Restoring Original Horsepower?!?!?!
 

MY BOY AT THE LOCAL MAZDA DEALERSHIP SAID HIS GUY IN THE BACK ( A SERVICE TECH ) KNEW OF A WAY TO ELECTRONICALLY RESTORE THE ORIGINAL 280 H.P. IT HAS WHEN IT IS RELEASED OVER SEAS.. I.E. JAPAN// BY MESSING WITH THE COMPUTER INTERNALLY... HAS ANYONE ELSE HEARD OF THIS. OR THINK IT IS POSSIBLE... BECAUSE 280 H.P. VS 238 H.P. WOULD KICK SERIOUS A$$!!!

YEA YOU MAY NOT PASS YOUR STATE INSPECTION.. BUT IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE YOU STILL CAN!!!

SOMEONE GIVE ME SOME INSIGHT!?

I DON'T THINK YOUR GETTING THE CORRECT INFO, SIR!!!!! BUT IF YOU'D STOP YELLING, someone would be glad to point you in the right direction. Try searching the tech garage or check out the canzoomer ECU mods....THAT MAY BE JUST WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR!!!!!!

YEAH IF YOU GET THE EBAY CHIP GR0U|\|D1NG WIRE TuRb0 YOU WILL TOTALLY pwnRoXX0r them!?!111!

no no no.... im talking increasing horsepower without adding anything additional.... just by changing something within the computer system.... just wanting to know if it is possible for a tech to administer..... AND WHO CARES IF I TYPE IN CAPS. cry about it...

TALKING IN CAPS IS LIKE YELLING, AND THAT MEANS YOUR LESS LIKELY TO GET HELP FROM PEOPLE.

And getting 40+ HP from changing the ECU software is, um, VERY UNLIKELY.

.

20HP is more believable. and besides, wasn't the original HP 250 rather than 280? so it'd be quite easy to get 250 from ECU modifications.

japanese spec hp rating are always going to be higher because their engines use leaded gasoline so they can run at higher power. (leaded gasoline = >100octane)

I don't know about the RX-8's Renesis in particular, but I've dealt with motors that gain an additional 40+hp at the crank with software tuning.

There is someone here on the board stating it is possible to gain 40 with GReddy's inline computer btw, so I wouldn't rule out the benefits of a factory ecu programmed in similar fashion.

i know this is true of VW and Audi, they both use the 1.8 4 cyl turbo, but there are three different specs for the engine 150, 170 and 180 HP...all of them with the same exact engine, i know the VWs easily can just be switched to the 180HP spec

But i do.. Be courteous.. just a friendly warning.

On the Volkswagen/Audi turbo engines it is very easy to get about 25% more horsepower by increasing boost and changing the spark timing. That's because Volks is very conservative in how they program their cars.

On a normally aspirated car like the RX-8, it is very difficult to get much more power as you can really only play with the spark advance and fuel mixture ratios. There's no turbo wastegate to simply bump higher.

Personally, I don't really need a boost in my RX-8 MT. Yah, it is laking in some low end torque, but I feel that it's more a function of only 1.3L versus some bad ECU programming. Get the engine reving and it pulls pretty darn well.

On my 2003 Allroad, I can get a boost from 250 to 300+ hp with just an ECU re-program. I haven't done it yet as I want to keep my warranty. But I eventually will as the car is VERY heavy and needs the ponies.

Like one said here, it's 250HP not 280. I think the service tech was talking about restoring the ECU programming that Japan has, so that accounts to not intalling anything else. I dont know if someone out there has done an ECU swap so to say ;)

Oh yeah, and aside from looking like you're yelling, caps are really hard to read for anyone used to reading normal text. If you are looking for feedbacks on your thread, you'd get the proper responses if you make your message clear.

I thought the HP loss was emissions equipment related. That would make it hard to "restore" it merely be changing the computer programming. If Mazda could have given us the extra HP, I'm sure they would have.

You can probably unlock some extra HP through aftermarket mapping, but you risk (1) messing up your 4 year factory warranty and (2) messing up your engine if it's done incorrectly.

T.

Yeah, I think the prototype Rx-8 had 280hp. but I think you have to spin you rotor over 10000rpm and some mapping change. And I think just change mapping on ecu will give you some but not that much.

Re: Restoring Original Horsepower?!?!?!
 

Your boy is wrong. The Japanese rating is around 250, but remember that Japanese horses aren't the same size as SAE horses - the horsepower rating systems (JIS, SAE, DIN in Europe) are slightly different, so the exact same engine will generate 3 different horsepower numbers depending on the rating method used (but only varying by a few HP).

(Japanese gasoline is NOT different - it's unleaded, and their octane rating system is different, so their 98 octane is actually equivalent to our 91 octane.)

