Hello,

While I admit to being quite the n00b... I must pose a question as I am interested in starting to get my feet wet with some serious mods. I was looking at the Canzoomer (600 dollars for stage 1/2) vs the Interceptor X (cant find a price or website)

For a novice tuner who will probably stay N/A... which would be the best option? What are the prices/website for the InterceptorX? And in terms of ease of tuning which would you reccommend? I'm not lookin to race but I wouldnt mind taking on a little project like this to fiddle around/learn about my car/get a faster car in the process.


Any and all info is appreciated
Cheers
Jeff

 

You can get the CZ for $250 range. Int-X runs around $1500.

The X is superior, for sure, but carries a large price tag. Well worth it if you're serious about FI, but for NA applications, I'm not so sure if the price can be justified.

Tuning the CZ: http://tyrannical.org/page-15

 

^^^ Very true, in N/A form just get final gear, flywheel, not worth spending so much for such little power on CZ or Int-X.

 

ever since greddy released the turbo and mazsport released the interceptor, there's a number of a emanages out there for sale pretty cheap.

fyi, in case you didn't know the canzoomer is an older emanage that has been modified to plug right into the rx8's harness. it still suffers from all the problems emanages have, and even a few more. sales have dropped off recently since greddy released an rx8 harness for it (only available in the turbo kit)

if i were you, i'd pick up an emanage from someone who went FI and bought the interceptor. get yourself the password (do a search on here) and the support tool, and you'll be in business to start tuning.

the interceptor is, either way, far superior but of course you pay for that. the website is www.mazsport.net

 

The Canzoomer was probably the best gain for the money if you are just looking to keep it NA. Though with the new flashes, it might have diminished the effect a bit. The 2 systems are night & day though. One is an inexpensive, decent way to play with the timing & A/F ratios a bit. people saw somewhere in the 15-25 whp range with the Canzoomer tuned (& other stuff). Not bad if you can get one with the CZ unit, cables & software for like $400. Interceptor is a much more robust system, but you pay quite a bit more for it as well. Depends on what you are looking for, and how much you are willing to spend.

 

thanks for the information - you said "You loose so much for so little gain" what were you referring to that you actually lose? Do you loose things like cruise control, wheel stereo controls, traction control, and other electronic goodies?

If I were to get a canzoomer - as long as i retained ALL of my creature comforts of the car but gained the ability to tweak the AFR's, i'd be pretty happy. With the mods im looking at I'm hoping for a respectable gain (high flow cat, RB exaust, lightweight flywheel, and the CZ unit.

 

as far as i'm concerned the CZ is still the best bang for the buck out there for NA applications. For a novice I'd suggest a CZ box over a regular greddy box with harnass because the CZ box is nicely packaged to fit under the stock ecu cover and is idot proof and hassle free to install....

cz vs interceptor...

- no horsepower advantage with one over the other if tuned correctly
- the cz tuning does require you to play by the rules when tuning so as to not pick up any fuel trims that untune your tuning... it can be done though. The interceptor has complete control.
- the cz retains all of the factory ecu saftey features like knock retard, limp modes, catalyst protection, cold starting modes, ect.. The interceptor bypasses them all. This really means for a newbie you should really consider getting an interceptor professionally tuned as it is possible to blow your engine if you make a mistake, whereas tuning the cz is much more forgiving
- the cz is ~$400 (or less used) and interceptor $1500...

 

He meant not the best bang for your buck

 

well since your buddy's giving you the harness, and you already have the emanage youre best bet is to stick with it until you boost. i'd say if you didn't have those things, then just spring for the int-x (because I want to see what nitrous does with tuning! lol). either way you go now, DO NOT use the emanage with two power adders. thats just a disaster waiting to happen.

 

Controlling ignition with the emanage is risky and I would approach it with caution. There are issues with triggering.

 

As long as you adjust the timing signals as per Mazdamaniacs thread when you hook them up you should be OK with the E-manage. It works well to adjust the timing within it's parameters. As well you can add or subtract fuel in the open loop areas reliably as well.....esp at WOT like the NOx application will be.

Just don't try and adjust any open loop areas and you will be OK

 

FYI, Ryan is right. There are some SERIOUS issues in the way that GReddy taps into the RPM signal on the RX8. I don't want to go into a long discourse here. But, in fact, I working on a write-up of my experiences for a new thread on this topic. The first post will be a couple of pages long....

It turns out that they did a really shitty job of isolation between the RPM dongle, the PCM and the eManage. This is the reason why the R flash turns some GReddy 8's to un-drivable paperweights - the PCM's ignition signal is grounded out and looses so much of the trigger pulse (shape and amplitude) that the coils don't fire reliably. The result is a lot misfiring and abusrdly rich AFR readings. That is the undeniable result of the R flash. I speculate that the R flash changed the ground plane of the ignition circuitry somewhow. Perhaps through controlling one of the transistors differently than the previous flashes.

In my own experience, although I am on the M flash, trying to control timing had some pretty disasterous effects. I can't prove it, but I believe that there was so much cross-talk between the ignition channels that the trailing plugs were actually firing before the leading ones.... ouch...

Jeff has a custom circuit built to isolate the Greddy components and the PCM. This should have been built into the GReddy stuff to begin with, but wasn't. Under no circumstances should you ever attempt to control ignition timing without some isolation circuitry in place.

I think this leads us to the answer of the useful limit of the eManage. Fueling can be controlled quite reliably (using the severed P2 trick) but timing is not well understood at this time. So, using the eManage for moderate boost levels is perfectly acceptable. Its when you push it into the range that requires timing adjustments that things get hairy.