Thread: my car need a standalone bad

Megasquirt is good and cheap and superior to chipped ECUs but is a royal pain in the ass to setup compared to just bolt/unbolt a stock or chipped ECU, right?.

Yah, basically. Unless you can find someone who's willing to make a PnP harness adapter and initial tune for you to make things easier. Many car communities have this available but we don't (yet).

Yeah. The guys I know that run them payed over $400 just to have it installed in their cars, this didnt include any basic setup so...

I just built my own. I would never pay someone to install a megasquirt in my car, then I would be shit outta luck if I needed to change anything.

Not all of us have that knowleadge, or the time to do it, personally I dont have a DD yet, so keep my car garaged for long periods is not cool, something I have to constantly struggle with, I have a month and a half of riding the bus to work everyday (not anything related to an ECU), and I certainly dont have the knowleadge to do that, even if I had a DD...

I built a jumper harness so my DD was never down when I did the install.

Also all you need to know how to do is read, solder, and Algebra.

how long did it get you to tune it properly?

I still wouldnt mess with installing that myself, but then again I didnt buy one...

Resolution is your issue.

Ive found this out the hard way if you want a good proper tune.

Get something like a LINK/Vipec Plugin ecu?

a day or so.

Really, my whole point in 'arguing' this, is to show you that Megasquirt is scary, but once you dive in, it's really easy to come out of it with a really good standalone, and some new skills.

So many people want the easy way out, they aren't willing to do a little hard work to reach their goals at a lower price. That is why Megasquirt is cheap, because all the footwork is done by you.

Yeah, as a matter of fact we can "argue" this all day long, and at the end of the day it all comes down to each persons preferences (and the depth of his pocket)...
Its good to hear you got the mega and you are really happy with it, at the moment Im really happy with the Calum (I just purchased tunercode but havent installed it yet since the car is at the shop)...

EMS will have the huge advantage of converting maf to map, letting you run COP, etc, and I do think that an EMS will always be better than a daughterboard...

Tunercode added some cool features to Calum like, rev cut by spark rather than fuel like stock, overboost cut, allows you to activate VVL using Calum, etc, that Im dying to try...