"Forced" Hydra 2.7 upgrade
 

Are you fucking kidding me?




I'm fucking done with this bullshit.

Already paid FM for two hours of tuning. Car ran worse afterwards. ~$350-$400 down.

Bought a wideband sensor from FM so i could have the car re-tuned locally, paid for rush shipping. ~$300 down.

Local guy flaked 4-5 times, still has my wideband. I need to go pick it up so i can have the car tuned. Tune will cost me $300.

So i'm already looking at about a grand just to get this fucking piece of shit EMS to a point that i can drive my car to the gas station without it stalling.


THEN, if i want continued support, i have to make the jump to 2.7. I will not have the money or time to send the ECU out during the sale. I'm taking this car on my 3 week wedding trip in June, and i simply don't trust that i would get the ECU back in time, and that it would be tuned in time after getting it back, since apparently we'd have to start from scratch with a new base map.

I don't get to take advantage of the sale, then. So then, pay full price for an upgrade when i get back if i want any support going forward (more on that in a second.). THEN, pay to have the thing tuned again, since apparently even though 2.7, like 2.6, 2.5, and 2.16 before it is God's Gift To Man, but somehow can't handle a map import without a high probability of clusterfuck.

Normal upgrade is $600, but doesn't include a couple things that i don't care about. (Flex fuel, CAN) Does not include Long Term Fuel Trim, which i DO care about, so there's extra money to "unlock" that capability. I believe it's $250 to unlock that. (I'd have to double check.)

Then what? I get to have the fucking thing tuned again. $300, maybe $450 since this time we'd have to start with a base map.

So.... $1150 to $1300.



Long story short, if i want to continue with Hydra, have support down the road, and have the car run worth a damn, i'm looking at another $2300 invested.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? WHERE'S THE VALUE IN THIS?


Also, i find it HIGHLY unlikely that "Windows 7 computers will not work with anything pre-2.7."

Why? Someone is going to have to explain that to me. Is it an issue with logging? Because the software will absolutely install and load on Windows 7. (I have 2.5 R12 on my windows 7 laptop as a backup just in case something goes wrong with the tuner's.)


Sorry about the rant, but this is ridiculous. I refuse to support this insanity any further than i have to, and for the moment, that simply means that i pay my money to have it tuned, and wait for it to shit the bed again, at which point i'll sell it to some poor sap on ClubRoadster, and then have an EMS4 installed and tuned for the same money that the Hydra upgrade will cost me. A WHOLE NEW EMS FOR THE SAME PRICE AS AN UPGRADE.

But I have heard so many good things about Hydra. Oh wait, no, nevermind, I haven't.

I'm not sure when AEM first released the 30-1710 box, but I bought mine new 5 years ago and I have a box older than that in Rover right now. Both of them are still fully supported by AEM.

But the free upgrade includes Flex Fuel capabilities! Just buy our $995 kit to take advantage of it! It'll even trim your boost based on fuel analysis with the on-board boost control that may or may not work, despite having been one of the advertising points to upgrade to 2.5 (didn't work,) 2.6 (didn't work), and 2.7. (Maybe works? Been conflicting reports.) Yeah, i TOTALLY trust Hydra to ramp back boost when it sees a change in gas.

Pull timing? ABSOLUTELY. It's GREAT at pulling timing.

"Steve, i don't like the color of your shirt, i'm going to shit all over your timing map above 5000rpms."

"Fuck you, Hal."

If i'm this pissed now, think how shitty i'd be if i was actually the person that had actually purchased the EMS new and had it installed on my car. (Rhetorically of course, because i'm not actually dumb enough to buy one outright.)

I shudder to think that there's some poor fuckers out there that bought 2.1, and have purchased every upgrade along the way, paying to have their shit retuned every time.

It's conceivable to think that someone has $8-$10k in this piece of shit EMS.


Good point though Sav. AEM or Haltech are on my short list for this particular car.

Hate to say I did it, but jumped the Hydra ship. Waiting for my AEM and a motor now. Hydra just got to greedy and unsupported.

Your rant is valid and honest. Go have someone build you a fully functional and perpetually supported MS3.

I have 2.6 hydra installed on my 64 bit windows 7 PC. The installer just has the dumb and installs half the program to c/program files/hydra and the other half to c/program files (x86)/hydra. I dont even think that would be a problem on a 32 bit windows. The installer also has the dumb and if for some reason you dont have a c drive it wont install at all.

