NaN Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 I was recently asked to wire up a megasquirt ECU from trademe, into a mk3 capri with a lexus v8. I was a bit.. apprehensive at first, the ecu is a bit of a unknown. Never the less I went ahead and developed a diagram for the change, and was about to start implementing a the plan when I opened it up ... The ECU that seller 'teamjelly' is selling on trademe is shockly substandard. It's a v2.2 board, with a version 1 chip in, thats a 1990 chip, with the processing power of a 1990 calculator. Thats bad, .. but it gets worse, the ecu has the oscillator chip floating in the air, so under normal road use the legs will break, and then it's good bye to the ignition process, .. bad yes, but fixable with hot glue. It gets worse, .. the seller soliders onto the legs of transistors to attach a patch board, similar to the work you'd expect from a 13yr old, so the patch board is ... pretty crap really. DONT NOT BUY THIS ECU. my friend is enaged in 'trying' to get his money back, which is apparently not going well, from a customer point of view these ecu's are not worth the money, they would only be good for a dyno motor, on the road the vibrations would cause the ecu to fail. The legs that are soldiered to are bount to fail, the soilder will just break off, the transister that the seller soliders too might well be f__ked, .. stay away, .. wide away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spencer Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 Yea a MS1 is old and its only as good as the guy who builds it, but theres a zillion cars driving around with them. For a couple hundred bucks they are sweet if you know what you are doing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taistorm Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 Cheers for all that. Was going to buy one off that mofo for my mirage.. good thing i havent yet though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaN Posted December 4, 2010 Author Share Posted December 4, 2010 Dont buy one bro, i'll take a couple of pictures when I go into visit the guy on Monday, but he's a mechcanic, I'm a specialist when it comes to 1uz's, and wiring, we were both aghast, .. those trademe megasquirts are a complete rip off, on the phone I heard the guy say 'hey look, it's a $50 ecu, what do you expect !" .. for $650 ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spencer Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 Yea just buy one your self if you are keen on one. The whole concept is DIY and learning something along the way, if you expect them to be plug in and go you are dreaming/buy a link Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaN Posted December 4, 2010 Author Share Posted December 4, 2010 yeah, thats what my mate did, he purchased the parts, and then used a specialized program to redesign the board, and adapt it to be a full car computer with touch screen and wireless lan connection. His one is multi board, multi layer, it control the engine, the air system for the suspension, the cars electronics, it's .. frankly amazing. then again, he's in for more than 2k in electronics, seriously though, the whole line of products this seller (Teamjelly), is selling are pretty suspect, sure the guy is nice enough, the product will work, but .. pretty dodgy, pretty average workmanship, .. certainly a rip off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SloNLo Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 have asked question on http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=336558866 answer matches the above Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaN Posted December 4, 2010 Author Share Posted December 4, 2010 Hi Jarod I'm not in any hurry, but I would really appreciate if I could talk to you direct as I'm building a fuel injection system on my race car and I need all the bits to control the injection and the ignition so I thought I would use all the Megasquirt dedicated parts to achieve this. Cheers Mike Limbrick Gutter Clean Ltd scooter5170 (42 ) 10:14 am, Fri 3 Dec No worries Mike Trademe forbid me giving out my contact details. Have you seen my lovely motorhome for sale? 5:22 pm, Fri 3 Dec > this really makes me mad because the seller KNOWS these things aren't suitable for motorsport. do you run the v2 or v1 chip? cm_ep (85 ) 9:04 pm, Sat 4 Dec Hi, Depends on application, The Ms-1 chip is suitable for 90% of engines and is the one I normally use. The MS-2 chip is available for an additional $150 and I can provide the MS3 chip on request. Cheers - J 11:18 pm, Sat 4 Dec > pretty expensive really aye might as well just order the bits and make it yourself and learn something, you'd probably be in for around $500 for a MS3, but you would have learned how to soilder and all about electronic engine systems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpr Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 workmate brought a ms1 v2.2 off him. board seemed to be ok'ish built. but didnt check the component you speak of though, will get mate to check it. one big problem though. he had made a short breakout loom soldering onto the db37 connector. turns out he had managed to solder the 12V+ to the grounds somehow. ok is a pretty crap idea to solder wires to the connector to start with. but surely you would at least check the loom before you sold it. ended up buying a proper pre made loom form diy autotune, was pretty expensive also. would have been better off buying an old v4/5 link. considering all the pissing around to get the ms going. running the engine wise it works fine. tuned it for him a few weeks back. no issues Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seedy Al Posted December 5, 2010 Share Posted December 5, 2010 Yeah seeing as we are on the subject Im a mechanic, and love building cars, however I did my time on old jags and Mg's So my ECU knowledge isnt amazing. However the idea of building a mega squirt to run a 4age is something