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I am not a ECU/tuning guru (but this is the internet and lack of knowledge is no hindrance) but I would offer a contrarian view...
I would normally agree that an aftermarket management system is an extravagance for a NA but your commitment to the turbo upgrade (cemented when you actually take possession of the drivetrain) means that the cost is already built in, it's simply a question of when.
Seems like it'd be easier to set up and tune an ECU on a stock NA, where there is a greater margin of safety. You'd be installing and becoming familiar with a system you plan on using anyway, with less pressure ("I see what you did there!") and fewer consequences.
And presumably, you end up with a running car you can enjoy as the turbo engine is prepped.
A prep job I expect your grandchildren to complete.
I would normally agree that an aftermarket management system is an extravagance for a NA but your commitment to the turbo upgrade (cemented when you actually take possession of the drivetrain) means that the cost is already built in, it's simply a question of when.
Seems like it'd be easier to set up and tune an ECU on a stock NA, where there is a greater margin of safety. You'd be installing and becoming familiar with a system you plan on using anyway, with less pressure ("I see what you did there!") and fewer consequences.
And presumably, you end up with a running car you can enjoy as the turbo engine is prepped.
A prep job I expect your grandchildren to complete.
couldnt agree more! i couldnt help feeling like your post was a subtle prod towards attemting mapping the seven myself.
considering i havent any money at the moment,(because turbo) i looked into cheaper options and naturally ended up looking at megasquirts. its not the first time i have done this and i have always finished a good couple of hours of reading into the ins and outs of installing and tuning said standalone feeling positively intimidated and somewhat bereft of intelligence. this time was no exception.
but they really are rather cheap. there is a place in finland that sells them too.
i would need high impedence injectors which would add to the cost and then if i was to map it myself it could easily take 1-2 summers.
i am at an impasse with myself that could only be compared to when my missus buys clothes for our girl. the only difference is that she ends up buying everything and i end up doing nothing.
so, the golden question. is a megasquirt as complicated as it seems?
answers on a postcard to..
confused englishman
23 förstår ingenting gatan
stockholm
sweden
they had cut a couple of hoses but no wires so thats good.
i have nowhere to put it at the moment, and theres no way in hell im going to manage or even want to hump the thing down two flights of stairs to my cellar only to have to drag it up again in a couple of months.... so its sitting on my parking space. the plan is to pull off as much as possible and then put them into boxes (ikea, naturally) and put them in the cellar. then itll be the matter of lumping it into my boot, driving it over to someone with the nut to get the flywheel nut off and then pulling the engine apart, putting those bits into boxes... you get.the idea. i got a little bit done this evening but the intake is quite different than the one im used to so i only managed to get a couple of bits off that i probably dont need to remove anyway haha
its getting prety chilly out pretty quick and its already dark by approx quarter to 7 in the evening so id better get a move on. once thats done i can take my time.
i got a message yesterday about the garage so me and joel are going to meet the fella that owns it for a sort of interview. he seems very nice so high hopes on that one. if all goes well we will be moving in in the beginning of december. and not a moment too soon!
stuff like this makes me less miserable about the coming winter at least
go the megasquirt way and get rid of all the unuseful vacuum stuff in the engine bay.
my friend can probably solder a ms2 for a rotary if your'e interested and even the wiring can be made i guess. gonna do it for me soon anyway.
Your new engine pics remind me of my replacement engine when I got it and all I can say is you have a metric shitton of work ahead.
Makes me tired just thinking about it.
it does indeed feel like there is a daunting amount of work ahead of me. the worst thing about it is that i dont really have a plan. i know that i would like to have around 400hp and i have accepted that this will be more costly both in time and money. i geuss if im going to do this i might as well have a fast rx7 at the end of it all. its so funny that all the n/a guys do this (well, most of them anyway)
the mistakes of our forefathers and all that
another goal i have is to have the engine bay as simple and clean as possible. any prettiness would be a bonus!
i geuss the only thing for me to do at the moment is to play the waiting game and as soon as i get the garage start cleaning and putting together what i need. im genuinely hoping that i will have more clarity when i have everything layed out in front of me.
Originally Posted by psyaddict
go the megasquirt way and get rid of all the unuseful vacuum stuff in the engine bay.
my friend can probably solder a ms2 for a rotary if your'e interested and even the wiring can be made i guess. gonna do it for me soon anyway.
this is also a subject that has had me quite perplexed. i cant seem to find any concrete information concerning what i can remove. can i literally remove ALL of mazdas emission systems? it would be nice to not have any vacuum lines in my engine bay at all. i have already done an emissions delete on my N/A but im pretty sure i have done something wrong and thats why she isnt running right.
thanks for the offer psyaddict i may take you up on it im going to have to consider my options first. all i know is that a standalone is the next thing on my shopping list!
i need to get her running before i even start to think about the turbo engine
... i dont really have a plan. i know that i would like to have around 400hp
OK, what is this bullshit?
