IronTanuki

I've decided to migrate my other thread for my Black 2004 MT to this one since I now finally have a set time where the work will be done and a few other updates. It's taken a lot of time and research to get to this point, I can't believe I thought I would be ready to have the turbo installed two months ago! I've included some pictures of my CXRacing intercooler and exhaust manifold I just got back from being coated at SwainTech.

The install is now scheduled for next month at Speed1 (formerly KDR) and will be tuned by Jeff at the MazdaManiac Dyno Day at Speed1 on 10/23.

Installed Mods:
BHR ignition
BHR radiator
Mishimoto radiator hose
Cobb AccessPort (stock map)
Mazmart RE-Medy waterpump
Mazmart RE-Medy thermostat
Rx7Store high flow cat
AEM cold air intake
4 OEM injectors sent to be serviced by KG Parts
HKS turbo timer
Evans NPG-R coolant
Good-Win Racing slotted break rotors with curved vanes and Hawk HPS break pads

Still have to install myself:
Odyssey PC925MJT battery relocated to the trunk inside a Taylor aluminum box
MM upgraded P2 injectors

To be installed by Speed1:
MM GT3071R turbo
Greddy exhaust manifold with SwainTech White Lightning coating
Greddy downpipe
Greddy IC pipes
Vibrant couplers and t-bolts
CXRacing Intercooler 22"x8"x3.5" with SwainTech BBE coating
Synapse BOV
Greddy oil pan
Walbro 255 lr/hr fuel pump
BHR throttle body spacer
AEM water-methanol injection
AEM Uego tru boost gauge
AEM wideband O2 gauge
SPA oil pressure and temp in one gauge (last item that I am still waiting on...)
Mazmart oil pressure regulator
New spark plugs with BUR9EQP (NGK-5255) leads
Lotek triple gauge pod
2.5 gallon Snow Performance water/methanol tank in battery location
eBay oil catch can
Custom 1/4" thick downpipe to transmission brace

IronTanuki

So the kit has been installed by Speed1 and tuned at the dyno day at Speed1 yesterday (thread here). I don't have my dyno sheets yet but I'll get in contact with Dave to have him send them over.

The general consensus was that the car performed well under what was expected after putting down a max of 245rwhp. Jeff cautioned me before the car went up that 260ish is normal for customer cars where there is still a cat. I am going to order an OBX test pipe and see how that affects the grams per second, boost dropoff, and butt dyno.

There are some lingering issues that need to be addressed outside of the power, the turbo vibrates against the passenger footwell. Also during hard driving it will start to melt the glue under the carpet. When Jeff was doing dyno runs the entire cabin was filled with smoke Hopefully both of these issues can be resolved by adding more heat shielding to that area. The smoke in the cabin doesn't seem to be an issue when the car is actually moving but you can definitely smell the glue.

The car also still runs much richer than I would like especially since I will be running methanol 100% of the time (I got a 2.5 gallon tank after all). The AFR drops to 10 at WOT then holds in the 10-10.4 range. Right now the AFR curve is pretty solid except one small dip down then spike around the point the APV opens. I have the MMCCS so hopefully I can work with Jeff to get the tune rock solid.

The syncronic BOV was leaking during the first several runs under boost but I believe that went away after Shelldude helped with the hoses a bit. I am not sure how I can test to make sure the BOV is no longer leaking under boost besides reving it with someone else under the hood. Shelldude mentioned I had the older style synchronic BOV which he got rid of since it also was leaking. Dave ended up not recirculating the BOV even though I requested it but I believe I will have to have it recirculated after all since the car will sometimes stall after coming off the throttle after going WOT.

I drove up there in my STi which my brother drove back half way and we did a little comparison where we could. The rx-8 right now walks on the STi from a 50-80 roll with the boost just under 12psi. From a butt dyno perspective both cars feel very similar in power with the rx-8 pulling harder at first but it dies off.

This all being said the car still is much more fun now than stock but there is still several rough edges to smooth out, then maybe I can put it up on a dyno again for comparison. Driving the 3 and a half hours out to Speed1 to dyno probably won't happen however so the results will be less than scientific. I had my wife drive me around in it today (it is her car after all ) and she reiterated her love for the rx-8 and said is even more fun now, like a rollercoaster.

