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I'm done with the A9L chips and Quarterhorse..time for aftermarket ECU..Input ?

30K views 65 replies 25 participants last post by  wywindsor 
#1 ·
After dealing with nasty cold & hot starts, bucking for years, tuners, dyno runs and buying this Quarterhorse along with BE and EA..I'm gonna dump it all and finally go with a standalone aftermarket ECU. These 25 year old EEC's that came in the Foxes are just too dated for mods.

I've been looking at the P.I.M.P, Megasqurit and on the deep end of the scale is the Pro-M setup. Any input ? I know the Pro-M setup is quite a bit more money then the others.

The car is your basic street Fox...306, H/C/I, all the normal goodies. I just wanna be able to drive enjoy the car without being at the mercy of a tuner and wasting months of my time researching the secrets of tuning the A9L with the Quarterhorse.

TIA guys !
 
#3 ·
To me, it looks as though you have already answered your own question.

Using the PIMP/megasquirt requires that you either spend a lot of time learning how to tune, and/or that you rely heavily on a tuner. You made it pretty clear that you do not want to do either of those.

The Pro-M system will allow you to easily do this on your own.
 
#4 ·
From what I was researching, it seems as though the Megasquirt/PIMP are must more tuning friendly then our old EEC's? I know more useless info about GUFB scalers/functions and FN this and FN that. There's up to date info on tuning with these Aftermarket EECs, where the old OEM code was never officialy release to the public and there's still quite a few unknown code in it.

There's thousands of $ wasted on trying to tune my old Fox ECU, what's another $2k on the Pro M?.. Lol
 
#5 ·
You can get an MSPNP installed in one of these cars in less than half an hour, and it should fire up on the base tune with your mods. See this link for an illustrated install guide.

MegaSquirtPNP by DIYAutoTune.com

Tuning it will be as simple as entering spark advance numbers in the spark table and moving the VE table numbers up or down. Get the registered version of TunerStudio and a wideband, and you can even have the laptop figure out what those VE table numbers should be for you. While a dyno is going to give you best results for tuning the spark table, you can adjust the spark table at a dragstrip test and tune night by playing back the data logs and seeing what timing numbers give you the fastest acceleration, which is labeled RPMDot in the data logs.

You can also download the tuning software here and check out an example project to get a better feel for the software.

EFI Analytics Software Downloads | tunerstudio.com
 
#6 ·
Matt thanks for the post! I was checking that out on YouTube, there's a bunch of vids on tuning with it. Seems much more tunable and user friendly.

My main concern is the driveability and manners of the car. I want to simply start in the morning and drive. After running to the store, come out and restart the car without a long cranking time and it barely catching and then it trying to find an idle... You know the simple things.. Lol

Also I've already had a wideband installed for a couple years now at the "request" of the first tuner as well
 
#8 ·
I have the same setup as you. 306, H/I/C, 24lb injectors. It idled like crap with C&L meter and 24lbs on stock A9L. Mind you i never drove it other then a drive around the block when i bought the car in January so i cant really tell how it did daily driving, but the hunting idle, had to rev it to stop from stalling out in slow speed manuvers etc

Installed EFIsource Microsquirt, came loaded with stock tune, all i had to do was connect 3 wires from stock BAP sensor into the provided MAP sensor, the stock 302 tune was already loaded and in 32f weather it fired up my mustang with no issues once i altered injector size in the tune. The Microsquirt IMO is better if you're going to use a basic setting without getting crazy with lots of inputs and outputs. I also use the MS to control my electric cooling fan, but thats about it. Its really hard to beat for $475. If you find that you just dont like MS and all this tuning, at least you're not out as much money.

A day of driving around monitoring afr's and tuning the fuel map, it idles and drives much better than the stock A9L.
 
#9 ·
thinking that changing hardware is going to solve your tuning problems

will result in just emptying your wallet faster.......

there isn't anything in the QH that is not allowing to tune for drive ability.
 
#12 ·
Tuner

If you have a QH and wideband already; use it. Contact Willie at Dirty Dirty Racing and get tuned for $150.00. Your tune should be a piece of cake for him if all your sensors and such are in good working order. I have a finicky SN95 with a 347 and Willie tuned it to run like a new car. My AODE also had to be tuned.
 
#15 ·
I can understand the frustration, but having looked at the MS2 and MS3 source code, I'm sorry... it's a joke. There's no way you'd ever get better driveability with a MS system, or any aftermarket system for that matter. Failure to properly tune the EEC-IV is a lack of knowledge/expertise on the tuner's part. I do sympathize with the OP, however... there is a steep and long learning curve to becoming a good tuner with the EEC-IV.
 
#23 ·
That sums it up IMO. Tuning became my new hobby rather than driving the car for over six months. Without participating in forums online it would have been much longer. Took me only a few days to get it running decent. Several months before I was truly satisfied with driveability on my combo. I enjoyed the learning process and the result in how my car drives is outstanding. Ford PCM, QH, Binary Editor or Tuner Pro give you nearly unlimited capability to make fine tune corrections. I completely understand it is not for everybody. Anyone who just wants their heavily modded car to run right and doesn't particularly care why should hire a tuner. It will be far less frustrating in most cases, and possibly less expensive in the end.
 
#16 ·
If you put a Holley system in, like the HP, it will auto tune and run like a champ. I have not had one bit of trouble (other than an initial ground loop issue because I grounded to the battery negative) with the Holley.

