Stand-Alone's... What setup and why?

[Jack-MX5ATLanta.com]

Let's have a civil discussion about what stand-alones work well and for what? The pro's, con's, and all that good stuff. No Bashing!

[Doppelgänger]

I have a Hydra. Yeah, it was in the car when I got it, but even when I was building up a turbo kit for my 99, I wanted a Hydra because of the capabilities that it can do everything and is very well designed. It does not require constant tweaking either and it has a very good autotune feature. I have yet to really sit down and go through every little aspect of what the Hydra can do...which is about everything...so for the moment, I just have it tuned and running, though i'll be exploring more stuff the next time I go for tuning (3"exhaust w00t)
A big plus to the Hydra is the ability to control VVT, as so far there is no aftermarket ECU that can.

[Jack-MX5ATLanta.com]

What's the interface like? I also heard the Hydra has the option for some sort of anti-lag fuel dump setup. It would probably eat up turbo's quite a bit quicker but would be pretty cool to mess with.

[simontibbett]

Megasquirt, I can't really say which is better or worse, as I have only used MS on a Miata. It is very easy to use, installation was literally plug and play, seriously. It even started right up. The program is easy to use, lots of options and features. Plus for the price it's hard to beat.

[Doppelgänger]

What's the interface like? I also heard the Hydra has the option for some sort of anti-lag fuel dump setup. It would probably eat up turbo's quite a bit quicker but would be pretty cool to mess with.

I have not really looked at the screen layout on something like a MS, but what I have glanced at, it's pretty similar. There are tons of various tables and values to adjust anything. It's all pretty easy to find and change, but since I don't know how the value scale work, I generally don't mess with anything. It does have a anti-lag/flat shift setting, but i'll stay from using such fun toys on an expensive turbo :lol:
Real-yime monitoring/logging is very easy to use and read too, although the readout doesn't have the "gauge screen" that you can get with the MS, but data is data when you're rading it.

[Jack-MX5ATLanta.com]

Mike, just occurred to me, how do you go about emissions with a stand alone on an OBDII car?

Was yours one with a plug and play harness or did you have to solder it in Simon?

[simontibbett]

Yeah it's the plug and play, no soldering, literally unplug the stock ECU, plug this in, run a small line, remove a fuse, that's about it. Took ten minutes tops to get the car up and running.

[Doppelgänger]

Mike, just occurred to me, how do you go about emissions with a stand alone on an OBDII car?

Was yours one with a plug and play harness or did you have to solder it in Simon?

Oh uuuuh... what are emissions tests? :biggrin:
I'm registered outside metro-atlanta. But no, it does not return OBDII codes...no emissions legal. The Hydra is also plug and play.

[RotorNutFD3S]

I have a Link. It's what came with the car. It's good for what it does, hasn't caused me any issues, relatively easy to tune yourself, and can autotune with or without a WBo2. Now they can be had relatively cheaply and still work really well. Support is hit and miss though, so be ready to learn.

On the flipside, I've been wanting to upgrade/update my EMS for a while. People have found power gains over the Link by going with a Hydra, AEM EMS, or MegaSquirt. I really like the features of the Hydra, but cannot justify the cost. I've been watching the AEM EMS v.1 prices bottom out. Right now I can get one new for $850ish/shipped, which is only a little more than a MSPNP, and while the MS is pretty widely supported, AEM is definitely fully supported almost everywhere, especially with dyno tuning. I'll make a decision at some point after the car is running again.

[N3v]

I'm at the far end of the extreme, I built my own megasquirt. cost me 210 bucks. As far as I know, it can do all the stuff a hydra can. At least, all the stuff a hydra can do that a miata can actually use. Again though, I've never even seen a hydra, just read about them, but mine is easy to tune (I thought they were tough or I was bad at it until I recently helped someone tune a megasquirt that wasn't on an ITB car, turns out regular cars are MUCH easier to tune, haha) For my setup, I stripped some insulation away on the stock harness on the wires I needed, and soldered my wires onto them so the stock harness is relatively intact; all I would have to do is cut my harness off. A popular thing to do is to build a wiring harness that goes from the megasquirt's DB37 to a plug similar to a stock ecu's plug, and plug that into your stock harness. I made one of those plugs, but it wasn't reliable for me, pins kept breaking off of it and stuff.

It has capabilities to handle spark advancement, autotuning, flat shifting, electronic boost control, launch control, nitrous management, water injection, rev limiter, you name it. And best of all, once you build one, you learn a LOT about efi, and you can tweak the original layout to work with pretty much any car! I'm helping a friend build one for his 240sx at the moment. I'd really love to see doppelganger's hydra and it's software, but you can't beat it for 210!

It took me about a month to build my megasquirt in my spare time, and a few hours here and there to tweak it. For example, on 93-95's you can wire it to the tachometer wire and it will fire right up, but on 96-97 cars you have to build a little circuit inside the megasquirt, called a 'mod' in the 'mod area' which is basically a blank spot on the chip where you can add whatever you want. You have to do a similar mod for launch control. So, I had to remove my megasquirt a couple of times to tweak a thing or two to get it just right.

Also, as a side note, one thing I do know about the hydra is that it has the megasquirt beat on 2001+ cars. I don't think megasquirts can handle the variable valve timing stuff. Perhaps a megasquirt can be modded to deal with it, but i know there's no pnp, and I've never really looked into it.

As for support, as far as I'm concerned, you've got all the support you'll ever need as long as you're patient enough to search on miataturbo, and post when you're stumped.

[JDM88]

How hard was it to build your mega squirt? Much prior electrical experience needed?

[N3v]

you don't really need electrical experience per se, as long as you know how to use a soldering iron you should be ok. You don't have to do any calculations or any design yourself, its pretty much all spelled out in the guide: solder resistor R7 into slot R7, capacitor C22 into the spot labeled C22 on the diagram, etc.

[gearbox]

the MS you can order premade if you dont want to build one.

[redrumracer]

As for support, as far as I'm concerned, you've got all the support you'll ever need as long as you're patient enough to search on miataturbo, and post when you're stumped.

except for the part where they flame you and tell you to read all the post 3 times ;) :D

[N3v]

yeah you just have to tough through that part :P hell, some people told me to gtfo and wanted me banned cause i was doing an NA build