Im new to tuning and I know how to perform a basic tune and everything but I see a lot of jbody turbocharged cars using a megasquirt?? What exactly is it..... i know its an entirely diffrent ECU but is it worth going through all the trouble to have that or should I just just use HP Tuners?
All of the trouble? It isnt really much trouble at all. A few sensors to wire up along with your injectors, some grounds and 12V. With the relay board and wiring harnesses, they have made it very easy to install on pretty much any car. My personal preference is Megasquirt. You can control any kind of fuel tune you want, whether it is N/A or up to 42 lbs of boost with their new 4bar map, and you can choose whether you want to use Alpha-N or Speed Density. Also, you can choose the RPM range you want to tune with, and you can control basically as much of your engine and car as you want to. HPT is very nice for the people that want to plug in a controller and do some tuning. Pretty much anything on the stock ECU, you can control, but you have your limits. You can only tune up to 7000rpm I am pretty sure. Unless you have the gm supercharger reflash, you will have a hell of a time trying to get a tune on a boosted motor with Alpha-N (there is a reason why no stock boosted cars use Alpha-N to tune with), but I am not here to take anything away from it. You can remove all limiters, adjust pretty much anything, but there are limits, and dont be mad at HPT, GM is to blame. If I was you, I would go with HPT and save you some of the trouble. Basically, if you use Megasquirt, you are building your own tune from scratch, you will have problems along the line, and you will pretty much need to fix them on your own, but it is a great tuning solution for the J-Bodies.
People have great results with both. I use HPT, with GM s/c reflash it is perfect, but if you wanna use it to control nitrous, launch, or water meth, you will need a seperate controller. Mega Squirt is hard to install, harder to use, but does have more options. It will include wiring likely 4 / 5 stars. If you have any questions about HPT, then mega squirt is NOT for you.
HP Tuners | Garrett T3/T04B | 2.5" Charge Pipes | 2.5" Downpipe | 650 Injectors | HO Manifold | Addco front/rear | Motor Mounts | HKS SSQV | Spec stage 3 | AEM UEGO Wideband | Team Green LSD | FMIC | 2.3 cams | 2.3 oil pump swap | 280WHP | Now ECOTECED
i thot you couldn't tune the gm s/c reflash with hpt???
You take a women and X her by PSI devide the legs and you can then juice the car......LOL
2.4 reflash is tunable and is a huge benefit, turns our Alpha-N stock comptuers into the Speed-density that we all love. If you have the eco reflash, @!#$ty outta luck.
so why not use the 2.4 s/c reflash instead of the ecotec reflash???
or is that not possible
i have a 2005 cavy 5 spd
You take a women and X her by PSI devide the legs and you can then juice the car......LOL
ALcOhOLjC wrote:so why not use the 2.4 s/c reflash instead of the ecotec reflash???
or is that not possible
i have a 2005 cavy 5 spd
No offense but if you don't know this, then the MS will be over your head. I personally love the MS and it has some killer features that my new build revolves around. It also can run low imp injecotrs which is a huge must for me. It is complicated though, tuning can be hard also. Tuning afr's for boost/vac is easy ... it's things like gettign a nice idle, start up enrichments, accel/decel enrichments .... stuff like that takes alot of time to get just right. HPT has great support, where as with the MS you are pretty much on your own. The documentation is great but as far as other support goes your mostly on your own unless you can find someone with a simular set up that might be able to help you.
HPT = plug and play
MS = 2 months of swearing and regretting your choice until you learn what you are doing ..... then you will have more options, more control and a better set up.
well i did some more reading and understand now the difference
it looks like its going to be hpt
You take a women and X her by PSI devide the legs and you can then juice the car......LOL
im in a toss up HPT is limited but you can return to stock tune at any time where MS you have to get a good stock tune on you own and then work into bigger and better tunes but the learning experience I believe is worth it and the money saved, maybe its a hassel but I believe you'll get more from MS if you stick with it until your happy !!!
'99 2.2 OHV w/3spd auto (work in progress)
http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2322134
Alright Thx I think im going to stick with the HP tuners, Im pretty used to the software and I just aint comfortable messing with a megasquirt on my daily driver and thx for the info guys
MS can be unplugged and return to a stock tune very easily if you use wisdom when you wire the system in. Also, a resonable stock tune can be downloaded from some people on the ms-efi forums who have a reasonable tune already for the LD9's, ecos and 2200.
I've seen megasquirt used with much success, its only real advantage over HPT is that you can use a 2 or 3 bar MAP sensor with it instead of having to scale VE table. To be honest, if HPT is available for your ecu (i know there were some oddball ecus it couldn't be used with or something like that) than my advice would be to go that route because its gets you tuning quicker and lets you control more areas of the ecu (shift points, trouble codes, etc.) It costs more but it is much easier compared to MS (which isn't hard, but is a lot more involved than a plug and play system specifically designed for your ecu).
Arrival Blue 04 LS Sport
Eco
Turbo
Megasquirt
'Nuff said
MS also has Speed density tuning instead on alpha-N which is a huge plus. However I think I've heard the factory reflash might do this conversion for the stock ecu but I'm not sure someone might need to confirm that.
Also MS has 4bar map capabilities now too...Not to mention there is no nasty bumpy tuning steps you get from faking a 2 or 3 bar map in the HPT, but like scarab said, they both have there advantages for sure, MS sure can't cut off trouble codes.....sigh.
when you hit the limit with HP Tuners run MS in tandem
the two together is unstoppable, and if it comes down to it will be my course of action.
as was said, when tuning for boost VE tables can only be scaled so as you raise the bar you also raise your lowest values making drivability suffer. A few HPT users are workin on tune solutions to the problem, myself will be included once I join the ranks of boosted.
Right now I'm still tuning n/a
I dont know why if you had the MS you would want HPT? MS can run spark and fuel and do both very well...with almost limitless possibilities. The only real reason someone would want HPT if you have MS and not afraid to use it would be to kill trouble codes but until HPT can make some kind of budget single modification license or something you wont see me spending $600 to kill codes....I'll live with the light first.
I had my MS system tuned on the Cressida before I tore it down for the turbo rebuild and I love the amount of tuning you can do on it. The new cams are good to 8600 rpm so the stock cutoff of 6800 wouldn't do at all I need about 9000rpm cutoff. I was even able to add a clutch depress timing retard to it to smooth out shifts and keep the tires from chirping.
--------------------------------------------------
'96 Cavalier Good ol' Pushrod 2.2
-24X,000 miles on factory build
-Some oil loss between changes, me thinks it be rings.
