Stroudism

I have a 2004 RX8 with a Mazsport Turbo kit. I was accelerating quickly at a green light and when I put the car into neutral and came to a stop at the next light, the car stalled (which happens every now and then I think from running rich). This time the car doesn't start. After 30 minutes of cranking with the gas pedal all the way down (figured it flooded) car finally starts. Runs rough as hell, a slight vibration while it runs, like on 1 rotor. Almost no power at all but I get it to limp home 5 min away. Tons of white smoke coming from exhaust and wreaks like gas.

Next day I fire it up. Idle stays solid at about 800-900 rpm, but still the vibration. AFRs around 17 when cold and vacuum at 6InHG. It warms up finally and I get 14.5 AFR idle and 12 InHG which both seem normal. Still white smoke coming out. I check the oil. It's more drippy than normal and really smells like gas.

Did I blow a seal? Did I just flood the sh*t out of it? I didn't really let the car warm up before I got on it, but it had only sat for an hour after I had been in Texas traffic so I figured it was good. Please help!!!!!

Also - engine code PCM P0300 (random misfires). I have JUST replaced coils and wires about 200 miles ago.

05rx8mazda

iTrader: (4)

It shouldnt be that lean on cold start.. mine goes to about 12/13 afr when cold... with a vacuum that low i bet it is probably a vacuum leak.. check it before going into boost.. also check the jet air fuel mixture line mine had a tendency to pop off.

Did you replace the spark plugs??? also might wanna check the fuel pump.

05rx8mazda

iTrader: (4)

BTW NEVER and i mean NEVER go into boost until your motor warms up.. Coolant temps do not = oil/Metal temps... remember metal expands ooo if you boost over time your gonna blow a side seal/ apex, or damage your coolant orings.

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

^ Good points. It could be many things but that is very lean if you are in the 17's for any decent amount of time. But this issue could be many things. Did you ever get your tune finished properly?

Stroudism

Excuse me for being dumb, but where is the jet air fuel mixture line located?

Also, like I said the car only sat for one hour after I had been driving it in Houston traffic for over an hour, so it's likely everything was already warm.

I never got the tune corrected. It's still rich.

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

A range of 14.5 to 17.0 is not rich man. You should start budgeting for a rebuild soon.

Stroudism

I was talking about the original tune. That's what I'm saying I know 17 is lean and the car has never run that lean before. Anybody know someone in Houston that can rebuild these?

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

I would check all the obvious stuff (vacuum leaks, etc.) and if you still have issues then get a compression test to see where you engine is at. If the engine tests okay then get it tuned properly because that is probably the biggest issue.

Why would you spend so much adding forced induction and not get it tuned professionally? That $200-$300 is pocket change compared a what a rebuild aimed at forced induction will run you (around 5-6k).

Stroudism

I had it tuned professionally by a shop in town. I just think they didn't really know what they were doing and mislead me. I am having a baby and I need to sell this car so I can't afford to put any more money into it. The car runs good, just a bit rich is all.

05rx8mazda

iTrader: (4)

when i unplug my boost controllee.. my afr's jump easily to 17's at idle.. soo check the vacuum lines.. the jet air fuel line goes from your intake pipe to right behind the alternator.. on the left side of the motor towards the middle ish...

05rx8mazda

iTrader: (4)

nah bro i am not calling you dumb, im just trying to help you out.

BTW what ECU are you running?? the interceptor?? last i remember the cobb didnt work on it right?


n

Stroudism

OK, awesome I'll check that out.

Yes, I have the Cobb and they couldn't seem to really dial the tune in so it was a bit rich. Car ran great for the most part. But I think I blew a seal.... check out these 2 videos of the rotor turning over with trailing spark plug removed.

Rotor 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhPqrO2XoBY

Rotor 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RbreDtT5Ew

MazdaManiac

iTrader: (3)

That sucks.
I tried to help you out with that, but it was pretty clear to me that Chris had no idea what he was doing, if for no other reason than how "defensive" they became when I tried to explain to them what they would have to do to tune your car correctly.

