I'll sign a petition!

I am curious on how much of an investment it is. I cant imagine that it would be a start from scratch type of research. The CPU is common, and the protocol is mazdas standard J2534 pass-thru. I assume the big changes would be the configurable parameters that are additional to what the S1 RX8's had, but that is at least something that can be investigated by the community. Am I on the right track here or completely out of the water?

Im ready too...

There is a thread here somewhere about a local (to me) company that has tuned a 09+ RX-8. A local guy was going to try a tune but pussed out. I just never got around to it, I also wanted to try Hypertechs tuner too just for shits an giggles.

I'll look for the info.

with standalones being able to fill the needs for the race set and with the demand for plug and play being so ridiculously low from the everyday set, i understand why COBB walked away from the s2.

you're forgetting there was a time when they walked away from the S1 and decided not to even build something they had already spent money on for RnD.

FYI:

Your message was forwarded to Jim Mederer, Racing Beat's chief engineer,
for review and reply. His reply to your message is as follows:


Sorry, but we have no plans to offer tuning for the 2009+ RX8. As
you know, it has a completely different PCM, and the cost of developing
flashes for that model is prohibitive. Also, since the sales volume of
the 2009+ has been dramatically lower than the earlier cars, which
further reduces the incentive for the aftermarket to invest costly R&D
money into such expensive projects, especially during this tough
economy.



Jim Mederer

My only concern with standalones is that it almost costs thousands of dollars just to get into a reputable shop and have them tune/test/tune/test etc etc etc. Not to mention even more money if you are looking for a place to fab up a harness so you dont go hacking away at your oem one

The hypertech stuff looks nice, but nothing for the 09s http://www.hypertech.com/Performance..._Automatic.pdf

It's painful to acknowledge the almost complete disregard for the S2's amongst aftermarket tuners.

I have a 2005 Shinka, and am looking to sell/upgrade to something newer. Although I still love the 8--the lack of support has me all but ruling it out as an upgrade/new option.:(

There are two companies who either offer re-flashes now or in the near future. One is DPTune and the other is Pettit Racing. I had been in communication with DPTune to possibly get their free tune as the first S2 owner trying it, but they just stopped responding to my emails. Not sure what happened, but since I'm nervous about being the test mule on a new RX-8 with lots of factory warranty left, I wasn't too upset about it falling through. I am very excited about the newer offerings from Pettit for the S2, though.

I did see the pettit offering, but you are right, I have yet to see someone be the guinea pig for this.

Ah ha, DPtune was the place I was thinking of! They were real responsive when I was talking to them. Try giving them a call.

Whats interesting is their website has a picture of the S2 on the mazda page

They have been around quite a while, I have heard of them (nothing negative) off an on over the years. I can't vouch for them but they do not appear to be a fly by night joint.

I will shoot them an email

The unfortunate thing is that when companies talk about how expensive and difficult it is to reverse engineer an ECU, what they are really saying is that it is difficult to sell the 1500 units they need to make the venture profitable.

Usually all that is involved is a few months of work by a single engineer. The catch being that there aren't very many people who can do it.

If you look at all of the open source stuff that is available for Subarus and Mitsus, most of that is thanks to Colby at Tactrix and merchgod at romraider.com (who now works for Cobb.) Romraider has lots of resources for ECU reverse engineering, and they have the same hardware as the S2, so it might give you an idea what kind of effort it will take.

I'm under the impression that the EcuFlash software might work with Mazdas directly, but I can't be sure until I try it.

Really, if you can locate the main fuel tables, VE table, injector variables, and maybe MAF table, you have all you really need to tune for power on an NA car. I dunno, is it that hard to find tables that look like this?

https://www.rx8club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1309301256

I can't be sure that the S2 is like this, but in most roms I've looked at the most important tables are really obvious. Then you just disassemble in IDA Pro, see where they get loaded in memory, and usually the other good data is loaded by the same subroutines. Repeat ad nauseum. :dunno:

Tuners tend to act like this stuff is all black magic, but IMO an ecu is mainly just a pint-sized database engine.

I can understand the dumping of the ECU from the tactrix device, but the only thing that I am wondering is how the flash happens. Seems like for the subarus and mitsus they sell a special cable that is required for flashing ....

No you can program the PCM through the DLC/OBD II connector using a J2534 device. One of the most popular aftermarket one is the CARDAQ PLUS. It is for reflashing PCMs to the latest Factory PCM calibration updates but without using a factory scan tool.

This one:
http://www.drewtech.com/products/cardaqplus.html

So basically you need to program the pass through device with what you want to program. So if you can modfiy/edit the PCM tables yourself, you then upload it with any of the compatible reflashing tools.

yea but who the hell wants to pay that much lol

From DPTune:

Thanks for the email!

Yes we have been rewriting the denso ECU in the second Gen RX8 for quite a while now. As far as I know, we are the only company in the world doing it. We have done quite a bit of work for MazdaSpeed on these files.

The gains are in the 10-14 whp range on a bone stock car. However the numbers really don't show the huge gain in derivability Files are custom written based on your mods, and your input. For the very best tuning, I suggest a datalog of the car under certain conditions. This is very easily done with a Innovate OT-2 datalogger plugged into your cars dataport

The service for the RX8 is 450.00 per car, plus shipping. This includes free touch ups on your file should you change exhaust, intake, ect.

Please feel free to give me a call should you need more info

From DPTune regarding masking DTC's:

It is possible, however we do not offer it for the street cars. Besides, why in the world would you wish to "mask it"? A well designed exhaust with 200cell cats will flow far more than the car can produce, and still be legal for street work

Thats a shame they wont mask a cel... I want a midpipe just to avoid possible failure of aftermarket high flow cats. I have heard some get destroyed fairly fast.

Good to hear, like I said he always seemed like stand up guy when I talked to him. He is right but a lot of aftermarket cat pipes just do not last. Ideally, a really good race cat in the midpipe would be best but they are really expensive.

But masking ability is needed IMO. With my Cobb, I mask several codes including codes relating to the air pump (don't have one).

So who is going to man up amongst the series II guys and test this tune out?

I think that Mitsus and some models of Subarus don't have all the pins connected to the OBD connector that are needed for reflash. Mazdas seem to come ready for reflash, as do more recent Subarus. MazdaEdit uses the OpenPort cable, and at a minimum the Mazda software should work to reflash with any J2534 device, the OpenPort 2.0 is just the cheapest one.

Some tuning companies use software which provides automatic map recognition. Swiftec claims to support late-model Mazdas now. For reasons I don't understand, many of the companies that do this are Italian. I have no doubt that they can edit maps, I do wonder how much they know about tuning RX8s. Basically you run that software, it finds possibly hundreds of maps, and then you have to figure out what to edit.

So what kind of adjustments are they making? As I said, the base open loop tables are probably the easiest to identify, unfortunately just editing them won't produce an ideal tune. The ability to log and tune yourself is far more valuable.

Lemme try to put this succinctly:

I have the exclusive right to distribute the RX-8 application of the Cobb AccessPORT.

It would seem to me that, since it was possible to convince Trey and Christian that, rather then abandon the product entirely, they should allow one individual to become the only outlet of that product, it might be worthwhile to approach that individual with a compelling proposal for the expansion of the profitability of that product.

As it stands, the total number of 2009+ RX-8s sold is less than the total number of series I RX-8s sold in just 2007 alone. That is a pretty pathetic number.

In order to create the opportunity for the RX-8 AccessPORT to remain on the market, there had to be a definite idea of how many could be sold over time.
For a series II device to be developed and added to the exclusive RX-8 product line, a similar number would have to be conjured.

Anyone want to take up that gauntlet?

As it stands, I can't offer that compelling argument because I can't see the market. I simply cannot envision 200 - 300 series II RX-8 AccessPORT units a year or so going out the door.

Even then getting a serious number is very difficult. Whenever you do a poll about something like this lots of people are more than ready to say "yes I would buy that" but only a few of those people would actually put up the money for it.

I personally don't plan on getting a tune anytime in the near future even if it were available. I am just going to get a midpipe and a catback and call it good.

Yes, that is true.
But I gave Cobb a serious number for the series one. I said "I will sell this many units a year".
Not "can" sell - "will" sell.

If someone out there has those cajones, they should feel free to swing them. I will back them up.