cheapest way to get hemi 3g going?

I built my own board. It took quite a while, probably about 4-8 hours total. If you can read and follow directions it is actually pretty easy, just like eating an elephant, ONE BITE AT A TIME. I was really scared, I didn't want to make a $400.00 paper weight. I took my time, followed the directions very carefully and everything turned out great. Also building the box taught me a lot as well, so I think as an exercise it was well worth the effort.

I'd suggest you do what I did:

There are two test boards for the MS3 and MS3X they plug into the DB connectors on the outside of the box. Both of them come assembled or in kit form. They are both much simpler to assemble than an actual Megasquirt.

I ordered both:

http://www.diyautotune.com/catalog/jimstimx-expansion-board-unassembled-p-473.html

http://www.diyautotune.com/catalog/...imulator-wheel-simulator-unassembl-p-174.html

The JimStimX is the easier one to build. I built that, then built the JimStim, The JimStim even has a built in self test, so you can test the tester!

Once I built those two, I felt pretty confident to build the MS3.

One other important factor, there are A LOT of parts but they come very well organized in neat little bags with very clear labels. If you were the type of guy that could build a model and have it look like the picture on the box then you can do this. :cheers:

Even if you buy a prebuilt box, you're going to want to build or buy a simulator as it helps with diagnostics. It also allows you to work out any connection issues you might have with your computert. I use all Macs so connecting to MS was a bit of a challenge. I had to download some specific USB and Serial driver support. If I was trying to do this while sitting in the front seat of the car it could have been really never racking.

Also, the cool thing about the tuning software for MS is that since it is written in JAVA it is fully mac compatible, neither the FAST or AEM systems are, I'd have to run Windows through boot camp, with yet another expense.

It's also really fun to hook the MS3 to your computer and play around with all the pots and watch the needles move. Kind of like a video game without the explosions. The MS3X simulator has LEDs that represent each spark event, and each injection event so you can watch the flash of each injector and spark plug fire. The inner nerd in me thinks it's pretty cool.