I'm currently running a Braineack MS3X on my FE3N that's using a BP CAS and a Ford 2 wire idle controller. It's almost a decade old at this point and I'm and wondering if it's worth upgrading. I've made the FET driver circuits to run R8 coils. It runs smooth most of the time but I'm finding little quirks now and again that are annoying. Sometimes it will not bump idle on startup and it will chug until I tap the gas then it will work fine. Sometimes it will just stop commanding the idle to open and will almost stall at stop lights then will open it all the way and idle at 2500 and just stay there for a while. it's really annoying cause it's not consistent and it doesn't appear to be a problem in the tune. It sucks because I can't use the A/C in stop and go traffic unless I want it to risk it randomly stalling all the time. When doing pulls it will randomly stop reading vehicle speed over 100mph. I'm running a single lug pick up on the ring gear with a TP hall sensor because when I had it mounted where it should have been on the on the side of the TKX it only read to like 15mph then freaked out and just blink random numbers in Tuner Studio. None of these problems are consistent or will keep me from driving it but I was curious if there are more settings or adjustments that may be able to get rid of the issues if I just get a new MS3Pro.

 

Yes, I think you could benefit from an ECU upgrade. I'm sure I'm in a minority here, but honestly, I think that you'd be better off going with a solution other than MegaSquirt.

• The world is more open-minded than it was, but many tuners still shy away from MegaSquirt. Any decent tuner can tune a MegaSquirt, but unless your tuner prefers MS, it's probably better to go with something they tune with frequently.
• The standalone ECU market has advanced by leaps and bounds from where it was, while reducing prices. A commercial ECU with actual customer support is really not all that expensive.
• A good standalone ECU is far, far friendlier to the novice than ever. There's more and more stuff that "just works" right out of the box. When I set up DBW on my engine, I was dumbfounded that all I had to do was wire it in correctly, hit a button to calibrate the pedal, and then one to calibrate the throttle. Done.
• The amount of stuff they can handle without added circuits is sweet. This means fewer places for things to go wrong.
• While it's possible to do a lot of logging on a MegaSquirt (I think), commercial options do this sorta stuff on-board, without fuss. You'd be able to log these events and see exactly what's going on, without having to have your tuning laptop connected all the time.

I'm sure there are people who will point out that I'm wrong and that the latest sealed MS3s from vendor X, Y, or Z do all the things I've mentioned above. I'm happy to be wrong. I just want to encourage you to look beyond the MegaSquirt.

 

What he said. Upgrade? Yes, but I would choose another ECU option, or stick with what you’ve got.

 

I third both above

 

My dash is a just a windows tablet running tunerstudio so if there's a dash display on other tuning software id be open to it. 18PSI does all my tuning and has for the last 10ish years he's very familiar with MS. What other ECUs would you guys recommend in the same price range?

 

Well @redursidae and I would recommend a Link, they, along with MS actually, supports Aim displays or any other CAN based digital dash display. They're a bit spendier at ~$1500. @SimBa is working on a OBD2 bluetooth dongle that would transmit generic OBD data, but it may not be fast enough to use as a dedicated dash. I'm thinking mostly of a sluggish tach.

 

Yep. Link is my top choice at this time. It has a fully customizable CAN bus on top of the many predefined CAN messages, so it works with any dash you know the protocol for. That means you could build your own dash if budget is a constraint. I also still stand by my thought that Link documentation is the best outside of maybe Motec.

 

Not sure if it helps but t's not in a miata and has no can or obd system or cluster of any kind. The motor is just set up as a BP cause that's what I'm familiar with as i built my own ms1 kit for a BP powered festiva almost 20 years ago. I had such great success due to the help of this forum and 18psi pumping the power to hit 12.2s in the 1/4 mile. I. Don't track it is just for fun and trolling the streets since they closed our drag strip. The MS3Pro Evo is $1500 so looking to keep under 2k as long as the extra stuff is worth the price.