The ECU IS reprogrammable, but it's also encrypted. Mazda dealers get the ECU flash updates from Mazda in Japan - even dealers can NOT just fiddle with a few parameters, and Mazda is not providing ECU flash updates that are not emissions compliant.

The missing HP have been well documented here - the problem is that the US, for 2004, extended the catalytic converter life requirements from 100K miles to 120K miles. In durability testing of the original 247 hp ECU tune, Mazda found that the exhaust gas temperature at high load and high rpm was too high, and that the catalytic converters would likely not last the required 120K miles. To remedy this, they richened the mixture at high rpm high load conditions to lower the exhaust gas temperature, with the byproduct that the peak HP dropped (to no more than 238).

SO - Mazda will never be giving us back the lost HP - because of US requirements for catalytic converter durability, the legally can not. I suppose in the future, if they could equip future Renesis cars with a cat converter that can withstand the higher EGT, then they could restore the lost HP, but owners of current cars would not get that from Mazda.

By replacing the Mazda ECU or installing a piggyback programmable computer like the Canzoomer or Greddy E-Manage, an individual can lean out the mixture and get 20 or 25 hp back. However, they WILL sacrifice the life of their cat converter.

Regards,
Gordon

Thanks Gordon, you took the words outa my mouth.

And the sacrifice of the cat. is acceptable IMHO. I will be getting the CZ stage III and a turbo next summer. Then I will have an excess of the stock and pre-release hp figures. I will also be scrificing my stock cat and muffler since the turbo and upgraded ECU will destroy them anyway. :)

The WDS (Worldwide Diagnostic System), which is the system Mazda dealers use to program the PCM, contains maps for all locales (Japan, Europe, US etc.), hence "worldwide". It's technically possible for a US dealer to install a Japanese map on a US spec car. Whether that would increase performance isn't entirely clear because as far as I know, nobody has done it. I explored this in depth with my Mazda dealer and he said that it would be a federal offense to install a non-US map because it would violate federal emissions law. Actually, since emissions vary from state to state it's probably the CARB mandated catalytic converter lifetime that would be affected, but the dealer made it very clear that he would not do this. Still, it would be interesting to get a US spec car with the JDM PCM programming on a dyno, just to see if there is a difference.

In my opinion, you're going to see better performance gains from after market performance modifications such as canzoomer's unit than from Mazda. The in-depth analysis that has been done on the standard Mazda maps, even the latests ones, show that there's plenty of room for optimization.

Re: Restoring Original Horsepower?!?!?!
 

I get the part where you are the father of a son who works at the local Mazda dealership?

But the second part confuses me. Are you saying your son is gay and has a "guy" partner? Or are you saying he has something called a "guy" in his back like some sort of bodily defect or something? And what in the hell does that have to do with a service tech!!! That one really has me stumped.

And boy, aren't YOU possessive.

Kinda off the subject but why do people get so offended when people use caps lock? This is our modern computer generation I guess. I mean when I see a billboard on the side of the road I dont hold my ears or nearly have an accident... I just don't understand the point. It's simply big letters ooohh please no not big letters your bursting my eardrums or hurting my eyes! Please-to all computer geeks: Get over yourselves and your made up disease.

People dislike CAPS LOCK because it is, in fact, measurably more difficult to read it. Since all the letters have uniform height, it's harder (slower) to recognize words, and impacts reading rate.

Some people, sports car drivers in particular, do not react well to being slowed down. :-)

"...impacts reading rate" I wonder why its used for advertising when you are driving 75 mph on the highway? In any case I accept this argument better than calling it "yelling". Also when were in kindergarten don't we all read and write in caps? Wouldn't you think that would mean its easier to read?

But we're not in kindergarten anymore :(
Plus since when is there an ad that has more than a sentence long of all-caps characters? It may look ok in the ads but it is different on the computer screen. It's been widely known that typing in all caps is to express yelling. If everybody is typing in caps, how do you express that?

No, it means that kindergarten kids have only begun to learn to recognize the shapes of the letters, and they start out with consistent (upper case) letters just because it's easier to learn one form of the letters before introducing alternate forms. I think we've all progressed beyond kindergarten here...

This certainly isn't the only forum where people complain about posts in all caps - it's pretty much universal. It's not just computer geeks, unless we all are computer geeks. IF we all are computer geeks, then we're entitled to our own made-up computer-geek pet peeves, and non-geeks can go stuff themselves. ;) If a forum member insists on using all caps, they can expect that they will quickly start being ignored entirely.

Regards,
Gordon

O.k. I understand you Gord. And sorry, I wasn't really addressing anyone in particular and certainly not this forum which I love. I was just commenting in general. My only real comment is to ask if its really painful or insulting to read capital letters.