JDM R magic ECU and immobilizers
 

Hi all
I bought a JDM engine from an importer and it came with an ECU with an R-magic sticker on it
the engine shows signs of being rebuilt from japan (new sealant on the housings thats not OEM and RE-amemiya parts on it) and is likely ported (a few other RX8 owners have driven my car and admits it has more power)
I am trying to swap to this ECU using forscan's module initialization to sync the RKE (immobilizer) to the new PCM and it can not pass forscans Coded access incode outcode system, it doesnt supply an outcode that is good enough for forscan

I have another JDM ecu that probably doesnt have a tune on it that came with my turbo kit (seperate purchase from importer) that passes the coded access system fine, but never seems to be able to finish the initialization correctly, just loops the last stage, which it itself takes away my original ECUs association to the immobilizer

and then my car came with a spare ECU (apparently the original ECU) and I am able to swap no problem between the two USDM ECUs I have (the original throws a P0610 for some reason, but has the correct VIN in it)

so whats up with these JDM ones? is the R magic one locked down? do I have any chance at getting ahold of anyone at R magic to solve this?
none of the JDM ECUs allow the car to crank

I would pay mazda to swap this ECU in, but there is a high risk they will just flash the whole thing to a stock USDM image and make it useless for me
at the very least I would like the extra 20 hp the JDM market cars are supposed to have, which I assume is all in the tune)

it’s been a long time since I had a dream as nice as that. :suspect:
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care to elaborate?

I think what Team is getting at is that you're not going to get a 20hp gain from using that ECU.
The HP difference between the USDM Renesis and the JDM Renesis is most likely due to the different standards used to rate power.
Power ratings for cars sold in the US prior to 2005 used the SAE J 1349 standard, and Japanese cars used the JIS D 1001 standard. The difference between the two is the standard value for atmospheric pressure for Jis at 1.013 bar and SAE at .99 bar and standard ambient temperature for JIS is 19.85ºc and SAE is 29.25ºc. This results in the JIS value reading ~5% higher than the SAE value.
When power is being tested by the manufacturer it is rated in Kilowatts, and then converted to HP. However, the conversion from KW to HP is not the same between the US and Japan. Japanese power figures use metric horsepower(1kw=1.359622 PS), and US power figures use mechanical horsepower (1kw=1.341022 HP)
The Japanese rating for the high power RX8 is 184Kw, If you reduce the power rating by the 5% difference between JIS and SAE ratings you get: 184kw*.95= 173kw. Convert the Kw to mechanical horsepower used in the US 173Kw*1.341022= 232hp.

Besides that there are three different ECU tunes that RMagic sold. The cheapest one was only removal of rev limits and speed limiter and cooling fan set point. The others had slight changes to the fuel and timing. There's likely very little power to be had with the changes they've made. There's also risk as the ignition maps may have been made with the higher octane fuels available in Japan in mind( japanese high octane is equivalent to 93 octane in the US, but there is a less common higher grade that is 95 octane equivalent.) If you only have access to 91 octane the RMagic tune might have ignition maps that could cause problems.

either way I already have the ECU, and would like to use it within reason, I just dont understand why it doesnt co-operate with forscan, either of them really
its not like I am faced with paying the $1000 they charge for the service, I have nothing to lose really.. if I have to put higher octane fuel in this car too I will

I have no clue how the RKE/immo/key teach in procedure works, but I know for sure there's a magic password needed to access some areas of the ecu memory. The default password is MazdA, mazdaedit's password is EpSMZ, versatune has their own, and probably so does every other :piss:head out there who claims 20 hp extra from a tune on a NA engine.
Change that password and you open a can of worms.

it was also in regard to finding a USDM Mazda dealer who will even touch it, let alone not turning it into a disaster if they try to work on it.

Try to consider that they aren’t going to risk some mega $$$ EPA fine trying to help somebody out with an ecu that’s not EPA compliant.
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so then is it safe to assume this password you are talking about is the incode password in the forscan system?
and if they changed that who is to say they didnt change the outcode too
if I can get forscan to bypass the check on the outcode and let me manually put in the incode, then I would just need to find out what Rmagic changes it to