For what it's worth, I used a Rywire harness. I ended up pulling the grounding pins out of the harness though and wiring it as per AEM instruction which is one to the ECU sensors ground, one to the housing, and one directly to the battery. Have not had any issues since doing this.

 

So in my research of how to wire IGN1A you have alot of conflicting info because of how the coils were originally designed. The main aftermarket conflict is based on how to wire the "sensor ground" which in their OEM application went straight to the ECU and only to the ECU. HOWEVER from what I saw with haltech issues was that people were originally doing this and in the event a coil overheats due to Misfires, broken lead, disconnected lead, fouled plug, flooding, etc. During meltdown you could send your spark through the ecu sensor ground and fry your ECU.

From what I can gather about the mercury stock system this sensor ground was needed as its own separate circuit so they could detect and disable the coil if misfires occurred to avoid melt downs considering how much energy these coils have.

In our application without this logic loop it sounds like we are best off grounding the "sensor ground" to the engine and then to the sensor ground on the ECU to avoid frying anything since we don't have the logic protections to prevent melt downs and shorting out through the unprotected ECU.

Unless my understanding is crazy far off, someone was telling me I should talk with Pantera EFI on this, but I just haven't had time due to being sick.

 

I'm certain the coils will work as intended if the sensor ground from the coils is going to the engine (how sakebomb and rywire both have them wired in their harnesses) as I've had it wired this way and they were still working just fine. I actually moved these grounds chasing another issue but it had no effect so I didn't revert the wiring back.

BUT about what you said above, never wire the ECU sensor grounds to the engine block or the chassis, the ECU sensor ground pins should ONLY have sensor grounds pinned to them and nothing else.

 

True, I gotta check the stock harness to see how that connects its ignition grounds again. I was fairly certain it went to both the ECU and the engine. Perhaps it wasn't necessarily a "sensor ground" and was a power ground or something on the ecu.

Right now I have the SB kit grounding out to this center stud for the engine ground, Then to my battery ground stud on the chassis.(these two locations are also grounded to each other with a 1-2awg cable) Then the "sensor ground" on the coil is grounding out through the stock Rx8 harness which I will double check how that pins out tonight.
I think the "Ideal" layout would be to have a ground tapped in between each spark plug or something to get as close of a connection as possible. Whether any significant improvement comes from it Ehhhhh probably not worth the headache. I plan on using knock sensors so I didn't want to ground to those stud locations, pretty certain the knock sensors wouldn't be happy with the spark juices making noise that close.

Also annoying that the rx7 has 10mm studs when the rx8 has 8mm knock sensors like the rest of the world it seems. Something much easier to tackle if my engine was outside of the car not covered in cables and tubes.

 

Did you get my email? Lance would tell you to wire them just as most diagrams show with the individual grounds as specified. He’s been involved with them from the very beginning. There are three coil circuits; the primary winding with battery power supply and battery ground, the ecu trigger signal with ecu sensor ground, and then the pin C secondary winding ground to the rotor housing. The pin C ground tied to the knock sensor mount are completely unrelated in how they function and shouldn’t be any issue, but there are plenty of other places on top of the rotor housing to mount them if you want to be fussy about it.

SB has you covered on the knock sensor mounting conversion. A few FD owners are using the RX8 knock sensors with an aftermarket ecu:

https://www.sakebombgarage.com/bosch...ting-kit-fd3s/
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I have re-re-pinned the ECU for the Haltech and updated a lot of my google sheet. Everything fit perfectly, but the wiring was completely different than the Adaptronic so basically everything was undone and redone. The Haltech has about an inch or more between it and the power steering and there is alot of room above it too so I was able to fit the Innovative EGT kit above. I do plan on sealing up the box to keep things clean, but the worry of airflow cooling vs dust/fluid is the tossup. For now I will just monitor the temp in the box.
- Removed the OMP wiring
- Removed the Rx8 O2 front and rear wiring.
- Installed the ID1050x injectors
- Installed the new IGN1A coil

 

Exactly how mine is wired with the pin C ground going to the top of each respective housing at the factory grounding points.

 

This looks great, weird that you had to repin connectors for PNP ECU; was it not the Adaptronic PNP in here prior or was it just a generic model? For the most part I did the exact same wiring mods to my harness with the Elite 1500.

