mega squirt

[miami man]

i may have asked this question before but has anyone here had any luck with installing the mega squirt on thier festiva?

i went to the mega squirt website and did a search and there was only one post in connection with a festiva and that was from a jon rood.

[Hot_Wheels]

well i dont think it would be that great of a peroformance upgrade for a stock festiva, your not really going to squeeze that much power out of the b3, if you want that little extra that you think you can get with the meqasquirt i would say go the old fasion way and make it carb-u-taded, i saw a long time ago someone had a nice weber carb set up with a custom intake on ebay. i think that would be the best, get rid of all the emisions stuff and throw a nice big carb on it. now if your going turbo or b6t then i see more of a purpose and there are a few people who have used mega squirt on b6t just check out there 323 sites, and fred was also using a tec 3 stand alone i dont know if he ever finished it though.

[Sleeper]

^^^ ya fred got it going...it was nice because he had a 2 stage rev limiter.......then he ripped that, and the engine out and now she's mine

[poisonousbeef]

If you are thinking of doing megasquirt on an FI Festiva, IMO it is not worth it at all. You can tune it all you want but as Hot_Wheels said, you're not going to extract much. The cost and pain associated with megasquirt (i understand it's an awesome product but be honest that it's a big project and if you aren't completely DIY it's not all THAT cheap) really negates the very modest gains you might achieve. Your money would be better spent on a PnP or some bolt-on parts.

If you are thinking of converting a carb'd Festiva, IMO it is still not worth it at all. A properly tuned, good-quality carb should be very nearly as good as the FI. With FI you might be able to smooth out the power curve and fatten the bottom/top end because carbs always have limitations at the limits, but honestly with a whopping 1.3L single cam you should have no problem getting a carb dialed in that is very driveable. The more likely limitation for performance is going to be the breathability of your B3 head (just your B3 in general ). Spend your money on a decent (or at least rebuilt) carb or do a PnP before you take the time to do Megasquirt.

Some of the engine swaps are [relatively] easy and not that expensive. IMO if you're sitting on a few hundred dollars that you could throw at the Megasquirt project, just shop around and buy yourself a better motor to start with, I know a guaranteed running B6-E where I live is like $175 and it will definitely give you more performance than you could milk out of the B3 through ignition tuning.

Disclaimer: 100% "just my opinion." I only recently bought a Festiva but I've worked with Hondas for a long time. I think that Megasquirt is a cool product and could be a big asset if, like Hot_Wheels said, you were doing a serious turbo setup.

[FB71]

as stated above... MS carries no benefit for a stock engine.

however, when making modifications, it comes in VERY handy!!!

[poisonousbeef]

FB71, just to clarify for the sake of the discussion, do you feel that MS offers an advantage with bolt-ons or mild mods like an upgraded valvetrain (springs, retainers, etc.)? My feeling is that MS is only worth it if your build is a serious departure from stock and you really need to dial in fuel all across the board as is commonly the case with forced induction, though high-comp N/A builds can benefit from the tuning capabilities as well.

[FB71]

let's put it this way... I've seen (on a chassis dyno) a 35hp increase over the stock pcm on a 5.0 Mustang with nothing more than an intake exhaust, injectors and off-the-shelf heads. Even the stock cam...

there's lots of power left untapped by factory calibrations, for emissions and fuel economy reasons.