The cost of carb, jets, and other rebuild bits are fast approaching the price of MS1 kit. I'm thinking of letting the challenge budget suffer to make it easier and go pre-assembled, but . . . . How hard is it to assemble via kit?
The cost of carb, jets, and other rebuild bits are fast approaching the price of MS1 kit. I'm thinking of letting the challenge budget suffer to make it easier and go pre-assembled, but . . . . How hard is it to assemble via kit?
I took my sweet time with assembling MSII and it was about 10 hours. I followed the assembly guide, and stopped and tested along the way. I have had no troubles with the assembly.
If you can do a decent job of soldering, you will do fine.
You want a GOOD quality soldering pencil - I prefer the ones that have an adjustable heat on a separate base. A bit more money, but they do a great job if tiny soldering.
I say go for it!
And do Megasquirt Extra. You can thank me later.
I soldered it in one sitting and the only testing I did was when I connected it to the car, I was freaking out about it but it was one of the easiest and most rewarding things I did to my challenge car. I say read the manual like ten times before even picking up the iron.
Having done a couple MSII I would not hesitate to do it now. The first one I was a bit more stressful.
If you don't have not soldered anything get a couple of those cheap kit things for a radio and flashing led Christmas tree things and warm up on that. Then go to town on the ms. Oh get a stim Jim. They are a good thin to practice with and are invaluable for testing during the build and down the road.
And since the stim Jim is not used on the car there is no budjet hit. 
Part of me wonders if you could buy an assembled unit and only apply the kit price. Because who's going to know?
Honer
I'm debating between MS1 or attempting to adapt GM 7749 ECU. The GM stuffs was $60ish bucks total from Pull-A-Part. The added goods to tune it is similar to puchasing a MS1 kit without the budget hit.
In reply to Knurled:
My pocket and integrity will know!!
In reply to Strike_Zero:
Tell me more about the GM thing.
I've gotten somewhat lucky finding half-built or used Megasquirts on the local classifieds but it's not something that you can rely upon (maybe one per year, and often requiring a lot of debugging work to undo what the previous owner did if they never got it running). Another option, if you're feeling brave.
For soldering, I have a trusty Hakko FX-888 with the narrow tip. I wish the Hakko tips weren't so expensive, but the rest of the package is surprisingly inexpensive to make up for it. The 888 has been supplanted at least twice by newer models, as far as I know.
In reply to Stampie:
http://www.gearhead-efi.com/
Dusterbd13 found this and I think gave it a try.
I headed over to Moates site and came up with ~$210 worth of tuning stuffs. I haven't added the cost of a wideband and gauge yet. The wiring, sensors, and ECU I pulled totalled $60
MS1:
Pros:
Cons:
GM stuff:
Pros:
Cons:
I just have to decide which one I wanna go with.
In reply to Strike_Zero:
Cool. For Challenge purposes it sounds great. I'm going to research more. You can tune with a wide band but then go back to the stock oxygen sensor for budget right?
Correct!
You'll need to log in to post.
