I've read through a few forums and I may be missing it, but it seems nobody has explored hte option of using megasquirt. If you dont know, MS is a fully tunable ECU that is extremely cheap. You can buy a completed board cusomized for your car, for around $400, or you can get the board in pieces and solder it together your self for only $200. I recently set one of these up for a CBR 600 engine that was on our schools formula SAE race car. It was my first endevor in this type of thing and it was a moderatly easy project, even for a beginer like myself. After you get the board, you just need a laptop and then install the free tuning software. Then start setting up maps. It may seem confusing at first but there are tons of help forums for MS. Anyway, just a thought.
Another FSAE participant
Sounds like you were more involved in your team than I was though
I was allowed to drive one of the old cars which had been hacked up and pieced together after falling off a truck. It had an unrestricted 900cc.
Words can't describe the feeling of that much power, combined with that much traction.
There are a few MS Mustangs around. It seems that the stand alone options aren't used as heavily as the piggy back tuners though.
Maybe it is just an intimidation thing?
Personally, I like that by using the tweecer I am becoming familiar with how Ford tuned the original ecu's.
I would think that the MS supports data logging. Is this correct?
jason