I would like to do. How likely am i to have issues getting my head around the tuning side of things etc? Is it worth the time, or would a link just be key? I can solder pretty good and all that, and understand a fair bit wiring etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaN Posted December 5, 2010 Author Share Posted December 5, 2010 Yeah seeing as we are on the subjectIm a mechanic, and love building cars, however I did my time on old jags and Mg's So my ECU knowledge isnt amazing. However the idea of building a mega squirt to run a 4age is something I would like to do. How likely am i to have issues getting my head around the tuning side of things etc? Is it worth the time, or would a link just be key? I can solder pretty good and all that, and understand a fair bit wiring etc. look, you can pick up a link up for around 700, and send it down to CHCH for the correct chip, but the tuning will still be an issue, MS or link. In terms of skill level, it's not the soldering thats the issue, it's the $200 iron with variable control that hurts (ouch), you do need some decent kit to do work like that, although you can buy those for around $40-70 now. In terms of knowledge, that would be the hard part, learning how modern systems work, and what sensors, form part of the control system overall. When I do buy an ECU for my project, it will probably be a LINK, that is unless I find an ecu that will do everything I want and be affordable (Motecs come pretty close but cost 8k). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpr Posted December 5, 2010 Share Posted December 5, 2010 megasqurit can be a bit of a mindfuck tbh. biggest issue i had was finding answers, there heaps of info out there, but sifting though and finding what your after can be annoying. building the actual board assembly isnt too hard, took me about a day assemble a ms3 kit. taking my time. instructions are easy to follow. other major issue is the triggers and getting the ecu to see a clean rpm signal. you have to mess around and figure it out yourself basically. where is if you had a link etc, all the research is done, just wire it up and your away, ready to tune. tuning wise, as above, not much different to your average link etc, if you have spare time, patience and want to save a bit of cash, go for it. otherwise just get a link far easyer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barf Posted December 6, 2010 Share Posted December 6, 2010 cheers for the warning here nigelwade. it's such a shame to see the Megasquirt name sullied by poor workmanship altho, Link's or any other ECU can have noise in signals, if not installed properly. there's professionally constructed "plug and play" megasquirts from DIYautotune, if soldering isn't your forté. tuning is primary concern with any type of ECU, and TunerStudio made tuning easy for me. at the end of the day, the MS tuning software is on par with MoTeC and Link's, you can interpolate between values on the tables, import/export and there are keyboard shortcuts. as one example, it took me two hours of dyno time to tune cruise and WOT, fuel and spark for MBT but, one hour was for the dyno setup and pull-down. the only authorised Megasquirt dealers I know of are glensgarage and DIYAutoTune.com there are some others now though - I reccomend DIYautotune to anyone considering Megasquirt. from what I understand B&G went to some effort to evaluate and QA these dealers. PS. I construct my megasquirts with a $30 jaycar soldering iron, with zero failures to date. just be careful not to overheat components and the board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spencer Posted December 6, 2010 Share Posted December 6, 2010 ^ agree'd. There is also a full surface mounted pre-built option of you have issues with the old style board construction. (obviously costs more) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaN Posted December 6, 2010 Author Share Posted December 6, 2010 The seller; stopped returning or answering phone calls, a complaint was lodged with trademe (who arent going tooo do much). I think my customer will probably sell the ecu on trademe with the diagram I made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaN Posted February 22, 2011 Author Share Posted February 22, 2011 Seller resolved the issue by refunding the purchase price less $50. The seller is actually a very nice, very genuine guy, but the workmanship is well fairly low skill. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaN Posted February 22, 2011 Author Share Posted February 22, 2011 Link to 1uz-fe / Trademe megasquirt diagram and image below (670kb odd) http://i977.photobucket.com/albums/ae257/1uzfefordcapri/Mk3CapriEngineLoomcopy.jpg ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nirvanagas Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 this is interesting. i built my own MS2 with the V3 Board for my injected turbo 4k motor. i did have a lot of trouble getting the ignition circuit to run, and if i'm correct it was this guy who was helping me HEAPS via email. he was alot of help and in the end all the problem was, was a turn of the screwdriver on a pot, that was it. i would say he knows his shit but perhaps not so good with the assemblig and soldering it seems. i too have a drawing i made for my 4k if anyone wants it. although note that i am controlling spark aswell which isn't necessary for most 4k applications. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unclejake Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 As a mild, but somewhat related aside, take a look at these very well priced 'marine anchor winches' Anything look familiar to car people? http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-Me-Motor ... 317504.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spanners Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Is that black part a windscreen wiper motor? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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