DaleClark

iTrader: (55)

Do you know how old the motor is in your car?

Dale

Banzai-Racing

iTrader: (11)

Diagnosis all starts with a compression test, everything up to that point is speculation at best. Original 3 piece apex seals chip tips(speculation), it is a common occurrence

Testrun

to be honest I do not know for sure. Car had 53k on and supposedly 3k on the motor. Did it have 3k? No idea. That is going off trust. Anyone could make a receipt or "proof" of.

Testrun

Yes I need to do the compression test for sure. The audible test doesnt have good results though. You can definitely here the speeding up of the cranking over certain points.
Would be a wonderful start to the New Years if I am crying over nothing...., I hope that's the case. Unfortunately 98% sure it probably isn't.

DaveW

You are right in being pessimistic - uneven cranking is a definitive sign of VERY uneven compression. Ask me how I know...broken compression ring in my F2000.

adam c

iTrader: (2)

As noted by Skeese, timing is important. If timing is bad, an engine can easily be blown.

$10K wont get you a new engine "and" new turbos unless you do the R&R. Do the compression test and let us know.

Good luck

Skeese

iTrader: (11)

Where you go from here is an ECU upgrade and a tune that involves some engine protection. Otherwise you'll continue to have these scares indefinitely and ultimately something will happen that causes it to let to, and there will be no failsafe there to catch it. ALL of this is easily prevented with a modern ecu and quality engine protection setup. The PFC was designed around the same time as the Motorola bag-phone, but you don't see people trying to use bag-phone GPS in 2019 to navigate.

$10k will for certain get you that if you aren't shooting for huge power. Buy a brand NEW MAZDA complete keg from IRP for $4800 here as mentioned and then strap a set of used 99 spec or BNR twins to it for another couple grand max, then buy a haltech and a tune and your're out at max for $8k with a quality ECU, brand new motor with all new parts, and better turbos than you started with. Not to mention that you can sell all the parts of your old keg that are still good for probably $1800 and that PFC for probably $500.

Just sayin, its very doable. Just can't get sucked into things like turblown quotes or overbuilding an engine for what you need, those are where you get burnt.

Skeese

Testrun

I will look into the Haltech. So there isn't a thing with the pfc that can be done in your opinion? I hate the fact I just spent 1k on that. What's the Haltech running? Or which model. I guess I will start to research it as I know nothing about it. Protection would be nice.

Skeese

iTrader: (11)

The PFC has no engine protection, nor any way to add it. The best you can do is tune extremely conservative, maintain every aspect of the car religiously, and monitor both wideband readings, fuel pressure, and EGT in both runners constantly like a hawk to try and spot anything indicative of an upcoming failure but even then you can't respond quick enough should something crap.

I've tuned PFC's, adapronics, haltechs, and a few AEMs and prefer the haltech platform by far. For single turbo or parallel twin 2 rotor you'd want to run the elite 1500, but if you have a sequential twin turbo car you need the 2500 to run all the required I/O's for the twin stuff. I personally have the 2500 on a single turbo car, but I run a ton of additional stuff with it. I can't tell you how many times I've hit engine protection in my car while street tuning it myself and had the cut save my ***. Haltech makes a patch harness for the S6-S8 Rx7's that allows you to plug the ECU into the factory harness should you not want to go the custom harness route.

I really need to write a thread on here about the proper use of engine protection, how to set it up, and why. Anytime I post stuff like that though it gets like 4 views and 2 comments, but still....it blows my mind that we are still talking about why rotary engines blow all the time with a PFC driving it.

Skeese

Testrun

Skeese I like the sound of all this, but I was and ... I dunno maybe a little sceptical because I haven't really heard much about it. If it truely has protection that works it makes no sense not to go that route. Plug and play is always cool of course. If it is something I could get into for a couple grand and it saves me heartache and a lot of $ in the future it is a no brainer. If it is a "maybe it could help" prevent detonation in some odd circumstances I am not interested In spending. I would rather stick with the pfc, pay extra for tune, water/meth, extra cooling, extra lubrication, extra whatever. I think a write up would be awesome.

