Megasquirt engine management

[john blackburn]

Has anyone had any experience of assembling the through hole Megasquirt kits, or indeed using one on your car?

http://www.diyautotune.com/

A mate is into his tuned cars and is thinking of trying a Megasquirt on a honda civic to see how he likes it. If the project goes ahead I will be assembling it so I thought I would check on here to find out others experience of the product. It looks straight forward enough but a word from the wise can save a lot of frustration!

I was very wary putting the name into Google, it brought to mind some very dubious possible search results.........

John

[Ron E]

I don't see anything nefarious on the first few pages of a google search.

I looked at this thing a year or so ago, it looked like it had some limitations at the time but I'm not sure how much they matter. I filed it away as a future possible project.

[john blackburn]

What were the limitations you were concerned about? All I have really looked at is the assembly of it, the operational side hasn't been looked into yet.

There seems to be generally good feedback about them but lots of the "tuned" cars I have seen run like bags of sh*te so I wanted to see if any of the good folks on here knew anything.

John

[DaveR]

Its been a while since I last visited the megasquirt forums (I even have a part assembled board in the garage), but megasquirt (MS) family really is very flexible. Depending on application the MS family goes from cut-down ignition only for those who don't wish to ditch carbs all the way through to fully mapped ignition and injection from the same box. Even a microsquirt surface mount. Mapped ignition (preferably with mapped injection) can make bad tempered lumpy cams quite tractable. Tuning can be a bit of a pain but there's datalogging applications and with a wideband lambda sensor to take most of the pain away.

Dave

[john blackburn]

DaveR

Cheers for the input. I've registered with various MS forums though for every answer found theres two more questions raised. It's hard enough just to find out which module is the one for us.

We have two to do now, one for a 2.1 Zetec turbo in an old escort and one for a Honda. Do you only get access to the mapping software after a purchase or have I overlooked it somewhere? I had wondered if it was embedded in the MS processor.

Also do you have any experience of the various suppliers? We want them in kit form but there only seem to be ready assembled units available in the UK. It may have to be DigiKey (after considerable research no doubt)

Anything else you think could be good/useful info for us would be very welcome indeed.

John

[DaveR]

John,

In no particular order.....

All software and hardware is open source, you should be able to download any software to try it out before purchasing anything (PC software that is). Code does get written to the processors internal memory which is opensource but the maps (fuel and ignition) are often freely available but if someone has invested a lot of time/money on a rolling road they might be more reluctant to freely share their maps.

MS version 1 will cover most basic installs and should drive an EDIS unit. MS II I think is a processor upgrade, MS III is new hardware, (I think) same upgraded processor but can drive up to 2 coils directly.

A Zetec turbo should be straightforward, google should throw up some installations, the Honda might/might not have a strange trigger wheel pattern, I've no idea about vtec. If someone has done it before so much the better.....

I got the basic kit (PCB, processor, map sensor) from USA, and I managed to get most of the other parts from our electronics stores and from Rapid Electronics. Case from Maplin. A chap called Bill Shurvinton used to supply complete kits - not sure if he still does. I've not been reading the forums for ages - I was going to inject a 2.1 Pinto which drank too much fuel, not so much because of fuel costs but the limited range of a 25 litre tank.... Can't think of anything else other than you need to do a lot of reading, work out what features you need for each install and choose a suitable board. There's also a UK based forum http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/megasquirt_uk/ if you haven't come across it. Oh, and good luck! it can be daunting but many have done it and are very happy.

Regards, Dave

[john blackburn]

DaveR

That's a group I hadn't spotted, I will sign up to that later on and see what they have got to say. We've a barbecue to attend tonight which is being hosted by a mate who has just qualified as a teacher, and he still wants to celebrate.

He likes to be creative with his cooking so it will be something like Norwegian organic rabbit cheese and hand woven falafel from a carbon neutral commune if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks for the tips and info.
John

[john blackburn]

DaveR

I've found the MegaTune software and it's enormous help files, and for once they are some help. It's cleared up a few questions already.

There's a lot of info to plough through but I think we can do this. One line that caught my eye was in the settings regarding the amount of cylinders the engine has. By way of explaination it said to count the number of cylinders with a foot note that if you can't do this you really shouldn't be doing anything else to your car!

It raised a chuckle with me.

John