Help deciding on management for m45 1994 1.8
 

Okay, new to the fuel control world, never had a boosted gas vehicle before.

Specs will be as follows.

1994 1.8 stock motor with cold side m45 8-10 psi
Header, 330cc injectors.

Everything else is still undecided. I would like some ideas on what to run ecu, piggyback, etc. that will still get me through a CA smog check, all accessories functional, and basically plug in ready (not a wiring genius) Pretty tempted to just run a powercard but I hear a lot of negative about them. Any other thoughts, pros and cons of different systems????

not from the people's republic of cali but i'm pretty sure anything aftermarket has to have that freaking CARB sticker.

I standalone will still get you past CA smog checks. A 94 is still ODB-I, so there's no reason you can't replace the ECU with a Megasquirt or alike.

I was just reading in another thread that none of the standalones operate the CEL or work with A/C. Was this old or bad info? Thats why i was thinking piggyback.

The MS was my first choice til I read that info.

Old info.

You can run the A/C no problem. The CEL is disabled since the ECU won't send to it, you could potentially light it up on a timer with a simple relay switch, but it lights up like normal on start IIRC so it's no matter if it never shows a code.

my mspnp works great with ac...

Aircon is easy, and has been covered in some depth here: https://www.miataturbo.net/forum/t20954/ Additionally, if you buy a Megasquirt PnP it natively supports A/C, and it would be easily integrated into a DIYPnP (which is preferable from an emissions standpoint, owing to the greater injector resolution)

The check engine light is not natively supported, however it would be relatively easy to fake. I honestly can't recall what its exact behavior is, I believe it's something to the effect of "Always on when engine not running, then on for 2 seconds after engine start" or something to that effect. Simulating this behavior would require a small amount of hackery- I'd start by wiring a relay driver output of the ECU to turn on whenever RPM > 500, and then use that output to drive a delay circuit which in turn drives the light. You could use circuit #2 in this illustration, but with the N.C. rather than N.O. contact on the relay closing the CEL circuit: http://home.cogeco.ca/~rpaisley4/LM555PowerDelay.GIF

if building a diypnp, its incredibly simple. should be as simple as using an output relay ans setting up the parameters...I'm pretty sure you can make it active with a timer.