Testrun

Also I will give you a page of comments!!! LOL
I actually have a tuner here in south Florida possibly they dont do pfc anymore

IRPerformance

iTrader: (41)

Power FC is a great basic ecu but it lacks any significant engine protection options. You can set it up to pull timing if coolant temps get too hot or fuel cut if it overboosts (bad) but it cannot do things like monitor fuel pressure or afr and shut down if there is an issue before it hurts something. That being said, we have maid close to 600whp with a properly setup power fc car and I've heard of even more. If you want to upgrade I'm a big fan of the new Haltech elite series ecus. They even have plug in models now.

Testrun

Only issue I see is I cant see it saving me for a fuel injector failure. Fuel pressure sure. I could go dual fuel pump and help eliminate a little there, but injectors?
Does it have a knock sensor reader and cut accordingly?
The AFR option is awesome if it is a millisecond response (if that is even fast enough??).
Octane? What if I buy 96 and got 89 and pull 14psi on a hot day? Will it react fast enough?
Sounds like an awesome route to go, but. I find it hard to believe if it is so good why are we even having this conversation? I would think we would all be on it no? Like it should have been all over the forums a long time ago? I BLAME SKEESE FOR NOT PUTTING A THREAD UP!!! Just kidding, but I never would have went pfc route. I just want to know what I would be truely getting myself into as to justify swapping.
would it have saved me?? I dunno as we dont k k what happened yet of course.
Maybe a cost thing with all the options? If it is looking like 5k or something to set up with all options I will have to do some serious soul and pocket searching. I dunno. I am starting my research pretty much now as I type this.. I like modern. I think these FDs can hang with modern cars, why not have modern thi gs maki g them work.

Skeese

iTrader: (11)

No offense, but if you haven't heard about the pros and successes of modern engine protection then you either A) aren't a tuner or B) don't talk to a very good one. I'll try and get a write up started. I'll have some spare time away from work in the next few weeks for some surgery so I'll have some bored bed-ridden time I can dedicate to it. I'll try and pull some logs showing the engine protection going live and how the ECU responds with the cut.

This isn't new...the haltech PS series has been around for like 10+ years now and while its not advanced as the elite, it offers a level of engine protection that FAR surpasses what is available on the PFC.

And IR is right on all points...the PFC will trim fuel based on coolant temp, but that isn't really engine protection so much as a standard tuning operation. It does have an overboost fuel cut, which should really be an ignition cut. Cutting fuel due to excessive boost pressure on an engine that is extremely susceptible to failure due to detonation caused by a lean mixture...is a bad idea.

Skeese

Testrun

skeese I am far from a tuner, but I learn quick.
I wish you the best on your surgery. Speedy recovery to ya.... well, as long as you have enough time to write all this up lol.... j/k
I am open to swapping. Just has to be worth it

Skeese

iTrader: (11)

I assure you, it is.

Skeese

Banzai-Racing

iTrader: (11)

DaleClark

iTrader: (55)

Also while modern ECU's do have some great protection strategies they are not foolproof. Blown motors happen, they aren't the end of the world. The good thing is it doesn't happen anywhere near as often as they used to - before the PowerFC was out, people were trying voodoo and Oujia boards trying to keep motors together.

A good tune is the first part of the battle, the next part is knowing your mechanical system is in good shape and set up right - no hacked fuel pump wiring, ghetto hoses, ancient components, etc.

Focus on getting the car up and running again, you probably don't need to buy a $2000 ECU right now, put that where the car needs it most.

Dale

Gilgamesh

In the end, **** does still happen.

Throtl youtube channel just blew up their FD on the last dyno vid. Its running a halltech elite and it lost signal on the dyno at the top of the RPM band. Abel was behind the wheel tuning as well.

But still engine protections should give you peace of mind and will probably save your butt numerous times. squeezing power out of these cars is a delicate balance, no matter 300hp or 1000hp, one thing goes wrong and its rebuild time.

Skeese

iTrader: (11)

Nowhere did I suggest he buy a $2000 ECU before getting the motor fixed or determining where the issue came from. I didn't think I had to specify that as doing so would be retarded...

