My latest Megasquirt install, MS2 w/ITBs, wasted spark, relay board and custom harness Options

[aircooledtechguy]

Megasquirt EFI is an amazingly capable system that is 100% tuneable. It is, however a mis-understood system and many of it's detractors have either not actually used it themselves or have used a cobbled together system of mis-matched parts. After 8 year of working with Megasquirt and doing installs, I have found that buying a complete, well engineered system with a quality harness is key to success. Also having an expert tuner can't hurt either.

Some may know that I work closely with Mario Velotta from The Dub Shop for all my Megasquirt parts and kits as well as tuning help. Here's a very typical install of one of his kits. You don't need the buy the most expensive kits to get a great running car and Mario will not up-sell you things you don't need for your application.

This install was on a 914 2.0L that had factory D-jetronic. Normally we would keep it plenum based re-using much of the factory parts, but with the TB badly worn and this clients desire to clean-up the engine bay, so we went with 40mm ITBs with modern 32# injectors. Ignition is a crank triggered (36-1 wheel mounted behind the fan w/ a bracket and hall sensor) using a coil pack and 8mm plug wires. Exhaust sampling is with an Innovate LC2 All sensors are wired through custom made harnesses. These feed into a relay board. This relay board is not a piece that is 100% necessary to use, but I feel it simplifies and cleans-up the install by getting all fuses and relays used into one neat, clean compact footprint.

The install took about 2 days. This included careful removal of the old D-jet system and installation of all the components is the new system. We chose to mount this system in the fwd, right end of the rear trunk. Probably the most difficult part of the install was installing the hall sensor bracket with the engine in place. While totally doable, it was a tedious part of the job.

Mario came out to assist in the in-car tuning. The result of a 2-2.5 hour drive is smooth as silk driving from idle to red line, under light throttle or heavy. Acceleration is smooth. No bucking, burping or farting Here is a short video of the test-drive and an over view of the install.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9rcczRTG_M...e=youtube_gdata

[era vulgaris]

What's the ballpark "all in" cost of doing something like this? $5k? More? Less?
And what's the complexity of install? Is it necessary to pull the engine?

[MarioVelotta]

What's the ballpark "all in" cost of doing something like this? $5k? More? Less?
And what's the complexity of install? Is it necessary to pull the engine?

It really depends if you are able to install and tune yourself or if you will be using a shop to perform the install and tune for you. This particular package was about 3k. Since the car already had EFI it didn't need all my normal parts. If you where to add in 4 days of labor, 5K would be pretty accurate.

That would include the initial tuning plus a few days in the shop to adjust cold starts, hot restarts, etc,. The stuff you only have limited time to adjust each day once the car has been run for any period of time. That's why it's the hardest and often left as-is. Also, those can't be addressed properly until the main ignition and fuel maps have been tuned.

The install is like putting in dual carbs, you just have some extra wiring to do. But with the harness I provide that isn't a big deal IMO and as close to Plug and Play as possible. As Nate stated it all can be done with the engine in the car. But the crank trigger wheel will be more difficult to install.