Hydra Nemesis Discontinued !!!!???
 

In my INBOX was a flyer from Flyin Miata which indicated that they are abandoning the Hydra ECU. As a person that dug deep into my pocket to buy a premium service and customized system, this is troubling. I realize the flyer said they will continue to support the Hydra's that were sold through them but I'm rather concerned about the "what if's" that now come into my mind. What if my Hydra quits working? What if it works erratically and needs diagnosed? What if it quits working in 3 years?

I make no claims to be anything more than a user in this field so bare with my ignorance regarding standalone ECU's. Is there's a wiring harness and a version of MegaSquirt that will slip right in and everything will be just fine??

So chime in with your thoughts/plans, those with Hydra's; what do you think? Should I go into a hoarder mode and try and get another (very expensive) Hydra unit to set on the shelf as a back-up or is that not the best option here?

Yes. Has been for many years. And has a huge user support group. And is the only way to get meaningful tuning help from anyone on this forum, since that's all anyone here uses.

There's even Megasquirts that don't require the patch harness that Hydra does.

I would not buy another backup Hydra. Enjoy what you have until you don't anymore, then get a new ecu.

1) I'm legitimately surprised that there's a person under the sun that didn't see this coming for at least a couple years now.
2) The latest Hydra is mediocre compared to the modern megasquirt. And when say mediocre, I mean it is inferior in almost all aspects. Previous hydra versions aren't even mentioned here because they're bottom barrel trash nowadays.
3) There are many versions of pnp megasquirts. Many of those would work perfect for you, plug right in, be cheaper, and easier to use, and.........

The stupidest thing you can possibly do is buy another hydra. That's like spending triple the money on a NA Miata because you live under a rock and don't know about NB, NC, ND.

NA are prettier. And pop-ups beat all.

I never understood why FM continued to hamstring their full-fat turbo kits with the Hydra as opposed to the pretty much Miata standard MS3. I feel like they missed the mark with people looking for a one stop shop solution but wanted the MS.

I have the actual answer.

Here it is:
They are stubborn little money grubbers. They want exclusivity.
This is the only reason they switched to that KNOCKOFF TRASH of an ecu EM221/FM221 instead of the much better in every single way Megasquirt.

and OBD1...

Quick correction on this, it's the ME221. But everything else stands.

Took me all of 20 minutes examining the interface on the third day at FM to see this and report it to Bill.
Gotta say, the guys at FM are awesome. But, they don't control the direction of the company and Bill does (or used to) have final say in things.

Looks like they've got another GM there now, someone local, versus the greasy consultant they hired while I was there.
That also took about 10 minutes to see he was going to milk them for all the money he could. And did.

I will say that from FM stocking things now like carrying more CARB-EO'd products, Moti products and the Skunk2 stuff, I applaud the new GM for helping them come into the "present day".

Taking a week to ship an order made up of off the shelf stuff is not present day or even close. That is 90's shit.

My order finally shipped today. :party:

AFAIK, the Hydra is still current product with Nemisys EMS. If your unit develops a fault, you could still have it repaired at the mothership (when I upgraded to the latest specs several years back, it was shipped to the manufacturer and not FM). I'm sure Jeremy will act as a go-between, to generate an RM number, for the indefinite future.

I'd rather run a MS1 than a Hydra if you gave me both for free.

As mentioned, Megasquirts have been PnP for roughly 10 years. Megasquirt MS3 has a superior featureset to Hydra in my opinion, and that opinion is widely shared on this forum.

MSLabs Megasquirt MS3 Basic

Thanks everyone, Good stuff in here and I'm happy that I can "unclench" after reading it. I was concerned I had painted myself into a corner. While I may have picked the wrong paintbrush, at least there's still hope to get mine repaired or get a roller that will likely work better.

Rest in pepperonis

megasquirt 4 lyfe

The widebands will always be available. They're oem Honda units with different connectors put on them to make them "proprietary" in order to better upcharge you.

Next time buy the Honda unit and the other side of the connector, save some money, and will be able to get replacements anywhere you'd like.

Not off the top of my head, no, sorry. Kris @ KO Racing can set you up, though. I ditched my Hydra years ago after nobody was able to tune the car to run remotely acceptably, and never looked back.

Hyrda should have been ditched eight years ago...

:giggle:

Don't mind me.

I am heavily involved with subaru's and have no idea where this is coming from, because I assure you, it's nowhere near popular or even common. In fact, I'm not sure why nemesis is even competing in that market (if it is, I rarely ever see anyone using hydra). Seems like they're ignoring the market that could actually use more options (miata) and focusing on cars that have powerful tunable oem ecu's where running a standalone is only needed for full on race cars or less than 1% of "the market". But hey it seems like bad decisions is their specialty.

Shrinking market? Better introduce another ecu that nobody else uses and will require support as well.