That's honestly the "best" option.

But i have one problem with it, and it's one of those "It's not you, it's me" kindof things.

I have no interest whatsoever in tuning this car myself. I don't want to. I don't want to spend time on the phone with anyone about why the car doesn't work. I don't want to have to post online with my logs asking what i fucked up. This car is not a project, and i'm honestly considering selling it (more so than i was in the first place) rather than deal with this whole clusterfuck.

If i "fix" Hydra by putting something else in it, it'll be dropped off to someone to have them install and tune an EMS they're comfortable and familiar with. I'm not doing it myself. I want something i can have face to face support for locally.

Hydra was supposed to be that for me, which is one of the reasons i bought the car in the first place. I was assured that this car would be trouble free, better than a stock ECU car in every way. It hasn't been. It's been a clusterfuck, and no real local support.


I realize i sound like a whiny bitch when i say i don't want to touch/tune the car myself, but i really don't have the time. I have a race car. I have a car i pretty much have to build from scratch for the GRM $2013 Challenge. I have to tear down my daily driver to fix a whole host of issues and also get it ready for the GRM $2013 Challenge. I have to rebuild the suspension/steering on my Cherokee.

I have another Miata project that i WILL be wiring and tuning myself.

I've already got too much on my plate. I'm not interested in the slightest in having another project added. This was supposed to be "the nice car" that i can just get in and drive to go to dinner, take on weekend trips without worrying about it, or just pull out to go drive in the country to unwind. NOT something that can sit in the garage while i try to figure out what i fucked up in the install/tune myself. I'm just not willing to take responsibility of this car.

I haven't really tuned a Megasquirt car before. We leave in June for a 6000 mile trip. I can't take that chance. I also wouldn't be able to trust a car that i've tuned with my Fiancee to take to work if she so chooses. (And she does.)

I've only put 4,000 miles on this car since i got it home July 2011. Because of Hydra. It's time to shit or get off the pot for me. In this case "shit" means EMS4 more than likely. "Get off the pot" means selling the car and getting an RX8 or a BRZ/FRS.

Right... so you just move the files to where they need to go. It's SERIOUSLY not an issue in the slightest. Took my buddy and i a whopping 10 minutes to figure it out.

Voila! 2.5 R12 running on 64bit Windows 7.

I think leafy was just adding to the 'fuck hydra' circlejerk.

I was being helpful, kind of. But hydra 2.6 is a hateful piece of software. You mean I cant click into the middle of a table?

Yeah, the installer is stupid, and the front end sucks anyways. :bowrofl:

I'm told 2.6 is actually an improvement over 2.5. Scary, huh?

My friend Chris says that 2.7 is a large improvement, though. Brings Hydra front end solidly into the "OK at best" realm.

no time to tune your custom hot rod? then dont custom hot rod.

Seriously, make it stock plus bolt ons and no need for engine management and just enjoy it. Having a car you can't tune is an unrealistic expectation I think you set yourself up for. Unless you can get something tuned at the local WalMart, then it's never going to be the right solution for you.

I didn't custom hot rod.

I don't have the stock parts. I never had the stock parts.

Having a car i can't (more like don't want to/don't have the time to) tune isn't an unrealistic expectation, provided i'm ok with paying a local tuner to tune it and support an EMS of their choice.

Luckily i'm ok with that in this instance.

When it comes to cars that have to perform at a moment's notice with no bullshit, i'd rather trust a pro to take care of that and take myself out of the equation. I know my own limitations, and admit them freely. This is also why i don't weld my own pimpy turbo manifolds. Do you weld your own pimpy turbo manifolds? Or do you pay someone else to do it/buy already made? There's no difference between "fabrication" or "tuning" in this context. I also can't weld, should i just leave all my cars stock and never buy a modified car?


I'm not afraid of tuning when it comes to cars that don't matter if something goes wrong. But then we get back into the difference between "Toy" and "Project." I play with toys. I work on projects.



Now let's get back to Hydra sucking and shitting all over their established user base.

It's not at all an unreasonable expectation. There are plenty of shops out there that can install and tune a box so the owner never has to tweak on it. I have tuned more than a couple of cars like this over the years - the owners want all the benefits of a standalone, but are willing to shell out the bucks to have someone else set it all up so they never have to worry about it.

I'm even cool with paying for an hour or two of tuning a time or two a year if i feel a touch up should be made.