MazdaManiac

iTrader: (3)

Not to call you out particularly, but what made you draw the conclusion that it "runs much richer" than you would like?
You do realize that there is no magic AFR ratio that equals maximum power.
That is the wonderful thing about the dyno - you can find out exactly what your particular car needs.
Even if we had spent 3 more hours on the dyno, I still would have set your target AFRs in the high 10's because that is where your car was making power. Most of the time was spent making the curve smooth.

Keep in mind, btw, that the target AFR for all of Mazda's boosted cars has been 10:1. MSP, MS Miata, MS 6 and 3, etc.
I'm not saying this is where the most power is on all those cars - I'm just pointing out that there are more datapoints that go into tuning a car than just pure AFR.

IronTanuki

I mean no disrespect and by no means am any authority on what a proper tune for the car is but wouldn't the car at least get better gas mileage at a higher AFR? What would be the negative of having it in the 11-11.5 range instead of the 10-10.5 aside from increased chance of knocking?

IronTanuki

Even though no one seems to care about my build thread I'll post a few more updates I suppose.

Earlier in the week I found that the AEM TruBoost had not been set up fully and the spring crack pressure was still set at the default 2psi. After I bumped it up to 6psi the car picked up a lot more power.... for a while at least. The boost would hit 14psi at 74% duty cycle and hold it above 10psi almost all the way to redline but after the APV opens the car would feel like it was choking big time and it would run really rough at the high RPMs. Prior to changing this setting my top grams per second was around 330g/s but on Friday morning after correcting this my top hit 370g/s:


All was well until a few minutes before getting home on the same driving session as the above log when all of a sudden I lost 3-4psi across the entire RPM band regardless of boost profile. My high boost was peaking in the 10s and dropping off to 7, my low-boost was barely hitting 7s and 8s and only getting 4-5psi with the boost controller off. I'm thinking maybe my cat took a **** and is clogged up completely now... I will test this for sure with the OBX test pipe which should arrive on Tuesday. Here is an example of the type of numbers I'm seeing now with a 1st to 2nd gear run:


I've also attached the cropped raw logs for these runs with the charts on a separate tab.

ShellDude

iTrader: (12)

damn... sorry to hear about your troubles... hopefully you can get things ironed out before we get too far into winter.

In regards to the Synchronic BOV, the only functional difference between the "old" and "new" versions is that the old has a boost line... meant to act like a safety valve (read as additional waste gate) in the event of overboost. The manual says to not bother connecting it unless you're running some crazy high amount of boost. For whatever reason Synapse dropped it in the current production version and now there's only vacuum valves A and B.

To further confuse things you need to use their anti-stall kit if you vent to atmosphere. It's nothing more than a silly spring loaded plate with a rubber seal built into it. Yours did feel a little looser than mine does, but I remember it working pretty much as designed once we got the vacuum setup straight.

From what I've gathered by first hand use and a video/post or two from the Synapse site, the possible combinations are A, B, and A+B. Using only A requires more vacuum to open the blow off and A+B the least.

Your car acted almost the exact same way mine did. A+B was the worst, pretty much blowing all the time, B leaked even under boost, and A is the sweet spot.

If you drop the anti-stall, put the recirc fitting back on it, and recirculate things should settle down even more. You may even want to tinker with your A, B, C valve settings again.

But one thing this BOV appears to love to do is leak... Even Synapse calls it out... wierd thing this, they call it a "feature" ... protection for the snail ... LOL

Also, did you get better seals for the BOV hose? I remember we jimmy jammed in a little bolt.

Brettus

iTrader: (2)

Looking good .

BTW I never do WOT in 1st ....

IronTanuki

Yesterday I had a chance to work on the car again. I took out the rx7store highflow cat which now looks like this:

I also noticed the pre-cat AEM wideband O2 sensor on the mid-pipe was barely torqued down at all.

When I went to put the new test pipe I noticed the rear donut gasket that I was going to reuse was no where to be found ... since it was late Saturday that meant no place which would sell a replacement was open so the car will be out of commission until Monday.