If I had to guesstimate: Subaru is like 79% cobb and 20% opensource with maybe, maybe 1% standalone use for the serious racers who need absurd control of their monstrous builds or all out racecars.

Same for me, but I bought mine used, and purchased the support. I've had no idle issues, and once I matched my fuel table to my injectors the car has been perfect. Not trying to argue. When these came out I think their intended competition was a much more expensive Motec type system and not MS. It didn't help that you could only get a Hydra at full retail plus shipping.

Cerealspit.jpg

Man if I ever needed more proof..:giggle:

Imma just leave this here.

:party:

Oh. And on my third day of employment at FM, I was tossed the keys to Igor and asked to "figure out" why the NB wouldn't start anymore.
And that, folks was my introduction the ME221/FM221 project.

Six months later I walked out, truck full of parts purchased with my employee discount, and dusted my hands of that entire fiasco.

I wish FM all the best. Again, the guys are great and I'll just say that once again, the techs don't control what the company sells or supports or even ships.
It does look like with their new GM things are starting to become more modern and present day, so that's a big plus.

With regards to what ECU offerings they have (and why) it's pretty easy to see that FM prefers to be "exclusive" with their offerings.

Element tuning bought hydra

Don't sweat it. If the unit fails under warranty, you'll be covered. If it fails after the warranty period, you can still get it fixed by Nemesis EMS (it's pretty reliable and, even if it does have an issue, repairs are usually reasonable). The base maps are solid and the ECU will self-tune as you drive it. The only fiddling you might have to do is for cold start or idle control and FM will still support you in that regard (as will they for any tuning help you need). I have two Hydras (my L.E. street car and MSM track car) and this news bothers me not one whit.

Had one loose the sync signal just recently and had to deal with the new owners for repair. it was a half year out of warrantee. they wanted to charge me a bunch for diagnosing and swapping components out to try to get it to work. I didn't want to pay a bunch of money for them to figure out why it failed, pretty sure it wasn't my install. ended up being $750 for a new board. comes with a new 1 year warrantee again though. Kris at KO-racing was also a big proponent of hydra and an amazing tuner and helped some with development for MR2's He took them off his website as well.

Well, that's discouraging. Maybe I'm bothered after all.

the hydras are not discontinued ...Phil from Element Tuning purchased the rights to sell the hydra ..flying miata can no longer sell them so they telling you it is discontinued with their business you can still get them only from phil

and for those of you that think the hydra is crap ...go tell that to phil while he is on the podium winning time attack events with the hydra ..I would put phils tuning with the hydra vs any megasquirt or cobb tuner with a subaru or now ls in his LS scion ..you miata guys don't need to worry phil didn't buy the rights to discontinue the hydra that he uses in both his time attack cars his LS scion and STi ..the only reason the cobb is more popular is because every tuner in the nation knows how to tune with it .most tuners talk crap about the hydra simply because they haven't got the knowledge to tune with it .Phil personally tunes my STi with the hydra and mine has been running 700whp for 4 years now

Sigh, newbs

I'm glad you think so highly of your entry level ECU. They work fine in the hands of someone who understands their absolute garbage software/firmware, and have for years.

This, however, is a Miata-specific board and they never worked very well in Miata land because it was competing with many other ecus because we have something called "support." Hydra for a very long time was nearly "the only" ECU if you wanted a standalone on a Subaru or Toyota, so very obvious logic dictates that they would be more popular on those platforms than ours.

Welcome, thanks for posting, now GTFO.

It would take entirely too much time and effort to explain to him just how stupid his posts are, with less than 1% chance that he has the brain capacity to comprehend and digest the information, much less appreciate the logic of it.

I still say that the Link Piggy or the Greddy EMU are really the way to go.

Emanage Blue with @olderguy autotune.

But the Autotune can't be tuned; oh wait, it doesn't need to be.:facepalm:

I'm offended that the

Bipes ACU and BEGI FMU

were not mentioned

P-p-p-p-p-p-powercard?

:bowrofl:

msmola wins this thread.

Obviously the best solution available. Makes more power than a tuned Megasquirt according to Tom at FFS, who totally knows what he is doing.

The powercard on my M45 was fantastic. Any AFR you like, provided it was 10:1

10:1 for a 10 second quarter mile.

Just keep adding fuel til it hydro locks then back it off a notch. Perfect.

As the former (or possibly still) Exclusive dealer for the Toyota MR2 for Hydra (I haven't sold one since 2017), and long time Hydra tuner (I've tuned every model they made), I feel I can maybe shed a little more light on this subject. Currently as far as I know the main connector for the Hydra that has been used since the first Hydra 2.0 version (a GM Delphi ECU header) is discontinued, so I don't see any more being made unless the hardware gets updated. The software and firmware of the 2.7 (which debuted in 2010) stopped receiving updates around early 2014 but still sports some features that the MS does not. Support from experienced tuners/dealers was the model Hydra went with (hence exclusive dealers) so that the support a customer received was theoretically from a very experienced source. I agree with the sentiment that the older version Hydras are extremely out of date at this point and I wouldn't even consider getting one. After a couple bad experiences, I won't tune any versions of the Hydra older than the 2.7 as they often have issues that can't be resolved by just tuning. Even the 2.7s sometimes have issues, and when they do, the support from Phil is not the quickest as Hydra isn't his sole business, nor is it inexpensive to diagnose (minimum $150 charge) as the units were only ever sold with a 1 year warranty. I have also never liked the need to use an adapter harness which often cheapens the overall install in my opinion.

