Haltech ECU for my RX7. It is not that megasquirt is bad, only that it is more labor and time intensive (and I didn't have much time to spare). At the same time. If given nothing but time and a limited budget, I would highly recommend a megasquirt ECU to anyone with the following qualifications:
Has some soldering experience
Has basic electronic knowledge
Has decent troubleshooting skills
Has a reasonable amount of time to complete the project
Has a limited budget
Does not really want to do anything other than simple engine control (no IAC, wastegate or launch control)

This just reinforces my point that you have no clue what reality is.

You're ASSUMING that just because you have no problem doing this that others would not have a problem also.
BAD ASSUMPTION.

If I assumed what I can do would be easy for others to do, I would NOT be able to sell my services and products to others.
I can do automotive electronics in my sleep - I still charge others to handle stereo / alarm / EMS wiring.
Other people are willing to pay for such work and service.
NEVER ASSUME.
I tune Haltechs on cars also.
I can do this in my sleep, and it's automatic for me.
I can explain how to tune EFI in a couple hours to anyone who has a good grasp of EFI theory.
Why do people still pay me to tune their cars?
NEVER ASSUME.

What does it have to do with economics?
SUPPLY and DEMAND, period.
It involves money - you are touting that MS is cheaper, right? - and when it comes down to it, your only advantage with the MS is MONEY.

Reply if you want, but my replies to you ends here, cause it's a lost cause.
It's obvious by now that you don't get what I'm saying at all.


-Ted

That I will disagree with. Now, I haven't toyed with the MS software extensively but I will say that there is no way that is as easy to tune as some of the other softwares out there. There are certain functions and "add-ons" if you will to other ECU softwares that make thing SOOOOO much easier. Since I know the MoTeC V3 the best, I'll give a few examples.
Once I have my L table filled out correctly I can hold the engine at a certain cell in the fuel map (that is incorrectly input), press a single button on the keyboard, and the ECU will automatically change the input number to what is calculated to give the correct L. By doing this at a few different sites, you can manually interpolate the numbers and VERY quickly come up with a base map. Make a few pulls and make a few adjustments from there. VERY easy.
The MoTeC can also correctly and internally calculate the difference in needed pw to accomodate for different sized prim/sec injectors. Once you setup a few parameters including the 3d map for sec fueling, there is no other adjustments to make for the sec injectors, it's all internal. On the datalogs you can watch the primary injectors duty cycle increase to a certain point, start to fall off as the secondaries come on, they meet at a certain pw determined by sizing differences and then they both head off togeter. by inputting a percent number you can enrich or enlean the map AT THE POINT when the secondaries come on and control how much, how little, and for how long it is either enriched or enleaned.
Injector timing
The PID functions for idle/boost control are VERY easy to work with and HIGHLY adjustable. Much more than the Haltechs/microtechs
OMP control or DBW is pretty damn easy to accomplish
Troubleshooting is ridiculously easy with some of the screen displays that are available.
And one of my favorites is the datalogging. The datalogs that I have seen from the Haltech are all in a basic MS Excel format. Not very easy on the eyes and if you want to see it in graph form, it takes a few minutes to "arrange it" With the V3 and the i2, after a dyno run I press CTRL+F8 to get the logged data and give it a name, and press enter. Alt+Tab moves me to the i2 software. CTRL+a closes the previous log, CRTL+o opens all the log files, Home then enter brings up the latest log. I have up to a meg, there is an internal option that allows up to 3 megs of logging. The Pro Analysis option is just silly. Graph overlays, advanced math functions, syncronized video..... just crazy stuff that allows much easier tuning of the entire vehicle.
So I don't agree with the statement that the MS, Haltech, or microtech are about as easy to tune as the others, or as user friendly. Can they do it? Well, they can do most things, but in the end, in Perfect Competition - which this almost is, at the end of the day they're all ECU's, you get what you pay for. MoTeC is >$4k for a box, and MS is 10% of that. They both can run a basic engine almost as well as another when tuned by a competent person. However, you get what you pay for in competition so I don't agree with saying that all ecu's are equal.

I'll agree, there's some stuff there that the MS doesn't do; OMP control, for instance. I'm not saying it's impossible with the MS (one of the bonuses of a DIY setup is you can pretty much -do- anything, with enough effort). But some of the other stuff is pretty easy on the MS. The base table it generates, given your RPM limits, expected torque, number of cylinders/injectors, peak HP and TQ RPM points, max boost, etc... it's always been a good enough map for me to drive on.

From there, to get a pretty good road tune, just punch in your desired AF ratios (assuming you have a wideband hooked up), turn on auto-tune, and drive around; it'll read the AF from the wideband, look up the desired AF ratio, and recalculate the VE table based on it.

The MS, at least the Extra code also does secondary injector staging properly, bringing the secondary injectors online at a given % pulsewidth on the primaries.

Also, the logging works very similarly to the haltech, exporting in an excel spreadsheet; but there are seperate programs designed just to open the MS log files and give you a much nicer interface; personally, I dump all of mine into a database so I can run a series of scripts across the data looking for specific triggers.