I also don't tune my own race car for this reason. I need it to perform each and every time. The more the car (variables) i can take out of the equation, the better i can focus on my own performance.

Neither scenario is unreasonable or even uncommon.



And maybe someday through my Projects, i'll feel comfortable enough to tune my Toys.

I also see nothing wrong with this, I'm solidly in this department as well.

I'm not a paint and bodywork guy. I know that I cannot get the results I want by doing it myself. I lack the tools and experience to DIY. I plan on paying someone to "do it right the first time" and then not worry about it. I understand regular upkeep will be required, but that is to be expected.

Take my above statement and replace "paint and bodywork" with "tuning" and the exact same applies. I also feel its not an unreasonable expectation. Once I get my hardware squared away, I'll be calling Andrew for tuning services. He's local and he knows his shit, and I trust him to get me what I need.

concealer404: I don't think you are out of line, your rage seems appropriate from where I'm sitting

no.

I just sold my highly modified turbo miata with megasquirt to someone who hasn't ever tuned one. I'm part of the problem!

Also I only welded my wastegate flange on to my manifold and the turbo back exhaust. I did not do the manifold. I mean come on, it was my daily driver.

But I tuned on the way to work and on the way home because I could and wanted the eke out the pinnacle of driveability. And my car did drive very stocklike. Point of fact, the wife of the guy I sold it to is driving it now and she's not a car person. Sure it's hard to start sometimes because I never had time to finish tuning the startup enrichments in 30F weather, but no shop will be able to do that for $1000 in tuning either. OK, nobody'd pay for it if they would.

It's not unreasonable if you have convenient access to those guys. If I were the OP and lived in Maryland or DC, I'd keep the Hydra and just shell out big dollars to Element Tuning or whatever. or FM in Colorado. Or whatever.

But that's the tradeoff, right? If time is money, money is time. What do you think I'd have had to pay for 4 years worth of tuning and gigabytes worth of datalogs at a shop?

Ultimately the equation for me worked like this:

1 turbo miata
+ megasquirt
- time because of baby and other social engagements and no garage

=

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1363120464

Well that's just the thing.... this car is never driven in 30 degree weather. It operates from mid spring to mid fall, and sits in storage the rest of the time. It's rarely driven in rain, for that matter.

I have convenient access to a tuner that i trust. I will be removing Hydra and replacing it with an ECU that he supports.

Money most certainly is time as you say. It'd take me hundreds of hours to get the car running half as good as a professional could get it running in 2 hours and maybe a couple mornings of cold start tweaking. I'd say paying for 2 hours of tuning is a pretty good use of my time and money. :P


You and i are on the same page, the only difference is that i'm just flat out not willing to take the time/risk to tune this particular car myself, and that's that.


It's an interesting topic, though. And maybe one day i'll be "that guy" that tells everyone to tune their own cars themselves because i tune all my own cars like a man should. *grunts*

For the moment however... i have 6 vehicles. 3 of them have standalones. Two of them are/will be running massive piggyback clusterfucks that do give a semblance of "tunability."

I have a whopping total of ONE out of SIX vehicles that doesn't need some sort of tuning from time to time. I'll leave the "nice" car and the race car to the pros. :)

Yeah I'm done with the HYDRA it's getting removed soon. Now I have get another EMS for the MSM it would seem to me that there are two real options here and I have some experience with both.

option 1 AEM EMS-4 I helped a friend do a initial setup and tune on a subie the AEM software is super easy to use.

option 2 run a megasquirt 2 or 3 there is tons of support on the forum for MS setups. I have built a MSII before I built one for my truck (89 chevy c1500 w383/700r4) it worked great but I never tuned it past initial setup because my truck got broken into and they stole a 10 year old cd player, old 6x9's, edelbrock alum water pump, MSII, and some other things that were laying in the seat.

Anyhow Savington since you sell AEM EMS-4 have done an install and setup on a MSM or NB with a FMII at TSE? I'm looking to replace my HYDRA soon.

We replaced a malfunctioning Hydra 2.7 with an EMS-4 last year, yes. I don't have a PnP harness available for it yet (we hand-built the harness for that particular car) but it is doable.

There's a PNP EMS4 on your site, or am i just not savvy (haha see what i did there?) with the definition of PNP in that context?

Trackspeed Engineering

I won't be driving my car again until mid april is a PNP harness in the works, I have a motor build coming some what soon I can wait until then and just do a custom engine harness ether way. If you get a PNP harness I might do the switch early.