"I have 400 hp" describes the engine but says nothing about the car as a whole.
You might say "I'd like to run a 12 second quarter mile" or "lap the Ring in 7m30s" (good luck with that!) and you'd actually be describing how you'd like the car to perform in the real world instead of just in theory.
I once raced in a series that ran unlimited modifications on 600cc superbikes..."unlimited" except for horsepower, which could not exceed 100rwhp.
At race's end, the top five finishers were dynoed and if you exceeded the 100hp limit, you were disqualified.
The winner of the series was consistently about 10hp DOWN from everyone else but his bike was set up better, he rode harder and the power deficit was irrelevant.
He'd have lost a dyno competition but the race actually happens in real life where horsepower is just one of many factors that determines performance.
And not even the most important factor at that.
If you're going to concentrate on horsepower, I expect you to grow a bitchin mullet and hang at the Dairy Queen with Wooderson.
OK, what is this bullshit?
"I have 400 hp" describes the engine but says nothing about the car as a whole.
You might say "I'd like to run a 12 second quarter mile" or "lap the Ring in 7m30s" (good luck with that!) and you'd actually be describing how you'd like the car to perform in the real world instead of just in theory.
I once raced in a series that ran unlimited modifications on 600cc superbikes..."unlimited" except for horsepower, which could not exceed 100rwhp.
At race's end, the top five finishers were dynoed and if you exceeded the 100hp limit, you were disqualified.
The winner of the series was consistently about 10hp DOWN from everyone else but his bike was set up better, he rode harder and the power deficit was irrelevant.
He'd have lost a dyno competition but the race actually happens in real life where horsepower is just one of many factors that determines performance.
And not even the most important factor at that.
If you're going to concentrate on horsepower, I expect you to grow a bitchin mullet and hang at the Dairy Queen with Wooderson.
haha as soon as i read the first line i got an image of this guy in my head..
your not wrong though clokks. it is a bit silly but i have wanted a turbo car for a long time and the skyline was a calamity. specifically because i never did much of it myself. i relied on others and thought that throwing bundles of cash at it (when i actually had money ) would make it work. now that i have got my confidence up a bit i would like to eventually have a go at doing a turbo build. i can only speculate that at least doing it once in my life would make me happy and give me some feeling of accomplishment. not so much for the having of it, more just for the doing of it.
if i was to say EXACTLY what i want in no particular order, it would be as follows.
i want a street car that above runs, sounds good, looks good and feels fast. of course all of these things require sacrifices from eachother so i have ended up in the weird sort of limbo i find myself in now. right about now the plan is to keep her N/A and get her running nicely and perfect everything as well as i can within my very limited means at the moment. in fact, i geuss im pretty close to something resembling a car that i will enjoy driving.
the idea is that whatever i do in the future once i get her going, i dont want to go back to being a jackstand racer.
considering the rate at which hipster gentrification is on the rise in my area, growing a mullet would easily add 20% to the value of our apartment AND allow me to realise my life long dream of looking like pat sharpe.
i want a street car that above runs, sounds good, looks good and feels fast.
win win!
Indeed, who doesn't?
The point of the above screed was not to discourage dreaming but instead, alter the framework of the fantasy.
All four of your desired outcomes are completely subjective and yet you pursue an arbitrary, but decidedly objective, goal. How would you feel if it turned out that 300hp thrilled you to death or 500hp wasn't enough?
Running,sounding and looking good, while subjective, are easily grasped concepts.
"Feeling" fast is a more ephemeral concept.
I would assert that a brisk 60mph jaunt in a 1960 TR3 "feels" a fuckton faster (and infinitely scarier) than 120mph in an Audi S4. The question becomes what sort of "feeling" are you after?
A while ago I did recommend you get the ECU and apply it to the NA already in place. Get the car running, get it sorted- it's amazing how many issues don't crop up until you start piling up some miles- get to know it and then start figuring out how to make it better...or at least, conform more to your dream.
You have the luxury of a backup engine tucked in your pocket (or are you just glad to see me?) and assuming your NA engine isn't blown, I promise that getting it going first is the most solid foundation for your project to build on.
When I first started working on Sigfrid's FD swap, I spent a lot of time reading build threads on the darkside forum. My biggest takeaway was that the guys who started with a decent, running platform had much greater success than those who didn't.
