Congrats John. I knew the trip would pay off!

Best of luck next week.

 

yes congrats! that's very cool!

 

I noticed that. You guys were very fast. Good luck at Nats!

 

Well it's good to be home. But I wish I was still out there.

The car worked GREAT at the pro. The courses suited the car really well, and I drove well. I should have video figured out in a couple days... right now I'm too tired and need to catch up on some work.

I felt good after the morning of the Pro, but I knew my lead wouldn't last. Ian passed me in the afternoon session, and then Marc passed me on sunday morning. I ended up only 0.5 out of first on a 90 second pair of courses. Very close. We straight timed ST and STX, which is a very good sign for the car.

For Nationals... I drove very well both days. On the first day I made the same (stupid) mistake on both my first two runs. Once I realized that and fixed it, I put down a time that would have been good for third, but I slid the tail along a tight section and ended up +3. So I think the time was valid, but obviously with the cones it didn't help me. On day two, the times were about a second off the fastest guys. Couldn't get the car to turn. I thought the car would work well in the big, broad sweeping turns on that course, but it just pushed everywhere. Frustrating. I tried adding shock to the back and upping the rear pressures, but it didn't do much.

There is still a lot of work to do with the car. I'm planning to do a megasquirt on the car before next year, as well as working a lot on the suspension and trying to learn some different setup tricks with the car. This year was really about gathering data to see if the car can contend. I think it can, so I'm going to stick with it another year.

 

GREAT JOB
I'm happy you're going to stick with it.

 

Here's my West course (Tuesday) Nats best run:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpiHC6siWdY

 

WoW that looked to be a really high speed course on a really big parking lot.


quick question. What did they use to paint the lines of the course? did they use paint or some type of chalk?

I haven't auto-crossed yet but just from watching videos and riding with others I still have a hard time 'Visualizing' the course and the paint helps a ton!

 

What will a megasquirt give you that you can't do with the Rtek?

 

The offsets after the start were flat out, except for a small lift right before the right-hand 180. The slalom after the 180 was also full throttle the whole way, and both times I was touching rev buzzer before braking for the 180s. So that's about 60 MPH. Nationals courses tend to be fast and long.

They use chalk, like you'd see marking the base paths on a baseball diamond. Mostly it's to help courseworkers see when someone is going off course.

The Megasquirt will give me finer resolution over fuel and timing. The Rtek only gives you 512 RPM increments to tune and while it works OK, it could be better. The trick will be making the 'squirt work with all the factory emissions **** as well as the OMP.

 

piggyback! i'm not sure you can do that if its gotta fit into the stock case though....

might be worth stepping up to a haltech or something, more outputs

 

let me know if you want to poke around my megasquirt John to see if you like it.

I also now have AWR camber adjusters if you want to look at those installed on a car too, I heard you had issues with your MMR ones

 

The awr adjuster are even worse. They remove two degrees of freedom from the rear arm. And they move the force further off-axis. Not good at all.

I do want to check outgoing your ms. But I'm guessing it doesn't control the S5 OMP or do emissions. I need both.

 

haltech/motec....

 

Can you fit either of those in the stock ECU case? Can I implement them without changing ANY of the stock wiring? If the answer is yes, then I'm in. If the answer is no, then I can't do it.

 

http://www.diyautotune.com/

I think you can fit a MS in the stock case... You will have to get an ecu and gut it and use the mazda connector and fly wire all of the connections to the ms board....

The MSIII was just released this summer. I think it can do individual cylinder trim (I know not applicable on rotaries, although it would be cool to treat the engine like a 6 cylinder and have individual rotor face fuel trim. Maybe you can be the first to do it ;-))

(Disclaimer: I've never held a MS board in my own hands but they seem small enough.)

 

yeah, I'm not surprised about the AWRs, I got them because they looked stronger than the MMR pieces, but they do have the plain bearing instead of the heim joint. I would assume due to the nature of the arm, the axis will change depending on how much you adjust the link, but I could be wrong, I haven't really looked at it.

I'm running an MS3 in my car currently, the only thing that might hinder you from running it in a stock case is the height... we can measure it when I come and show it to you. I'll try and bring an MS3X board too which has a lot more outputs and allows you to run sequential, but I'm not running that yet. (ken has some lying around)

I knew a guy who ran an MS-II in a stock case along with a techedge wideband, so I know it's possible... I'm just worried about the MS3s increased height. I also don't think ken has the OMP worked out yet, but if someone actually needs it, I'm sure he can get it running pretty easily.

 

you can get the magasquirt to fit in the stock case well. its done all the time.

 

not sure, picture is an E11V2, i think from 2003?

 

I've been looking into designing and making a custom pcb to house a Megasquirt 2 or 3 using the stock ecu case and tyco/amp connector. The issues I'm coming across is the same you mentioned, the s5 omp stepper motor and emissions solenoids. I was thinking of using an amtel microcontroller or something similar to control the emissions separate from the ms using signals derived from it (rpm, load). It would also allow me to shrink down the ms board as it can be custom tailored to the car and not so universal. Unfortunately as I'm terrible with software, its been going pretty slow. Do you think there would be much of a market for a completely pnp Megasquirt for the s5?

 

My guess is yes. I bought my rtek because it was pnp. If there was something better out there for a similar price, I would have bought that instead.

 

Theoretically, yes. But we all know how most FC owners are with money (myself included) .

 

Is the DIY-PNP any smaller, perhaps? That and it comes with connectors for the factory harness.

 

http://www.diyautotune.com/catalog/d...kit-p-384.html

You mean this one? Besides using a more generic connector with an extra slot, it's not 100% pnp because Megasquirt is not being able to run the emissions equipment and the s5 omp. I believe STS rules require it to be in the stock ecu case too.

 

Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through, is it really THAT much better than an Rtek? Its not a high boost build we're talking about here is it?...

 

Its defiantly more versatile and has a much higher resolution. Plus the Rtek from what I can tell is more or less just remapping the stock ecu parameters. I don't think it would allow for things like spark cut only or removing the vam.

EDIT: Read up on the Rtek. MS allows for wideband inputs to be used whereas Rtek just uses it for logging. MS has a more thorough logging setup and doesn't require palm devices to be tuned. MSIII can also log to an SD card onboard. MS allows for a smoother secondary staging as well as switching things like 6pt and VDI on more than just rpm alone. Rtek cannot do wideband logging and constant atmospheric correction at the same time whereas MS can. MS can also log egt data and may be able to do something with it. I'm still reading into MSIII as I am unfamiliar with it. MSII seems more than applicable though.