I don't have one specific for the MSM yet. It's a completely unique adapter harness, so it's probably the last one we'll release.

How hard is it to adapt a NB harness to MSM I'm fairly crafty with a soldering iron?

I've seen in a thread on here somewhere where Stephanie, Reverant and (someone else) were talking about the MSM using the same header as the NB2, but its something like 4 wires change locations. So "sounds easy" but I can't find the post that outlines it, so I can't say. One of those folks or Sav would have a much better handle on that.

Quick google search turned up this: MSM ECU connector

Thats all I think it is is stuff moved around in the harness I might have both pin outs on my computer so I guess I might be able to answer my own question.

I'm almost that stupid apparently !
 

I bought my Hydra 2.6 new , my " free " upgrade to 2.7 after shipping from Canada and upgrade to "gamma" so I could have Vvt control that i already had with the 2.6 was just north of $500.00.
What pisses me off are the features I've paid for, twice in fact that still don't work. Can you say EBC ! This is despite it being advertised as being fixed , twice .
The complete lack of documentation is the other thing that I find completely unacceptable .
Jeremy has done a pretty good job supporting me with the Hydra but I don't want to have count on him . Give me complete documentation ! And I'll happily deal with it myself.
Hydra's manuals are a bad joke at best , there still isn't a finished manual available for the 2.7 . How a product like this could be released to the end users without a complete manual is beyond me.
I have no problem paying for new features or real upgrades but I think the features I've already paid for should work as billed. Is this too much to expect?
I'm really beginning to feel like an unpaid beta tester.
I can't afford to change ECUs this year , but if FM/hydra don't get the EBC working this spring ,I'm going the look hard at my options this next winter.

I see that Leafy has informed Jeremy that at least the two of us have figured out how easy it is to make the 2.5 software work on Win7.

Hehe. Yeah my room mate pointed out that he got that email on his iphone while we were watching top gear a little while ago.

Ah ok, i just saw MSM as an option on your site. Definitely let us know when it's ready to be released! :)

Probably... i know we hate talking about this sort of thing on this forum, but i adapt old FCON PNP harnesses from MKiii Supras and FC RX7s to work with MX6s. Not terribly hard.


"Unpaid beta tester" is exactly why i don't want to upgrade.

The whole "Well you have this capability on your current ECU, but we're going to make you pay again to unlock it" is utter bullshit.

This is a company that seems to stay in business by force-feeding Koolaid and then shitting all over their existing customer base.

The product has to be REALLY GOOD to get away with that, and the product is NOT really good.

Sorry to hear about your troubles, Fred. :(

The pricing they charge for upgrades (Should just be updates/fix what didn't work before) is outrageous as well.

I was going to send him step by step instructions on how to do it last night, but i was shitty enough that it probably wouldn't have been a constructive email.

And i LIKE Jeremy. He's a nice guy. I like all the guys up there. I just fucking hate this garbage product.

They're kind of in a shit position. The Hydra was a pretty good unit at the time when FM first started selling it. And honestly their current business strategy was par for the course back then. Heck Motec still uses the same business model, but companies like Haltech have gotten away from it. AEM still advertises their ecus as having all features and maps already unlocked, a relic from a bygone era. They cant just drop support of it and stop selling it, because it'll alienate their current customer base even more, and they might even have a contract/agreement with Hydra. And what else would they pick up? Motec is too expensive, Haltech is almost as hateful to use, TSE is already doing an AEM EMS4 setup, plenty of people already do Squirts. No one is going to buy adaptronic. All the cosworth/mclaren/bosch choices are WAY WAY WAY too much money too.

To be fair the 2.7 version does work pretty well. I've got a reasonably good tune on now , drivability is good ( not OEM good but not bad at all )
My problems have been fairly minor compared to some folks :
Inconsistent starting ,eventually traced to sequential spark with a NA Cas
Cold start was becoming an issue last fall just before I put the car away for the winter . Jeremy's new cold start settings seem to have helped that.
Most of the things that have bit me in the ass , stem from my not understanding how a setting or map actually works because ....... Wait for it ....... There's no $@cking MANUAL !
Next ,I'm about to go back to square #1 as I'm about to pull the motor to put in a built NB unit. Stay tuned .....

Why the Adaptronic hate? Apart from the shitty joints on the adapter boards (which are now a thing of the past anyway) they seem like a really decent unit. The Australian support is epic, not sure what it is like in the US though.

