- So far in Money Pit, we've been putting new feet, new legs, new biceps, new button
muscles on the Miata and well, dude's getting beefy. But, just like a lanky teenager with more muscles than coordination, the Miata's brain is still
just a little bit behind. So do we just sit here and wait for this thing
to go through puberty, to develop some cognitive skills? Or do we attempt brain surgery? I think we attempt brain surgery. I think I'd be good at it. So today that's exactly
what we're gonna do. We're gonna rip out the stock ECU and replace it with an
aftermarket standalone ECU. Just like brain surgery
this could go wrong and leave the Miata dead on the table, (car engine roaring) or it could open us up
to making big power. Along the way we'll talk about what this allows us to take control of. We'll also talk about what the cons are and then at the end of the episode, we're gonna take this
thing back to the dyno and see if we can make any more power with just a new tune. I'm Zack and this is Money Pit. Let's do some brain surgery. (upbeat music) Big thanks to Jazwares and Micro machines for sponsoring this week's
episode of Money Pit. Millions of people love playing with cars, but they're just too darn
big to have any fun with. If only they were less big and more micro. - It's too big. - Yo, my guy, James, try this out. (cheering) Now you too can think big and play small with the rebirth of Micro Machines. Playing with cars has never
been more fun or easier than playing with these miniature, micro, highly detailed toys. Let your imagination run wild with these realistic vehicles and playsets. Yes, you heard it right,
Micro machines are back baby. And we couldn't be more
excited that Jazwares asked us to be a media
partner for the relaunch. My plan has worked, I get
paid to play with toys. Hey Joe, you bet you're pretty jealous having to work on a real car, when I get to play with these tiny ones. - This one's pretty small too. - Micro machines are perfect
for all car enthusiasts and collectors out there. And for me, it's a really fun way to relive my childhood
years with my family. I mean, I remember playing
with super van city. A dope van with cars that
transforms into a real city that you can play with. And guess what man, super van city is back and is better than ever. Freaking crazy, I missed you. You're never too old to be a kid again. So click on the link in
the description below, check out all the sets and vehicles that micro machines is launching and keep an eye out for
them in retail stores. Thanks again to Jazwares
and Micro Machines for including us, we are
so excited about this. Now, back to Zack. (soft beat music) - See how many he breaks this time. - Hey man, hey man, these
things are holding strong. I've had these out like at
least five times I think. We've only had really one casualty. Oh, I'm just kidding, just kidding. There she is. All right, before we go any further, I'm gonna disconnect the battery because you don't wanna mess with
electrical components in general, especially important ones like the ECU with the battery connected. So these here is where all the sensors from the engine Bay go to and it's definitely the brain of the car. And it's programmed by the
engineers who made your car to run efficiently and
safely in all conditions. And the other thing is once
you start modifying your car, like we have, you start putting some aftermarket
car parts on your engine, you've changed the engine. And if you don't change the
tune you're not fully utilizing the parts that you've
installed on your car. So in the case of the Miata,
the intake, the headers, the exhaust, all those
things that we've installed, they're not being really
taken into account on the factor of tune. In my opinion, the best
option on the Miata is a full standalone. If you watch the flame
thrower video on the Miata, we flashed my roommate's stock ECU and put a new file on it, to account for the
modifications that he had and the outcome that he wanted. It's not really that easy on this ECU, so that's why we're going full standalone. But on a lot of newer cars,
you do have that option. You don't have to go for a standalone, you get to retain your OEM ECU but you get to take control
of it, which is really cool. Because biggest problem in my
opinion with a standalone ECU is that it's not gonna pass smog anymore. And for that reason, I'm definitely not gonna
throw this thing away in case we ever need to pair smog. - Like next year? - Like... - A couple months? - Yeah, like right now (laughs). But the fact is that the stock ECU is controlling a lot of stuff and the guys who wrote the
stock tune are really smart. So putting all this
responsibility into our hands is no small matter. We're gonna have to make sure that we do a lot of things right
