2004 6MT
-AccessPORT purchased from and dyno tuned by Steve Kan at Gotham Racing on 8/7/08 http://www.GothamRacing.com

-Racing Beat http://www.RacingBeat.com-GM LS2 coils Huge thanks for marsredr100 for help with the setup on the coils!

On to the good part:
Steve Kan tuned the car on his Mustang Dyno. After the runs were done he verified the dyno by putting his G35 on within 10 minutes of unloading my 8. He said that his car consistently pulls 240whp +/- 2whp. It put down 242wph which verifies the dyno was set up properly.

Final results on the Mustang Dyno:
208whp
144wtq

Normalized to other dynos (x 8%):
~224whp
~155wtq

 

Score another for the race pipe + duct!

 

Another dyno to hush the intake naysayers! Fantastic work!!!

 

Do you happen to know how much advance in timing vs. factory Steve did?

 

Just to let you guys know. My mustang dyno is approx 8% lower compared to a dynojet. If he was to put his car on a dynojet, it should make approx 224rwhp. We wanted to verify that those numbers were accurate so we put my G35 on the dyno to validate it.

 

204whp in 95+ degree heat on a Mustang dyno?....you may have the worlds most powerful NA RX-8 my friend.

 

Sorry, I don't know any of the specifics - and I don't want to know. The reason I bought the AccessPORT is that I knew that I wouldn't have to mess around with learning the ins and outs of it. After tuning a Haltech and a Wolf standalone on different cars, it was such a pleasure to be able to hand the car over to a professional and have it tuned so perfectly.

Bottom line, I bought the expensive AP only because I knew that I could get it properly tuned at Gotham. In a rude way, this means please don't ask me about tuning specifics or if I will share my map with you. I will absolutely not share my map with anyone.

Steve does tuning days anywhere in the world (I think). Just get a bunch of people together and do a group tuning session.
www.kantuning.com

 

Great results! Are you offering for FI RX-8s at this point?

 

Unfortunately, I don't. My wife does!

Pluto- I was going to send you a private email, but what the hell.... While driving home, after the temps got cold late at night- you know, around 89°-90°F, the power and throttle response was way better than driving in slow traffic in the heat of the day. Maybe it's just SOTP or compared to pre-tuning, but the power after the last set of valves open is just awesome. The hp plot doesn't really show how hard the car pulls at 8k+.

 

I have done a few FI rx8 in the past. but not with the AP yet.

 

Did you do a baseline run in this RX-8 on this day PRIOR to uploading the AP map? Being the professional you are im assuming you did (as its customary in any tuning session to accurately guage the changes/additions made) but i didnt see it posted and i am interested in knowing. Let us know, appreciate it!

 

I don't have an AP and I'm no longer N/A. Your maps wouldn't be much use to me. What I was interested in was an evaluation of how conservative the stock timing curve is from Mazda just for reference. Stock tunes are generally set up for the worst case expected operating conditions which is probably running CA 91 in AZ on a hot day. So, if you run a good quality 93 in a much more temperate environment, you might be able to add some timing and get some gains. Steve was up in MD last year I think. I considered heading down for that but my car was not together.

 

Nice looking dyno. I'm jealous.

 

I'm sorry for being such a jerk! I really don't know any specifics of the tune.

I forgot to mention that I had 3/4 tank 93 and 1/4 89. Some undetermined amount of Idemitsu premix in there too, somewhere between 1oz and 3oz's. Hmmm.... maybe I'll run full 93 and go back there in October when it'll only be 85°F.

I have many ideas of why a full baseline wasn't done but I'll let Steve answer that. I don't think any information would have been useful from a baseline full pull, my mods don't fit any of the plug in maps out there. I liked the way he did it. Very methodical.

 

The AP was originally installed by Criag few weeks ago. We were having some issues with the AP not accepting any new changes on the map while reflashing back to the PCM. I uninstall and reinstall it a few times with the latest firmware and also updated my protuner software to finally make it work properly. It took us a total of 6 hrs for this entire tune (4 of which was troubleshooting the AP).
Baseline is really not ideal for any cars that are modified. Additionally, the engine was brand new and was never WOT. Once we got the map semi dial in and making a full pull, We made 190ish rwhp and ended up with 208rwhp on the final pull.

 

Jonathan, his car was making 15rwhp more and require 10% more fuel than you across the board. When we compared your dyno charts to his, I was amazed at the differences and was also skeptical that maybe someone changed my settings on the dyno. We then verified the dyno with my car and was dead on so it wasn't the dyno. What compression do you have in your engine? It may be a little weak.

 

Whether your mods fit any "plug in" maps out there is beyond the point. Baseline pulls not usefull?? Dyno is just a number. Without a baseline from the same dyno on the same day (or at least similar conditions) from which to compare changes/additions, you dont know what is responsible for what.

Example (ur car yesterday):
Dyno 1 taken at 6:00pm prior to AP map upload= 190whp
Dyno 2 taken at 6:15pm " " = 192whp
(ok so we can safely say this is consistent)
Dyno 3 taken at 6:30pm after AP map upload= 204whp

This suggests the tuning changes from the AP alone gave you a gain of 14whp. How is this not useful???

You have no clue how much the AP actually helped you if you never took pulls prior to its upload. For all you know, your car could have dyno'd at 200whp prior to the AP upload. Unlikely? Yes, but fact is u just dont know. Yes all cars will be different to some degree depending on which mods they have, but a dyno number is relatively useless without before and after comparisons to prove the effectiveness of whatever ur adding/changing.

 

This may be true. I understand what you are saying.

Before I got it tuned, I watched the afr's on the AP and saw that they were pretty lean. For me, I see no purpose in doing a run on a known bad tune.

I have different goals now. I used to spend years doing incremental changes and testing on setups. Now that I'm old and lazy, I just want to get it done right, don't care what it takes to get there. I just want to enjoy the final result.

Do I care that the baseline dyno probably would have been really ugly past 6k rpms? Not really. I promise you that it made nowhere near 200whp prior to the dyno. If it did and I saw that the afr's were good, I wouldn't have made the trip to get it tuned. I'm not going to speculate what the power was, but it really didn't pull past 6k before. It was strong to about 5k then inimpressive after that.

No, don't expect to put an AP on an unmodded 8 and make 200whp. What the AP does is allow the tuner to make proper use of the mods that you do have.

 

I agreed to a certain extent with a car that has been running for awhile and reliable at WOT in the street. I used to do baseline pull before making any changes. However, some of the cars out there were so far off on the existing map that making a baseline pull ended up blowing an engine on the first pull. Was it worth risking a chance of blowing an engine just to see what it was making originally? You have to remember that this is a rotary engine. Unlike piston engines, any significant ping will crack an apex seals

 

I'll be sure to get that checked out. I'll get back to you as soon as I find out something. I'm nearing 3yr/20k miles on the stock ignition, so could it be ignition related?

 

I was going to comment that I wasn't very impressed, but then I saw the part about what type of dyno it is. Very nice!

 

sweet

 

I think it may be Ignition related. You should consider LS2 coils.

 

Oh I'm definitely going to get those now. As soon as they are released by BHR if I can help it.

 

Are you talking about the LS2 coils with the cool heat sinks on the bottom? You can do it right now yourself on the cheap. Coils are $19.95 each on eBay, the coil connectors are $1.74 each from Mouser Electronics.
http://www.mouser.com/Search/Product...uZobQJtw%3d%3d

Make your own bracket and get or make some spark plug wires.

Watch this video that includes testing and tech info on the coil:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...65754251&hl=en

Some wiring info:
http://www.megamanual.com/seq/coils.htm

I wanted the ability to swap the stock coils back in five minutes so I 'harvested' connectors from bad stock coils. If you don't want to do this then just cut and splice.

marsredr100 has threads on coil installs.