I do, however, disagree with the idea that the megasquirt is somehow superior in every way. The Hydra has per-cylinder knock detection, and response, IAC trimming delays for fan, ac, and alternator control, peak and hold injector drivers, onboard 4 bar map sensor and internal NTK wideband controller. The interface seem intuitive to me (probably due to long time use), though it does lack the ability to customize and refreshes only at 10-12Hz. The results with a Hydra in the right hands often results in a much more OEM feel and level of tune from my experience thanks in part to the very good fuel pulse drivers, resolution, and large up to 32x32 fuel and timing tables. Hydras were shipped for the Miata from FM and often installed and ran right out of the box with little to no tuning at all in many cases. Several that i tuned had been run for months or years before the customer decided to seek out a tuner to extract more power, or resolve some issue. That said, it is very dated at this point, and many other ecu platforms have moved on. If you have a problem with your Hydra and it isn't a simple tuning related issue, I would definitley look at replacing it with something else.

The MS has been receiving continuous support and updating since the late 90s and still doesn't feel fully "right". The MS I think *can* get to an OEM feel and level of refinement, but any type of base is far from this level of refinement that I've ever seen (why does every base map coolant temp scale have 6 values below 100°F and nothing above 176°F for example). For the person paying a tuner by the hour, taking more time to get to a desired result can end up costing more if the base isn't as good. For the DIY-er, however, that time is not as much of an issue, and I feel the MS is largely targeted to this market. Also it can be a big bonus for someone starting out or tyring to learn how to tune to have a large community of users for sure. The biggest problem is that not many of these users has tuned hundreds or thousands of ecus, so they don't necessarily get the same level of support as from someone who has. From the company standpoint, there is no "the buck stops here" for tuning support with Megasquirt. Hardware support is a little better, but even then when I had sold one unit that ended up having issues, we spent hours ruling out issues at my vendor's request before they would admit a problem with the ECU (actually installed a Hydra on a vehicle and had no problems thereby proving to them their ecu was at fault). I think the main issues stem from the dispersed development and support of the product: one company invented the basic architecture of the EMS, another company licenced and produced the product for particular applications, and another company wrote the software and is still updating it (as a hobby/side gig) as far as I can tell. Knock detection involved headphones or turning a screw inside of the ecu to try and dial in some level of detection. In my opinion as a tuner, if I'm using a screwdriver, it better be to adjust a throttle blade and not the EMS I'm trying to tune.

Have you not seen a megasquirt since 2001? Because I don't think any have used a pot on knock since then. MS3 has per cylinder knock, windowing, adjustable gains, dual knock input all settable in software.

NTK widebands suck donkey balls, 90's tech and slow and sensitive as hell. 4 bar? Makes sense for a miata. IAC volt trimming, MS2/3 has that. Fan idle, MS2/3 has, alt control, MS3 has, what does a miata need with peak and hold? You could make a 32x16 or 16x32 table if you wanted in MS3, or flex blend it. Besides the table size, MS3 has hydra beat on all counts.

But, 3+ years of skipping crank to run taper didn't work like it was supposed to on the most modern MS3 firmware. My next ecu will be neither because they honestly both suck. MS3 pro is dangerously close in price to competent ECUs with firmware written by more than one person...

I think your review/experience with Megasquirt is about a decade old, based on that post.

I can tune better than the tuning support i received on my Hydra for many dollars.

And i can't tune worth a shit in my eyes. The "value" in relying upon your dealers to provide tuning support is flawed at best. I've known/followed you since the Toyota days and i'm aware that you're likely a far cry from who i used, but it also wouldn't have occurred to most of us to contact you for Hydra stuff years ago when Hydra was "in its prime" other than when i believe i was involved with finding out around 2012/2013 that you were THE place to go to get replacement widebands for these things that constantly burned out expensive "proprietary" widebands due to the absolutely trash onboard controllers. (Or the horrible cheesy modifications made to the off the shelf sensor to make it "proprietary.")

Meh, any "tuner" who complains about a basemap for a full stand-alone does a pretty decent job of establishing the value of anything else they may try to contribute.

in for his next "crank-no-start" post

I still use a Hydra and it runs better than a bunch of my buddies MS3 cars. I guess it sucks balls though.

I bet your casio with the time adjusted shows more accurate time than their rolex that's never been adjusted too.