The Megasquirt Build

In order to advance our understanding of race and track car electronics we decided to try to build one of the popular stand alone ECU kits on the market.  The DIYautotune DIYPNP megasquirt.  

To prepare for building the megasquirt we built one of the JimStim engine Stimulator (simulator) kits.  While we assembled many other simple kits to practice and develop basic skills needed to assemble the Megasquirt, this was the most complicated kit built as both a means of testing the Megasquirt upon completion and as a confirmation of our skill level.  

The Megasquirt is a fairly complex kit but with some care and understanding it becomes fairly straightforward.  

We found assembling the main board to be fairly straight forward.  The next step would be to configure the jumper wires between boards so the ECU can be a true "plug and play" unit using the wiring present in the car.

With the jumper configuration complte it was time to plug it into the test car and go from learning about the computer itself to learning how the computer interacts with the sensors in the vehcile.  As it turns out assembling an engine computer and learning to teach the computer to run the car are two very different and very challenging things.