I'm sure most of you know about me and my Celica. I have a 77 Corolla liftback with the original 2TC. I paid $50 for it and spent just about that much painting it a few years ago. After I swapped the 18RG into my Celica this became my daily driver. The side drafts on the RG aren't tuned very well, and it's getting terrible mileage. I drive 70+ miles round trip for work so gas mileage is much more important than power. The Corolla had it's carburetor rebuilt a little over 3 years ago, and it's beginning to degrade again. Same with the ignition. It's terrible in the mornings even on reasonably warm days. Once it's warm it usually runs fairly well. But it's been getting worse and worse, yet it still gets great gas mileage. I had a few problems where my ignition rotor would arc through to the center of the distributor, but it turns out it was a defect in manufacturing and they have all been recalled. But that's a different story.
I've always wanted to convert my cars to EFI, but never even knew where to start. After I read Bollox's thread on his 18RG with ITB's I found out that it was within my reach. I'm studying electrical engineering so Megasquirt is right up my alley. I wanted to do my RG first, but that would require either building an entire intake manifold, or ITB's. Both of which aren't in the budget just yet. So I've decided after reading BillyJarrel's thread how he converted his 18RC to EFI That I could use the TBI from a GM to convert my Corolla. That would make it run incredibly better, and I should be able to tune it to get even better gas mileage than it's getting now. (I'm getting about 32 MPG now, but 40 would be even better!)
I bought an MSII from a guy on Craigslist out of Montana. It came with the relay board, cable, assembled MSII V3 PCB, power supply, stim, and two usb-serial converters. All for $250. Not too bad. Of course it wasn't assembled for the way I wanted it assembled so I had to dig through all the MS manuals and such to figure out what I needed to do for my setup. (Single coil, distributor based, original VR sensor, single injector in a GM TBI) There is lots of info on the web dealing with various modifications for a particular setup, but the biggest problem I've run into is that is all so severely fragmented and all over the place. I've resorted to creating an email to myself, and anytime I find a website with helpful info I paste the address into the email with a short description so I can get back at it later.
After fixing it to work for my setup I had spark going with a Toyota coil triggering off a distributor with electronic pickup. It's one thing to get it going on the stim and see things change on the screen, but when you get an actual spark while turning the distributor with a drill it's quite exciting.
I got the TBI setup from an '87 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. I now have the TPS working, the injector dry firing, the spark plug firing, and the cold air idle stepper motor stepping. I still need to get an appropriate fuel pump, and the coolant temp sensor. It was raining at the junk yard so I was in a hurry and forgot to grab one. I also need to weld the centrifugal advance in the dist, and make the pickup ring solid. It's all a complete mess on my desk for now, but it at least works. I still need to make the adapter to fit the TBI on the 2TC manifold. I can get 5 of them cut with a water jet for about $90. That was an online quote. I might be able to find it cheaper somewhere local. Once I get this one running and the main bugs ironed out we will probably do it to my dads 77 RA24 and both my brothers' Corollas.
I'm going to drop the TBI, manifold, and distributor at the machine shop and have them run them all through their parts cleaner. I'm tired of having to clean my hands with fast orange after working at my desk. Anyone know how to pull the center rod from the distributor? Drill the rivet on the gear?
I'm planning to make an adapter circuit board so that I can use my smaller relays that I use for my flatlight converters. They are less than 1/4 the size of the relays on there now. Once I do that I will be able to put the top half of the relay case on it so that it isn't open under the hood. They say it's supposed to be open, but I think that's just their excuse for not designing it better so it will close. Once I do it on the other cars I probably won't use the relay board so that's not that big a deal right now. I may just build my own relay board that has all the external wires connecting on the end instead of coming out of the side. I think they definitely could have done a better job designing the relay board. It seems it was done almost as an afterthought...
Nate
hyeah: I'll probably permanently install the 110V power inverter somewhere in the car as well. 