One should obviously figure out what caused the failure first. I suspect if the OP was logging at the time of the failure on the PFC, all the logs would show a lean condition and high knock values at the point of failure in the log. All that pulling the engine apart may tell you is whether or not the apex seal failed due to detonation or not. Assuming the answer is yes, and you don't have a log with more than PFC data to show why it went lean and detonated and point to the failed part of the system, then you need to physically check fuel pumps, filters, lines, injectors and all wiring to find the source of the fuel failure. Strapping a new motor into the same system that failed obviously doesn't fix anything as the engine didn't blow itself up, something external to it failed and the PFC did nothing about it.

This is why I have my haltech setup to ALWAYS be logging the critical data when in boost. For tuning I'll plug into the PC and record all data to the computer hard drive, but for general day to day driving the ECU is setup to record only a handful of critical factors so in the unlikely event something fails I'll be able to know why. The ECU's built in hard drive can hold quite a bit of data when only recording the critical factors and only recording when in boost.

Sure, no level of engine protection is a 100% fix for the inherent design factors that make the rotary engine subject to failure, however aside from swapping in an engine with large metal pistons and big metal rods to absorb the force of detonation instead of the little 2-3mm seals the rotary has the best thing we can do is setup as many barriers as possible to avoid ever ending up in a detonation scenario, all of which begin with engine protection functions within the ECU. Which the PFC does not have.

It isn't rocket science. Prevent detonation by stopping the engine when you sense things that lead to detonation. If we can't do that we may as well just tune for 9.0 AFR's for reliability margin.

Skeese

Skeese

iTrader: (11)

I can't watch that video as I'm at work, but I'm wondering if that car was using the factory mag trigger sensors combined combined with an elite ECU and a patch harness over to the factory wiring? There have been several accounts that when pushed past 8,000 rpms, the factory mag sensors have been known to miss a signal causing the motor to blow with the haltech elite but in every condition I've seen they have been using the factory wiring and the older style patch harness (since patch harnesses are all compatible with the elite all the way back to the E8 ecus). Now I'm not entirely sure, but there's a chance the trigger wire shielding is lost somewhere in the patch as I haven't seen nor heard of this happening with an aftermarket hardness with proper shielding of the trigger wires all the way to the ECU.

The issue has successfully been mitigated when using the patch harness by altering the home and trigger voltage thresholds in the software and extrapolating the values out to 10,000 rpms instead of the ECU looking for the same signal at 8,000 as 10,000 (haltech basemap only comes with voltage threshold values to 8k). If someone wanted to take the initiative to setup a test rig and spin the factory trigger wheel on a drill end to 10k and dead nuts these values using a scope, that would be something worth talking about.

Skeese

estevan62274

iTrader: (32)

^Rywire made him a harness for his Haltech Elite.

Also... they said it made like 530 @16-17psi.. on 91 pump.
All through a T3 footprint, GT35 style garrett turbo or something like that.

Testrun, sorry to hear about the engine.

Skeese

iTrader: (11)

500+ hp on 91 pump gas is asking for it, not to mention you're likely running on the ragged edge of lean with some real advanced timing to pull those numbers off of a turbo that small...

yes it gets blamed on a sensor skipping a signal instead of having proper tuning and engine protection? We could start with realistic expectations and tuning within known parameters...

Skeese

Testrun

I am pretty sure I am doing this right. I just held the pressure relief of the compression tester while it was being cranked. Using the bottom (leading) plugs of course. Rear rotor got up to a little over 90 and had 3 hits or bumps on 90 and progressively got higher. The Front rotor is screwed. I get one 60 bump and nothing else the other 2 bumps seem like almost one continuous at 30.
if anyone wants email vid just let me know. I cant put a mp4 up on here and can't link it.

Damn this sucks

RGHTBrainDesign

Tiny FPR, No FPD, and Retard **** Fuel Pump setup on CA 91 Octane.

Dumb ownership is real easy to spot. Like PFC "tuned" cars. Sometimes they are one in the same.