to make this thing run as good as possible, but
I think we can do it. So if you're looking
at any standalone ECU, it's gonna give you a lot of power, you're gonna be able to take
control of a lot of things. For one you're no longer tied
to your stock fuel injectors. If you were to put new larger injectors in like in case you were trying
to turbocharge a Miata, you would need to be able to tell the ECU about those bigger injectors. What size they are and how
much fuel they're squirting. So the mega score gives us that ability. Another thing it gives us control over is our spark timing. Which is super important
for making good power and not hurting our engine. Very important to have control over that. The Miata currently uses
a mass airflow sensor, but the mega squirt will allow us to move to a speed density setup. Being able to move to speed density, lets us get rid of our
mass airflow sensor, which is important if
you're trying to go turbo. And then the ECU actually
has a map sensor built in a manifold, absolute pressure. And it's responsible
for taking the pressure in the manifold at all times. It's gonna use our stock math for now, so that's where it gets tempt signal from. RPM signal and we will tell
it what size the engine is. And with those things,
the ECU can figure out how much air is flowing through
the engine at any point. And then from that figure
out how much fuel to squirt into each cylinder, based on, the target air
fuel ratios that you set. All we have to do is tune
our volume metric efficiency. That's what speed density is. Let's talk about that for a minute. Oh my God, it's hot out here. Okay, so let's talk about
volumetric efficiency and what it is. It's basically the percentage of the theoretical
displacement of an engine that is actually being
displaced at any given time. This is a one point eight liter engine. So if it's volumetric
efficiency was at 100%, that means it's actually
displacing 1.8 liters of air on every revolution in the crankshaft. No engine runs at full
volume metric efficiency all the time. But when this thing is at max
power at wide open throttle, hopefully we're getting close
to 100% volumetric efficiency. They used to always say, there's no replacement for displacement. I'm sure you've heard that,
but that's not true anymore. And the reason that's not true is because of things like
turbos and superchargers. Those things can force air into an engine and get them to operate at above a 100% volumetric efficiency,
which is really cool. So with our new ECU, we're
gonna be able to tune our volume metric efficiency table. And from that it figures
out how much fuel to squirt and when and all of that. So by tuning volumetric
efficiency or speed density, it makes the tuning process a
lot quicker and a lot easier. And it's pretty cool, got it? I think my hands are clean
enough for brain surgery, let's dig in. So this is the MS3Pro plug and
play set up for mega squirt we're gonna the same
connectors from our ECU. Now click right into the box here. So now that we're plugged in, I'm just gonna run our vacuum line from the engine Bay back to the ECU. On the Miata, there's a hole down here that just had a plug in it. So I've got my welding wire and I just stabbed right into it, poked the welding wire through. And now it's also coming
out in the footwall and this will be our go-between. I'll use this to pull
our vacuum line through. Okay, so we've got the vacuum line stuck onto the end of the welding wire and then we've got it taped on here. So now I'm gonna pull the
welding wire through the firewall and hopefully it bring
the vacuum line with it. I'm gonna take this old plug
that was in the firewall and the hole that we used. Cut a little X in the middle of it and we're just gonna put
our vacuum line through it, just to protect it, so that it doesn't get
cut on the firewall. Mega squirt came with
this applied vacuum T, so we're gonna T in to this
vacuum line right here, that goes right into the intake manifold. So this vacuum line
sees manifold pressure, whatever it is at all time. So I have no concern
about that coming out. You could add some little
zip ties if you wanted to. Make sure it's not kinked, make sure there's no
resistance to flow anywhere so that our ECU gets a nice,
accurate reading all the time. All right, now we've got the vacuum line through the firewall, so we're just working
back towards the ECU. We're routing it under the carpet, 'cause we're trying to
act like professionals. Tada! Now we can mount up our ECU
box with some provided screws. Then we'll trim this to
length, plug in our reference. We're also gonna install
a wide band 02 sensors, so we can monitor our air fuel ratios. You need a wide band. So we got one and we're gonna install it. (upbeat music) We're gonna install our