Even though your path to more power is much simpler than a real engine swap (after all, it is mostly bolt in), it should still be the last fork in the road.
a standalone ecu is gonna make everything much simpler, i was in agony while putting everything back together and then my friend tells me that i dont need all this wiring and rats nest because the new wiring makes it much less complicated. I already had the ms2 waiting on the shelf. Just some plastic quick release vacuum hoses and way less wiring.
The point of the above screed was not to discourage dreaming but instead, alter the framework of the fantasy.
All four of your desired outcomes are completely subjective and yet you pursue an arbitrary, but decidedly objective, goal. How would you feel if it turned out that 300hp thrilled you to death or 500hp wasn't enough?
Even though your path to more power is much simpler than a real engine swap (after all, it is mostly bolt in), it should still be the last fork in the road.
what you say is very true. i geuss we all get "speed blind" no matter what we drive. for example, if i drive a bit further away and sit on the motorway for a longer period of time, when i turn off and start driving in residential areas again 50kmh feels excruciatingly slow. this means that even a citroen berlingo can feel 'fast'. that should be the 8th wonder of the world in my humble opinion.
i geuss i eventually want the seven to be boosted. maybe its the sound of the turbo and BOV that will me more pleasure aurally than what i feel in my butt dyno. i always remember as a teen hearing a turboed car going past and thinking "one day.. one day". of course this was in london at the end of the 90's so it was more often a vauxhall nova or a ford fiesta with a horrendous bodykit going by. a quick browse of the old fast car magazines from the time will give a good insight into the tuning culture in the uk then. it may even induce vomiting haha
but yes, goal number one is definately getting her up and running with the 6 port. for every winter that the seven sits out there with ten inches of snow on her and having no idea whether she will run next summer makes me genuinely sad
hopefully having a garage again will give me a chance to remedy this!
Originally Posted by psyaddict
a standalone ecu is gonna make everything much simpler, i was in agony while putting everything back together and then my friend tells me that i dont need all this wiring and rats nest because the new wiring makes it much less complicated. I already had the ms2 waiting on the shelf. Just some plastic quick release vacuum hoses and way less wiring.
sounds really good! i know for a fact that the seven isnt running properly because i have missed something somewhere and i for the life of me cannot seem to find it. im not sure if i still have to work it out before i go standalone. maybe i will just end up in the same situation if there is something that isnt fuctioning mechanically.
i really need to get my hands on a workshop manual so that i can go through everything one more time just to be sure.
im looking at a haltech e6k just need to get some moneys in. as per usual
Where you be, boy?
Why are my new wheels not carving up the Swedish roadways?
sorry for the inactivity. money has been really tight this winter but the garage thing worked out and now me and joel finally have a garage again. we share it with a friend that has a r33 skyline and a couple of saab 9000 enthusiasts. veryone is really nice the only sad thing is that none of us really have had the time to be there. we moved in on the first of december and since then i have been there twice. once to take the car and the other time to drop off the turbo engine.
i must say that i am always a little surprised at the low weight of the 13b engine. me and joel lifted it fairly easily into the boot of the pussywagon. (because after all, what chick can resist an absolutely filthy citroen berlingo family that smells of jurassic forest? exactly.)
me and joel were hoping to go there tomorrow and build a couple of work benches cos working on the floor aint the one.
my main problem is that im still stuck on the grounds of lack of info. i really need that manual. a gentleman i contacted on facebook was very kind and took photos of the troubleshooting section of the correct manual which is 40 pages. (thanks Bo!) the only problem is that it redirects me to other parts of the manual that i do not have.
i have seen manuals on ebay from america but im not sure if they are the same as the one i need. so basically i need help. im going to include the pdf file and if anyone who reads this has an FSM, would you be so kind as to compare your copy to this one and confirm that they are the same? what i am most interested in is if it has the (Australia) and (Australia only) captions. if they are the same then i should be able to get one from America because i have not been able to find a european one to buy.
in about a month and a half i should be getting some sort of payrise as i will have completed my apprenticeship and i will have a little bit of a better economy.
sorry for the inactivity. money has been really tight this winter but the garage thing worked out and now me and joel finally have a garage again. we share it with a friend that has a r33 skyline and a couple of saab 9000 enthusiasts. veryone is really nice the only sad thing is that none of us really have had the time to be there. we moved in on the first of december and since then i have been there twice. once to take the car and the other time to drop off the turbo engine.