Good luck with the sale.

nycgps

iTrader: (1)

your rotor #2 is bad. hmm, one of the sound is missing. cracked apex ?

white smoke = coolant seal failure.

rebuild is the only way to go, oh, use hylomar on the seals. it's good stuff (stock don't use it)

AFR 17 is freaking lean, why is it going for 17 at startup? I thought tune supposed to be a bit rich at startup ?

14 is not rich. 11 is rich.

StealthTL

iTrader: (1)

I love Hylomar, used to work for Marston Lubricants.

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

It sucks but I saw this coming a mile away. Tuning, tuning, tuning.

Stroudism

Guys, I don't think it was the tuning, I think it was my own fault. The boost setting I had it on peaks at 16 psi every once in a while and I should have turned it down. I think that's what did it. I was told 13 psi is max on pump gas. I should have listened.

nycgps

iTrader: (1)

I still think your tune is weird.

But either way, u need a rebuild that's for sure

MazdaManiac

iTrader: (3)

Make up your mind...


The tune should have covered all the possibilities.

I can absolutely assure your that Chris Delgado at SS had no idea what he was doing.

Stroudism

I am saying that I agree the tuning wasn't right, but I think it was my greed faulty for having the boost set at 14psi.

Do you think I could make a case to sue SS? The owner promised me they could tune it then at the end basically told me they didn't really understand how the Cobb worked.

Tuner@SSA

I'd like to get some details straight here. We never promised that we could tune the car, I explained that I had tuned several rotaries in the past but that they were all on standalones and I didn't have any experience with the access port on the RX8 ECU. I said I don't mind giving it a shot as with most unfamiliar software I can usually find my way around pretty well and get the job done.

Lets start from the beginning.. The car was brought with a used turbo kit from a company that was pretty much out of business. We install the kit with basically no instructions. We pretty much had no information to start with so we started searching and figuring out what we could from other peoples installs on the internet plus a little common since.

Once we had everything sorted out as best as we could I got the car up and running and I started to work with the Accessport and tried to tune the car.
I have friends that work at Cobb so I called them and they told me that they no longer support the RX8 and that I'd have to talk to Mazda Maniac "Jeff Abrams" or "MM" for short, for any support issues I may have with the Accessport. I decided to go ahead and see how far I could get by myself, that way I'd know what questions I'd need to ask when I talked to Mr. Abrams. So started trying to dial in the car and was having 2 major issues. The first issue, is that every time i'd go into boost the load would max out, the other issues is that no matter what I did when it would stage to the secondary injectors everything would go lean.. I finally got ahold of MM and sent him what I had so far for a map. I explained to him what I had done so far and what I was having issues with and asked if he could point me in the right direction as far as how this particular stock ECU functions. He replied with some answers that made since so I made the changes and went back to trying to tune the car. Well the load issue was fixed but the leaning out issue wasn't. Turns out in the software the 2nd and 3rd stage injectors are opposite of how they are laid out on the motor, hence why I was having lean issues.
After a couple emails back and fourth with MM we discovered the error and I changed it per his suggestions and started to make good progress on getting the car to pull through.

During this time the turbo was constantly smoking and we finally decide to pull it off and send it out to have it checked out. Turns out the turbo was missing parts from the CHRA and basically shot. Needless to say the customer ended up having to replace the turbo.

After making about 300HP @ 14 psi with it on the rich side and conservative ignition, I sent MM the current calibration and he responded saying that I had a lot of stuff wrong and that the MAF looks completely wrong and such and so fourth. After some back and fourth emails and us finally getting ahold of the guy who made the kit, we found out that the current way the kit was setup was designed to be used with the Haltech Interceptor and would not work properly with the stock ECU. Basically the MAF was in the wrong place and in the wrong size piping, which explained why my MAF curve ended up being so weird to get the tune where it needed to be. So we rebuilt parts of the kit how MM had suggested in an email and got everything back together. I emailed MM and let him know we were ready to do this one last time and hopefully everything would go smooth now. Jan 28, 29, 30, Feb 1, I don't hear back from him, basically internet silence. So the owner contacts him directly and MM gives him pricing and this and that to tune the car over the internet. Meanwhile I have already gone ahead and tuned the car to the extent that I can with the information I have. WOT was good, the car made good power and I was on the conservative side due to the fact that I wasn't 100% sure on the ECU stuff, but everything seemed to be working well EXCEPT, for some reason when in closed loop the ECU would struggle to trim and you could feel the roughness while driving. We did some research and from what we found supposedly those MAFs are super sensitive and a lot of people add air straighteners inline to help smooth out the signal. We've done this before on other MAF cars so it wasn't big deal. We installed the air straightener and it helped quite a bit but it still wasn't perfect. At this point MM had basically stopped helping us and decided that we needed to pay him to tune the car. I already had the car running reasonably well and the owner decided to take it as it was rather than pay MM to touch up what was left that I couldn't seem to get sorted out.

