*New guy* Microsquirt questions regarding required engine info.

Howdy! New guy here to the forum. I am no stranger to Mustangs, but am completely green when it comes to efi and ecu requirements.

2 years ago I picked up a 66 coupe that has a '93 5.0 with a C4 trans, and it currently uses the A9P and harness. I'm not sure what all is done to the engine unfortunately. It has an Edelbrock intake, cold air intake, cam of some sort, aluminum heads of some sort ( I haven't found any markings on them yet), an no clue about the rest of the parts. It has a good lope to it and supposedly it's 347 making 450HP. The guy provided a build list, but it has been lost. To make a long story short, I bought the car and couple of days later was rushed into surgery where I found out I had a really aggressive cancer. Was immediately admitted to the hospital for surgeries and chemo treatments. I was in there for over a year, and during that time I had to sell my home and have everything moved to parents. The engine build documentation has since gone MIA, and I no longer have the guys number who I bought it from. SO...short of tearing the engine down, which is not an option at this moment, I can't get exact info on the build. I don't have the space or strength to tackle that.

While I was in the hospital my brother went ahead and installed a T5, changed from small fuel cell to upgraded stock style tank, and halfway started disk brake swap. Someone had told him not to start the car until "X Y and Z" were done, but he didn't understand and lost interest in it. So the car has been sitting for well over year at this point. Now that I am home and slowly recovering, I have finished up a few things he didn't like putting the starter and headers back on, hooking the O2 sensors back up, and installing the clutch cable. Next, for the rare times I actually feel up to working on it, I'm planning to start removing the spark plugs to add some mystery oil to each cylinder, change the fluids, plus removed the valve covers and distributor to prime the engine.

So this gets to my questions.
1. Since there's now a T5 in the car, and it has the A9P, Is it safe to only start the car using the A9P, or best not to? Not looking to drive the car yet, just get it running again at this point until I feel like finishing the brakes. When trying to research it seems I couldn't find definitive answer. Some places say yes, some say no. If it's possible as is, then great. If it would require some minor changes then that's ok, too. What would those changes be?

2. If it's not possible to start the engine with A9P, without swapping to A9L, then I am thinking about going to a Microsquirt instead of going A9L. From my research it's the most cost effective method and should do more than I am ever planning with this setup as it will most likely be many years before I ever financially recover from my medical bills. Thanks cancer. If going Microsquirt, are there any other parts needed/recommended?

3. With Microsquirt, and without knowing all the specs of my engine, is it even possible to tune it? How does not knowing cubic in., cam, and heads effect the tunability? I can easily pull an injector to figure out what they are.

Sorry this was lengthly. I was just trying to make sure I covered as much as possible.
Thank you for any help you can offer!
 
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1. Dont know..
2. get a wide band O2 sensor, google spartan 2 wideband
3. W the wide band the microsquirt can tune itself. Yes it needs to know cubic inches and inj size..but cares nothing about the heads or cam
 
Howdy! New guy here to the forum. I am no stranger to Mustangs, but am completely green when it comes to efi and ecu requirements.

2 years ago I picked up a 66 coupe that has a '93 5.0 with a C4 trans, and it currently uses the A9P and harness. I'm not sure what all is done to the engine unfortunately. It has an Edelbrock intake, cold air intake, cam of some sort, aluminum heads of some sort ( I haven't found any markings on them yet), an no clue about the rest of the parts. It has a good lope to it and supposedly it's 347 making 450HP. The guy provided a build list, but it has been lost. To make a long story short, I bought the car and couple of days later was rushed into surgery where I found out I had a really aggressive cancer. Was immediately admitted to the hospital for surgeries and chemo treatments. I was in there for over a year, and during that time I had to sell my home and have everything moved to parents. The engine build documentation has since gone MIA, and I no longer have the guys number who I bought it from. SO...short of tearing the engine down, which is not an option at this moment, I can't get exact info on the build. I don't have the space or strength to tackle that.

While I was in the hospital my brother went ahead and installed a T5, changed from small fuel cell to upgraded stock style tank, and halfway started disk brake swap. Someone had told him not to start the car until "X Y and Z" were done, but he didn't understand and lost interest in it. So the car has been sitting for well over year at this point. Now that I am home and slowly recovering, I have finished up a few things he didn't like putting the starter and headers back on, hooking the O2 sensors back up, and installing the clutch cable. Next, for the rare times I actually feel up to working on it, I'm planning to start removing the spark plugs to add some mystery oil to each cylinder, change the fluids, plus removed the valve covers and distributor to prime the engine.

So this gets to my questions.
1. Since there's now a T5 in the car, and it has the A9P, Is it safe to only start the car using the A9P, or best not to? Not looking to drive the car yet, just get it running again at this point until I feel like finishing the brakes. When trying to research it seems I couldn't find definitive answer. Some places say yes, some say no. If it's possible as is, then great. If it would require some minor changes then that's ok, too. What would those changes be?

2. If it's not possible to start the engine with A9P, without swapping to A9L, then I am thinking about going to a Microsquirt instead of going A9L. From my research it's the most cost effective method and should do more than I am ever planning with this setup as it will most likely be many years before I ever financially recover from my medical bills. Thanks cancer. If going Microsquirt, are there any other parts needed/recommended?

3. With Microsquirt, and without knowing all the specs of my engine, is it even possible to tune it? How does not knowing cubic in., cam, and heads effect the tunability? I can easily pull an injector to figure out what they are.

