Tried these settings and all went well. At idle my AFR is leaner by 1 point went from 13.0 to 14.0 and car seems to respond quicker to accelerator input. All in all I can say that it's working great and better then before.

 

Prob the only issue I have noticed is hot starts. Mind you my car run on the highway around 172-175f. I know it's cold but, driving around town the temp jump's up to around 196-205. that's when i seem to have issues with starting.

 

Do you have any compensation for your starting maps in those temperature ranges? It could be too much fuel, not enough fuel, etc, with the spark dwell time not having anything to do with that.

 

I'll have to look at it. I rarely get to those temps. So i'll have to make a point of playing with it soon.

 

I've always had issues with *really* hot starting regardless of fueling or dwell. My car simply has a hard time starting if its over 200F.

That being said, all I have to do is hold it to the floor so it goes into fuel cut, hit the switch and turn it over a few times, then release the gas turn the key and message the throttle until she catches and it settles back into idle.

I'm sure I could better tune for this condition, but mine runs between 170-175F cruising and 185-190F at the absolute hottest in bumper to bumper traffic so it never really gets to that point for me to care. Long story short, I don't think it has to do with the dwell settings.

-Skeese

 

Try reducing fuel at startup for these temps. Sounds like you're flooding (and pedal down is not injecting fuel until you release it).

 

most hot start issues are due to air temp sensor being soaked. and as most air temp correction maps are set up standard as ideal gas law they pull fuel. not helpfully with ported engines with low air speed and alot of overlap. they want a big shot of fuel and ecu is telling them the opposite.

 

Good to know! I wonder if this is more of an OEM Mazda air temp issue, which is why Adaptronic and a bunch of other aftermarket ECU companies run with the GM air temp sensors.

One thing most of us won't do is actually map out that sensor in a controlled environment for accuracy. I have a tire temp probe I could use to measure mine (once the car is running) and a multimeter to calculate resistance.

These threads should help:

Recommend a IAT sensor. **with solution**

Air Temp Correction? Gas law?

Intake Air Temperature Sensor

Lean hot start (heat soak)

e440 Select ECU Sensor Calibration - Miata Turbo Forum -Boost cars, acquire cats.

IAT sensor calibration - Miata Turbo Forum -Boost cars, acquire cats.

Hope that helps.

 

Soooooo......I'm now in the situation where I am actually hoping I cooked a coil. I ran the car pretty hard this last weekend on Saturday and then parked it for a few hours. I went to start it back up a few hours later and went for another ride. It then didn't seem nearly as smooth at idle and didn't pull as hard as it usually would. It was minor so I didn't think anything of it and I parked the car.

I go to start it the next day and I get this.

https://vimeo.com/166374208

Nothing tune wise has changed and the car now only wants to idle at at 670 rpms and sounds like it isn't consistent with each exhaust pulse, however the rpm stays consistent. I pulled the plugs and the EFI fuse and turned it over to check for any obvious signs that it may have lost compression. See video below.

https://vimeo.com/166374220

Since compression seems ok, nothing tune wise was affecting it (I even loaded and tried an older DD tune that was perfect for over 2 months), I verified there were no vacuum leaks by pulling the UIM and checking all connections, it leads me to think that this may all be ignition misfire or lack of fire??

I'm thinking I may have cooked one of these coils, so I'll need to test it out and see. I really don't care if I fried one or two $75 coils, I'm just hoping I can pin it on that and not have lost my motor.

-Skeese

 

^Seth, I hope it's just a bad coil.

 

Sucks!!! keep us informed. Hopefully it is just a coil

 

Thanks guys. But the compression tester has spoken.

It is time to move onto bigger and better things.

RIP little 23 year old glassbox, you have served me well.

Damnit.

 

What do the plugs look like? Also, throw a compression gauge on it and see what the compression actually is, other than how it sounds. Failure rate of these coils is extremely low and highly doubt that's your issue. Checking spark is easy enough and that should be another test you do before you start tearing parts off the engine.

