i was talking to my dad about my plans to someday megasquirt my car, and he had to do his job of playing devil`s advocate. he said his dad actually ruined something in his dodge charger by adding an aftermarket ECU. he tinkered with it for months afterwards, but eventually had to sell it. i haven`t talked to grandpa yet, so i don`t know what really happened...

have you guys heard of anyone ruining their cars (beyond simply returning to stock) with megasquirt?

then dad took his advice to the next level by saying my car was too old and rusty to spend that kind of money on.... i should stop spending $ on it and buy a newer car. oops dad!

 

This thread is destined for uberfail already...

 

your dad is an old curmedgeon (just like me-i"m probably older) if you have the ingenuity and intelligence to implement megasquirt go for it. but it ain't for faint of heart. not plug and play. kinda like a dos computer when you added a new sound card. but you probably don't even know what I mean by that youngun

 

roger, i think i have an idea, haha

and nismopick... what the heck are you talking about?

 

It's like saying orange juice kills... because you can choke on it and die... so don't drink orange juice... or water...

It doesn't take a genius to blow up a car... nor does it take a genius to modify a car and drive it 300k miles.

Also, I'm pretty sure MegaSquirt wasn't around when your gramps "ruined his Dodge Charger". Since we have no detail whatsoever, I'll stop at that.

 

alright, that makes sense.

and for the record, Grandpa drag races. NOW.

As in currently. I never said he used MS, but he did swap in some other ECU.

 

Megasquirt is, in my experience, a very robust and affordable (as opposed to say Haltech) Standalone. There are so many factors to be considered with it and many different modules and versions of the system you can use. I totally disagree with your dad, as that's just too much of a blanket statement about it ruining the car in question. Megasquirt will take some time to tune correctly though. If I were going down that road, I would either "load" a very conservative map and limp it to the dyno OR flatbed your car and take it to a dyno. Either way, and it doesn't matter what standalone you go with......It's gonna take time to tune it correctly.....Megasquirt can take a day or a week to tune......just depends on the experience of the tuner and what you are asking it to do in order to nail down a good map.

 

It's kinda like saying a screw driver will destroy your engine. Yes it can. It can also fix or improve it as well just like Mega Squirt. MS is way more advanced than the stock system and there is a ton of info out there for it.

It's also a stand alone which means you can take it out and sell it if the car isn't worth keeping...

 

Man, all I want to do is get my car to run on it haha...

It wouldn't even be controlling a turbo because.... I don't have a turbo....

how dangerous can that really be. really.

 

If you are going to put in MS I'd recomend getting an 82-83 turbo dizzy because it has the optical wheel in it which makes interfacing to MS a lot easier.

 

if you tune it wrong you can blow a ring land under boost if you have it set to lean. really the only way to ruin an engine is by running it too lean under boost. But if you do your research, or have it professionally tuned, you'll be fine