a new potential problem has manifested out of no where. after cruising on the highway for ~45min at 70-75mph at 3500-4000rpm i got off my exit and stopped at the light and smelled heat. not sure how to explain it but its the smell of something hot, the smell that you smell when something is really hot. i pulled over, popped the hood and the turbo and part of the downpipe were cherry red. it was glowing as red as brakes on race cars. glowing so red, that whole side of the engine bay was illuminated from UNDER THE TURBO BLANKET. my concern was how long it had been glowing and if it was safe for it to be like for an extended period. i wasnt getting on it or anything, it was just a light cruise on the highway.

from what i am reading, it could either be a timing or a fuel issue. my cruise afr is anywhere from 13.6 to 14.1. and my cruise cells for ignl is 31-35 with 0 split. my question is, what do i do to remedy this and how dangerous is it to for the turbo to be glowing red to that extreme for an extended amount of time?

mods:
power fc
street port
550/1600 injectors
turbonetics t67
bur9eqp x4
stock coils
and typical supporting mods

 

Could have bad stock coils, test them. I got a supposedly low mileage set of coils once and the leadings were near dead, car was running just on trailing. Also make sure your plug wires are hooked up right.

Dale

 

as dale said, most likely:

faulty leading coils
retarded ignition timing
severely rich condition along with semi retarded ignition timing

if lead coils are fine verify actual timing, not just the load cell because there is other corrections for timing. the smog pump can also skew AFRs, if it is still installed, making you believe the engine is running leaner than it actually is.

 

where did the Power FC map come from? Can you post it?

 

definitely going to look into that. i have a box full of coil packs. i'll mix and match until i find the best 3. my plugs and everything ignition related is hooked up properly. its funny because it wasnt doing this before. i changed to a new set of plugs and then this started. the "old" plugs had ~1000mi on them. also bur9eqp.

no air pump and i posted my cruise afr in the first post. i dont think those figures would qualify as severely rich. im leaning more toward the timing being the issue but i dont know what im doing with that part of the map and am worried that i can lose everything if i go in there and start poking around.

not really sure what to say about where it came from but its the map i have. i have attached it below.

 

It's not that unusual to get a bad spark plug...or to damage the plug wires installing plugs.

 

considering the odds, im willing to take the chance that neither of those is the case. i also want to note that everything else is fine. all things are operating as they should. the only new thing is the glowing of the turbo. i would imagine if a plug or wire was bad i would have some other indicating factors. i would find it very unusual for everything to be operating fine with a faulty ignition component. especially during idle and under full boost at red line.

 

well you should start checking before you assumptions bite you in the ***. you can verify that all 4 plugs are firing by hooking up a timing light to each wire individually.

 

The shop manual shows how to test the coil packs, I've run into bad ones in the past and that test was spot on in identifying them. It's basic, just checking resistance.

It's also worth double-checking the plug wires, it's easy to get mixed up and get them goobered up.

Dale

 

Last time I changed my spark plugs on the RX-8 I am driving/racing one Leading spark plug had the entire metal core of the spark plug come out the back as I pulled the plug wire off. The other rotor's Trailing spark plug had that super corroded look on the coil contact you get when your coil goes bad.

Checked the cat and sure enough it had been like this long enough to melt/split the first brick of the catalytic converter and I hadn't really noticed it was running different as power diminished slowly over time.

New plugs, wires, coils, air filter and hollowed cat and maybe it was running a little faster. Hard to measure changes on the butt dyno when you have so little to begin with.

But I did jump back up to where I should have been in the race results- so it had been down a bit.

Just saying in my experience ignition failure can be sneaky- especially in a turbo rotary where miss fire can help spool the turbo and cover up a slight engine power loss.



The only time I really smelled hot hot exhaust like you did though is when on my single turbo FC the aftermarket fuel filter with paper element clogged up with premix and it was running really lean at low loads. AFRs were also reading a bit low at cruise and most noticeably did not pop up fast as I slowly increased load. Had to pull over and backflush the fuel filter.

 

Working on the racecar and other non-trivial stuff, way too often when I assume something it comes back to bite me in the butt. I really try to never "assume" anything. Either rely on known facts or check it out.

