haltech vs megasquirt

Which do you prefer and why? To give more accuracy, second hand parts budget of roughly 500 to 700 investment window w harness variety of either haltech ecus or ms.

Whats the hives' experiences?

Are you planning to map it yourself or get it mapped?

If it's the latter, whatever your tuner of least mistrust prefers.

For equivalent dollars, megasquirt will be more powerful. Haltech may be slightly more robust, depending on what you end up with.

On a rotary, Haltech is better supported. I find Ecu Manager a little more "friendly" than TunerStudio.

If you're tuning yourself, use whatever has the most info/units on the forums. If you're paying someone, use what they like.

I've had Hydra Nemesis, Haltech Platinum Sport 1000, Megasquirt DIYPNP, HKS PFC FCon, and soon an MS2 "Enhanced" on my cars. I don't have real preference in practice between Haltech and Megasquirt, all other things being equal.

Well for starters, you can ms1 for 200$. Haltech=$$$

I wouldn't consider a MS1 since version 2 and 3 are much more capable, along with the Haltech CanBus system. Plus, a new MS2 unassembled kit is $279.

MS1 is serious blah these days.

Haltech is also much less expensive than you'd think, though with OP's budget, he's looking at an old E6/E8 series, POSSIBLY a Sprint 500. (He'd need the RE version for rotary things.)

My plan when I give up this carb thing next year is a Haltech. Seems to have a lot more "known" things when it comes to rotaries.

fidelity101 wrote: Which do you prefer and why? To give more accuracy, second hand parts budget of roughly 500 to 700 investment window w harness variety of either haltech ecus or ms. Whats the hives' experiences?

I'm obviously biased , but that budget would get you a brand new MicroSquirt and wideband. Those fully support rotary leading/trailing spark on the current firmware.

Any must have features beyond rotary ignition control?

A friend and I learned some uncomfortable news about our "advanced" FJO systems(Now Holley).....

Not only is there no support for our systems... but a friend of ours took a look at the software... and he believes our "advanced systems" has dung for software

just goes to show...

Swank Force One wrote: If you're tuning yourself, use whatever has the most info/units on the forums. If you're paying someone, use what they like.

absolute truth!

Mr_Clutch42 wrote: I wouldn't consider a MS1 since version 2 and 3 are much more capable, along with the Haltech CanBus system. Plus, a new MS2 unassembled kit is $279.

I am not planning on someone assembling something and I most certainly am not building my own MS.

I do not have any special requirements beyond that rotaries are teh speciale.

I am looking at second hand E6k E6X, I have seen Ps1000 but I don't want to spend a grand on EMS.

Microsquirt is 370 new though.... hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I will be "doing the tuning" I have friend who work for the big 3 or a bosch motorsports division around here as engine calibrators and etc so they really don't care what I get they said they will help me calibrate and tune it. They do it every day at work with OEM systems and etc. I have some experience in it but they are the experts.

I also have full version of megatune, for some reason.

This is of interest to me too as I will likely be getting into full stand alone with the next car (MCM Super Gramps copy).

Matt - Do you know of anyone using an MS3 on a Subaru H6 EZ series motor?

If Haltech, the only thing i'd be looking at in your budget or near it would be the Sprint 500. The PS1000 will be outside your budget. The E6 series aren't great. Bad time for Haltech.

A friend of mine runs PS1000 on his rx7 and it is muey beuno, also it is tuned by an excel spreadsheet. However it is out of what I want to spend, robustness and simplicity is high up on requirements. I've won and win races on my tiny carb setup, I just want to open up the RPM range for power I am missing. No point in building the engine the way I did then.

Peak power right now is 6700rpm or so when the engine is capable of 8-9000rpm.

Right, that's why i'm saying look for a Sprint 500 if you want PS1000 stuff. PS1000 is also most definitely not tuned with an excel spreadsheet, unless you're talking about something strange that he's cooked up in the background? It's tuned via Haltech's software, ECU Manager.

I've seen Sprint 500 units go for $400. Deals are out there.

Swank Force One wrote: Right, that's why i'm saying look for a Sprint 500 if you want PS1000 stuff. PS1000 is also most definitely not tuned with an excel spreadsheet, unless you're talking about something strange that he's cooked up in the background? It's tuned via Haltech's software, ECU Manager. I've seen Sprint 500 units go for $400. Deals are out there.

