Hello All,
To make a long story short, I am about to receive my new engine from Trackspeed Engineering. My 2003 car has an FM2 setup on the stock VVT motor. It has been happily running a Hydra ECU at 12 psi. Until about 2 weeks ago. Won't bore anyone with the details but the Hydra seems to be toast. Car runs but I definitely don't want to run it on my new motor, it is running extremely rich and not responding to efforts to make it behave.

I may need to quickly migrate to Megasquirt. I started reading the stickies but most of the info on the product line is dated. Can anyone help me fast track what I need? I'm thinking the Miata 0105 MS3Pro PnP Plug and Play at about $1200 (ouch) My questions are:
1. Can I use my existing EBC ( I believe it's a GM unit )
2. Can I use my existing AEM AFR gauge?
3. Does it include a proprietary wideband sensor and, if not, can I use the one from my Hydra? It is an NTK 23400 (Brand new)
4. I'm currently running LS coils in sequential spark, will it support that?
5. How "generic" are the base maps? a lot of tweaking to get the car to start and run semi-okay?

My concern is dumping fuel into a never been run engine and dealing with too many variables. One possibility is to NOT install the motor and sort a Megasquirt system on the existing motor. Kind of a time crunch, so it'd be nice to not have to take that path, but I don't want to F*** up a new built motor.

Not looking for someone to do all the work for me, but it's a lot to brain all at once and any shortcut from the gurus would be great.

Paul

 

I can't answer those questions without being certain I am correct, however I would look at the MS3 Basic. I bought one off of BOFI Racing, it came out to around 900$ after I paid import fees and shipping. Tuner Studio MS + Megalog viewer is mandatory if you don't have it already, 80$ for that. Should be a bit cheaper than the MS3Pro for a very similar megasquirt

 

1. Should work fine
2. Yes
3. You'd take your signal from your AEM controller, but no it does not include a sensor.
4. Yes
5. It's generic. I personally mixed some setting from the diy map an Braineack's an it started up fine an I autotuned while breaking in my motor. No problemos started right up.

If you want support and to just give the specs of what your going to run I'd look at one of Braineack pro modules

 

1) Probably. The MS has a bunch of configurability options for the EBC solenoid and will handle (I think) most but not all of the ones out there. Worst case you're looking at $50 for a new solenoid.

2) skipping until after 3

3) MS3 uses an external wideband controller, most people seem to use an Innovate but there are some using AEM and others. You can do analog input or (with some widebands) digital. Digital is far superior IME, and it's worth looking for one works. I have an LC-2 with a serial-to-CANbus converter from MSLabs. I believe there are wideband controllers that speak CANbus natively, but I don't know which they are. You probably cannot use the existing sensor, but I'm not sure.

2 redux) How does the Hdyra drive the AEM gauge? is it a analog signal? if so, then you should be able to drive the gauge using analog output from whatever external controller you buy. Is it CANbus? If so, then it depends on whether it and the MS can be configured to use the same address/encoding for the wideband values.

4) Yes, although you may need to do some wiring and/or soldering

4) The base map from MSLabs started and ran just fine on my car, but that's from a long time ago. I would imagine the current maps work decently, but I don't have personal experience with them.

--Ian

 

Base map from MS Labs on MS3 Basic will crank and run fine.

 

Thank you all for your input. I have one more thing that I can try to get the Hydra functioning correctly. If I can do that, then I can migrate to MS a little more calmly ( and after my next Social Security check comes in! ) Clearly, I need to be on that platform, I don't see Hydra as the future for my car.

Thanks again for the quick answers,

Paul