Mazda did what they could to max out the Renesis and still keep the excellent long term durability of the rotary. They had to in order to keep up with the alternative Rice products.

There are small but almost insignificant gains available from tuning an otherwise stock RX8.

However as soon as some of the other components are changed out like exhaust systems, porting, Nitrous, even various true racing fuels, there will be changes that can be optomized from piggyback tuning. Again, how much? Maybe 5-6 HP over the mod.

I think the most enjoyment with such a system comes from the tinker-factor. That alone could make it worthwhile, as long as you don't end up doing any damage.

The RX8 is what it is. From my experience when you start dicking with things to make them go faster each mod is never quite enough. Once you solve one project you're immediately off to the next. Imagine you treated your woman the same way - first a boob job, then laser hair removal, a nose job, a lip job, then it's time for liposuction, and at some point it's time to trade her in on a new model. The major difference is when you trade in the car you don't have alimony.

 

Hehe, damn right

 

On all of the lesser mods, leaving the Renesis normally aspirated, the HP gains are just too small for the costs. If you start stacking them up, then you can get a nice boost in power, but you will spend a small fortune. By that point, you will be thinking, I should just have just gone with FI. If you stack all those mods with FI, then you have spent enough to have bought a lot nicer sports car.

I think I will keep my money in my pocket.

 

Having done most of the decent N/A mods I tend to agree . However if the right mods (forget catbacks & intakes) are selected you can get some nice gains for under $US2000 . Advantage over FI is that you have virtually no compromises over stock reliability/driveability .
I got about what I was expecting from my mods but now yearn for that punch in the back you get from FI.

 

Not to mention your chances of blowing your engine are miniscule, unlike FI...

 

hmm... i seem to remember posting a dyno on here around 210 at the wheels with a CZ, high flow cat (or was it stock... can't remember), and a K&N air filter.. and i don't remember burning any cats up yet in 35k miles

 

We didn't have anything to measure horsepower and didn't tune the unit. We just tested the out of the box map.

We ran both our cars side by side to see if one was faster than the other. We did them both stock to start with on a straight road (all rolling starts to take out driver reaction etc.) to make sure we were driving equal cars and they were both the same. Then we put the CZ unit into Polak's car and ran them side by side again. No one was faster, we both ran equal. Did it a few times to make sure no one was getting the jump on the other. No difference. Then we swapped the unit into my car to see if I could get any improvement out of it. Again same result the cars ran equal each time.

We didn't try any tuning just tried the out of the box map and there was no difference on either car.

 

Out of the box the CZ is virtually useless. The supplied tune is very mild and also every car is different so what are the chances? Slim to none of good results.

I had the CZ unit in in 05 and I had the car tuned by one of the founding 'experts' with the unit, SpeedRacer. He said my car responded well to the unit and tuning, aka I had a 'good one'. We tuned both fuel and timing. I never had it dynoed with it in the car, so only butt dyno results and track results.

Butt dyno is obviously subjective, but when well tuned, the CZ produced a definite upper midrange RPM surge in power. Very noticeable even to passengers, e.g. had an instructor riding in the car and he asked if I had a turbo he was so surprised by the surge in acceleration in that range.

Also I have fallen 2 seconds short of matching my best time on a local 1.3 mile circuit I know like the back of my hand since I've removed the unit, even with better, wider, stickier tires and upgraded brakes/pads, not to mention even more experience there. Sessions where however not anywhere close together in time, but I do feel the lack of umph since taking the unit out.

I know also that cat temp is noticeably higher with the "tuned for results" CZ in and so lifespan diminished.

 

let's see it, post the link

btw, I didn't knock the CZ because I have no experience with it ... you might consider the same

 

i really don't care to spend the rest of the afternoon finding a p0st from 2 years ago...

a quick search result showed one of my earliest 89 octane daily driver maps
https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...highlight=dyno

 

those don't look like actual dyno runs to me, no dyno spec data, etc.

 

oh here we go, watch me scurry around to try and find 2 year old data on my old defunct laptop to prove i have the bigger e-*****... err maybe not