MegaSquirt PNP for Miatas

[FoundSoul]

what kind of timeframe are you thinking for the 99-00? like 6mos? 1yr? 3yrs?

Hard to say with a solid degree of accuracy. A year seems fair, I'd like it to be sooner, but I wouldn't advise you to hold out exactly 12 months expecting it to be ready to ship. We haven't started yet and have two MSPNP projects in front of it, and a few other projects in the works too. I'm working on cranking up the R&D work here though to make things come together faster than they have as of late... I'm stretched too thin to do it all. Matt to the rescue .

[Dave Burchfield]

For what it's worth.........I would call Chris and have him take care of business. The reason I say this is because, after a number of years chasing various gremlins, losing race weekends, and wasting money, I took my car to him and had the Haltech installed and had him tune it. The cost was to go to two less race weekends in a season. Last weekend was the first time out with it, and I learned that the car is now well better than the driver. In the 8 years I have owned it, the car has not run better.

Racing is now fun again.

[avu3]

Travis,

We have one. It only took a little bit to get it to work. for IT, out of the box, the tune is pretty far off. I've got about 3 hours on a dyno doing spart tables.

Install was painless.

I've never gotten it "RIGHT". I had what I thought was a good tune on the dyno, but on track the car was a total dog. The stock ECU and some afm adjutments was a lot better to the butt dyno than the work on the Chassis. I think my error is in spark but...

Blew the motor up so we haven't gotten back to finishing making it work.

STRONGLY recommend going with a wideband hookup, and I wish I'd thought twice about having datalogging for it.

Jerry's guys have been fairly helpful via email. I think they'd be more helpful if I was smarter and asked more articulate questions (not a dig on them, I just think I'm too stupid to educate).

I think it would be worth paying someone who knows how to tune it to teach you the basics at the dyno with your car, etc.

S

[FoundSoul]

I think it would be worth paying someone who knows how to tune it to teach you the basics at the dyno with your car, etc.

Those last words say it all. For the hardcore DIY crew I encourage exploring and using the MS to learn to tune too. For the race crew though... you need it right, right now. You need it dialed in to perfection on a LOAD BEARING, STEADY STATE dyno. Not a DynoJet or any other inertia dyno that's going to put unrealistic levels of load on the car causing you to tune wacky WOT advance levels, and not allow you to tune the partial throttle areas of the table at all. I'm not sure what kind of dyno avu3's car was tuned on, but I'm going to guess it was inertia only and ended up with way too much advance and very likely too little fuel, the combination of which will cause both a loss of power and detonation. A pro tuner can fudge his way through tuning WOT advance on a inertia dyno reasonably well though some guesswork is still involved, it's nothing compared to a proper steady state dyno with a good tuner. Not to mention they can tune your WHOLE table.

From a engine control standpoint, the MSPNP gives you all the capability you'll ever need. It just needs to be tuned for your engine. The base map was tuned for a stock motor, you'll have to retweak based on your setup. But the base map shouldn't be that far out. I'd be glad to help one of you guys set one up right for your car. It's easy to do and we've got the equipment. Mac-- when are you in town next?

[tnord]

thanks again jerry, that's more great information regarding how the tuning needs to be done on specific types of dynos. i'll have to talk to my guy and see if he has that capability.

[C. Ludwig]

Those last words say it all. For the hardcore DIY crew I encourage exploring and using the MS to learn to tune too. For the race crew though... you need it right, right now. You need it dialed in to perfection on a LOAD BEARING, STEADY STATE dyno. Not a DynoJet or any other inertia dyno that's going to put unrealistic levels of load on the car causing you to tune wacky WOT advance levels, and not allow you to tune the partial throttle areas of the table at all. I'm not sure what kind of dyno avu3's car was tuned on, but I'm going to guess it was inertia only and ended up with way too much advance and very likely too little fuel, the combination of which will cause both a loss of power and detonation. A pro tuner can fudge his way through tuning WOT advance on a inertia dyno reasonably well though some guesswork is still involved, it's nothing compared to a proper steady state dyno with a good tuner. Not to mention they can tune your WHOLE table.

+1 Good advice.

[avu3]

I somewhat misspoke in my post, we spent most of our time tuning Fuel, and never really futzed with Spark.

I think the tune was off because our car is a pretty fully built ITA car. Intake track, Header, Exhaust, motor, all not stock. It started and ran, it just was lean out of the box.

Our car WAS tuned on a steady state dyno, I accept most of the blame for it not being right on track. I think another contributing factor was that the motor was already going sour, I just didn't realize it.

Thanks much for the feedback, Jerry.

Scott

[Eagle7]

...The stock ECU and some afm adjutments ...

I don't understand what adjustments you would make to the AFM.

[C. Ludwig]

I don't understand what adjustments you would make to the AFM.

It's common to tweak the ouput of the flapper door AFMs to fool the ECU into changing the mixture.

[Eagle7]

On an IT or SM car? Doesn't sound legal.

[Edit] Oh, I was thinking mechanical change. I guess resistors would be legal.

[JIgou]

The thing about the AFM adjustment is that it ventures into the whole "Can you prove it - what are the factory specs" thing that permeates the Spec Miata world.

Jerry, do you have any thoughts about the gains a well-tuned 1.6 Miata with a pretty much stock setup might see with a Megasquirt setup? I'm sure I'm not the only 1.6 SM driver toying with the move to IT.... (Yeah, I know it's hard to quantify...)

Jarrod

[Eagle7]

...In the 8 years I have owned it, the car has not run better.

Racing is now fun again.