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tfrasca's 142 Turbo Project

Well, I got the new tune from Mike to match the 3" MAF and Deka 60s. It still has that stumble at higher boost, which I'm thinking is overly aggressive knock enrichment dumping too much fuel. I really haven't done any scientific tests for that, but it seems logical. Turning the boost down to 10-13 makes the stumble much better than it was at 20 psi. It seems like I could chase down the issue and it would run ok, but at this point I'm thinking about MS anyway. My battery died yesterday on the way to Cars and Coffee in Davenport, and it reset my ECU. Pretty sick of that part of LH.

I've been talking to all the various people I know who are well-versed in MegaSquirt, and this is what I'm thinking about doing:

Microsquirt
MAF from a Miata
LS coils
Crank signal from my 60-2 flywheel

I was going to get an MS3Pro, but I just don't think I'll need it. The Micro has enough outputs for me, and the only thing I'll be missing out on is sequential injection. Some people have said to only use MAP, but I really like the idea of metering the actual air mass, which should make drivability and tuning better with changing temps and altitude.

Anyone have any input on the setup?
 
You really don't need a MAF. Driving from Utah to anywhere on the west coast is a huge change in altitude and I've never had a problem except more power at lower elevation with speed density. But that's caused by air density changes at the same boost level, nothing to do with the tune.

When I upgraded from micro to MS3Pro, there was a huge difference. Idle control is so much better with full sequential and much easier to tune efficiently. If I was to do it again, I'd probably use an AEM infinity though.
 
I have no first hand experience but in your position would be a little concerned about what obstacles the MAF might bring, considering there is very little knowledge to draw from on here.

an MS3pro is ~3.5x the cost of a microsquirt.. so you really have to gauge what value the extra functionality is going to bring to your setup.
 
an MS3pro is ~3.5x the cost of a microsquirt.. so you really have to gauge what value the extra functionality is going to bring to your setup.

True. Depends on what he wants to do. But better flex fuel blending, better boost control, traction control, and full sequential ignition and injection are really nice to have for a daily driver.
 
You really don't need a MAF. Driving from Utah to anywhere on the west coast is a huge change in altitude and I've never had a problem except more power at lower elevation with speed density. But that's caused by air density changes at the same boost level, nothing to do with the tune.

When I upgraded from micro to MS3Pro, there was a huge difference. Idle control is so much better with full sequential and much easier to tune efficiently. If I was to do it again, I'd probably use an AEM infinity though.


I have no first hand experience but in your position would be a little concerned about what obstacles the MAF might bring, considering there is very little knowledge to draw from on here.

an MS3pro is ~3.5x the cost of a microsquirt.. so you really have to gauge what value the extra functionality is going to bring to your setup.

True. Depends on what he wants to do. But better flex fuel blending, better boost control, traction control, and full sequential ignition and injection are really nice to have for a daily driver.

Yeah, the 3.5x price increase is the hang up for me. I don't ever see myself running E85, for a lack of stations in my area. Traction control also seems unrealistic for me, since I still haven't even gotten around to figuring out a VSS for my LH 2.4. Sequential sounds nice for idle and cruise, but it's hard to justify the expense for that. Plus, I'm pretty confident that Micro could be tuned to run better than my LH.

I've been reading about how batch injection tends to idle worse because the intake pulses coming back out of the runners can pull some fuel out and disperse it to the other cylinders. So then you have some cylinders running lean and others running rich. Its seems like a common fix is to tune idle a bit richer so all cylinders are at least 14.7. If that's what it takes to get a better idle out of batch injection, Micro might be just fine.

The MAF idea came from Josh S. saying he's been using that setup on a lot of cars lately. Then I looked into it and there's a consensus that tuning with a MAF is a bit more forgiving than with speed density. I really have no knowledge of this stuff, other than a bit of research I've been doing.

Thanks for the input and first hand knowledge. I'm going to try to hold off on the MS as long as I can, so I don't rush into the wrong setup.
 
Don't get me wrong. Microsquirt is much better than LH, and you can tune it fine, but idle is going to be richer and not quite as smooth as it would be on a full sequential setup.
 
Microsquirt is okay, but ms3x is good. I will also extend this offer to you, you can drive both my cars, the Fairmont and the 244 if you'd like. The drive ability difference is yuge
 
Microsquirt is okay, but ms3x is good. I will also extend this offer to you, you can drive both my cars, the Fairmont and the 244 if you'd like. The drive ability difference is yuge

Damn. I can't not take you up on that. That drive is going to cost me so much money...
 
The other thing about the sequential vs. batch thing is that I am not running very big injectors. I have 60 lbs in there now, which should get me to the 300 whp mark if I push them for a run or two on a dyno.

It's my understanding that sequential injection is nice for huge injectors, but less noticeable with smaller ones. Can anyone weigh in on that?

Also, what's the benefit of sequential ignition over wasted spark?
 
