MS vs WAR

[LowR3V'in]

one thing i have not seen in the thread so far is, what is the total cost for a full boat MS. wasted spark, sequetial injectors, ETC. everything. total price with the different sensors, ETC.

If you say you'll be boosting then ms all the way.
MS doesn't support sequential injection yet. Have to wait for ms3.

You might be the type of person who would go for a plug and play unit
so considering it's P&P it'll cost about $500-600. Wasted spark can't be over 30$ +
coils and wires, but a chip won't do that anyway so why complain?

Lc1 is like 100bux idk. You'd have to look that up. GM air temp sensor is ultra cheap too.
Isn't a wideband needed to tune fuel on the Miller emulator? Correct me if I am wrong.
not allot of info on that thing.

[der affe]

not complaining., but when i have tried to research it, i go into info OVERLOAD and can't seem to make it out.

i have someone who will teach me about the tuning end of it, i know there is support out there. i am hoping to gleen some more insight into MS from this thread without getting lost.

i will deffinately go for a plug and play unit from someone.

what exactly is a stim? is it just a program to check to see if everythiong is working correctly before you install it? do i need one if i am getting a plug and play?

when is MS3 comming out?
how much more beneficial would the seqential injectors going to be?

do i just need to look for coil packs from a GM V-6 (or FORD maybe?)?

because of the TPS location on the Dbilas there is not much room between the firewall and the throttle bodies. how much deeper (thicker) is the variable TPS that will bolt to the stock throttle body? i need to know if i am going to have to beat the crap out of the fire wall first. gaskets between the intake and the throttle bodies are $120.00 a set and only available from germany through Dbilas, don't want to take them off and on more than once!

i am not going to do the S/C right away i will have a lot of fab work to do first for the air log for the ITB's, piping, ETC. for that reason, i will be going N/A with the ITB's first on the new motor.

i am looking for the best bang for my $$ without having to have my car down for weeks while i wire and splice things in ETC. if you convince me to go MS insted of WAR chip i want everything in hand before i down the car.

when i see stuff like this:

http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80011&highlight=plug+play+MS

it scares the crap out of me that i am going to have $1500.00 wrapped up in a MS set up, that is not too too far away from a WOLF EMS at that point

[nando]

If you say you'll be boosting then ms all the way.
MS doesn't support sequential injection yet. Have to wait for ms3.

MS2 actually does now (in beta phase, based off the new 2.1.0 code), but you have to do some hardware modifications, and you need a cam signal. MS3 of course has it built in but that's not here yet. ;)

a stim is a peice of hardware that plugs into the MS and sends it input signals. This is how you know if it's working or not before you put it in the car, and why people that don't have stims tend to have problems.

you shouldn't have to spend anywhere near $1500, even with the LC-1, all the sensors (you only really need a TPS and an IAT). GM coils were like $50, the extra hardware for runing them was less than $20, and you can get ends from summit for like $10 and modify the stock wires to work with the new coils. the PWM idle board is only $20 or so. Besides a PnP board I can't think of anything else you'd really need. I'd figure $800-900 with the wideband ($200), depending on how much you build yourself and how much you get pre-built.

Besides, some of the things (sensors, wideband) can be used again if you upgrade to Wolf or something later so you can't really count them in the total cost vs a different system. You should still get a wideband with the war chip too, unless you like tuning blind.

[der affe]

ok, so i don't really need 6 MAP sendor because of my ITBs then?

he says in the ad it is MS3. i thought that it was not out yet?

what is the syncro thing he is talking about in the ad?

is there a specific MAP sensor i need to get? i can get most GM stuff on the cheap through friends, hopefully that stuff will be what i need.

sorry for the 100 questions, i have serched and read about MS, but like i said before, it is not long before i just get lost in info overload and give up

[nando]

that's a 3.0 board, MS1/2/3 is the chip you put into it. sounds like it's an MS1 chip. Never heard of the synchro thing, sounds like an external board meant to blend together the 6 independent map signals. sounds like a really complicated way to run ITBs!

you don't really need 6 map sensors either. I'd just run it as alpha-N if you are worried about a good map signal.

MS comes with a 2 bar map sensor by default so I wouldn't worry about that either. you can also run both MAP and Alpha-N at the same time if you want to add boost, just start your MAP table at 100kpa instead of the normal 20-30kpa.

