Canzommer,

You mention fuel economy. What are your projections for this? I like the idea of more power but I am more interested and getting better mileage out of my car. Power is great but the daily drive is killing me.

 

Mr. Load has a good point, 'Zoomer... if you could point me in the direction of that bloody beeper, I will do a replacement/upgrade post.

It is pretty well useless 'as is'.

Thanks,
.
.
.
doc

 

You make a good point. One can't hear it of the stereo is on.
So, I looked. It is a peizo electric buzzer.
5 volt apparently.
I have louder ones here if you want to have a go.

I have the shop manual, wiring manual, a decent set of tools and a big concrete driveway.

Maybe stop by tomoorw if you are not doing anything exceptional tomoorw and we can play with wiring. i wanted to do my fog lights mod anyway..

Call me if interested.. 456-1510

 

That is a big part of our goals.
I will be doing a final fit on my 8 next weekend, so after that I can use a couple of tanks and tell you the results. I have detailed records of my gas consumption up to this point, so we can certainly tell..

 

Does this require removing the dash, as in the RX-7s? Where exactly is the buzzer mounted? Thanks. Really excited about your work, once again.

 

Yeah, it is in the dash, behind the instrument cluster.
About a half hour to get to it.

 

doesnt sound like a fun job

 

Are they ever? :D

Seriously though, who cares??

Isn't the darned tach BIG ENOUGH for some people??

Last thing I want to hear is yet another bloody beeper!

Yes mother, my seat belt is on.
Yes mother, my door is locked
Yes mother, my car is over-revving
No mother, I will not speed
Yes mother, my fly is done up..

 

Yea, yea.

What about the role of the secondary injector?

Vince

 

Interesting conversation today.
Through a friend in USA who is a very well known and recognised specialist contractor for (insert some performance component type here) and a conference call, I got to talk with a fairly high placed engineer at Mazda USA.

I am NOT going to say more about that part as people would be quite unhappy if I did..

Seems Mazda are considering the idea of making an ECU upgrade available to those who whine enough..
Not a cheap thing, though.

Here is the kicker:
He said it would allow those who are really dissatisfied to get 238HP..

I worked VERY hard to keep straight face and not sound amused.

 

We figured out a neat trick today:

Disconnect output from front wheel sensors to ECU.

Take output signal from rear wheel sensors to ECU.
Split out and hook to input on ECU for front wheel sensors.

Now ECU gets readings that tell it front and rear wheels are all turning at the same speed.

It seems very happy with that, and does not want to do anything odd.

And it makes the same power output as we got before.

Also, we did some road running with fuel control device, O2 sensor monitored, fuel/air ratios monitored, exhaust temps monitored.

Readings on road identical to those on dyno, other than exhaust temps a bit higher. Not surprising as on dyno we are not getting as much air cooling as on road, outside, at 11C ( 52F)

Note to Bern:

2nd and 3rd BS flags thrown..

 

I dont understand your trick of the day

 

On Rotary News Bern quoted somebody (un-named) from Mazda who claimed that when people put an RX-8 on a dyno the power figures would be wrong because:
"the ECU could tell that it was not running on the road" and that the ECU would lower the power output.

See:
http://rotarynews.com/view.php?id=212

"Only the rear wheels are turning while the front tires remain stationary.

On cars equipped with DSC with traction control, the difference in speed between the front and rear wheels is sensed and the power is reduced immediately to compensate for what the car senses as excess wheel spin.

If the DSC is turned off, the traction control is disabled but the brake functions of the DSC are still operational.

If the DSC system is completely disabled, this removes the brake functions from the equation, however it does not fully remove the engine management system functions.

The ABS hydraulic unit/control module (HU/CM), or the DSC HU/CM for cars with DSC, determines vehicle speed by comparing the speed of all four wheels. If two are turning and two are stationary, it will still compute a speed but senses that the car is experiencing excessive wheel spin. To protect against engine or catalyst damage:"


What the RX-8 has that could feed info to the ECU about wheel speed is a sensor on each wheel that sends pulses to the ECU and from these pulses the ECU tells how fast the wheel is moving.

There is one sensor on each wheel.

On a dyno the front wheels are not turning, only the back wheels.

So, we disconnected the front wheel sensors, fed the signal from the rear wheel sensors in to the ECU on the circuit that the front wheels normally send on.

Now the ECU is getting a reading from the front wheels that is identical in speed ot the signal from the back wheels.

It "thinks" the front wheels are turning at the same speed.

The result showed no differences.

