macanic21

Hey guys, I thought I had this figured out but now I'm not sure.

Which ECU should I use?

At some point we will be swapping an boosted LS into a 79 camaro with a manual trans. I was just going to go with MS but I hear the factory ECU's are more powerful. Any advice or pros and cons you guys could provide would be a big help. Cost is a factor so we are not going to be doing any $2500 Haltech setups. I was thinking of just biting the bullet and going with a MS3 to give you an idea of our price range.

Haddixj

iTrader: (1)

I was in the same boat and bought a MS3x from a member here and decided to use the factory setup although it costs more in the end with a harness and HP tuners. I am going to list it for sell. It has a harness made for an LS1 and has the Map daddy sensor. I would let it go if your interested send me a PM. People love MS and people love the factory and holley. It depends on what your comfortable with. Send me a PM if your interested.

macanic21

Well, we aren't to the point of purchasing yet but thanks.

You had to purchase the harness separately? How much did that cost you? If we went with the factory setup we would try to get an engine with everything. If the harness and ECU were already included with the engine, would that sway any ones decision?

HP tuners is like $650 + $100 in credits to license the ECU?
MS3 Pro is $1200?
MS3 EMS (probably what we would go with) is $700.

Honestly, looking at the numbers it would seem more cost effective to go with HP Tuners if you already had an ECU. The huge advantage would be that it only costs $100 to tune the next vehicle.

Thoughts?

Haddixj

iTrader: (1)

Hp tuners comes with 6 credits that should be enough to license 3 cars if I remember correctly. You don't have to buy a new harness to run the factory setup but you will have to modify it to make it standalone and the stories vary on how hard it is depending on your wiring experience. I didn't want to hassle with it and bought one for around $600 that included the relays for my dual fans and fuel pump. That's where I got that from.

JackrabbitSlim

HPT comes with 8 credits. It'll run you 2 credits for a basic tune, and is usually 2 credits for "enhancements" to the map (e.g. 2bar SD, 3bar, etc..).

Edit: look up Denmah. He's become somewhat famous/infamous for (relatively) cheaply making things work, and seems to love the MS system. He may be able to give you more insight than many could.

macanic21

Well, Denmah is the reason we were going to go MS. He's like an hour or so away from me also, so I imagine that if we would run into an issue we could probably get him to bail us out if we were running MS.

As long as we can get enough documentation such as ECU and sensor pin outs as well as what type of signal the sensors put out and what the ECU is expecting we can make up the harness ourselves. I'm not real worried about the wiring. Honestly, I'm thinking it might be easier to start from scratch on the harness anyway, not really sure.

Are there any LS specific books out there on this subject?

macanic21

I didn't realize EFI Live worked on these things too.

Which system would be easiest to add additional I/O such as wide ban, EGT ect.?

Haddixj

iTrader: (1)

I have only looked at HP tuners and they do have an interface for plugging additional I/O. I think it is called MVI pro.

macanic21

So you can't add IO to the factory ECU without buying more hardware?

LLLosingit

iTrader: (4)

Have you looked at the Holley Dominator and HP? The Holley HP should be in your price range and besides having many great features it's also easy to tune.

macanic21

No I haven't looked at the Holley stuff because just the HP ecu is over $1100 on their site. That's stupid when I can get an MS ECU for $750. Holley wants $450 for a stinking harness. So thats $1550 unless I want to somehow scrounge up their probably proprietary connectors to make my own from scratch. Sorry, I just have a thing against insanely high priced and over rated stuff. Do you know I can buy an entire computer with WAY more power than that stupid ECU has for $400? Electronics are NOT that expensive anymore. We aren't going to have over $1000 in this ECU and tuning package unless there is a VERY good reason to do so. We are not running the Baja 1000 so we don't need to pay triple the money for what ever insurance a name brand would get us.

Thanks for the idea. The price of that stuff just annoys me because its not necessary.

LLLosingit

iTrader: (4)

I looked at the Holley system among others and went with the Holley for a few reasons. Ease of use and expandability and the fact that I figure my time is worth something also. The Holley system has a short learning curve and it's plug and play.

Keep in mind you aren't paying for just the electronics stuffed in a box you are paying for development and continued developments, Holley updates are free and they have been good at listening to what people want.

The connectors are not specific to Holley and neither are the most of the sensors.

I looked at using the stock ECU but really don't want to spend the time to make my own harness then pay for HPtuners and then try to learn it. To buy a harness for my S10 so all gauges work runs $700-900 plus the cost of HPtuners I'd already be at the cost of the Holley HP.

I also considered MegaSquirt but by the time I bought everything I needed I would still be at $1000 or so, I also don't think the product is nearly as user friendly as the Holley or some of the others available and again time is money.

I'm not saying Holley is the better option for everyone, I just weighed all my options and found it was better for what I needed to do. It also helped that when I was trying to make up my mind Amazon had the HP system with harness for less than $1100 and they had the Dominator ecu for $1401.
I bought two of each knowing the price was going up at the end of 2014.

macanic21

Yeah I see your point. Fortunately for us, we don't have any gauges to run or things like that. How do you add IO to the Holley stuff? Is it CAN bus modules?

RixTrix

I have been burned by both Holley and Edelbrock spending hours on the phone with tech support (who seem to know less than me) and engineers coughing up hairball solutions while hiding system weaknesses.

I prefer to roll my own, I have not done anything yet that would convince me want to use anything more high zoot than a MS.
With an MS you can rewrite code and compile your own firmware, if you want to take it that far!
Some MFGRs will do that but at an considerable additional expense (beyond the original incursion into your wallet) and none will show you their code.

HP tuner seems like a viable consideration due to the abilities (unresearched) to access the deeper darker areas (and Transmission control?).