 

I had rewired for the adaptronic, but haltech disabled most of the pins. So most of the inputs I had used had to be moved. Honestly its great since the haltech fits right in the factory ECU box. Everything happened to just go together swimmingly during the rewire. Also since the haltech can directly accept the AFR sensor I dont need those wires going in and out of my cabin.....which means now I have an AEM gauge gathering dust among other things.

 

Which AEM gauge? Mine is going out...

 

I'm still using my AEM UEGO AFR gauge in my dash, but it's completely independent of the ECU O2 sensor. It's just a nice easy to glance gauge in my Loteck dash pod and is also a good second check to confirm the ECU and the stand-alone gauge are reading the same; they are generally bang on to each other. One day I'll potentially splurge and go for and IC-7 or UC-10 so I can stop bringing my laptop everywhere I go, but I'd likely mount this where my Loteck pod is over the radio and keep the factory rx8 dash functioning as well.

Anyways, as a whole I think you are going to enjoy moving to Haltech. The Adaptronic was great and did it's job well for the most part, but the Haltech NSP software is much better and further developed than Eugene for all the obvious reasons; along with great support from both the community and Haltech themselves.

 

Its one of the AEM Eugo with gauge I may use it on my other car along with the adaptronic.

My big dilema is what do I do with my shitty greddy turbo Renesis car. Its body is beat to **** from a tree falling on it. A highschool girl hitting my rear bumper while texting. An illegal reversing onto a highway and onto my hood. Along with me hitting two deer at the same time on both headlights.....because you know deer just run full sprint through the woods. Honestly not sure how the car has lived so long. If its body wasn't shot I'd probably sell it off for a decent amount. I have been thinking of making a tube chassis car and using the suspension out of this car. I suppose I would also have 3 spare renesis engines laying around waiting to go boom so maybe a 350-400hp turbo renesis wouldn't be bad in a light weight tube car.

 

Let me know if you need a quick spooling turbo to make them go boom that much faster 🤣
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Ok well we are getting off the ground again. I got everything on the engine connected again. Currently writing up a basemap for the PnP rx8 haltech. It does not have a REW swap map already so I have been doing a ton of passes and keep finding settings to tweak. My only complaint so far is that haltech splits up things all over the place in different menus. Like how the fuel system and fuel tuning are different tabs, but they could probably be one or at least have each others settings linked so you don't miss something. Also the USB supplied with the haltech is not long enough to reach the driver seat, so you need a 15ft usbc datacable.

I did fire it up but now we are just barely idling around 900rpm(should be 1800 cold) and the AFR is reading 20+ Timing wise I have done several passes and checks with the timing light that we are all set. So now we are on to fuel and VE. I may unplug the trailing coils for now just so I do not unnecessarily risk them again while testing. I am willing to bet it is fuel injector related so I plan on going back over the injector wiring and running the haltech test on them.
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EDIT: news flash, injectors don't work when they are not plugged in. So now we are back at stable start and idle. As far as I can tell all my sensors are reading properly other than my flex fuel which I havent found a datasheet for.

 

Thanks for the update. I just put pump E85 in my car. I thought it would require no adjustment in tune but I was wrong. Kenny is working on the tune to get it running better. What specifically are you referring to when you say datasheet? Do you mean the proper setting in the Haltech ECU. Kenny told me that the ECU should have the required tables to work without us having to do anything.

 

NSP wants you to enter the below data which I cant find published for my GM13577379 sensor. I believe the haltech sensor which the ECU has settings for is actually a GM13577429 which MAY have the same data, but IDK. Here are the Haltech tables for the sensor.

The annoying thing is that haltech obviously doesn't have AEM sensor data saved which I had used for all my temp and pressure sensors.

 

Well ive been messing around more. I had originally setup all the corrections to match the haltech's Rx7 FD maps. I may disable the crank corrections for now because they certainly are not setup for the 1000cc injectors and are drowning the engine.

Also I still have issues with throttle response. Any load or throttle just stalls out the engine.

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Winter is taking up most of my time anyways, been dealing with my other rx8 dying starter and good ole power steering issues that make no sense.....Since the REW is getting close to running I took its module back from my Turbo REN car. Dropped in an ebay replacement and it worked for about 10 mins before parking. Dropped in another Replacement and worked again for 10 mins before parking. Tried the REW module again and it didnt work on the REN car.

Comically both of those ebay modules still work on the REW car. So why did the REW's module work for 2 years and suddenly nothing works after swapping it out? Unless somehow something happened to the torque sensor or something.