 

i will do this to verify.

i will test them all. its page G-21 in the manual. also, the way i have my plug wires set up doesnt allow for them to be mixed up. when i was reassembling my car, there are few things that i wanted to be super maintenance friendly and fool proof. mixing up the wires was one of those things.

i pulled out all the plugs and verified that something didnt happen to them between a few days ago when they were new, to now. i also torqued them to to 13ft-lbs as stated in the manual just to eliminate their tightness or lack thereof being a factor. it may be time to replace my fuel filter though. its getting pretty close to ~5000mi and i premix 1:1 with no omp.

fair enough....


thank you guys for the help. should this just be a timing issue, how would i go about making those changes? i dont have an egt gauge so how would i know whats good and what isnt? would i just make changes, highway drive, check if its glowing, repeat? with the potential problem being too retarded of ignition timing, i would have to pull/decrease the numbers in the inl timing map? if so, my next question is what do i do about the igt map? change it the same amount to maintain the same split. which btw im running 0 split in the cruise cells.

 

Temps rise pretty quickly as timing retards; I say check everything related to timming, this includes your timming map and any hardware that has to do with timming.

 

Terrible leading timing for P9 - P20.
Timing split of 4 under medium to high boost is way too hot.
Settings 4 IGN Vs Water T Cool should be set to all 0 retard.
A plug up exhaust can also cause high exhaust temps. If you have a main cat, it may be clogged.

 

Thanks. I will make changes to the settings 4. My cat is the magnaflow unit from rx7store. It's brand new. As far as my p9-p20 cells, what should I be doing with them? If a 4 split is too hot then that means I have to........ lower it? what do you recommend I do about my cruise cells? I'm trying to learn what to do in these timing maps as I'm worried I can destroy my motor if I just experiment. I'd rather have some experienced guidance.

i compared the map to the dyno tune from my red fd and made some changes in the blud fd timing map. is that better? something along the right path?

 

Was this a Vargas tune? Its no wonder it isnt right. I havent looked at it yet but you want a split of 12-15 in boost.

 

no, the vargas tune was on my red fd. the one thats messed up is on my blue fd. i just put it up for reference. when it comes to split timing,do i just set the split and leave the igl and igt timing maps alone? im trying to figure out how to adjust timing. whats the approach? how do i know when to advance or retard and is increasing the number advancing or is decreasing it advancing? and which direction is it that is safe to go and which one is it that will blow up your motor. i know that you can advance or retard timing and it will just make it run terrible and if advance or retard timing then you can blow up your motor. i dont know which one is which is though.

 

I run a varying split from cruise to high boost. Timing is a varying parameter that normally is not consistent except around maximum torque.
Back in the days of distributor ignition control, timing changed was minimum and stopped after maximum torque. Thus you had idle timing covering maybe 0-1000 rpm,
then it increased to about 5000 rpm, after which it flat lined. It was pathetic. Modern ECUs allow exact timing control for all load conditions.

I am running a Denso-Apexi 3 bar map sensor, mild exhaust port, blue printed stock ports, ported throttle body, water meth at 18.5 psi boost (P19),
with a FP HTA GT3582R 1.06 turbo. My Setting 3 Map Ref table is non stock, as are some other tables. These are mention in my PFC Group Tuning Guide.

 

looking at your map, i have so many questions on the logic and reasoning behind why you have things set up the way you do. would mind if you i threw 1001 questions at you? you have a lot of valuable information that could help me better understand how to tune and information that can also help make this thread very useful to others out there that are looking to go deeper into timing maps.

 

Only time I ran 0 split was at idle because that with max retard smoothed the idle out and then went into split with rpm off idle, but went back down to 0 split with load going to atmospheric map and then back into split with boost.

I ran 0 split coming into boost because it raises EGTs and brings the boost...

 

which direction is retard? lowering the number or raising the number?

 

Lowering. My streetport liked no timing advance at idle or it would lope a bit.

 

retarding is the safe way to go right? if in doubt retard timing? youre supposed to gradually advance timing until you find perfection right?

 

IGL is the main timing and increasing it makes it more advance and hotter.
Split is the opposite. Less is hotter and more is more safe.
Only if you email me. cewrx7r1@yahoo.com

 

Well, that is the rule of thumb.

You can certainly do damage with retarded timing on the rotary, but it is all stemming from the high EGTs you can cause.

If you are tuning with Power FC a base timing map is the safest place to start unless you know something is up with your engine (like someone put NA high compression rotors in it).