peejay

Which is why I stick with half bridge engines.

elwood

iTrader: (1)

Getting back to the original theme of this thread . . .

I've owned and driven V8 cars and turbo rotaries. I'd put it like this:

V8 is like the girl next door -- dependable, sturdy, gets the job done, always ready for fun, doesn't have expensive tastes, doesn't have guys lining up to talk to her, doesn't quite fit in at the sushi bar.

Turbo rotary is the exotic foreign girl -- unpredictable, strong and weak, streak performer, sometimes mind-blowing, has a champagne budget, has every guy in town lined up to talk to her, loves sushi.

If I had it to do all over again, I'd do a NA 3-rotor. Just the right mix of exotic and dependable.

tasty danish

iTrader: (5)

*sigh*

Pay attention mikey. Not all stainless fasteners are created equal. I have plainly stated that twice already.

Normal steel: rusted solid in 1 weekend on my Turbo FB
Stainless with copper: I can walk out there, anytime, any day, and spin the the nut right off like it was new. No busted knuckles, no pb blaster, just effective.

And if your Haltech was harder to drive than a blowthrough, you suck at tuning. Not being insulting, that's simply a fact.

jd9fd3s: MS does have a steep learning curve, but ms3 is actually VERY easy to use compared to prior systems, and after you've established a certain level of competency, it makes things quite easy. I shudder to think of trying to get an acceptable tune out of a carb and distributor on a turbo rotary, whereas an MS3 can nearly tune itself.

And I absolutely think ms3 is worth 400-500 more than an ms1, even though 400-500 is about all I pay for them anyhow.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

lol, you misunderstood. i've got a weber on a P port. you'd be surprised at how nice the carb+ distributor can be to drive, even on a big port like that, to IMPROVE it i think i need an ecu that offers things like sequential injection, and injection timing.

yeah $540 for an MS3 assembled isn't too bad, and at least its reliable

peejay

Why? Rotaries are incredibly insensitive to tuning, and big ports don't seem to like timing outside of a narrow window, so a modified distributor works just fine, and I haven't seen a noticeable power change in the range 12.5:1 to 14:1 A/F so that doesn't really matter much either as long as it's in the ballpark.

Money is far better spent on the exhaust system, which is absolutely critical and where the real power is to be made.

tasty danish

iTrader: (5)

I'm not knocking a good carb setup at all, just saying: if you have infinite control over all loads and RPMs, the best a carb can POSSIBLY be, is as good as a well tuned ECU. If you notice drivability gets BETTER with a carb vs an ECU, your tune was ****, pure and simple. And that was directed at Mikey anyway. I can definitely see your argument against ECU's when Haltechs and the sort cost nearly 1500 to do what a 500 MS3 can do. But at the price point, it makes the most sense by far. Barring deals on used parts, you CANNOT get a good carb set up for what you can do with a MS.

And peejay, tuners have noticed some pretty nice gains with sequential injection and negative split, not to mention the theory behind busting high power engines with waste spark on leading.

Also, owners have noticed their car running smoother simply by switching to ms3 by virtue of the fact it's simply a faster, more powerful ECU. This doesn't even take into account all the features and settings innate to the ECU that require NO hardware mods. Compared to prior systems, the MS3 "just works."

Maybe you're smart enough that this isn't worth it to you, but it sure is to me, I'm dumb. I don't like to work hard; connect wires, press autotune, drive. Hey I'm done.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

true! the carb + jets = as much as efi.

also true, sequential injection makes a huge difference in the low rpm areas, you can hear it. the MS1/2 haltech E6k/x can't do sequential on a rotary. the stock 86+ ecu is sequential...

i'm not sure what you mean by the wastespark thing, but if you can do sequential ignition, you can increase the charge time on the coils, this is how/why the FC has such huge coils and the Rx8 has such small ones. the Rx8 leading fires half as often.

the faster ecu thing is interesting too, the power FC is faster than the stock FD ecu, and it does make the car run better. the E11/e8 haltechs are faster than the E6k/x's and it makes a difference too. it does mean your map has to be better with the haltech, as the ecu reacts quicker and sees more cells.

one of the key differences between the carb, and say a haltech, is that the carb has like 5 load points, the haltech has 1086. it takes longer to tune 1000 than it does to tune 5. the process is the same though

mikey D

I said SS bolts suck because their not strong, I dont care what you do to them they do not have the strength of other better fastener options

"I went haltech efi turbo blah blah and it sucked the fun out of the car because it go so expensive and didnt fit into any autocross class so I sold it all and was hard to drive fast anyway but straight."

