To squirt or not to squirt

[bohica]

Hi everyone,

I hope this post doesn't seem too stupid. I've been researching MS for about 1.5 years. I have a JDM turbo Nissan engine (CA18DET) that someone swapped into my MG. I love the engine, but the fuel injection has crapped out. Nissan stopped making the engine 20 years ago.

I've read and reread an article about installing MS on my engine: http://forums.nicoclub.com/zerothread/164446, so I know it's possible, but I have a couple of concerns:

1) That this will be the Linux of fuel injection systems. In other words, something that sounds great in theory but is a total pain to configure.

2) No base map to start with.

A bit about myself. This is my hobby car and I love to work on it and modify it. I'm pretty familiar with the mechanical stuff. I did most of the restoration on my car (1962 MGA) myself. I build my own PCs for home use, but I know absolutely nothing about tuning an engine, carb or FI, and have had really bad luck with my fuel injection system, which is 20 years old.

My engine isn't modified, except that I'm running 10 psi of boost instead of the stock 7.

One reason I want to go MS is that I can get parts easily. All of the FI parts for my car are hard to find and some of them, like the wiring harness, haven't been made in 20 years.

Any thoughts?

[Philip Lochner]

1) That this will be the Linux of fuel injection systems. In other words, something that sounds great in theory but is a total pain to configure.

MS IS a kind of Linux on EFI since hardware, firmware and software is open source - there are no secrets.

2) No base map to start with.

That can be a good thing. This forces you to get to grips with MS and EFI from the ground up. This will be a substantial but rewarding (and sometimes frustrating) learning curve. With your background you seem well equipped to take it on. The biggest question you should answer to yourself is this: "Am I prepared to spend MANY hours STUDYING the MS documenatation in detail BEFORE I pick up a screwdriver? " If you are not prepared to read, read and read, then I would advise you 1st motivate yourself to do exactly that.
This is what you need to start with:
http://www.megamanual.com/ms2/configure.htm
http://www.megamanual.com/ms2/tune.htm

...and the manual: http://www.megamanual.com/index.html

If you are really concerned about your Nissan engine and you can afford it, first install MS on another ( similar ? ) scrappy car as a learning curve so that if you mess that up, the loss will not be too great. In my case my Land Rover served as the lab rat - and survived.

Since the existing EFI has problems, it seems you don't have much to lose... and you are not alone. This forum has taken me from where you are now to where I am now with several successful projects under the belt.

[texasZX]

The "easy" fix is that parts (ECU's Injectors, Sensors, etc) are all available for that engine on eBay for reasonable prices.
Diagnose the part(s) you need, buy the part, install it on the car, drive the car.

The MS option means that you will be designing and implementing your own EFI system.
You could always fix the car (as said above) and build and test build MS as a side project.

Edit: NICE car and engine combo!

[bohica]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the replies. I still haven't decided on what I'm going to do yet. I have to say that I'm not worried about the hardware. I've built several PCs, and the wiring harness is labeled. In addition, there is a write-up about my engine and MS on a Nissan board that walks you through it. Then again, maybe it's a lot harder than it looks...

What does scare me, though, is the software. I know nothing about tuning, and until now, I'd never never even heard about things like dwell, etc. I'm not worried about screwing up the engine since I have a wideband 02 sensor already, but I'm afraid I'll need a masters degree in engineering just to get the thing to work right.

How hard to you find the tuning?

PS Yes, it is a nice engine/car combo. It was a blast to drive when it was running.

[cygnus x-1]

I would say that tuning can definitely be challenging, but I wouldn't call it hard. It takes some patience and persistence to learn what all the settings and such are in the tuning software, but once you figure it out the actual tuning process is pretty straightforward. Really the biggest hurdle is just getting it started for the first time. Having a preexisting running injection setup will help a lot.

You could try installing Megatune or Tunerstudio to play around with. Obviously you won't be able to do any tuning but you can check out the software.

C|

[bohica]

Thanks for the reply. What engine did you install MS on?