[Good & Tight]

Best way to run ITB's and get a clean map signal is to make a vacuum canister to connect all the ITB's to it and the map line.

[der affe]

thanks everyone, it is starting to make sense to the slow guy now.

so i am going to need to source or fab a vacuume canister to collect all the signals from the ITB's, gotcha.

i am going to want to get a plug and play MS2 with wasted spark, alpha-n, etc that has a screen shot atleast of the stim being run on it.

i need to source up a V-6 GM coil pac and GM IAT sensor and pigtail.

GM wideband and the wideband controler that xlibiel posted.

as far as the software, can i just get all in the MS when i order the unit or do i need to source it from an outside source?

once again, thanks!

[nando]

software is free, check MS2extra.com for firmware, tuning software and logging software (tuner studio, megalogviewer).

Alpha-N is just a software setting. It measures load with the TPS instead of a MAP or MAF (speed-density). When people say they got an Alpha-N ecu it just means they don't really know what they're talking about. ;)

I suggest DIYautotune for just about everything you need. They sell the PnP boards that allow you to put everything inside the motronic case as well. Matt has quite a bit of experience with M20s and megasquirt and is always willing to answer questions and help troubleshoot.

something like this:

http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79843

[der affe]

thanks, that sounds good except that i think i would rather get a pre-assembled unit first time out of the gate since i have no real solid knowledge of the system therefore i can.t really trouble shoot it very well if i screw something up putting it together. it is not the soldering that scares me, just the lack of knowledge of the system.

i am going to hit up my GM friends for the coil packs, IAT, wideband O2 sensors and associated harware and connectors. i think i can get it for free or close to that.

i know that there are several members on here that do pre assembled plug and play MS that are in the motronic 1.3 boxes and i have sent out pm's to them.

since space is going to be a concern, what is the variable TPS that bolts to the stock throttle body without an adaptor? (dbilas uses a stock TPS)

[nando]

you need a late M30 auto TPS, or an E36 (M42, M50, etc) TPS with an adapter plate. The M30 TPS bolts right up but needs wired, the E36 TPS plugs right in but needs an adapter to bolt to the TB (it's really simple though). your choice!

careful on the wideband, you need more than just a sensor - you need a controller as well.

[nando]

as far as being afraid to put it together from lack of understanding - that is where you will gain the most! The whole thing is broken down into different sections (power, communications, inputs, outputs) so you will know what each part does. and if you also get a stimulator you can test it before you ever touch your car.

aside from that, there's always the SMD board. I think DIY will even hook it up to run your M20 as requested.

[der affe]

ok, it is getting less and less scary.

looks like i need to sit down and spend some time infront of the desk top insted of my phone and pour over DIYautotunes site.

as far as the wideband, they sell a controler kit for $50 + another $30 for a digi numeric read out and $5 shipping total.xlibiel is using that without any issues.


since i am looking at $599 for the WAR since i can't reuse my MAF this is looking like a better option.

i can always recoupe some of the money when i resell my ARC2-a and the MAF.

what am i going to need in the way of a laptop as far as power? i have a couple of old laptops that have barely enough power to run the internet.......very slowly. can i put the stim and other software onto a disc and load ot from there or do i need to download it directly from the web into the laptop?

[nando]

you want something that can at least run Windows 2k. Megatune will run on a slower computer, but if you want to do any VE analysis with MLV you'll want something faster - I'd say a 1ghz CPU, wireless card, 512mb of ram and a serial port at minimum. laptops like that run around $150-200. tuner studio probably needs a 1ghz CPU minimum.

you really want an internet connection, but if you can copy it from another computer that's no big deal.

[der affe]

ok. i have a really nice desktop that i just added 1.5 trig of memory with a 70gig back up memory in addition, but i turned off my high speed to save some money and moved it over to my parents house to mooch off of their HS connection for free.

i can always hook up the laptop to their connection to download the software then take it home to use it for the stim and tuning. there is also 5 or 5 decent signals that i can pirate from in a pinch. they are just kind of slow.

i was hoping to keep from buying another laptop as that would just start to add to the cost of everything

there is also abunch of places with wifi in my hood so i could do it there too.

[nando]

I'm sure you can get away with what you have. if all you are using it for is tuning, delete everything off it and stop all the uncessesary processes. my first laptop was like a 500mhz machine with 256mb and it worked fine, it was just slow at VE analysis.