I meant to add that Ari put a nice map in my PFC and it ran incredible!!! Smoother than the stock ecu for sure. Nice afr and transition no hesitation whatsoever. Very well thought out map. That was without an actually tune on the car. It doesn't have the protection of the factory ecu of course, but she ran beautifully. Then I had to go out and put bigger injectors and blah blah...... damnit

Ill admit in my younger years I was guilty of running large ports on stock twins. It just adds lag, drive ability and idle issues. Very few will recognize any benefits from porting the engine on stock twins. The smaller power curve and the annoyances are not worth the 15-20rwhp gain. I’m old now though and don’t want to hear the exhaust, let a lone listen to it idle horribly.

I have a car with Ohlins, HKS and stock suspension. They all feel similar for street driving. Not harsh. If you are ok with stock ride height and wheel and tires I think the stock suspension is a great option. If you want to get aftermarket wheels and lower it a little. I think the HKS are a great value coilover. Ohlins are great if you have the money for them and serious about tracking.

How often do you drive your FD? Do you think you would drive it more if it was completely stock?

I completely eliminated the tip in or acceleration enrichment (AE) problem in the Power FC several months ago. I did three months of extensive testing to find the exact meaning of the three AE tables and eliminated the problem in my own car. IMO, it accelerates better than any stock or near stock ECU since I can up the turbo response over stock ECU's with the typical table changes and I am not limited to accelerating in a fuel efficient band due to emission goals on the stock car used by the Mazda engineers. It's a true rocket on a extensively upgrade sequential twin. I will also help any single user too. You can fine tune your AFR in AE. I posted an entire article that described the whole process and the way to fix the problem. Search the Power FC forum for the article "Acceleration Enrichment Solved". I will warn you it is lengthy but there is a quick guide at first to cut through so the theory and testing. It has been amazing to me that since posting it only two people even responded to say they tried it and it worked for them. Through the years everyone keeps complaining about the Power FC AE and now they can do something about. It does take some trial and error, but nothing in our cars is simple. Try it, you'll like it.
Mike

Getting back to this comment: it depends on your reference point. Drive modern turbo BMW's for example and they have much quicker response than a stock FD, closer to a naturally aspirated engine. Drive a naturally aspirated engine and it feels responsive, until you drive an electric and it feels laggy in comparison.

Lots of truth to what you say as it is all about a person's reference point. I one thing I always loved about the FD's stock sequential system was that anytime above 2800 rpms the boost is instant and very much like an NA car. But I do realize that to someone else 2800 rpms is too high of a boost threshold and thus the car would be laggy to them.

One thing I will give the FD is the wide rpm range of useable boost & rpm. Most of these new downsized turbo engines have like a 3000rpm window before they fall on their face, like 2000-5000rpm is common now.

buy a spare FD and I can store it for you here in NJ. :)

Enjoying a stock FD, but its a daily struggle to decide between EFR and BNR. I think the only solution is to get two xD

Not often enough, sadly but that has nothing to do with the mods on the car. More to do with me being too busy these days and having a race car to fuck around with instead of doing track days in the FD.
I suspect I would have to be more careful driving a completely stock FD than my mildly modded FD since the stock cooling system just doesn't work well enough for my usage - even in stop/go traffic. YMMV

The biggest thing that would get me driving my FD more would be putting the A/C back in.

I dyno'ed my close to stock FD with stock port, stock twins, AC, cat and RB exhaust running on Pettit ECU and got 345 rwhp on a Dynapack dyno.
Definitely admire the capability and appreciate it very much.

I've been looking for a replacement and can't find one unless I spend 4x the price.

That sounds pretty strong.

Most of the Pettit ECU FDs I owned or was in our group back int he early 2000s were making between 320-350rwhp on 12-15lbs with fulll exhaust and supporting mods. When I was trying to push a set of unbreakable seals to their limits years ago I raced my buddies E55 that trapped 93mph in the 1/8 mile(high 11 second car) and I pulled on it running a pettit ecu, water meth injection and 16-17lbs of boost. The Pettit ECU can be a lot of fun and the best part about it is retaining the stock ecu drivability assuming you don't have a 3k hesitation issue.

what would make this 3k hesitation worse? mine all of a sudden at 3k falls on its face then pulls strong after. solenoid or some kind of vac leak?

Its unfortunately not always easy to diagnose. Better grounding or new wiring harnesses are typically the best solution to the problem.

How did the 16 - 17 lbs setup compare to the 8374 setup?

It was non-sequential so EFR had much better response. The twins pushed to their limits are really impressive but that comes with a ton of heat and headaches. If I had to guess my twin car was likely making around 360-380rwhp depending on which generous dyno shop you use. Comparable power a 8374 makes on 12-13lbs but with a much uglier torque curve.