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Build Your Own Fuel Injection Computer

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hope-you-have-a-spare-engine dept.

renaissance-redneck writes "I was searching for details on assembling a fuelie setup from junkyard parts when I stumbled across this: 'MegaSquirt is an Experimental Electronic Fuel Injector Controller for Internal Combustion engines. Its main goal was to create a simple fuel-only controller that could be easily reproduced with cost-effective components.' If you've got the time and the skills, it beats spending $2000."

5 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Interesting... by barzok · · Score: 3, Insightful
    As the government takes more control (with OBD-III) along with the carmakers, expect to see less "home-tuning" as time goes on. Even with recent OBD-II vehicles things are getting difficult. And it requires deep pockets, plus a lot of equipment.

    Really, if you're into this sort of thing, you're probably better off restoring an older car, and dropping in a crate engine with a bolt-on fuel injection kit like Edelbrock offers, then tuning that.

  2. Pretty cool, but... by Micro$will · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'd rather see a Mass Air Flow version of this. Maybe because I'm a little biased towards Ford's system, but MAF seems to be easier to modify. Supercharger? Turbo? No problem! Just make sure you plumb the MAF sensor before the blower or turbo inlet.Of course this is on a stock system, stock or mild cam, and good exhaust. No other modifications necessary.

    OTOH, with access to the assembler code for the EFI controller, you can run any setup you want, but you'll have to spend a couple days driving around with a laptop in the passenger seat adjusting A/F ratios and various timings until the engine runs smooth. This is also a great option for the multitude of oddball engines that never had an EFI option, or if you're like me and don't like those overpriced Rube Goldberg TBI setups Holley makes.

  3. Hackers. by jericho4.0 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This is very cool. The success stories page has some interesting real life applications of the thing. Reading it is very like reading overclocking stories.

    Some people are replacing stock computers in more modern cars for performance reasons, and some are putting them in older cars, and getting some impressive results. And, yes, you can hook up a laptop for on-the-fly tweaking. Now I want a car.

    --
    "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  4. Dont forget the group that inpired the MS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Check out diy-efi (homebrew EFI)
    gmecm (modding GM fuel injection)
    efi332 (inspiration and immediate predecessor of megasquirt)
    wb-02 (diy Wideband O2 sensor)

    http://www.diy-efi.org/

    We've been modding injection for 15+ years, how is this news?

  5. Limited usefullness by Lewie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This device would be good for converting a carbed vehicle to throttle body EFI. With only two injector drivers though, it's ultimate usefullness is pretty limited. They claim you can batch fire several injectors at once (non-sequential EFI), but that is hardly 21st century technology and has all the disadvatages of carbs and TBI like crappy emissions, fuel economy, and idle quality. If your mullet-mobile's Quadrajunk needs another rebuild, then this might work for you. If your tastes reach any higher, though, you'll need one of those "expensive" EFI computers.

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