MoTeC have an offering similar in price to Haltech and the other big players, but the "optional extras" can make it quite expensive. The MoTeC features usually work fairly well and the logging is awesome.

In the states the cheapest I can find a new motec is $2600 when looking quickly M4.

This is some painful stuff to read. Anytime anyone even mentions considering getting a Hydra I'm going to point out this thread. I can't understand why FM bothers with them anymore.

Once in awhile with the MS2 I'd get a touch cranky, feeling like things weren't quite well implemented. But 98% of the time it's been fairly flawless, and sounds like 100x the product the Hydra is at 1/5th the price (literally).

MS3 Pro looks like a good feature / price trade off and I know we have good ms3 support here. Could probably get close maps and let pro tuner get the rest of the way. 2.7 is hugely better if you are running high impedance injectors like ID. Logging over CAN is finally there.

Currently it is working well for me but the idiosyncrasies with the Hydra, insane cost and problems really make it a hard sell. They only with 2.7 implemented firmware flashes and basic features from. 1999 Motec or 2002 Haltech. With 2.6 I thought I had been transported to early days of EFI with all the problems that should not exist in a mature market product.

I've used Hydra 2.5/2.6, so when I say that WARI is the worst piece of tuning software I've ever used, it should really mean something.

I think modern Haltechs are quite a bit better than the old E6K units or whatever that almost put the company out of business.

It's certainly be a step up from Hydra for them to carry, and could potentially get them more sales from having a full model line rather than selling only one ECU that you pay out the nose to "unlock" features that come on pretty much every other standalone on the market in the first place.

That all being said, i haven't personally messed with one hands on, though i have one in my Escort. I did a lot of research before deciding to go with one, and i really wasn't seeing anything bad being said about them.

Will i put a Haltech on my Project Miata? Probably not. I want to cut my teeth on Megasquirt, so that's the route i'm going. Is it still tempting to throw on a Sprint 500? Yeah kinda.

I've only ever worked with Sport 2000 haltechs. In the grand scheme they're really not that bad. I HATE how they handle data logs, (lets just use random units and sometimes disregard the decimal place, hey dawg I heard you want your measure of distance to be decameters in your logs but miles in the tuning software). And I hate how often the software crashes out and sometimes after a crash that computer will never work with the software ever again (without a complete HD wipe). Even if you delete every thing haltech related on the damn thing. Once they're tuned though. Almost stone reliable, except when it gets the dumb and randomly changes the tune file completely.

Well... i'll post up what goes on during the tuning process of my Platinum Sport 1000. :)

I started reading this rant of a thread, halfway through got bored and stopped.

Bottom line: ditch that stupid POS that everyone in the entire universe hates (seriously, even on other car platforms) and get one of the handful of well supported ECU's by companies that are not trying to gape you without lube at every chance they get.

I am honestly shocked that FM supports that terrible company the way they do.

Also - I've no idea how something stupid like a Hydra can be supported by your local shops, and not something much easier to work with and common like MS and AEM.

Well, I guess whatever resale value my Hydra 2.6 had is now gone. Maybe I'll use it as a doorstop like my Cp-e Standback.

I have heard about a lot of shops that won't touch MS because they have some sort of stigma that it is cheap and hacked together. I have not attempted to go to any of my local shops for tuning so I cannot verify this but I know I have read other threads that discuss this issue.

I think AEM is very widely supported though.

Bingo. I know of two shops within 2.5 hours of me that will touch Megasquirt, and it's VERY begrudgingly.

I can't even comprehend how utterly ignorant and idiotic that is.

I guess move to an area that doesn't have inbreds running all the speed shops?

LOL:giggle:

No its real common. The shops see it as, they dont get to make money selling/installing the system. And they assume that any car that the owner cheaped out so much on the EMS, is a raging pile of crap.

This isn't uncommon across the entire continent...

And around here it's not even "just because it's Megasquirt and cheap."

It's because when Megasquirt first started "getting big," they were getting flooded with dumb kids want them to tune their cars equipped with megasquirt that they had installed themselves. They agree to a tuning cost per hour, drop the car off, and then the tuner ends up spending hours and hours just to get the shit to work correctly before even getting to tune. Due to an absolutely shitty install by the kid.

Then kid gets hit with 5 hours of labor plus tuning costs, can't pay, and it's a huge clusterfuck.

This was VERY common.

