Has anyone tried...

[CJ455]

Is megasquirt the only EFI system anyone has run on their 6?
Or has anyone tried something like Greddy E-manage, or HKS F-CON for an "Import" inline 6 cyl with success?

For those running megasquirt...how is the quality/durability?
I have a friend running MS on his Bimmer and the board fried after a month. He got another and it's worked since.

 

[fordconvert]

Since MS is available in kit form many of the issues seem to relate to the assembly quality. Soldering is like welding, to do it properly takes decent quality tools and some experience. Just because you have soldered a few wires or pipes does not mean you are up to the task of something on the level of MS that uses some fairly small semiconductors and a multi layered board.

Good thing about MS is it can pretty much be configured to just about anything. Bad thing is it can be configured to do just about anything so there is some learning required to get the basic configuration down. In the end you end up learning a lot about the system and tuning in general. Thats not for everyone but I think it was a good experience for me and would do it again.

 

[rbohm]

8) as with any electronics, usually if the board is going to go bad it will do so early. as for assembling the board and the circuits, they do require some skills and some decent equipment. you can however buy the computer already built from this place;

http://www.diyautotune.com/

the prices are reasonable. also check out these forums;

http://www.msefi.com/index.php

they have a lot of good information, and like this place a lot of people willing to share their experience.

one bit of advice when tuning your system, when you do your tuning maps, document everything each step of the way, regardless of how small the change, that way you have something you can go back to if the change you made doesnt work. also dont be afraid to revisit changes in the future as sometimes a change you made earlier that didnt work in one combination, might work great in another.

one more bit, make one change at a time, and avoid large changes.

 

[fordconvert]

Diy is where I bought some of my stuff and where I will buy future MS related stuff. They have a good reputation and they watch the forums and help out when they can.

Most of the tuning parts of MS can be saved as individual files and even exported into things like excel files so if you know how to work with excel you can chart and graph and compare all you want. You can also save the complete program including the tables. The default for saving that stuff is a fairly long file name that is a date and time. If thats not good enough for you, you can always name it something that will make sense. I usually leave the time stamp but add something that will remind me what the change was. That way if you do something that does not work you can just reload a working version.

 

[CJ455]

Ok cool.
Thanks for the responses.
I've been looking at doing this for a while so I can learn how to tune efi, and make this truck better. I swapped on my ported cylinder head "finally"....only a year late, and it really boosted driveablity when it's running correctly. I think the exhaust O gasket is leaking and throwing the o2 sensor off. Seems to run better on the throttle so that would make sense. The cool thing is it doesn't feel like forever to get to 55mph and can hold 70 on the highway.

 

[fordconvert]

If you want it to work without really understanding it MS is not the best way to go. If you want to and are willing to learn along the way then MS is the ticket. Since MS is user driven all the info is available. Some of it is fairly complex but if you choose to take the time to learn it, its all there for you. I would not do it to something that was your only means of transport. Your first attempt is not likely to be drivable in the first day or two so you want to have a back up plan for getting to work. My first try took 2 days (weekend) to get it to run and a week (after work) to get it more or less drivable. Most problems were pretty dumb mistakes where I just did not read carefully or rushed through things that I though were not a big deal but turned out to be critical.

 

[wallaka]

I got my MS stuff from DIY as well. Got the MS-2 assembled, and a kit for the relay board. I'd highly recommend getting the relay board, it makes connections a snap. You can buy it assembled too, but I felt comfortable soldering big connections. Not so much the tiny ones on the MS board.

 

[MustangSix]

I ran the SDS EFI for a couple of years. It's a pretty good system. The only thing that's remotely difficult is mounting the little magnets and the pickup. Other than that it's pretty easy to use.