Sorry this was lengthly. I was just trying to make sure I covered as much as possible.
Thank you for any help you can offer!
The A9P can run the car with the T5.
 
You can start it with the A9P. It won't drive to its full potential without an ecu swap. There will be coast down issues and other things that have to do with the difference between factory programming.

Microsquirt would work for your application.
 
1. Dont know..
2. get a wide band O2 sensor, google spartan 2 wideband
3. W the wide band the microsquirt can tune itself. Yes it needs to know cubic inches and inj size..but cares nothing about the heads or cam

Added the spartan 2 to my list. Do happen to know if that LSU O2 sensor is the same size as the factory sized O2 sensor, or if I'll need to weld on a new bung? I tried to do a quick search on the size but didn't see anything in that short time.

I pressurized the fuel system today to check for leaks with the new tank/lines, and looks like I have an injector o-ring busted. So, I will pop them all out to replace those and figure out what they are exactly.

Lastly, since I don't know for certain what cu.in. the engine is, by setting the cu.in. I'm assuming it uses that info for a general initial enrichment table. So, if I set it for 347 but it's actually a 302, then would it be rich and vise versa? Is that accurate, or is there more to it than that? Is that something that the auto-tune could catch and resolve if I get the size wrong using the wideband data?

Thank you!
 
You can start it with the A9P. It won't drive to its full potential without an ecu swap. There will be coast down issues and other things that have to do with the difference between factory programming.

Microsquirt would work for your application.

As long as I can at least get it running again with the A9P I'll be happy until I can get the microsquirt in. The car needs more work before it'll be drivable again anyways. So I won't have to worry about it not performing with the current ecu. I just don't want the engine to sit any longer without being started periodically. When it was being moved during my hospital stay they got caught in a good old fashion Texas pop up hail storm which busted out all the glass and flooded the interior. So it's gutted right now, and will be awhile before that's all replaced and other issue resolved.

Thank you.
 
It will tune itself to be close, but fuel only like any other ECU. You will have to do the rest, like smoothing the tables in, setting up the IGN table, acceleration enrichments, ect.

Thank you. I saw your name pop up in most of my research into the microsquirt, and saw you do videos and classes. I'm planning to watch as much as I can and get setup for your classes/tuning to get the ball rolling once the micro is in. So I'll definitely be in touch. I just mainly wanted to be certain that it was still possible to tune before buying without knowing the exact specs of the engine. Since I won't be in a position to tear it down for a good amount of time.
 
The big C takes its toll on a person. Glad you are in recovery. I couldn't imagine being in the hospital that long. I'd go crazy. Sucks about the hail storm.

A91what tunes my car. He's the guru here.

If you have any issues getting it to fire up we're always willing to give advise. Sounds like a pretty nice project.
 
The big C takes its toll on a person. Glad you are in recovery. I couldn't imagine being in the hospital that long. I'd go crazy. Sucks about the hail storm.

A91what tunes my car. He's the guru here.

If you have any issues getting it to fire up we're always willing to give advise. Sounds like a pretty nice project.

Thanks buddy. Yeah, it was definitely brutal. Believe it or not, the worst part wasn't even the lengthy hospital stay, or all the chemo, or the constant thoughts of that you could die. Don't get me wrong, it all sucked, the chemo ABSOLUTELY SUCKED, all the side effects from the chemo ABSOLUTELY SUCKED, but by far the worst part was wound care after the surgeries. The cancer was so aggressive and multiplying very rapidly which caused the Dr's to rush me on high dosages of chemo to slow it down. BUT...by doing so it cause the wounds to stop healing and get infected. So then they had to reopen the incision areas, dig around in there to clean the areas, then stuff/pack them with this special foam, and then hook a wound vacuum to them to constantly suck out any fluids that would build up. The next day they would come in and take all of that out, and start all over. That part was brutally painful! Like on the verge of passing out painful, and each time it usually took them about an hour start to finish. And that went on daily for 9 months!!! Recovery has been really slow. Slower than I want it to be so it frustrating. I'm left with a bunch of side effects and issues from it all that I'm currently trying to work through and figure out. Which slow me way down. Sometimes I can get a few small things done, others I can't hardly get of bed. So I just do what I can when I can, and try not get upset about it. Which is a challenge in itself.

The car was a decent car before the hail storm tore it up. The day I picked it up I gutted all the wiring and put in an American Auto Wire Classic Update kit, and went through all the engine harness to clean it up. I installed electric door locks, an RFID keyless entry alarm with push button start, and have power window kit for it too. The power window kit uses the stock window handles to operate them, so again looking stock. I left the stock ignition cylinder in the dash so it will look stock, and will be hiding the push button start in the console. So it will all be hidden. The RFID system makes it so you don't even have to lock/unlock the car. As long as you have your key fob on you the doors will automatically unlock as you walk up to it, and auto lock plus arm the alarm as you walk away. It'll even roll up the windows when you walk away from the car. Once all that is done I think it will be pretty cool. I was planning to add a turbo, do a small back half on the car, 4 link, and mini tubbed. My goal was to have this a daily cruiser that I could enter into some small tire classes at track events. That will all have to wait for a long while now though . So now I'm planning to dial in the stock suspension, get the stance right with some decent looking wheels, and just have fun driving it until my finances recover.

I'm just super excited to be able to touch the car again more than anything else. And once I get the engine running again I will be content just listening to it while I slowly work on the other stuff it needs to be drivable .