And unfortunately there's a LARGE percentage of shops that won't touch a Megasquirt car simply because that happened.

Yes, WE know that there's PNPs out there that won't have any of these issues. THEY don't know that, and they don't care to know that.


They see it as "Well... i've been kicked in the balls 37 times in the last two years, maybe THIS time it'll feel GOOD."

I have to agree with the above. When I had my DIYPNP installed, every shop I called about tuning service in the SJ/SF bay had some sort of hacked ass MS horror story and then tried to sell me an AEM or some other product. The ones who were willing to touch a MS all had "a guy" they had to call separately.

I understand trying to make the sale, but there is something to be said for the army of tuners out there who support AEM.

I can't blame them too much. That's like blaming a .Net dev for not wanting to build you a Ruby on Rails site. Why would he want to learn a new technology when the one he does know probably gets him more business than he can handle?

Lot's of MS people won't pay, ask for deals, consume time etc from the shop perspective. Lot's of MS units are poorly put together causing problems for the tuner that the customer won't pay for or will get them bad reviews for. MS is an old product with many variations of which the earliest ones were very rudimentary.

MS3 Pro can now stand next to an AEM or Haltech but that is certainly not the case for the earliest versions of hand soldered boards with poor enclosures susceptible to all kinds of issues built by users who have never used a decent soldering iron. They almost need to ditch the name and call it something else for the high quality custom built versions like the MS3 Pro.

The Ultra Inject Pro.

Exactly: the new completely assembled pnp units from DIY as well as the MS3Pro can now easily be sold, installed, and tuned by said shops without all the previous issues IMO.

I guess its up to us to educate them that its not 2005 anymore.

It is up to us.

Go on out and spread the good word and report back. :)

lol by "us" I meant you.

I tune all my own cars :giggle:

I know I'm jumping in a little late, but I want to offer up some information from someone with a slightly different perspective. Full disclosure, I am a former FM employee from the Link ECU era. FM picked up the Hydra about 1 year after I left when the Link went away. Since leaving FM, I have been tuning ECUs on the side since 2005. I mainly support FM customers with Link and Hydra ECUs. I also work with AEM and Xede.

I was disappointed with the Hydra 2.5 came out. I felt the set up time and difficulties with boost control, idle, and starting were unacceptable in an ECU with a $2000 price tag. Still, I set up about 10 or 12 customers with 2.5s and they continue to drive the cars with no further adjustments necessary. Likewise, with 2.6. I felt it was no better then 2.5 and I could only get fuel autotuning to work about 10% of the time. At least with 2.5, auto tuning worked, it was just a little cumbersome. I did a lot of fuel tuning on 2.6s by hand. Regardelss, once set up, the ECU performed well with no further adjustments necessary. With the 2.5 I gave up early on using the EBC function. After much discussion with Jeremy about this, I like to think I conviced him to give up on it as well, but this is purly speculation on my part to boost my ego.

However, 2.7 is a different story. For about the past year all the cars I have set up (about 8) have worked very, very well. The fuel auto tuning is excellent. Starting and idle is as good as OEM. I can not comment of boost control because all my customers are happy with a $100 manual controller.

During all this time, I have been running my 2002 with an older FMII turbo kit with an AEM FIC6 replacing the Link Piggy back. I have never been inclined to install a Hydra because I could not justify the price. I am a husband and father with a mortgage, $2000 is a lot of money for me. However, I made the upgrade this winter based on the performance of my customer's cars. My wife is still angry I spent the money.

To the OP, I fully understand your frustration. Hydra upgrades are very expensive, and you guys who bought in early truley have been screwed. However, if you do upgrade to the 2.7 I can assure you the car will run better. The fuel auto tuning is very easy and effective so you could do it yourself. If you chose to have someone tune it for you, they should be able to set up the car in a few hours and you will never have to touch it again.

I own 2 laptops running Windows XP so I will be able to support older versions of Hydra ECUs for a long time to come.

I think this is also part of the problem with MS not being supported. A large part of the community tunes the car themselves with support of others in the community. This also happens to be most of the competent users of MS. The shops, for the most part, get left with people who have no clue what they are doing.

The only shop around here that I know for sure does MS is ISC racing but they also install them.

To be honest, it's not really something i care in the slightest about, so i'm not going to be knocking on doors anytime soon.


If i'm taking my car to a tuner, i'm using his choice in standalone, not forcing him to comply with my choice. That's the correct way of doing it.