My engine is currently running on the 14 degrees btdc because thats the common mod on the stock ecu for a little more power/torque. Do i need to reset the timing to 10 degrees for fitting the megasquirt? I know there are a lot of timing options within the MS, can i just leave my current timing and tweak the settings to take this into account?

The car is a 94 1.8 (and as you may have guessed, i dont have easy access to a timing gun)

 

you have to ensure the MS and the CAS are synced.

The MS takes over control of your timing. So you can idle at 10-12-14-16-18° with the push of a button, if you turn the CAS once you are running MS, you'll have to teach the MS the new position. So it is vital that you do the initial setup correctly.

 

You can skip readjusting the CAS and still accomplish the goal of the car actually running the timing that MS thinks it's running. However, regardless of whether you had base timing at 14° or 10° before, you'll have to tweak trigger angle settings in Megatune to get the MS matched up perfectly to the car. You cannot do this without a timing light.

 

you can't just run 14 degrees timing is ms, it's a whole map, whole different animal

edit: reread your question, you could do it but why? setup ms the way it's supposed to be

 

I think what he was asking was whether he could just install MS and somehow tell MS that the base timing is 14°, without adjusting anything else and without a timing light, and have everything run hunky dory. Heretofore unbeknownst to the OP but beknownst to us, the answer is of course NO.

 

Will you then have to retune for the new timing? I did the same thing. I synched the MS and the CAS in the Spark setting just like on the video DIY put out. Then in dawned on me that the spark map will have an additional 14 degrees of advance in the mix after I spent a lot of time at the dyno tuning my fuel map. I'm new to tuning and am eager to learn but sometimes **** happens. I'm ready for any answers or flames sent my way.

PS: I do have a timing light and I'm not afraid to use it.

 

Mate, when you installed your MS, you should have sync'd the MS to the engines actual timing, this is done by either adjusting the CAS until a timing light shows the same timing as the MS does, OR by adjusting the trigger angle in MegaTune/TunerStudio.

FWIW, when I first installed mine, I forgot to do this and drove around for a month before realising. I was n/a, and no harm was done, but it's NOT recommended!

Gimmie a bell if you need talking through the process

 

If you used a timing light and got MS synced properly with the timing marks on the front of the engine, then after you finished adjusting the trigger angle you set the timing field back to -10 (which tells MS to use the 12x12 spark table), then you're good to go and are running whatever timing the map in MS is telling it to run.

The only way you would have a blanket addition of timing across the board is if you told MS to give you 10° while you were syncing it up but used the 14° mark on front of the engine, or something like that, then in actuality the engine would be running 4° more advanced everywhere compared to what the 12x12 table says.