 

I compression tested it yesterday, and again today with the same results. Both the front and the rear rotors top out around 60 PSI and it appears the rear rotor isn't getting compression from a couple of faces.

I did use an inline ignition tester to check my coils to make sure they were triggering and firing correctly and was able to verify that all 4 were firing without fail, so for the sake of this thread, my engine failure wasn't related to the coils or coil settings posted in here.

I'll be re-wiring for direct fire during the next chapter of my build, which starts now. It may not go quickly, but I'm going to go big. Real big. Scary big.

-Skeese

 

O.o "I'm going to go big. Real big. Scary big."

 

Fakkk! Sorry to hear this buddy. Please tag me in your rebuild thread. Have you decided who you're going to have rebuild it?

 

I was considering having BDC, who is 4 hours away in Dallas build me a half bridge port, but at the same time a friend of mine who is about to make some big changes has a basically brand new semi peripheral port that is fully built that I could pick up.

Would be a bit on the extreme side, but it would be awesome. If I go this route there will be some significant down time and for sure a new dedicated build thread with alot of detail. Plan for now is to get my motor out this week and diagnose the condition of everything.

-Skeese

 

Sorry to hear about the motor, but now you can build her bigger, better and stronger

 

I will be. I'm using this as an opportunity/excuse to build the car the way I have always wanted to. I wasn't able to justify doing so when I had a good running motor, but the ball is rolling now on the overhaul and I'll soon be updating my build thread to include all of my plans once set.

I'll be moving to a Haltech PS1000 ECU as I picked it up as part of a package deal with the new motor/turbo setup I'm buying. After having spent some time now with the Haltech ECU Manager software I can say there are some positives to it over the Adaptronic, but at the same time the Adaptronic has a handful of great features, options, and software tuning factors that I'll be losing with the swap to the Haltech.

The biggest change is that the PS1000 an Haltech ECU manager does not support VE tuning for staged fuel injectors meaning I'll be tuning in injector ms timing. This isn't a big deal to me, however if you are a novice tuner and looking to do some tweaking/tuning/learning yourself the automatically staged injection and VE is a great way to go as the ECU handles the injector staging which can become complicated with injector ms timing.

I'll be moving to the Haltech section here soon and posting a thread with all of the ECU manager questions I have. I want to expand my tuning ability and want to spend some time with alternate platforms so I can become better at tuning as a whole instead of my skills being limited to one ECU. I am by no means tied to any brand or system, I just enjoy tuning and want to learn to tune it ALL. Whether I'll post another tuning progression thread or not I haven't decided yet. My new setup will be extremely unique and I'm not sure how much benefit others would have from seeing my setup.

Thanks for following me on this adventure. It has been a long road and I've learned ALOT since this thread began. I'm always available to try and answer any questions I can about the adaptronic or wari software.


Anyways...cheers guys! Happy three day labor day weekend!

Rotor on

Skeese

 

Is it safe to assume that 2 years later this direct fire table is still the recommended settings?

There was some mention of different plugs earlier in the thread. I've got leading/trailing plugs for the RX8 on my 12a. Does that change any of this?

And lastly, are there recommendations on how to configure the spark split table?

 

I'm still running the Direct fire settings.. No issues so far.

 

I still run the direct fire table. No problems. My Spark split is 15 at idle 10 for the rest of the table

 

Perfect! Thanks, I'm close to first startup on my 12a streetport (see build thread in signature). I'll plug the table in before I do any other tuning.

 

I actually map my dwell against MAP and voltage now, where it runs 3ms all the time in vacuum and then jumps to high dwell when you cross into boost which is when you actually need it. I haven't seen any benefits from running big dwell in vacuum, and doing it this way doesn't heat soak your coils from cruising around at 3000-4000 rpms in vacuum running high duty effectively shortening the duration of time you can run them hard when you get on it.

Skeese

 

What ECU are you doing that with? I don't recall seeing anything like that in WARI.