The engine and transmission are physically in place, sitting on engine and trans mounts I fabbed up, along with a S197 tunnel grafted in(I wanted an easy bolt-in offset handbrake and it was the easy way to go since I had to do tunnel mods anyway).
Anyway, my question to you guys is what my options are for tuning the stock ECU...what I really need is control over aspects like the drive-by-wire system...preferrably I would like to be able to ditch that part and just replace it with a cable system using a TPS signal for the ECU. From my reading on drive-by-wire systems they are essentially just 2 TPS sensors with inverted readings to fault check against one another to feed the ECU info for the PWM throttle body actuator(IE, the pedal gives a TPS signal that is fed to the ECU, which tells the TB to open to x%, and then checks the TB TPS to reference whether the stepper motor needs to continue to open or close). Ideally I would like to simplify this system if possible because I will be building an adapter plate to use some BMW ITBs(the stock intake manifold wont work because it wont allow me to run an effective shock tower brace...which is a MUST in a vintage mustang). Making an adapter plate for this application is just one more in a long list of pieces I need to fabricate....but it presents a challenge in somehow making a drive-by-wire system actuate a cable TB system correctly(not to mention I hate drive-by-wire, it just doesn't act right...not so bad with an auto, but annoying as hell with a manual transmission...my 05 Mazda 6 has a manual trans and drive-by-wire...its horrible for several reasons). Aside from that my other option is to simply use Megasquirt 3 to run everything...which is fine, it has the capability...I just dont feel like spending months tuning the engine from scratch for the basic fuel and spark maps, for the Ti-VCT, for the adaptive knock control, etc etc if I can get the stock ECU to do what I want and run cable-operated ITBs smoothly. I suppose I can always take the TB stepper motor and attach it to a cable-linkage wheel if I had to, but its really not an elegant solution(though it might be my only one).