Fred, that's tremendously generous and I'm humbled by the offer. I hate to take up your time, talent, and money on such a project, but won't decline either. Thank you. If at any point it has to fall way back on priority (or not end up happening), no worries.

I had pointed out
this board before and--prior to your offer--and there was something mentioned in conversation that suggested the chip might not work for our purposes. I would much rather have a
Cruiser (currently based on the same MC9S12XDP512MAL...though I wonder if the eBay one is a Chinese counterfeit), but if your time becomes consumed by firmware development and support and you think this would be useful for benchtesting purposes only, let me know. DeuceEFI sent me a CoolEFI BDM some time ago.
Thanks for the continued motivation and hope.