I thought that would indicate HIGH HP which means harder skillwise to drive, I didnt say it was tuned poorly.

*sigh*

Pay attention danish

peejay

I'm probably going to start playing with negative split in the near future, so we'll see what difference it makes. I have all the parts, and I will need to install that ECU anyway if I plan on doing a four or six cylinder swap, so why not try it out now?

I do remember that it was how I was able to get over 30mpg with a stockport 12A... but that was stock ports. The biggest problem I'm having with the half bridge engines economy-wise is that they refuse to run leaner than 14:1 under cruise. It's weird, it wants 15% duty cycle at 60mph no matter if the manifold pressure is 40kpa (downhill) or 85kpa (uphill) or 60kpa (flat) - the less load is on the engine, the less it tolerates running not-rich.

twinkletoes

iTrader: (17)

funny as hell!!!

NA 3 rotor Someday...

PercentSevenC

Well, I'll be using a plain old MS1 that I got for free to run my REW engine. Anything is better than a poorly-tuned carb and a locked distributor. I'm currently getting between 10 and 11 MPG no matter how I drive. With any luck at all, I'll be able to cut my around-town fuel consumption by more than a third.

tasty danish

iTrader: (5)

I promise you, I mean, PROMISE, that I have some SS exhaust studs that are stronger than almost any bolt on your entire car, unless you've built a forged engine some ARP mains or head studs. This is the forth time I've said use QUALITY SS hardware on the exhuast. Common SS is not QUALITY.

I'm not even going to bother with the rest...

tasty danish

iTrader: (5)

In the haltech section awhile back Claudio found a way to use a trailing ignitor to drive the leading coils individually. There was some speculation about the leading waste spark, at high power and high revs, firing close enough to the passing apex seal to cause some issues and maybe account for some of the busted motor epidemic we see with highly built turbo cars.

It was just a theory but seemed plausible to me. I like the idea of sequential everything anyway. And that was my point, 5 vs 1086 load points. There is NO WAY a carb can approach that level of refinement. It's remarkable how close it actually gets!

rwatson5651

iTrader: (5)

Has anyone ever done a carbed (three 36 DCDs I'm thinking) NA Three Rotor???

peejay

A carburetor is FAR more complicated than "five load points".

I went with EFI in the first place because it's so much simpler to tune! To tune a carb, first you must have a good one. A Holley is not a good carburetor, but there are good carbs based on its form factor.

There is so very much involved in tuning a carb besides "change a jet, turn a mixture screw" that it's nuts. If you can visualize how it works, then the different tweaks you can do will make sense. But you can very easily have any 3-dimensional fuel curve you want, the trick is in knowing how to get it and using a carb that will allow you to get it!

That's what's so very nice about even the MS1 that you seem to think is a horrible unit. My complete install cost less than half what a decent carb would cost, even before you figure tuning time and parts. And every subsequent engine requires more money to tune (jets, bleeds, gaskets, screwing-around time) whereas once you have the computer wired to the car, any new engine you put in is basically just a half hour or so of tuning time, electrons are free.

I "love" autotune though. I haven't seen one yet that actually worked worth a damn. They always need tweaking afterword and in some cases they actually make it worse than before if you started with a decent map (lookin' at you, XFI!). It's not a panacea, and it certainly doesn't remove the need to be able to tune an engine.

Maybe I'll listen to one of my friends' insistent pestering and put CIS on a rotary. They work AWESOME, but there's just that pesky 10% power loss because of the air door with 20-80psi of fuel pressure trying to close it. But... so smooth...

tasty danish

iTrader: (5)

It's not horrible, but the ease that MS1 gives you, MS3 give you a second time over. Plus extra goodies.