air fuel ratio gauge. I've got this one made by Innovate and it's a pretty sweet piece of kit. So we're gonna put it the Miata so we can keep an eye
on our air fuel ratios, which is very important
when you're tuning. Especially when you have a standalone ECU. I'm gonna install our gauge. I think I'm gonna use one of
our air conditioning vents, since I never use the air conditioning. And then we're gonna have to
do a little bit of wiring. We're gonna replace our O2 sensor with this nice Bosch unit
that the kit comes with. And this will allow us to keep an eye on our air fuel ratios. Oh, good Lord, oh my toe. (soft beat music) Jeez, I'm gonna break this thing someday. Okay, that's the whole thing. Eddie, will you hand me that motor? That's not bad, that looks pretty good. Maybe a little further recess
than I would like ideally, but, that's not bad. Oh my God, so sad, we have to glue that. (soft beat music) So our gauge wiring is wired,
it's where it needs to be. Let's get down there and get
the old O2 sensor in place. (soft beat music) All right, so we've got the cable that will go to our wide band controller. We'll run this across
the engine get it also and then we've got our new sensor that'll go down in the header
and connect right here. And then it's just getting
the controller wired up inside the car and
getting the gauge working. So right now I'm looking
for a 12 volt source that turns on with ignition
on and a good ground. I'm checking this connector
that goes to the window switches in the center console. And what I'm looking for is a good ground and an ignition switched positive, ignition switch 12 volts. So I've got my test leads here, one clamped to chassis to ground. And then I've got us on
(indistinct) test right here. So we know if we touch
the chassis anywhere, it'll create a continuous
circuit and make a noise. Anything that makes that noise is ground. So in here we've got ground. Now we need to find 12 volts. We'll go to our 20 volt range on our meter and now we're just looking for 12 volts. But we want it to come on with the key, I don't want it to be on right now. Now we're just looking
for voltage to come up on the display on our multimeter and it's just staying zero right now. So none of these are hot currently, cool. Let's turn the key on
and see what we find. Well bam. Okay, right beneath our
ground we've got 12 volts and it turns on with the key. So if I were to turn
the key off right now, it's switched source of power. Then we'll need to get the
controller talking to the gauge with a wire that goes between the two. And I believe same deal with the ECU. One wire will go from the
controller into the ECU. So we're gonna wiring a relay to control the wide band controller. We're also gonna fuse it
with a little five amp fuse. So we're just adding a
little circuit to power up the wide band controller. Should be nice and easy,
I've got some spare relays and it's just a matter of
doing a little bit of wiring and soldering and putting
things where they need to be. (upbeat music) So if you need to run a big
voltage from the battery, but you want it to be switched and you don't really
wanna run that big voltage to a big giant switch. What you can do, is switch big
voltage with little voltage. So basically I can run this
straight from the battery and then this straight into
whatever I'm trying to power. But rather than having that
constant on all the time from the battery, I switch it with the
little side of the relay. So in this instance what I'm gonna do is run power straight
from the battery, okay? Into the relay and then out of the relay and into the wide band controller. But I'm gonna take 12 volt ignition source from the ECU and power up
the small side of the relay. So that we're not interfering
with the ECU circuit, it's not pulling any extra voltage. All this needs to do is see 12 volts and it turns the switch on. So we can use that 12 volt ignition source that we found earlier, but we'll run power
straight from the battery. So we're not drawing on the ECU circuit. Our standalone is in place
and we've got all the wiring roughed out for our OB... Christ, I can't even remember
what things we're doing. OBD two sensor? All right, so we've got our
new standalone ECU mounted, our wide band O2 sensor controller, now it's time to connect
our laptop computer. Then we'll load up the base map
that mega squirt provided us for a 1994 Miata. And then we should be
able to get it to fire up, hopefully without too much drama. 'Dun-dun-dun' (laughs). This is what's called tuner studio, this is the interface that we'll use between the mega squirt and
our computer to do some tuning. But for right now, we gotta
get this thing fired up. So this is the first