In other words the claim that Bern / Mazda made was BS.

Clear?

 

Hi Canzoomer,

A PCM software upgrade from Mazda would have to pass the EPA and CARB tests which caused the power loss in the first place. If it is like the Mazdaspeed Protege PCM reflash that happened last month, it should not cost anything.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes Mazda to get the new maps to pass the SFTP tests.

Brian

 

thanks canzoomer

 

Quite right. It would be sweet if they could pull that off..

I have doubts as they have had a while to work on this already, and not much news, but let's cross fingers, toes, eyes, arms, and whatever else necessary!

 

Why would they offer new maps AND make us pay for it? It really pisses me off when I have to clean the tips off my car every week not to mention my fuel milage. It should be free or very cheap.

D

 

I thought at one point someone tested the sensors and they were unpowered with DSC off and no braking? Did that turn out not to be true?

The one other thing that still makes me somewhat uncomfortable is the report from Paul Yaw a while back which seemed to validate the claim that the ECU was getting squirrelly on the dyno. Why would he think that?

jds

 

It is still true. I posted this.
I am not the only one who tested this.

But I also want to double check things where I can.
So, turn of DSC as with it on wheel slippage will trigger DSC and that will lose us power. Same as before, always been that way.
ABS is still on, and I want to be absolutely sure that no "magic pixie action" is happening due to that circuit.

It is quite hard to run on a dyno with the front wheels turning at the same speed. Dynos are not made that way.

So, if we can't run the front wheels at the same speed as the back, what can we do?

Simple, make the ECU THINK they are!

And the results were unchanged.

I now have two different sets of test conditions validating this.

As for Paul Yaw, Rotary News, and so on.
Ask yourself this:
"Where does the money come from?"

The answer is:
"From working on Mazdas"

Did you ever hear the story of "The Emperors new clothes"?

 

If we want a reflash to be offered for free rather than at a price, sounds like the thing to do is for all to complain to Mazda documenting (through records that we should start keeping in writing re date, pump and odometer reading) our MPG experience, accompanied by a personal declaration that driving style and shift points seemed to matter little (plus observations re black exhaust tips). The debit card plus free service was premised on our disappointment in the HP and said NOTHING about expecting that the cars would uniformly not come close to the EPA numbers -- or to the mileage actually experienced by Car & Driver (which I recall as 20 MPG for their mileage course, and they do not baby a car).

If our position were premised solely on HP, they could answer that they have already compensated us with about $1,000 worth of value, so it is only fair that we pay back up to that amount for the reflash, which would, in lawyer terms, "make us whole." (We would be no worse or better off than if the cars had met the original HP promise.) However, if we complain about the universal MPG experience as well, they would have some difficulty in arguing that their fix also restores our MPG back to EPA specs -- it would be dangerous for them to admit that it fell below the EPA numbers since they never mentioned this to us or compensated us for it. (They could still claim a less specific "improvement" but my guess, as a lawyer, is that this is a subject they really hope not to touch in writing.)

Since I bring nothing to the party technically, hope this lawyerly contribution is helpful.

 

shebam, that's what the Mazdaspeed Protege people did. They just kept contacting people at Mazda. Kept trying and pushing higher. Got some mazda people that had the car and were experiencing the same thing involved. It took a while, but Mazda did come through with a free ECU reflash for them.

 

Ahh, I understand now...you haven't seen anything to change the previous statements about the sensors, you've just provided more data that the ECU isn't doing anything in that case even if the sensors do somehow provide data. Got it.

I can kind of understand Rotary News being in a precarious position with respect to getting access to Mazda info, but I wasn't under the impression that Paul Yaw's operation fell into that same category. Besides, if I'm not mistaken, his observations predated Mazda's announcement...possibly even triggered it. I'm all for conspiracy theories, but I'm not sure I'm buying that one. Maybe he saw something that he interpreted as problems with dyno-ing and it gave Mazda an idea! Who knows...

The Emperor's New Engine? :-)

jds

 

So does that mean he is admitting that the car currently really doesn't make 238hp like the official Mazda claim?

 

Bingo!

This is COMPLETELY off the record, of course.

Thing is, if you live in the USA, it might be a good time to renew your efforts with the dealer and Mazda.

Apaprently the ECU reflash is not going to be announced in a TSB or anything public. It is apparently going to be used to soothe those who are still complaining..

If you want to get greased, you have to be a "squeaky wheel" apparently.

 

In Canada, is this re-flash going to be offered too? (also off the record)