as you may imagine, i have not been working on the seven much at all as had been the status quo the last couple of years or so. anyhoo having das 7 garaged during the winter has felt much better and i took her home last week so that i can get some bits done. freddy, whom i have mentioned earlier, very kindly lent me his manuals which are the correct manuals for the euro fc*s so i have been reading alot and popping out to check bits and bobs. i have also gone through the entire ecu and not found a single thing out of place apart from the power steering and AC, which i have removed anyway. after racking my brains a bit and after some suggestions from a fella from australia on instagram, my thoughts went back to the emissions delete i did when installing the engine after renovation. i had followed rotary ressurections how to and so i put it up on the swedish forum and asked if anyone had done the same and it turns out that using this method on a euro fc actually negates certain vital functions within the emissions system. basically im going to try to put everything back the way it was (minus the airpump) and see what happens. the only problem is that i got my eyes lasered last thursday and am currently feeling like mr magoo. cant see a damn thing. im off work until next thursday so im hoping that my vision improves at least so that i can see 50 cm infront of my face then i can get out and crack on.
second time writing this as last time i was trying to write an update a certain three year old (ahem...UMA) was screaming at me and trying to push play doh into my ear. my laptop, who had aparrently grown tired of a life of having to send constant updates of my miserable inability to fix an rx7 on to the world wide web, took the opportunity whilst i was distracted to try and end its miserable existence by taking a dive from the table on to the living room floor. unfortunately for my laptop and yourselves, it survived.
so. now my eyes are really good and i am enjoying life without glasses for the first time in 30 years. its great apart from the times that stuff falls into my eyes. hurts like a beehatch.
anyway, i have been trying to get out as much as possible to troubleshoot and although thats not alot, its better than nothing. having the correct manual makes a HUGE difference! as i constantly suspect the vacuum hoses as any rx7 owner rightly should, i was on my way to remove the UIM and whilst removing the air funnel between the UIM and MAF, i noticed that there is a little L-shaped tube that sticks out from the bottom that im pretty sure went to the long since removed airpump. for some reason i had just very nonchalantly put a bit of tape over it and left it at that, it had peeled away which had resulted of course in air being sucked into the intake and making it run like poo. i blocked it up and all of a sudden the car runs much much better. it hasnt run this well since the rebuild at least and i must say that its the best bit of progress i have had since last summer!
im still not out of the woods yet as there are still alot of fumes coming into the car and making me feel dizzy, preventing any prolonged periods of driving. i only drive it to check the results of any work i do to it. so i borrowed a lambda meter from my friend and have been trying to familiarise myself with it, with the help of fredrik and erik that have out of the goodness of their hearts started a sort of support group for little old me on facebook messenger. this is the only thing that has given me hope that i will be able to eventually get the seven sorted.
i also installed a fuel cutoff switch over the weekend because she floods without fail and it just makes troubleshooting a complete and utter pain in the posterior.
i will do a post later when i have more data concerning what values im getting in different situations as im not used to this thing yet and have little to no knowledge of fuel ratios/lambda values.
it feels like things are going in the right direction anyway!
summer has arrived and the season is in full swing so me and a mate of mine took out our cars for a spin and went to what we thought would be a car meet but turned out to be a aeroplane meet/airshow/carmeet/ww2 nostalgia cosplay sort of....thingy. it was an absolute blast and though i didnt take many photos there was a veritable feast of cool cars! its funny when you are at a car meet where a brand new ferrari is the most boring car on show.
the saab at the top had a boeing engine in it.
then there was an aquaintance of my mate that had this ford escort with a turbo'd bmw m50 straight 6 with 610hp.
the most fun part of the day though was driving around with boone and his raspy opel ascona with a bmw m20 swap. 900kg,150hp and straight pipes made it a surprisingly nippy little ride. im really in love with that thing.
Originally Posted by clokker
Seems like it'd be easier to set up and tune an ECU on a stock NA, where there is a greater margin of safety. You'd be installing and becoming familiar with a system you plan on using anyway, with less pressure ("I see what you did there!") and fewer consequences.
And presumably, you end up with a running car you can enjoy as the turbo engine is prepped.
A prep job I expect your grandchildren to complete.
i have kept a weather eye open on the web for something and finally i found this.
a microtech lt10s standalone ecu. i am aware that its not the best ecu out there but i have really not had alot of money lately (or for an age so it seems) and i had to dig deep to find it but for 350 dollars it was a nice find! i have just started reading the manual and im going to have to learn alot. i have to admit it feels daunting but i am looking forward to getting stuck into this stage of my learning process. a smidgen of luck wouldnt hurt this time either
09-21-16, 08:56 AM