 

I understand that. We mention CAN because you’re using a windows tablet at the moment that won’t work well as a dash with non MS based ECUs. Most modern ECUs (including MS3) support CAN and that gives you access to a large pool of dash options of different costs. Regarding OBD, yes it will likely be too slow for a dash, but even though your car doesn’t have it now, with Link or Haltech it will, and you can access it by wiring an OBD port to a spare CAN bus, which they each have two.

I recommend you poke through each software and compare the capabilities and documentation’s. PCLink and NSP are free to download and use. I still think that you should ultimately use what your tuner prefers and meets your project goals.

Hell yeah dude, Festiva’s are cool! That’s a quick one too.

Real quick about your idle issues. That sounds like either something is up with the idle valve, or something has changed causing the ECU to not enter closed-loop or idle conditions. Obviously just guessing, but you should find out the cause first, because if it’s not the ECU you’ll be very disappointed.

 

I actually just got the OBD port working. I think the issues were just with the way I soldered the bluetooth dongle onto the board. I haven't had much chance to play with the various app, but paired with something like RealDash I think it could work as a dash replacement if you're fine with a slower refresh rate. I'm sure you'd be able to find videos of people running it. I believe you could also figure out a way to hardwire it to a tablet/RPi and get a faster data rate (just looked it up for a minute, you can definitely do CAN->USB Adapter->Tablet to run RealDash).

My tuning experience is on Speeduino (very cheap, open source, community driven) and now Link. The thing I've enjoyed about the Link is that for most features I've just turned them on and they've worked pretty well out of the box. You still have to tune the thing, but for something like Idle Ignition Correction I think I'm still running the settings the ECU had out of the box. "Modeled Fuel" took some getting used to and I still think that the Traditional model would be more intuitive for me, but it's running well enough so I haven't felt a need to change. I think one of the other big selling points for the Link is the flexibility. Again, I've found the menu's and setup a bit confusing, but you can set - most of the - tables up with whatever you want on the X and Y axis and add/remove cells if you need a bit more resolution in one spot.

I guess to address your question I'd ask if you want a project or not. If you're familiar with tuner studio and Megasquirt, then learning Link and PCLink (tuning software) or something else is going to take a while. It took me longer than I expected to get comfortable with some of the differences between the software and hardware when I upgraded. If you're not going to be doing the tuning, then I suppose that's not as big of a consideration. Not sure how big of a project the MS3 Evo would be from the wiring side, but if that's plug and play and you don't want to tinker, then it might make more sense.

Side note, have you tried diagnosing/fixing any of the issues you're having? Any chance it's just a loose wire or ground?

 

Thanks for your input. It looks like there is not much to gain over my MS3X if I stay with Megasquirt and replacing it with a different one would mean I would probably need to rethink my dash and relearn new tuning software. I have a list of things to go over with my current set up, so I'll see if I can get those sorted before spending an extra $1500-2k on a new ECU. I was looking to do a rewire of the truck anyway and so many things have changed since the initial installation. There are now lots of splices and overlays to the original harness with mismatched wire colors and too much tape holding wires to the outside the original harness. Not just the MS wiring but the lights and accessories too. I was also planning on getting rid of as many connectors as possible cause I don't fully trust my bulkhead connectors anymore.

 

Again, to address the original thread question, I don't have any experience with either the MS3X or MS3Pro Evo+, so I don't know what comparison of the two looks like.

Cleaning up/rebuilding the harness might solve some issues for you and I think if you go about it with some diligence and you still have issues afterward, then you could pretty easily adapt that to a new ECU if that ends up being the case. Sounds like that might be a good first step.

 

Another consideration out there between the MS and Link is the BMM (beermoneymotorsports) ecu. I've been quite happy with it so far. Easy to add sensors to the CAN bus and Jesse even sells a neat little can gauge for a reasonable price. I haven't done a back to back comparison with MS lately but when I chose it a couple years back it seemed like the better deal over a MS.

There's a discord link you can find off his website where you can hop on and ask plenty of questions.