It has a few quirks, like most systems, but nothing major. Like they call the PSIG they actually use "PSIA", which misled me. I programmed PSIA and nothing worked right, then I learned it was really PSIG and was not PSIA. :) The fuel cut off limiter sucks. But other than that, it is great.

I would never ever go back to an A9L, and wish I would have bought the Holley years ago. I could have saved thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time.
 
#18 ·
I didn't have any luck using an aftermarket transmission controller on my custom built 4R70W behind the 408 in my '71 Mustang, so I ended up converting to EFI using EEC-V. I paid $25 for the strategy definition for CDAN4 along with $200 in junkyard parts, including the harness and coil packs. Couldn't be happier with the transmission control. Ford has a lot of levers for tuning their electronic transmissions and the aftermarket stuff I've seen doesn't even scratch the surface, which is what you need for great driveability.
 
#19 ·
I have to agree. The transmission tuning is by far the most complicated aspect of my tune. Binary Editor has in the neighborhood of 300 different parameters to adjust the AODE/4R70W.
 
#27 ·
What is the matter with your Pro M system? What is your combination? I thought the self correcting nature of the computer made it a real plug and play setup?
 
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#32 ·
I'm running an 89 stock block, si trim making 10# boost, edelbrock rpm heads, gt40 tubular intake, 30# injectors. Either system would allow me to eliminate the fmu and msd boost retard because it's all in the tune correct? I have a 340 in the tank and no trex pump installed.
 
#34 ·
I had no trouble tuning the 306 with the Kenne Bell on it and a mild cam using the TwEECer. The engine size being the same as stock & under normal driving conditions, there wasn't much to it other than getting a decent MAF and it's associated transfer function. A few other tweaks for a larger TB and it ran excellent.

When I switched to the 427 & street-unfriendly cam, I thought I could just change the displacement and a couple other parameters and it would be OK. The off-idle & light-load tuning with this stupid cam was annoying and I ended up half-assing it by reducing timing to minimize bucking. It ran acceptably after these tweaks, but I had been slowly buying used a used HP and associated cabling. I made the main power cable and lucked into a half-price dual-sync distributor (eliminates ground issue and it is short so I can fit a Hi-Ram or my old GT500 supercharger over it if needed.) I was still ready to sell the HP if it didn't provide easier/better tunability with this grouchy cam. A few tweaks to IAC and fueling and I was able to get good tip-in response and reasonable below 2k RPM operation (oh, and 10 degrees more light-load timing which allows for a cooler engine.) The key is targeting a richer mixture under the light-load conditions to compensate for the exhaust gas dilution caused by overlap at lighter loads. Not easy to do with the A9L which targets 14.7:1 (you can offset the switching of the O2 sensors or run open loop I suppose, but it's tricky.) Holley HP is easy because it uses wideband feedback, thus you can command any ratio you want from idle to peak RPM. I've decided to keep the HP, it also has additional capabilities that allowed me to remove a ton of patch wiring needed to log certain parameters. Removing the 32 year old harness for a new clean looking setup was nice also.
 
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#50 ·
I had no trouble tuning the 306 with the Kenne Bell on it and a mild cam using the TwEECer. The engine size being the same as stock & under normal driving conditions, there wasn't much to it other than getting a decent MAF and it's associated transfer function. A few other tweaks for a larger TB and it ran excellent.

When I switched to the 427 & street-unfriendly cam, I thought I could just change the displacement and a couple other parameters and it would be OK. The off-idle & light-load tuning with this stupid cam was annoying and I ended up half-assing it by reducing timing to minimize bucking. It ran acceptably after these tweaks, but I had been slowly buying used a used HP and associated cabling. I made the main power cable and lucked into a half-price dual-sync distributor (eliminates ground issue and it is short so I can fit a Hi-Ram or my old GT500 supercharger over it if needed.) I was still ready to sell the HP if it didn't provide easier/better tunability with this grouchy cam. A few tweaks to IAC and fueling and I was able to get good tip-in response and reasonable below 2k RPM operation (oh, and 10 degrees more light-load timing which allows for a cooler engine.) The key is targeting a richer mixture under the light-load conditions to compensate for the exhaust gas dilution caused by overlap at lighter loads. Not easy to do with the A9L which targets 14.7:1 (you can offset the switching of the O2 sensors or run open loop I suppose, but it's tricky.) Holley HP is easy because it uses wideband feedback, thus you can command any ratio you want from idle to peak RPM. I've decided to keep the HP, it also has additional capabilities that allowed me to remove a ton of patch wiring needed to log certain parameters. Removing the 32 year old harness for a new clean looking setup was nice also.
Good post above, I'm going to disagree with one thing and it's contained in my post that I requoted here. I found tuning a mild cam setup with a supercharger (well PD anyway) was relatively easy. Just scale up and add fuel as needed. What I found difficult to impossible was tuning a large cam for good street manners. It seems that the dilution at light load caused by the cam was easier to deal with using wideband feedback (basically targeting a richer mixture to minimize misfires.) My experience, ymmv.
 
#35 ·
I've had or tuned Tweecer, PMS, QH, FAST, MS, and Holley EFI. Holley easily gets my vote. Not saying that the other systems won't do everything you need but when I weigh the things that are important to me, Holley wins. No experience with the Pro-M system.

I just bought another car that had been tuned with QH. Ran fine and made good power. No real driveability or starting issues. Drove it for 5 minutes after I got it home and then began the process of installing a Holley EFI system. I like their system that much but also know that I like to fix things that ain't broke.
 
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