In reality, just use what you like; if you can afford it, and you're happy with it, go for it. As nice as it is, I can't justify spending that kind of money on an EMS to accomplish what I can do almost as easily for much much less. Actually, I sell a megasquirt installed and fully tuned for less than the cost of the MoTeC box. And for curious parties, yes, I warranty and service it.

For those same people who couldn't install an EMS to begin with, having one professional installed and tuned for ~$2000-$2600 is very attractive; and those are the same people who don't need to learn the software, because they never intend to touch it.

Ya know, that's a VERY good point to make. If somone just wants to pick a car up completed and never touch the software, than by all means, it really doesn't matter what the hell is controling it as long as it works. For those people that are planning on playing around with the software it makes total sense to get a software package that you yourself can easily use. The V3 is like second nature to me now. The only problem I have is finding certain things because there is just so damn much of it. IE-running through the logs we found out that she went a little rich when the secondaries came on. Great, lets lean out the 2ndary enrichment. Great, where the hell is it?

I have no doubt that I would be able to build and install an MS. However, that's just insert pin A into slot B and add a dab of solder and then build a wiring harness. I have no problems with that. The be concern for me personally, would be any type of code writing. That I would fail at miserably.

To each thier own though. Like you said though, for the cost of the unit installed and tuned, as long as it's completed and the owner never needs to touch the software, who cares what's under there.

Wow! The Motec has come a long way.

I worked with one about 10 years ago and it was very comparable to my modern Haltech (that was before widebands were common). I guess I should have expected that they would come as far as the Haltech (although that DOS software is still awesome).

Point conceded - not all ECUs are created equal. Even my e8 has many more features than the old e6x (like autotune, desired lambda maps, VE charts, etc.). However, it was all these cool features that enabled me to trade my e6x for it, because extra features and functionality often makes an ECU harder to configure (Obviously not so with Motec).

Actually, a decent tune can be achieved using a megasquirt V2 in about 45 minutes of street driving. Autotune can take it from there. What is important is the coolant correction and air temperature correction (you should be careful where the IAT sensor is located).

Either way, I will still argue that the overwhelming majority of the effort in installing an aftermarket ECU is the wiring and initial software setup. The rest is cake.

/\ Well, I just got an RTEK 1.7 ecu, so I guess I wont be needing a Megasquirt for some time! Good thing is, I can always sell my stock ecu as well as the rtek (each easily $120) throw in a bit of money, and get an MS setup no problem!

MS Systems don't have enough support in the midwest. I've worked with Haltech and MSD w/carb set ups. Some of my friends that drive spec miata's and can't find help that can tune their cars. Rich condition/higher rpms.

Some interesting and valid points in this thread.

I would like to put in my .02 on MS though.

i started with MS as a raw green n00b. Never touched an EMS in my life. I built it from scratch and eventually got it to run. some of the main hurdles i had was no one had MS'ed the v6 i was working with so it was all trial and error to figure out what works. Now, I have launch control/flatshift set up, Knock sensing about to go in, and a decent tune in preparation for supercharging the v6. (which wasn't that hard really, used the clutch switch and it works like a charm) Which, BTW, gets nearly 30mpg highway and mid-high 20s mixed, runs 14.712@93mph in the 1/4 for now and is my DD :driving:

That said, I am probably going to go with the MS PnP offered by DIYAutotune for a couple reasons.Mainly COST. i don't make that much and am doing a lot myself and budget oriented where i can. Familiarity is a bonus too. However i will say that there are others that probably have more features, support and what have you, but not everyone can throw $1000-$5000 in for an EMS system.

Again, as stated, to each their own, But i'd say that if someone takes a little time MS is not that big of a hurdle if you RTFM x 20 and take your time. The forums are a big help even if no one has done your motor as 90% of the issues i ran into were easily solves as irrespective to engine specific things. Usually the "Ughnown" is scary because it looks and sounds worse than it really is

wait, so while an RX7 PnP megasquirt is around $450, NOT INCLUDING A WIDEBAND...

and it costs roughly the same ($500) to build the entire system yourself, including a wideband setup, how is this affordable to go with a PNP?

And then you also retain the factory wiring, and all the 20yo sensors as well... which can break and make the car run bad...

Stock you got:

MAP
MAF
Variable resistor
injector resistor
coolant
intake
emissions wiring
etc

Custom install, you got a few new sensors, like the GM coolant and airflow, and a built in MAP sensor in the Megasquirt itself (kinda dumb but I can live with it) fresh wiring, no problems.

I would rather get an older haltech, you can find e6k's for $500-600 with wiring harness and sensors.

Oh really?

OH REALLY?!?!?!

::waits for stupid owl picture::

uhh... i dont get it... You have a pressure/vaccum sensor on the shock tower, and a trap door style airflow meter.... what did I say wrong? :confused:

Please educate.

Its a pressure sensor...A MAP sensor is what is used on FDs instead of an MAF.

Yeah, one or the other as described in more detail in the PM I sent you.