time we've been in it. Just create a new project. Mooonneeey Piiiiiit. Configuration settings, wide band. So now I need to figure out
how to load up our base map so that the ECU understands
what car it's in. And then once we do that, it should be about time for startup. (car engine roaring) Figure it out girl, figure it out. (car engine roaring) Well, it is running very rich,
which is good, that's safe. Anything like this should
default to running rich. 'Cause rich, while it is not efficient and you waste gas, it's safe. You're not generally
gonna hurt your engine if you're running rich. Now I think this is probably
just going through some checks and trying to figure out idol. I'm honestly not sure. I'm just gonna let it run for awhile and we'll go from there. (car engine roaring) All right, so our idol has smoothed out. It's a little low right
now, but that's okay. We need to do a few things. I need to calibrate our
throttle position sensor, so the ECU knows what
voltage closed throttle is and full open, so it can figure
out everything in between. And I also need to check the timing and make sure that the ignition timing actually matches the ECU and
what's actually happening. I can lock the ignition
timing at whatever I want, 10 degrees before top dead center. I'll walk it down, I'll
get my timing light out and I'll check to make sure that that's actually what's
happening on the engine. And if it's not, I can go in
and change through the ECU, our spark timing to make
sure that it's matched up. That's very important, because if you think your
spark timing is one thing and it's actually another,
you can do a lot of damage. So you've got to check that
anytime you install a new ECU. Well I'm gonna do that tomorrow morning. (upbeat music) Once again, we have made
it down to long beach to my friends at EF1 Motor Sports, or more specifically their
tuning division, EF1 tuning. The Miata drove great on the way here, drives great on the bass
tune, it's very smooth. So I don't think we're gonna
have to work too terribly hard to get this thing making power today. So let's go slam it on the dyno. (upbeat music) Critical pre-dyno checks. Make sure you have oil,
make sure you have a cool, make sure the thing is running right. And I think we're all good here. - You'd be surprised at... - What people show up with. - It's (indistinct) like
dude, there's no oil in it. - Well, you should have
tuned some oil into it Gibby. I'm gonna blame me for anything
that happens here today. Good or bad. So you're ready for that. - I am ready for it. - So to make this pretty
easy to understand, we were talking about
volumetric efficiency before and how much easier it is to tune. And the reason it's easy is because you don't have to set a
bunch of fuel corrections. Basically you tweak your
volumetric efficiency table until your actual air fuel ratio matches your target air fuel ratio. And that's when you know your volumetric efficiency
tables is correct. So once you do that, then it makes all the fuel
calculations that you need and you're set to go. You just set your target air
fuel ratio and the ECU hits it. It's pretty sweet. - That's assuming the sensors and everything else is
calibrated correctly. - Yeah, that's assuming that
it's an operating system that doesn't have any big flaws, but hopefully we don't have any big flaws. - We're okay, so we're connected. (car engine roaring) - So this thing to be safe
has idled and run pretty rich since I installed the base map. So right now we're dialing some
of the fuel out of the idle and we're gonna watch the air fuel ratio come up closer to stoichiometric. It was running really fat at like 11 to one at idol,
which is way too much. So we're dialing some of that out now and we're underway baby. The only thing we really can't
effectively turn right now is cold star. Because the car is already
warm, I drove it here. So we'll be close on that, but we're doing a little bit of guesswork. So maybe we'll do some
remote tuning later or, you can just come over. So yeah, first steady state test and we're gonna start at
1400 RPMs work our way up. 2000 RPM is 2,500 so on and so forth and develop ourselves and tune. So this is our ignition table and all the numbers in these boxes is our specific ignition timing
for any given load point. What I mean by that, an
intersection of our RPMs and basically our throttle position or our load on the engine. So you can see down
here, we've got our RPMs, 700, 900, 1200, right now we're at idle, so we're at 900 RPMs. In that box, you can see
this blue oval moving. That's our tracer for what's
actually happening right now. So we're at 900 RPMs and no load. Because he's off the throttle. Gibby hit the gas a little. You'll see a climb, as
