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Originally Posted by RotaryProphet
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.
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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)