Ok, I'm over at Jenkinscrew's house looking at the Greddy Ultimate upgrade kit for his turbo. Jenkins asks me about a piece that came in the kit, which was a aluminum plate that appeared from the directions to cover a part of the uppper plastic intake manifold. (the kit also comes with a nipple and the new harness)

Confused, we decided to go look at my car since his is at the audio shop getting a trick custom dash built (he has a show car with a carputer), I walk over pop the hood and look at the uppermanifold. This little plate completely blocks the runner that feeds the auxiliary ports on the engine. My first thought was call rotarygod and check to make sure I'm not smoking crack, but it appears this plate effectively makes the engine a 4port.

why do this? Well, we know the turbo is already running out of stream in the 7500rpm range, therefore, is getting more than enough airflow. Could Greddy have tested the old kit and realized that the aux ports were not really useful with the turbo kit and possibility causing a lean spike or other tuning issues? I bet it makes it easier to tune without that event happening right when the Greddy hits its stride. In addition, all the older turbo factory cars were 4ports, maybe is just simpler and more reliable that way (it certainly takes less effort to tune, as Mazsport Scott went to a ton of work tuning around the port openings).

At any rate, this could have implications for folks just simply buying the Emanage ultimate if its loaded with the upgrade kit map. Be aware of this and and its potential to affect your tuning.

We need some scans of the directions that come with the kit so others can see, but since I hadn't seen this mentioned I wanted to get it out quickly.

My final thoughts are that it could be a good thing if you keep the power and boost down in the 5-7psi range as greddy intented, but I don't know the potential consequences if you boost beyond that.

Discuss.

 

here's a link to some thoughts on it:
https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...6&page=8&pp=15

http://www.mohdparts.com/emanage/tmp...nstruction.pdf

 

To clarify, this is a plate that bolts in between the upper plastic intake manifold and the upper plastic manifold piece that sends air only the the auxiliary port runners. It has 2 bolts. This completely blocks off air to the auxiliary ports altogther. It may stop air from going into the engine but when the auxiliary port valves open, these runners still are connecting each rotor to each other. When the turbo sends boost into the engine with the auxiliary port valves open, the air will inevitably bleed back through this passage, reducing efficiency. This seems like a really ghetto dumb idea to me and I feel dumber for having seen it. Yay Greddy. I'll leave the rest of the comments to myself as I don't need to start a war over a bandaid.

Actually that was a bit harsh. The reality is that the Greddy turbo is so grosly undersized that it can't flow enough air up top which means an added set of ports really isn't helping them. They just block off the aux. ports so they don't lose air velocity here and don't have a dip in power. There's a dip alright and he's in Japan. It's a solution to a different problem which is the small turbo.

 

wars are good, people learn from them

 

So this turbo setup should work on a 4 port AT engine just as good as it works on a six port ?
I am confused as to why Greddy does not put on a bigger Turbo and be done with it.

 

I seem to remember Maddog had the thought that he could hold boost better by closing off the aux ports. He disconnected the APV motor and went to the dyno. He found he could in fact hold boost better, but power turned out to be lower than with the APV ports functioning normally. Not a good mod in my book.

 

Glad to see you regained consciousness!

 

Here are the said instructions

 

There is no dip with the plate in place. It will run perfectly smooth up to redline with it there. So if he found little gain for the pain of having to adjust the afr, and a drop in boost from it opening up the 6 port, I can see why it was done.

Maybe later I'll take a screenshot of the dyno chart I have on my video camera. The line was perfectly smooth in around a 45 degree angle.

Anyway, I'm not sure I like the idea of the plate in place either, but it's what the ultimate was supposedly tuned with, and I just want my car running before I make any changes.

 

Some local honda tuners do something similar to this. They disable VTEC on turbo'd engines to make tuning easier, since you don't have to account for a different cam profile. Sure you don't get the more aggressive valve timing and there is probably less max power but the delivery ends up being smoother.

 

Yup. Z'actly... I seem to recall that the lean spike went away as well.

 

All seems kind of stupid to me...

You don't redesign an engine for a turbo system, you design a turbo system for an engine. Ghetto, very ghetto.

How is it too hard to do it right the first time? Instead they spend 3 years trying to fix the problems caused by laziness in the first place. (does kind of fit the car though...*cough* )

 

that was my response when brillo told me about this last night^^

 

Meh.. I don't know. Its not redesigning the engine, its redesigning the intake, which was definitely NOT designed with FI in mind. We control that motor with the IntX, too. Only we hold it open instead of closed. But its still trying to get around the design of the intake.

 

I'm not slaming the intent, the execution is a little bit of a hack but I know why they did it. We have a complicated intake system that NA was designed to squeeze every last dop out of the engine. With the turbo, a bunch of that stuff isn't necessary when your shoving 6psi through the intake.

In fairness to Greddy i think they are trying to make the system more reliable, but I think the cold reception they get now is more a function of "why didn't you figure this out 18months ago".

All aftermarket kits are going to contain some degree of hack, some are just more eligant than others.

I'm more concerned that people that are upgrading their ECU don't realize that the new Greddy Emanage Ultimate will be tuned around this change unless you alter their maps.

 

what if you make less air go in... like ake a 1" hole in the plate. It wouldn't make THAT big of a difference and air wouldn't go back up the other way.... Not sure of flow though.. just throwing something out

 

Or even the 4 port 5 speed manuals (jap spec) which is what I have. FI conversion underway right now.

 

Does anyone know with this upgrade, would there be more HP or less... I assume there will be more Torque.... Also if we installed this plate with one of the other Kits hitting the market shortly, would this be easier to tune.... I'am thinking of getting this upgrade...

 

I agree


I also agree that the change is getting a cold reception because maybe they should have done it earlier.

Maybe it is ghetto but what would you rather them do? Charge for a new intake manifold that blocks the ports? hehe


As far as the 4 port engine question yeah it makes sense that the kit would work with your car. You'd have to rewire the harness so that it controls the 2 sets of injectors you have. Then you'd have to find out how much more fuel those injectors can provide and if it's not enough you'd have to get bigger injectors.

 

Wanted to resurrect this for a minute:

I have attached the port sensor back to the actuator line through a resistor. This spoofs the sensor signal so the PCM believes that the port opens when it tells it to.
GReddy does the same thing, only I leave my actuator line hooked up to the PCM. Why?
Because I also have it hooked up through a diode so it opens the second I go into boost.
This allows the full breathing capacity without having it open and cause a lean spike right as the engine goes to the torque peak.

 

Would you write up a DIY for this? I have been throwing around the idea of opening the Aux. Ports earlier but couldn't figure out a good way to do it without causing a CEL.

 

I have a new slogan.

MazdaManiac: Making Greddy not suck since 2004.

 

Really, I don't have any great love for GReddy.
However, when I pop open the EMU or look at the casting job on their manifold, I refuse to believe that so much good manufacturing and engineering work should amount to nothing.

Electronically, the EMU is a marvel. Why GReddy should be so clueless as to how it should be implemented is unanswerable.
Its almost as if they were given the technology by an alien intelligence without an explanation of how it works!
Talking to Benny, I get the same impression - I think they leave him in the dark as well, which is amazing since he is the main guy GReddy USA R&D!
In reality, there are some engineers in Japan that completely understand the EMU and they are just not positioned to offer support, so we are left to reverse-engineer the thing ourselves to make it work.

There just isn't another product on the market that does what the EMU does.

 

Jeff , which EMU. Original with Greddy kit or the Ultimate..

 

EMU = E - Manage Ultimate