And CIS? are you serious? Jetronic sucks

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

if you look at say dowel pin failures, they correlate very well with the ECU brand. the ECU's ability to deliver the spark timing as advertised is critical. the MS's seem really good, actually.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

the family summer trip was to sweden, and we stopped at the volvo factory, which is cool, and the volvo history museum which is cool.

volvo also sold factory turbo cars, and factory turbo cars are easy and cheap to hot rod!

long story long, the turbo's ran CIS, and its primitive, but it does look like it works, and hey it would be FUN

attached pic, is CIS injected 370hp 2.1L WITH electronic traction control in 1983.

350swapblzr

iTrader: (2)

Im not a huge fan of my k-jetronic in my Audi until I realize my car is nearly 4000 pounds, 134hp, gets 26 miles to the gallon while being awd. In my book CIS isn't all that bad. Lol its really a blast to drive in 2 to 3 feet of snow. We put a pair of dcoe 40s on my friends 8v with a manifold he bought from a guy in Puerto Rico. Probably that rare mani you were speaking of peejay?

84stock

iTrader: (5)

Thought I should chime in regarding the road not taken.

I have stuck with the rotary, and have owned a total of 6 first gens and 1 s5 second gen. I currently own 2 gslse's.

I have stuck with the camden for years now in my red first gen. It has sat on top of 3 different 13b's. The camden has broken twice now, primarily due to the fact that I push it beyond it's design limitations.

Sooooo, if I could go back to square one?? Turbo would have been a better route, but ultimately I would have rather done a small block chev. So for my red rx7, that is the future, somewhere along the lines of a 383 stroker or even a 406 small block.

As for my white rx7 (casper), she will always keep her virginity intact.

Thus, the best of both worlds!

Saturday night with the dark mistress and Sunday afternoon with the faithful.

bad 83

iTrader: (3)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvnvNbaI6MQ

I am currently making a little over 400 rwhp at 15psi. My last trip (180 miles one way) I averaged 26mpg. I have less than a grand in my current setup (mods in the sig). You decide.


That is all...........

Directfreak

iTrader: (2)

You really think those mods only cost you a grand?! LOL!!
Also, what are the specs on that T04E? Did you dyno it?

elwood

iTrader: (1)

Interesting you mention ARP, since they make some commercially available exhaust bolts that are made from stainless that is stonger than Grade 8 --> http://www.summitracing.com/parts/ARP-400-1101

As a matter of fact, the OEM exhaust studs on my 13B-REW rotor housings are stainless.

As far as quality is concerned, my definition is something that performs its intended job. If I want to fasten something in a non load critical application that I don't want to rust and I'm prepared to use anti-sieze, I'd say a basic 18-8 stainless fastener is a quality piece.

tasty danish

iTrader: (5)

The studs I use are essentially a more spiffy version of those, ARP makes a version, I believe they call them "300M"

orion84gsl

iTrader: (5)

I've had the stock 12A with a Sterling and RB SP exhaust. Along with the usual RB springs/Tokico blues, Hawks pads and Stainless lines it was a blast to drive.. until it blew up. Then I went to town with an engine build that cost almost as much as the car did, and overhauling the suspension/steering (see sig) and after the headaches of getting it in and running, I now have a streetported 4port 13B with my Sterling and RB exhaust. It drives nicely and is way quieter than dj55b's little monster 12A. He doesn't see the good side of carrying a conversation without having to yell. It probably doesn't make as much power as his either, but I haven't dyno'd it yet, the tune is still rough and it is first and foremost a streetcar. 180 peak RWHP doesn't do me any good if I can only use it in first gear before risking a ticket. The problem is, once I get an idea in my head I see it through, and it costs me in the end. I worry about the next step, as I'm already noticing the line of diminishing returns. 45 series tires means every bump hurts like hell. Get those fenders rolled and raise the car to save the tires. And it looked so good slammed. I was spoiled with the 12A. Nice n quiet except over 4K. Now any touch of the throttle and the noise is there. Don't get me wrong, it's a good noise, but I'm not one to drive around town sounding like I want everyone looking at me. It's probably not as loud outside the car, the RB exhausts rarely are, but still, to me it sounds like it is. I'm contemplating a turbo... to make it quieter. I think I found the line though. If I go further in the power department, I may end up unhappy with the total package. Soooo, I think I'll leave it at this, and worry about the interior and exterior conditions and reliability stuff. I might one day say it's done, but by then I'll want more oomph.