You might as well stay with SMEC.
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There are shops out there that tune MS in addition to the "name brand" systems.
That said, if I had the money, I might have gone with one of the pricier systems as well.
Just because you take it to somebody else to tune it doesn't mean things can't go wrong. Granted the more experience someone has the less the chances of mistakes are going to happen. I had a customer with a 350Z bored and built to a 4.0 and he ended up detonating and burnt a piston. That was tuned by someone who "knows." I don't know if it was the tuner or the owner that messed up but either way my customer is now the proud owner of a boat anchor.
I kind of maxed out the SMEC, single coil, and distributor at 330 hp. I or somebody else who's more knowledgeable probably could have squeezed out more but how much time and money do I throw at something that I just have to upgrade anyways? At some point you just cut your losses and move on to something better. I spent $200 on an MSD box that's just sitting here now when I could have put that towards MS. Good thing I borrowed a monster ignition coil instead of buying one or I'd be sitting on that too. Plus you're going to LOVE having a cleaned up engine bay running your own wiring. There's so much less clutter in mine and it's great.
My goal for the wiring is to make it as simple as possible that way if something goes wrong it's easier period. Also I do want the engine bay clean as well. And as far as taking it to someone else I know for a fact that I could blow it up right there on the dyno I hope not but there are no guarantees. But taking it to someone who has been doing this longer than I have with the proper equipment will definitly be better off. I also want decent drive ability at that horsepower level and I'm not sure that's possible with smec. I know it will be with ms fast or aem or others.
The version I used had to be hacked to allow autotune to function beyond a small "cruise" window of the AFR map. That had to do with editing a text document that runs while tunerstudio or the no longer supported megatune performed autotune. This was very very maddening. This is how Megasquirt builders think. They think that stuff is exciting and fun! The MSpro has forced them to become less oddball so I guess the expensive product is a good thing. Software has changed and is less awkward.
I tried using active tuning years ago, it worked, you could even have it change your maps without having a computer hooked up. These days I am happier with using Megalog viewer and going through datalogs. That way I can choose certain load points I want to tune based on my datalog and then change AFR delay to make sure the AFR is a proper representation of what is really happening. Lower rpms, more delay. I can also choose what level of "sensitivity to change" want to apply to my map. Megalog viewer requires loading an MSQ (megasquirt file) and you need an AFR table in there so Megalog viewer will know what your AFR goals are in each load cell.
BTW, when it comes to boosted runs, if you start with too much fuel, its pretty easy to dial back fuel until it gets close. I used to mess with boost manually, but it would probably work great with datalog review. Basically one datalog running pretty rich and you would be able to get it close, then run a few more to fine tune it. The thing that is harder to fill out are the load cells that you don't spend much time in (like the other boost levels that you go through but not what your boost setting is). I often resort to averaging between two known points so you can get close.
Open the MSQ you were running when the datalog was recorded (don't get things mixed up, though sometimes I have purposely loaded the wrong MSQ for experimenting).
Click analyzer
http://www.ideasandsolutions.biz/Meg...gViewer2.2.png
Change the load (rpm, map, delay) situations that you want to change. If you just did a few boosted pulls, you might not want near idle settings or cruise modified. You can kinda figure out when a change is bad idea because its based on an odd situation. Load cell requirements get wacky the lower your pressure/KPA is. I have found that even N/A @ WOT the numbers change a bit pull to pull when analyzing.
http://www.westfield-build.com/image...q_analysis.jpg
Change your settings as a NEW NAME so you can go back to your old tune if you don't like what changes you made.
If you think its a really long good datalog, you could do 2-4 different cell blocks and have different sensitivities or delays (idle with more delay). This would mean making 4 different changes. It will show you how much you changed things so you have an idea how much you are messing up or fixing your tune.
The challenge in this all is the spark map.
Was just doing some digging and found that aem has a pnp setup for the srt4. Which doesn't help me per day since I don't have any wiring and will start from scratch but they do have base tunes so that is worth a lot to me honestly. Not to hijack this thread maybe I did tho.