The other thing about the sequential vs. batch thing is that I am not running very big injectors. I have 60 lbs in there now, which should get me to the 300 whp mark if I push them for a run or two on a dyno.

It's my understanding that sequential injection is nice for huge injectors, but less noticeable with smaller ones. Can anyone weigh in on that?

Also, what's the benefit of sequential ignition over wasted spark?

I'll tell you this much, my Fairmont has 75lbers in it and the Volvo has 80s and the difference is huge. When I had micro on the Volvo with the 80s in it, it the afrs would swing all over the place and surge while driving. I had Kenny look at the tune and I messed with it endlessly and i just could not get them stable. With micro the car was a chore to drive. Now with the ms3x it drives like a stock Chevy pickup. Results may vary and admittedly I suck ass at tuning but with my experience with both systems I highly recommend going with the nicer setup instead of fighting it.
 
I'll tell you this much, my Fairmont has 75lbers in it and the Volvo has 80s and the difference is huge. When I had micro on the Volvo with the 80s in it, it the afrs would swing all over the place and surge while driving. I had Kenny look at the tune and I messed with it endlessly and i just could not get them stable. With micro the car was a chore to drive. Now with the ms3x it drives like a stock Chevy pickup. Results may vary and admittedly I suck ass at tuning but with my experience with both systems I highly recommend going with the nicer setup instead of fighting it.

Well I've never tuned a damn thing, so if the ms3x is making it that much easier for you guys, maybe I need to rethink my plan. That's also the reason I wanted to use a MAF, for ease of tuning.

On the same boat. It took me nearly a year to get nearly stock driveability out of MS2.

That sounds lame. Are you still on ms2?
 
I have nothing to add to the current MS talks, but will follow along as it may be a path I could head down some day.

However, last night I re-read this entire thread, and what a trip man, You have done so much quality work on this car that I want to go out and fix things that I have done to my car. You have a great ride man.
 
I have nothing to add to the current MS talks, but will follow along as it may be a path I could head down some day.

However, last night I re-read this entire thread, and what a trip man, You have done so much quality work on this car that I want to go out and fix things that I have done to my car. You have a great ride man.

Thanks Chris! But trust me, there's plenty that I want to redo on my car. Going back through the thread really shows that this was my first time doing any of this, and if I ever do it again, I'd change a lot.
 
I've been reading up on MAF vs Speed Density, and sequential injection options.

I'm still on the fence about the MAF. Obviously not using one is the more common approach. Packaging would be easier, and I'm sure I could find a VE table to start with. But I still like that a MAF in MS2 doesn't use a VE table, and once you calibrate it, you have a solid starting point. Again, I know nothing about tuning, so the ease of a MAF is appealing.

Does anyone have any first hand experience with semi sequential injection on a redblock vs straight batch fire? It seems like Micro will do semi sequential (same concept as wasted spark). Wondering if semi sequential is a happy medium between batch fire and shelling out $1300 for an MS3 variant.
 
Another thing I just realized - the ms3x is only like $700, vs $1300 for the ms3Pro. If ms3x does all the sequential stuff I might want, why wouldn't I get that. I guess I didn't realize there was a step between Micro and Pro.

TL;DR: Listen to Erik?
 
Does anyone have any first hand experience with semi sequential injection on a redblock vs straight batch fire? It seems like Micro will do semi sequential (same concept as wasted spark). Wondering if semi sequential is a happy medium between batch fire and shelling out $1300 for an MS3 variant.

Yes, I'm running semi-sequential fuel and wasted spark on my 242. 1kcc injectors paired on two outputs in conjunction with (4) d514a coils. I ran batch fuel the first year with micro then changed.

I was having a persistent issue with an rpm specific lean swing around 3k rpm. I cannot tell you how much time I spent chasing this, both through tuning and with hardware troubleshooting. You can ask Kenny how many emails we exchanged on the subject. After some discussion with Bobxyz on here I switched to semi-sequential on the fuel side. After making that change and doing a bit more tuning the issue is not completely eliminated but smoothed out to the point it is negligible for me. I did not notice any other major changes in the way it ran, but was also very focused on a specific issue.

It's worth noting that the issue above was not present when I ran the car with batch fuel and stock spark on a stock block. It presented after I put in a built motor and a big ported head with 48/40 valves. My well-running batch fire setups were just as smooth as the current semi-seq configuration in my opinion.

I spend a lot of money on my hobbies but there's other places on the car I think the $900 would have bigger payoff. If I keep the car I'll upgrade the micro eventually, but in the meantime I believe that all of my current minor complaints about the way the car runs are the result of my own lack of interest in tuning rather than any sort of inherent limitations with the setup as built.
 
Well I've never tuned a damn thing, so if the ms3x is making it that much easier for you guys, maybe I need to rethink my plan. That's also the reason I wanted to use a MAF, for ease of tuning.



That sounds lame. Are you still on ms2?

Yep. Works fine. It's just really hard to make it run flawlessly.
 
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