Came across my screen this morning. Too bad its about a year late for my build. Looks like Haltech finally made a replacement for the adaptronic maybe I will upgrade in the future.

https://www.haltech.com/product/ht-2...cu-mazda-rx-8/

 

I've been testing one for the last couple of months. Haven't got it sorted 100% to my liking yet but once I do it will be going on the dyno.

 

I assume this would be a good ecu if you were wanting to add psh psh noises?

 

The shitty thing is that I already repinned my harness for the adaptronic and just got the REW running, granted 90% of it will be the same. I would just need to figure out other things like

• FFE Hall trigger wheel (what do the options look like on software)
• innovative EGT serial input (I assume its the SPI connections on the auxiliary connector)
• Whether I could use my AEM wideband and go straight into the ECU. Right now for the Adaptronic I had to go to the AEM gauge and then back to the ECU through a serial connector.

It looks nice that they have that auxiliary connector so you could get 12v switched instead of having to wire to the fat X18 plug in the corner of the ECU box. Also looks like it fits in the stock ECU box, good thing I didn't throw that out.

 

I purchased and received Nexus ECU last month. I'm searching for turbo kit or parts to have a boosted bridge ported renesis. Probably a year before I have a motor ready.

 

Hate to be that guy, but you might want to do some more reading up first. Cant exactly recommend bridge porting a renesis let alone a boosted renesis. Brett can speak more to his endeavors, but the general renesis issue is getting air out of the engine and not in.

 

Yeah, bridgeporting a turbo Renesis is a great recipe for disappointment. Sure you'll make some power and you'll probably think it's fine, till you realise you'd actually make more power without it.
Also : On an engine that is particularly susceptible to detonation , a bridgeport only adds to that risk!

 

Hello Brettus,
Thanks for the reply.
Would you recommend street port or no port for turbo renesis?

 

Wouldn't recommend it on a 6 port but may be beneficial on a 4 port.

 

Going to be buying the Haltech for my build, too. A big selling point for me is the flex fuel ability, but I also like the faster processing and multiple safeguards available.

 

I would be interested in a post for the new ecu with a 13b rew swap. Down the road when I need to pull my engine I would consider that.

Does anyone know how much more beneficial this ecu is compared to the stock ecu? Is it in a sense the same concept as the power fc to the Mazda FD, just better control and fine tuning capabilities? My main question would be from watching some videos is it really worth applying for better overall performance and or reliability compared to stock?

 

There's no such thing as performance. People got on the moon with 1/100 of the processing power of the factory ECU. All such systems need to run with 0.25 microsecond accuracy and this has been possible for decades already. You don't need to stream videos on it at 4k 120fps to call anything "performance".
Reliability is also something else, OEMs have much tighter reliability targets that must be met in order to be able to launch a complete car for sale. Whereas in the aftermarket scene people have been using literal arduino boards plugged into other boards and called it a day. That might be fine if you need it to run 1 day a year every 3 years when you go to the track, but some people drive that car/ecu every day of the year, including in scenarios that might end up life threatening should the engine/ecu fail(think driving in freezing outside temps).

 

Well i have the PnP on my rew swap, but I am waiting for things to warm up after the winter. Its hard to start my cars when my antigrav batteries freeze under 40degF(they dont tell you this in the marketing). I have some friends who got the haltech PnP for their stock Rx8 and it quite literally plugged in and ran like a factory car. For the REW they do not have a base map yet, so you have to frankenstein a map together between the NA rx8 map and an older FD map. To start off the only issue I have had is the fuel transient from idle. Which may have to do with the ID1050 primaries I have.

The benefit you are paying for and getting is modern tuning eases like changing maps on the fly and built in features like an oscilloscope. You also can setup the car with more boost oriented designs like coil dwell by boost and using a MAP sensor to control the engine and wastegate through the ECU etc. The debatable part is that you give up a bunch of factory features as ciprian may have already pointed out. He is diving deep into cracking the factory ECUs so you have access to the thousands of features. Currently IMO I view the haltech or adaptronic as a way to expedite tuning while also avoiding those thousands of features you cant tune in the stock ECU through mazdaedit/versatune. I don't want some archaic subroutine to suddenly change my maps on me back to some EPA oriented NA map that Mazdaedit or versatune didn't understand because it triggers in some niche scenario. Tuning my greddy Rx8 on mazdaedit and having to mess with the janky max load maps just seemed too hodge podge fucky to sit right in my mind. It feels more like "nothing went bang, so this must be the right way to do it".

The cost is also debate-able. My reasoning is that sure ME/Versa is 500usd or whatever and the haltech is nearly 2000usd.......in my mind that difference is pointless because the ease of tuning features can save me hours of dealing with the archaic ME software and flashing taking up my weekends. All the haltech has to do monetarily is save me 2-3 days of messing around and its paid off that difference.