 

It is getting that time of year again so I ended up buying ANOTHER tuning laptop. Windows did some update that bricked my other new laptop so here we are. I've been talking with Tuned by Shawn a bunch and I am going to have him do a double check over my haltech PnP basemap. Which Haltech doesn't have a rew swap setup yet, so I had to frankenstein the Rx8 map with parts from my adaptronic settings and the haltech nexus rx7 maps.

Over the winter I got a good deal on some tein monosports, my flexZs on the highschool rx8 have served me well after nearly a decade now so I decided to try these. Also I learned that the antigrav batteries basically stop working under 40degF. They essentially freeze and the BMS of the battery will shut it down and go into limp mode if you try cranking. Shouldn't matter in a few weeks though now that it is warming up.

 

Let us know how it goes with Tuned by Shawn. I'm finally making some progress on the tuning side of things. I've been plagued with some misfiring that I hope is all fixed now.

 

Finally got insurance for the car, figuring I will be on the road this year. Hagerty seems to be covering the car now. Before the quotes I was getting were like 3-4k per year. This time it at least got down to 2500 for a year for 40k$ coverage.

Pretty sure my buddy with his nismo R32 GTR got about half that, so I am not sure how their algorithm works. If a fender or headlight on an rx8 gets damaged its like 100$ vs a GTR is probably going to put you in generational debt.

 

Got all my suspension torqued down and decided to fire it up to play with the transient or map prediction settings. I need to run and grab some new gas, but playing with it for a while just seems like I need to add more fuel with throttle by like 3-4x whatever I am doing now. Now to go learn however the map prediction works in haltech.

EDIT: My dumbass was still using the Rx8 predicted manifold pressure map instead of the REW one, so Ill see how it goes in the morning.

 

Heck yeah! Good catch, I never gave hagerty a thought but it makes sense. I assume they track mileage?

Glad you found the manifold pressure setup, I can't wait to see what stupid issues I don't find 😂

 

I don't think they even asked for mileage. They asked roughly how many miles per year you drive, which isn't a lot.

Well in other news I filled the car up to half a tank, and i'm getting some good ole leakage around the JDL bulkhead. I'll have to break the lines and redo the fuel tank ring. Still inching closer to the idea of just making my own fuel pump hanger.

I also battled with the Davies Craig all day which simply wouldnt turn on. It ran all day yesterday and last weekend fine......for some reason it nolonger liked the ground I chose. All I had to do was lengthen the wire and move it someplace better. I spent like 9 hours diagnosing wires, testing the pump, fan, and started probing the circuit board........I was so close to saying **** it and going back to a simple mechanical pump.

I am also battling with the antigrav batteries, which have their battery management system trip and kill all power for just about anything. Pretty sure I just bricked my other car because the battery cut out while the starter was spinning. Cant wait to replace the 3rd starter due to these batteries. It is also very inconvenient being in my trunk where suddenly the trunk is locked without power.......eeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I ended up setting the whole throttle map prediction to 0 and let it self learn. Which mostly fixed my issues. Instead of stalling out i drop from 1000rpm to about 800 where it picks back up and goes to the expected rpm. Kinda hard with the 6 puck ceramic clutch.

 

Well I unfucked the other car luckily the starter survived this time.

On the REW swap I actually mounted the hood for the first time in 3-4 years. I also played with the front bumper and decided that I am going to redo the intercooler because I overly complicated it and made it too small.

I also filled up gas and realized that the fuel pump hanger was leaking because it wasnt tightened all the way, so I popped that open to check on things. It looks like the worm clamps I used are not happy in gas, so I will have to find stainless ones.......Honestly just another step closer to designing my own hanger from scratch instead of the JDL one.

 

Can anyone take a guess what leaked last night?


I ended up having to completely take out and disassemble the fuel pump system again to swap out the Orings for the stud bulkhead connectors. I swapped to smaller diameter viton ones instead which should hold up with ethanol better than the nitrile ones that appear to have come with it.

Again........ Just saying I am definitely planning out my own hanger next. Considering I will have to rewire the pumps again for to be controlled by the haltech at some point. I am thinking it should be easy to make a bulkhead plate with the pump attached. Then fill the bottom of the Rx8 tank with a full sized holley fuel mat. The only worry is the fuel level bobber at low levels with the fuel mat in there. Then I will put an actual connector instead of these ridiculous studs that are prone to shorting and leaking.