Megasquirt Confusion
Turbo Mini Forums

Hoping someone can educate me a little here.

Many moons ago I had megajolt, worked well and was very impressed with it. I've found myself in a position where I need another, looking online the prices seem to be kind of crazy. After mentioning this to someone they have offered me MS1 at a very decent price but I am unsure if I can use it how I want.

I want to use the management for bike carbs on a 16v engine, megajolt would do the job but can I also do the same with megasquirt? This would be ideal really because if I then come to run ITB's i've already got management that can cope.

Lastly, is MS1 compatible with multiple engines much like Megajolt? I assume it runs off of an ford coilpack and can be interchangeable much likt the Megajolt unit.

Any help, advice or pointers would be excellent.

Thanks in advance, Tomm

How much does he want for a start?

1/4 Mile 14.3secs 96Mph Terminal 10psi of boost.


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Yeah MS1 will work ok. You may need to buy another driver for the ignition side if you want to use a coil pack.
Megasquirt is great because it can be wired to do most things, equally it needs to be wired up in order to do those things.
Check what they have it set up to do.

1275 N/A Sprite, 998 T2 Turbo Mayfair
1275 EFi Turbo

ms1 can be configured to connect to an edis like jolt... or with a soldering iron and some extra bits, you can run the coil pack direct.

Just one caveat to what Dan and Joe have said - whilst the MS1 is perfectly capable of running a coilpack direct, with usually just the addition of an extra ignition driver (and the previous owner may have already done that), as it's an MS1, the earliest chip, it may be installed on an early mainboard.

The MS1, 2 or 3 refers only to the processer not the other hardware.
The mainboards are either 2.2, 3.0 or 3.57

If it's on a 2.2 board (the early one) that board doesn't have any VR circuitry on it so you are limited to the EDIS mode (pretty much identical to an MJ) or a lot more DIY adding VR circuitry (usually by fitting an aftermarket add-on board) if you want to run the coilpack direct.

If it's on a V3.0 or 3.57, the mod to make it drive the coilpack direct is very easy and driving a coilpack direct is, IMO, far better than through an EDIS module.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

With one ignition driver, you can fire a single coil and and use a dizzy with the RPM advance locked ( i.e. like an SPI distributor). You'll do away with any timing scatter normally asociated with distributors and have full control of timing and dwell. Technically a coil pack solution might be preferable, but I'd be surprised if there was much difference under real world tests. Either way, it's an easy option to get things running.

If you do this on a V3.0 board (3.57 might be similar), take the output straight from the MOSFET centre pin. There is a nice thick track for the ignition current, but it is terminated with tiny tracks at the pins. I know why they've done it, but I think it would be unwise to put all the current for a single coil through those tiny links.

V3.0 board: