Your best bet is probably going to be Angel Motorsports in Chesapeake. They're the only rotary specific shop that I know of in the area, but I haven't really been looking either. You might try to contact Flim Flam Speed on Facebook to see if he can do it, but I think he mainly focuses on BMWs.

 

Since you are not turbo and just getting the car to idle with conservative timing and no load is extremely safe, what are you worried about exactly?

edit: one of the stickies in the Haltech forum has a base map for s4 and s5. That should be close enough to get you idling with a little adjustment and obviously you would need to set it up for not running secondaries but that shouldn't be too hard once you get the car up and running.

 

I understand timing and fuel well enough but I've never created a tune from scratch before and I've never dealt with something as complex as a PS1000 (I've done some piggy-back adjustments on other platforms). I've been reading/watching the Haltech tutorials and I might know enough to get it running now. I have the base maps that come with the ECU Manager software although I don't know how much I'll be able to use. I have a completely different fuel, ignition, and trigger system than a stock S4/5.

 

Not completely familiar with Haltech fuel maps but if they are VE tables like Megasquirt, it would transfer to your setup because it automatically changes injector duty cycle based on the size of injectors you specify. So no matter what injector size you are running the VE fuel table wouldn't change. Then obviously you would have to change things to match your setup for ignition etc.

 

Unfortunately the Haltech base maps assume the plug 'n play setup using all the factory sensors, fuel, and ignition systems so it's setup to tune via injector time. Changing the setup settings to my configuration pretty much blows everything up so I need to set my own base fuel and ignition tables. That's where my knowledge/experience falls short. Fortunately the Haltch user guide is very helpful and does a good job walking through the initial tuning process. I'm also reaching out to Chris at LMS-EFI to leverage his experience.

 

Gotcha. Yeah that's a little frustrating but sounds like you are on track to figure it out. This is part of the struggle running modified n/a rotaries as most maps are for turbo cars or close to stock n/a... But at least there are less consequences for tuning being off a bit on our cars!

 

You could give peter florence a shot at PFTuning. i know he does megasquirt stuff, not 100% sure on his rotary experience.

 

Still can't get photo sharing to work on this site with Chrome and Google Photos. What's up with that?

The car is 100% put together and I've got a base tune with help from Chris at LMS-EFI. I tried to start it over the weekend but wasn't getting fuel to the front rotor due to some improper wiring. That should be straightened out now but I drained my battery and I'm pretty sure the rear rotor is flooded. I've got the charged back up so I'll probably pull the spark plugs, disable the injectors and crank the engine for a while to clear out any remaining fuel. I'll probably have to recharge the battery again afterward but I should get another shot at starting the car in the next day or so. It's got good oil pressure and steady speed while cranking. Hopefully, the probably was just the front primary injector not firing and not something like poor compression.

 

I'm not sure how to embed videos from Google Photos. Does this link work: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1Q...I3akVubllYdE1R?


Sorry for the noise. The fan had just kicked on. It's idling around 1000 RPM. Anything less and it gets a little rough/unstable. It's quieter than I expected, but I haven't taken it much over 3500 RPM or about 10% throttle. Tuning is turning out to be difficult. No-load idle is pretty much sorted out to 4000 RPM. Tuning under load on the road is painful. Going from no load to load is requiring a massive increase in fuel due to the large changes in incoming air volume associated with small throttle movements. I assume this is handled by transient throttle adjustments but I read not to mess with that until the base fuel map is sorted. This would be much easier on a dyno. If there's anyone in the Richmond, VA area with tuning experience any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

Okay, I think I've figured out how to post pictures. I don't know why this forum makes this so difficult...

 

So CLEAAAANNNNN. What door cards are you using?

 

Thanks! I made them myself. Since I have a base model the OEM door cards were really simple. It was pretty straightforward to separate the OEM cardboard or whatever it is from the top piece and use them as a template. I used 1/16" ABS plastic and covered it with some knockoff Recaro fabric I found on eBay.

 

Wow your engine bay turned out so nice. What did you do with the main relay and fuse box? Are you using you heater? and did you go with the race pack so you wouldn't have to worry about getting the dash to work with the ECU? Im asking because I'm in the stage of redoing my wiring to clean it up and wiring in my Haltech.

 

The main relay is gone. Everything is controlled by the Haltech ECU and its relays. The engine fuse box is relocated to the passenger's side storage bin with the battery. The heater is gone too. I gutted its case and left that in so I still have a fan.

I went with the Racepak because I wanted avoid having 15 gauges and redundant sensors. The stock water temperature and oil pressure gauges aren't accurate and I wanted to add at least oil temperature and two air/fuel ratio gauges while maintaining the tachometer, speedometer, voltmeter, and fuel level. I thought about making my own dash with custom Speedhut gauges but every design I came up with was too cluttered. It was far easier to use the analog inputs on the Haltech and output them via CAN to the Racepak.

 

Made a Youtube channel to share videos I've taken. Just two for now.

 

IT'S ALIVE!!!!
Nice work Jon that car looks great! Hope it drives as well as it looks. Will we ever see it back up here at a track in Ohio?