The coil driver with SBECII will make the same power with 6 cylinders with 2000+cc's of methanol which should be more difficult to light off with much shorter dwell times. Assuming parts are functioning properly. I had more problems with blowout running Megasquirt as it either seemed to have a weaker ignitor or who knows what. At high rpms you shouldn't have enough time for dwell differences to matter. Not sure what voltage our OEM sends to the coil or amperage.
It would be nice to know what our OEM dwell is. I could never find dwell information for FORD coils that I use since they have that TFI garbage or whatever it is that runs the coil.
Looks like sentiment has finally devolved into agreeing with my earlier statements of you have to be at a certain level before MS is practical. Not trying to be rude. I've been working on cars 15 out of 30 years and spend a LOT of time reading/researching and have a full time job teaching other people to be auto techs and MS is still not something i WANT to do when the factory stuff is so capable. I know OP is looking for megasquirt success stories but for every 1 successful MS install in a k-car there are 100 cars with a shitty injector harness that the owner has never been able to figure out. To me MS is only viable for a tiny tiny portion of the community and those are the ones who could have made the stock stuff work anyway if they chose to. Like AJ, Gary and Brent were just talking about, its not like a single coil can't fire 500+whp of fuel sparking 50% more often then AJs 4cyl, but the cost/benefit analysis changes at some point as to whether you want to be diagnosing idiosyncracies of the old setup or diagnosing idiosyncracies of MS. It's pretty damn subjective, and so far i havent seen anyone in this thread actually claim to be doing something that an smec CANT do other than saying the ignition timing is more accurate then it is with sub-oem level worn out distributor drive parts. It's just a balance of effort/knowledge/expectations that ends up drawing a line in the sand.
I think about installing MS sometimes.. because i have a DOHC 6g72 id like to put in a k-car.
On the other hand, i'm actively trying to convert my 2.6L Mitsu Montero to run a starion TBI off an SMEC as well. :p
I feel it depends on what your goals are. I would definitly stick with smec if I was staying with the 2.2/2.5 even going rwd with it because I feel it's capable. One of my goals for this car is to re wire the entire car as simple as possible also. Plan on using a painless setup for the chassis and then a stand alone setup after that. Simple as possible brand new wiring that's easy to diagnose at the track. Also running the srt could be done with a smec but I feel at the power levels I'd like to make it would be easier to go stand alone and again eliminate a ton of wiring in the process. I guess it all boils down to what your goals are. I also think that with megasquirt that you spend as much time trying to figure out how to wire it up and talk to your sensors correctly than you do tuning.
Like I said:
You are definitely more knowledgable since you're one of the pioneers and have probably forgotten more than I know about the factory set up. I really wanted to get rid of the 25+ year wiring and the distributor. The final nail in the coffin for me was blowing the spark out. I wonder if combustion chamber shape or other factors surrounding the 2.4 vs 2.2/2.5 were the reason I had ignition problems and you didn't?
Wiring for me took awhile because I had to first separate the body harness from the engine harness. Figuring out the best way to route the MS harness because I'm a perfectionist took awhile but only because I also had to get rid of the fusable links and run everything through a power distribution center. That was time consuming but the easy part because it's mechanical and I can actually put my hands on the problem (if there was one). Getting it started was a breeze once I figured out DIY Autotune had a setting wrong on their SRT-4 settings page but they corrected it once I informed them of the error. Tuning and learning MS has been the challenging part. I just spent two and a half days on getting the idle better and just resorted back to my original settings. I learned a little more about what thing mean and do in MS but not enough to make use of that knowledge yet. It idles well enough for the track so I'll just work on that later.
Your idle issues might be due to the fact that our Idle motor doesn't seem to play nice with megasquirt. We have to use always running to prevent it from sticking but then it gets too hot and again has problems. Drive to drive, your idle could go from perfect to absolutely not functional.
I think you are correct about the 4 wire IAC. Sometimes it'll be fine and other times it seems to "stick." When it's idling high, if I go under the the IAC test and send it to "home" position the idle will come down. So right now I have it commanded by temp. It's idles high when cold, comes down when warmed up, idles about 1300 in park/neutral and 900-1000 in gear. That's going to have to get me by for now because I need to figure out my lack of horse power issue first.
Good to know. I was leaning towards sticking with the Ford IAC. I think this solidified it.