With it incapacitated I took the opportunity to mark and pull the intake pipe so that I can get a recirculating fitting welded in on Monday as well. I also wedged some header heat wrap in-between the turbo oil line and the frame which will hopefully stop it from the ghetto banging it does.

I have heard some compressor surge with the way it is currently set up so I also took a look at the way the BOV is set up after reading up on Synapse's website and noticed that port C which is supposed to be a boost only signal is not hooked up to anything at all. I don't remember the exact configuration when it first went up on the dyno and was leaking but I traced the line we blocked off into the fender and it looks like it is coming from the post IC piping. Synchronic's website says not to use a boost line which is also used for the boost controller so if hooking this IC pipe line to C doesn't work I may have to send the BOV in to be modified to the new type where there is no port C. I'll leave it the way it is until the other pipe is back on however so I am only changing one variable at a time (well... two with the recirculation).

NgoRX8

iTrader: (1)

wow, that cat got cooked.

Brettus

iTrader: (2)

Wow . I think I can say without fear of contradiction that replacing that will make a bit of a difference .

NgoRX8

iTrader: (1)

are you sure? haha, just kidding. definitely would make WOT boosting in 1st a bit scarier.

MazdaManiac

iTrader: (3)

You stand non-contradicted! lol

Talic

i had the same cat and the same problem
i went with srmotorsports and had no issues
but only had it on for about 25,000km

Nemesis8

iTrader: (3)

What size is the stock GReddy downpipe?

MazdaManiac

iTrader: (3)

It is an irregular shape and it reduces to the OE CAT inlet diameter (3.75"??).
It starts out as a vaguely kidney-shaped opening, approximately 4"x2.5".

TeamRX8

iTrader: (25)

The OE cat inlet flange stub that the OE crush gasket slips onto is 2-5/8" OD

IronTanuki

On Monday I got the intake tapped for a recirculation fitting and installed the OBX test pipe. I thought you couldn't screw up a pipe but the tapered section on the rear of the pipe where the exhaust gasket donut sits was too wide to fit the gasket... I ended up having to bend the pipe inwards a little and stripping a few layers out of the donut to make it fit You get what you pay for... screw OBX.

I'm almost ready to just let the car be but the oil line still bangs against the frame a bit sometimes, especially when turning or low speeds/idling and the there is a consistent squealing coming from the belt area which starts several minutes after starting up and stays there until the car is shut off... adds to the sleeper image I guess. Ignoring these issues the car sounds amazing. I love hearing the turbo whistle from the floor and I'm glad that the volume is not any louder with the new pipe than with the high flow cat and it is not raspy at all, just pure turbo rotary magnificence screaming to redline. When at partial throttle it is also not very loud at all which is nice.

I was also worried about too many flames but it seems to only happen rarely when going to redline at WOT after letting off the throttle.

The car runs strong and I'm loving it. Recirculating the BOV makes a huge difference in drivability, I couldn't stand the bucking at partial throttle or when you got on and off again, and having to blip the throttle to keep the car from stalling every time the RPMs fell from above 3k RPM put a damper in my fun. I haven't had a ton of time to drive it yet though and a gingerly drive through the mountains is definitely due in the near future.

For reference here is a 2nd gear pull now:


Also attached the logs in raw form if anyone cares to see.

MazdaManiac

iTrader: (3)

You need to clock the center section of the turbo a bit to fix that.
Not an easy job, but the only right way to do it.

IronTanuki

Yeah I know, but I'm not about to take the turbo out any time soon. When the motor eventually goes it will be on my checklist pf things to do but for now I'm going to try one last round of heat wrap and then just deal with it if it still happens.

MazdaManiac

iTrader: (3)

If it is hitting the "fortress", it will eventually crack and dump all of your oil.

IronTanuki

Brettus

iTrader: (2)

Excellent - going to re-dyno it now that you have it sorted ?

IronTanuki

We will see. Since i dont have the tools, place, or time to pull the turbo myself having to drop another grand so I'm not sitting on a ticking timebomb may push the dyno run back a bit. My wife's patience with the unending stream of money going into this project is wearing thin haha

Brettus

iTrader: (2)

hmmm that sounds very familiar lol

09Factor

I thought that i was the oly one with this problem. maybe we should form a support goup.

Btw nice Cat.