I went way out of my way to try and make this happen for the customer even with all the odds against him from buying a used turbo kit that was out of production to the blown turbo, to the lack of information about the kit, to the unfamiliarity of the intricacies of the RX8 ECU. He drove the car for several months at the boost level I tuned it too and the motor ran fine. I know some people on here said that the map should have been scaled out for boost spikes and what not, well the fact of the matter is I originally had it like that and MM told me that it was wrong and to only scale it out to the max airflow that we will be using. Being that he was the expert I did as he said, so at this point I don't feel that I have done anything wrong. Like I said in the beginning, I warned the customer that I hadn't tuned a stock ECU RX8 before and that all prior rotary experience was on stand alones and he agreed to have me give it my best shot and thats what we did in EVERY aspect of his build. I cannot be held responsible for any damage that happened from running the car under conditions it wasn't tuned for (IE more boost)..

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

I don't blame you for this failure, but I am surprised you would put your name on it if you were not comfortable completing the job. But I guess that is a decision you made and I respect that.

From what I know this build was not thought out very well at all, and this is the result. Like my father always told me, "proper prior planning". I applaud Jeff for helping at all, I don't work for free for people I don't know.

Tuner@SSA

The issue I have with Jeff is that his agreement with Cobb as I was told is that they handed over the RX8 platform to him in return he is supposed to uphold the same level of tech support standards as Cobb would.. I can call Cobb anytime any day and ask them any question about how a particular ECU functions as far as it relates to their software. I didn't ask or expect Jeff to tune the car or give me any tuning help as I know how to tune rotaries, I only asked for him to explain to me how the ECU and software interact and how to get it to do what I need it to do which in all fairness he did initially but, I feel like he kinda left me in the dark towards the end there which I don't consider "maintaining Cobbs same level of tech support", and I defiantly don't see how he could consider anything I said to him as me being "defensive" .. There is also a big difference between "not knowing what your doing", and not being familiar with how a particular ECU works. I'm fluent in over 32 Engine managements and rom editing softwares and tune several hundred cars a year of every make model and setup you can think of. So its kinda not cool when someone publicly says I don't know what I'm doing.

Anyways, I can't win them all, I can only strive to do my best every time.

Stroudism

Looking back, the cheap and best route would have been to have MM tune it and drive it from the shop with his base tune. However, the OWNER of Secret Services Auto assured me on the phone that they could tune the car, so once I had gathered up all my parts and drove down there, then they said "yeah we've worked with Cobb before, but just not on an RX-8." I got the impression this was no big deal as they had tuned other rotaries before (an RX-7, 400+ whp not long before). I was also told that the kit would work with the AP, and then found out later on during tuning that the MAF housing was the wrong size. Yes, there was a lack of some planning on my part, but I acted with the information that I had at that time. All in all, this was one of the worst experiences of my life, cost me a **** load, and now I have to ride my motorcycle to work everyday. I have a kid on the way and no car to put him in. But I'll say this... that RX-8 was bad as f*** under boost and would run most cars I came across. Got a lot of attention at the local meets when they saw the turbo. Very bitter sweet experience.

As for MM, he has one side of the story, SS another. I know each party has their own concerns and needs but I just ran out of money to have MM re-tune the car and the owner of SS was unwilling to pay him to help out, so I got boned. Chris (Tuner@SS) maintained very good communication with me though out the process and I appreciate his help and dedication. I think ultimately is was the owner of the shop who would not pay MM to help complete the tune.

Car is for sale as-is at:
https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...54#post4064054

Please pass the word and help me out.

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

Hard lesson learned. Hopefully you can rebound and start over in a couple of years.