 

Okay, I think I've finally sorted how to share pictures. I moved everything to another hosting service.

Here's the interior as of now:


I'm in need of a passenger's seat but I'm avoiding the $700 needed for as long as I can. I'm thinking of something similar to the driver's seat but without the high side bolsters.

I've swapped the Banzai Racing alternator pulley for a Racing Beat underdriven one:


I was finding little black specks on the sides engine bay that looked like it was coming from the belts. The spacing between the belts on the Banzai pulley didn't match the Racing Beat main pulley and the OEM water pump pulley and I think that was causing wear on the belts. The Racing Beat alternator pulley has the correct spacing and after wiping down the engine bay I haven't seen anymore specks. I'm only getting ~13.9V out of the alternator at idle now but it hasn't been a problem yet.

I've played with the location of the MAP sensor quite a bit. First it was beneath the intake manifold on the firewall, then I moved it higher up, and then I changed its orientation on advice from another owner.


The reason for this is to avoid getting fuel and oil in the MAP sensor. Even though I'm not boosted I must be getting some kind of reversion in the system. It's a good thing I installed a couple of those little HKS vacuum filters. The filter in the line going to the FPR has already caught quite a bit of crap.


I'm going to try to install one of those inline air filter/catch cans designed for air tools between the intake and the vacuum manifold to avoid going through smaller filters every few months (they aren't cheap!).

I'm currently up to ~600 miles on the break-in and am limited to 5000 RPM. With help, I've got it running on a MAP-based tune instead of TPS-based, which has significantly improved drive-ability. Current issues:

1. I'm still struggling with transient rich and lean spots. It seems no matter how much I change the transient enrich settings in ECU Manager the fuel can't initially keep up with the air during large/quick throttle movements. It'll catch up after a second or two then go rich. That causes problems with quick on/off throttle applications like when in traffic or hitting a large bump in the road. I've flooded the engine a few times this way. I really need to install a fuel cutoff switch so I don't have to manually disable the injectors in ECU Manager every time that happens.

2. My water pump is slowly leaking out of the weep hole. I don't appear to be losing large amounts of water and I already have a replacement. I'm just being lazy and keep putting off replacing it since it's an annoying job to do.

3. I'm getting a good amount of transmission noise in neutral with the clutch engaged (pedal out). This makes me think the input bearing is bad. I also get noise in 4th gear and only 4th gear, which I think further points to the input bearing since 4th is straight through. I know how to partially disassemble the transmission and replace the bearing but again, it's another annoying job to do. I'll probably do this and the water pump over the Winter sometime.

 

your car is a masterpiece lol. Does your ECU have a de-flood setting that while cranking if you hold the throttle at 100% it cuts the injectors from firing and allows you to start up? The elite has a setting like that which I found out after I wired in a fuel pump cutoff switch.

 

Got any shots of the full car? Digging that color and clean engine bay. Your build is along the lines of what I'm thinking for my '90 Vert, there's a unique kind of joy from high revving NA cars.

 

Thanks! It's weird to be getting compliments on a running car after having it in pieces for so long.

I'm not seeing anything like that in the ECU Manager software. Where is it located in the Elite tuning software? In the worst case situation I can splice a switch into the fuel pump power wire that's easily reachable. I'd prefer to use the injector power source but that's a little more involved to get to.

Oddly enough I don't have any recent exterior shots of the car. I keep meaning to take some but I always forget. If/when the weather improves I plan on washing the car again and I'll be sure to grab some pictures then.

I wanted to do something different with the N/A build. Ultimately, the peak HP won't be anything to brag about but hopefully it'll be reliable and it sounds really mean!

 

Here's two quick pics I grabbed last night in the garage. It's dirty, the picture's slightly out of focus, and the fluorescent lighting isn't helping.

 

On the Elite software its in the main setup page. under the FUEL tab. below the base fuel pressure input there is a box to check to ENABLE FLOOD CLEAR MODE. I'm literally trying to learn all this over the last couple days as its the last thing I need to do to drive my car. So I'm not sure how comparable all this software is with each other. Wheels and tires fit nice BTW.

 

Must be a new Elite function because I'm not seeing anything like that in ECU Manager for the Platinum Sport series. I'm kind of kicking myself for taking so long to get this running. I should have waited and got the Elite ECU since I had the PS1000 for like 2 years before the car was ready.

I'm happy with how the wheel/tires worked out. It certainly took a lot of work. I have +20 mm fiberglass fenders in the front and the rear fenders have been pulled somewhere between 0.75-1 in. in additional to rolling them. Clearance is still a little tight with the fenders in the front so if I ever change wheels I'll probably look for something in the +25 mm offset range.

 

Nice job building your rx-7. I'm picking up my NA FC at the beginning of this coming year. I'm planning on keeping it stock mostly, since I am using it as a backup car. What major vendors does the rx-7 community have?

 

Fantastic build, especially when I realised I got get on your photostream and view the rest of the pics.

Particularly liked how you've slimmed down the wiring harnesses and the custom door cards.