the throttle comes up and the RPMs go up, you see a move. So that's what we're looking at. It's a cross between
the RPMs and the load. And then for each of those points, we can input our ignition
timing in this table or our air to fuel ratio or our fuel VE. But these are the kinds
of tables we'll look at. RPMs versus load. So that's the steady state tuning. We'll put it at 1500 and we'll tune all of these
ignition timing points, all these load points. Then we'll crank it up to
2000, do that whole column. So on, so forth until we're done. Now we can do our big sweeps and really try to make some power. So this is the real, what do you say? Yeah, this is the mid of it, it's meeting. (upbeat music) (car engine roaring) Okay, so we basically worked our way through the rev range in those columns, adjusting timing and VE and fueling and things are looking pretty good. So we're letting the car
cool down for a minute, bring oil temps back down,
cooling times back down, then we'll fire it back up and then it's gonna be
time to do some sweeps. Some real dyno poles and see
how much power we're making and then make some tweaks from there. But we're getting close. (machine engine roaring) Alright, so now we're gonna
do what you would recognize as a regular dyno run. We're gonna run this
thing wide open throttle from low RPM to red line and
see how much power it makes. Now that we've got our
map roughly figured out even further than roughly,
it's pretty well figured out. So now we can do a real run on the dyno, see how much power we make and then make some tweaks
based on what we see. Time to do it. (machine engine roaring) Yeah, baby, yeah. Ah, yeah, baby. That is a smooth graph, which
is exactly what you want. Smooth like a baby's bottom. And I don't know if you noticed, but we made 110 and a half horsepower. So that's pretty good. We're standing out above 108, I am happy. (machine engine roaring) Ooh, is that 111? Nice baby, nice. Break this thing for 112, Gibby. (machine engine roaring) (laughs) Hey, that rounds up to
112, I mean I'll take it. 111.6 shoot! All right, then it all comes down to this where we've let it cool down a little bit, we're gonna make another sweep, see how much power we make and then however much power
make is how much power we make. Hopefully it's 112, but honestly if not, I'm not too worried about it. Once we do that, then we've
got a few little tweaks to make in terms of drivability, and then that's it, we're done. Off to the races. Go drive this thing, see how
it feels in the real world. (car engine roaring) Hell yeah! Thank you, sir. That was 112, 112.75, yeah. All right, well that's sweet. I mean, that's all I
could have ever hoped for. We're making power and we
got control of the ECU, now we've got to finish
a few little tweaks and then that's it, baby. What a successful day. Honestly the truth is,
when it comes to tuning, making max power is not
the hardest part of tuning. The hardest part I think
is making it drivable and dealing with all the
different load conditions and the transition between
each load point on these maps. So we're gonna smooth things out. Actually, here's an idea. So we've gotten these maps
and this is how we tune them, but we want things to be smooth. So you can take a look at the 3D view and you can see whether
or not it's smooth. And we can see we've got a few jumps here, a few areas that aren't that smooth. So we're gonna smooth those out and that should help with drivability and overall feel of the tune. But we've made the power
that we're gonna make. Now it's just time to smooth it over. Okay, so we've done our
sweeps, we've made our power, we hit 112 horsepower, that's awesome. So now the last thing left to do, throw the wheels and tires back on it, we'll take it up and down the street, drive around the block. Make sure nothing weird
happens in the real world since this is a little bit not real. And that's it, we're
tuned, baby, we did it. All right boys, see you guys. Thank you, love you. Do a little circle
right here, not a donut. Just turn on and off the
throttle a little bit. Yeah, this thing feels great. Honestly, this thing feels, you know how the way this is
like it did when it was stock, which is saying something,
that's impressive. It's not that difficult
to tune for max power, but I think it is pretty
difficult to tune for drivability and this thing's really drivable. So if you're in the South Cal area and you need a tune on your standalone, hit up my boy, Gibby at EF1 tuning. Other than that, thank you
guys so much for watching. And like always, don't forget
to subscribe to the channel and make sure you got
the notification bell on. So you know when we're
putting out new videos. Follow me on Instagram at Zack Jobe, and follow Donut at Donut Media. I'll see you guys next week.