Correct, I guess its easy when you are a software engineer.

I suppose so... no idea why on earth you'd do that, though. ECU Manager is the slickest piece of tuning software i've ever played with.

I'm hunting for a sprint right now but no such luck, all the ones I see are about 900-1100 range. There is a functional E6K for 450 shipped w/ harness which really has me tempting

OR for about 80 less I can do microsquirt....new

My problem is that I just don't know enough to know what I want/need.

What you don't want is an E6-era ECU.

If you need something right meow, a Megasquirt is going to be the way to go. I know some of the rotary guys down under like Microtech as well, so that might be looking into, but they'll be more expensive than Megasquirt new, and probably won't find a bunch of them used in the states.

The deals on the Sprint 500 REs are going to require some waiting.

What's this? http://autoplicity.com/5227843-haltech-ht040702-ecu-platinum-sprint-500?utm_source=GoogleShopping&utm_medium=CSE&utm_content=5227843NOFITMENT&utm_campaign=GSNOFITMENT&gclid=CKyx34v74sUCFcRgfgod9JEAYA

Trackmouse wrote: What's this? http://autoplicity.com/5227843-haltech-ht040702-ecu-platinum-sprint-500?utm_source=GoogleShopping&utm_medium=CSE&utm_content=5227843NOFITMENT&utm_campaign=GSNOFITMENT&gclid=CKyx34v74sUCFcRgfgod9JEAYA

Long wiring harness only. Autoplicity's listings are super annoying quite often.

So its 285 for the harness? Not the ecu?

My only request would be to support e fan control.

I see that running microsquirt w stock leading trailing coil mix may not work.

fidelity101 wrote: So its 285 for the harness? Not the ecu? My only request would be to support e fan control. I see that running microsquirt w stock leading trailing coil mix may not work.

I don't even think that's a particularly great price for the harness. Just a misleading product listing.

I think pretty much aftermarket ECU made in the last decade will control a fan.

fidelity101 wrote:

Swank Force One wrote: Right, that's why i'm saying look for a Sprint 500 if you want PS1000 stuff. PS1000 is also most definitely not tuned with an excel spreadsheet, unless you're talking about something strange that he's cooked up in the background? It's tuned via Haltech's software, ECU Manager. I've seen Sprint 500 units go for $400. Deals are out there.

Correct, I guess its easy when you are a software engineer.

I'm an embedded software engineer and I wouldn't tune my engine using Excel. :)

I haven't tried any Haltechs, but I'm loving the fact that I can download source code to my MS3. It'd be even better if it were open source (it's not, you can't distribute any changes you make to it), but having the source means A) it can do anything I want it to and B) I have the authoritative documentation about how it works.

Megasquirt all the way. Haltech is only popular because some rotary tuners used Haltech.

We're going to start doing MS3Pro installs at work, after the ongoing bitchfest I gave after tuning the last standalone car we did, which was a well known relatively high-end system which I won't name, but I'll tell you all about it over beers at the Challenge in July. Tore a bunch of hair out over the almost criminally poor way in which it handled things, which I suspect is the real reason why they have you running in closed loop 100% of the time - for whatever reason, it couldn't temperature-compensate to save its life and on a fully warmed up engine, it would anywhere be from adding 5% fuel or taking away 10% depending. I have never seen any fueling discrepancies like that on a Megasquirt - 30 degree day with the engine at 150 degrees, 105 degree day with the engine at 210 degrees, by God if I tuned it to 13:1, it was running 13:1, and I always run open-loop.

I eventually got into the groove of that system and treated the fuel map as less of a precision instrument and more like the steering wheel of a '74 Chrysler. You sort of put it in the general vicinity of where you want it to be, and as long as it stays between the lanes, that's good enough. Which works well enough since it is always in closed loop, but it took a lot to get the part of my brain screaming "WRONG! WRONG! EFI SHOULD BE A LOT MORE PRECISE THAN THIS!!" to shut up. Quit trying to zero out all of the map, that way lies madness...

And as a bonus for Megasquirt, there's no BS locked-out features that you either need a Superuser Cable or added licenses in order to use. If firmware for it exists, you can do it. And some of the things you can do are WILD. I was poking around in the "user defined" things you can do, and I can set my idle speed based on battery voltage. Which is something I currently do manually, since my alternator doesn't put out anything under 900 and the fans overpower the alternator below 1500.