Il RX8 lI

Go to avatar settings. That'll do it for you. As for ECU? Well, people will argue, but the one with the best "balance" between ease of hooking up and the gains from it would be the PowerFC. As for tuning? I'd find a place that could do that for me before I bought one.

dgeesaman

Well, if you say you're going to autocross it, you need to make some decisions. Like the others said, the biggest reliability issue with this car is heat in the engine bay. In SS class, you must have an all-stock exhaust (I think), and so removing or gutting the pre-cat would not be an option. That keeps much of the exhaust heat out of the engine bay.



If you can move up to a modified class, then replacing the pre-cat is a critical reliability step. Maintenance is a little heavy: regular oil changes at 1.5-2k (synthetic or dino), fuel filter changes at 15k/2 years, etc.



There are many components that don't take this bay heat well and may already be near failure: Replace the stock Air Separation Tank with an aluminum one that can't pop, replace the radiator with an all-aluminum one that can't pop, and replace the vacuum hoses with silicone ones. Replace all the coolant hoses with new OEM parts. Add a boost gauge, water temp gauge, and maybe also an oil temp gauge.



I do not recommend pulling the main cat for a midpipe right away for several reasons: it won't have a chance of passing smog, it will stink, it can cause boost problems (need to port your turbo wastegate to keep boost steady), etc. Unless you plan on a heavily modified end result, save the midpipe for later or at least run a high flow cat.



The best power mods are cold air intake, muffler, downpipe. Just be sure your boost doesn't go above 11psi ever and the stock ECU should be fine.



I've been adding reliability mods and maintenance for the past 2 years, and driving about 5k/year on it. My annual bill has been around $2k, doing all the work myself and shopping for parts carefully.



Dave

Daemoan1

I heard about the oil being changed so regularly... why is that? I also have never had a Turbo, what is involved with porting the wastegate.

psyclo

People like to be extra catious since some of the crank case oil is used to lube the internal seals kinda like a 2-stroke stock. Yes it does burn oil as it runs, no you dont need to add oil so long as you change your oil every 3k.



Another option is to run pre-mix. Long story short (you can search for more specific instrustions/explanations), you mix 2 stroke oil in the gas on fill up instead of taking it from the crank case so that you are running oil that is meant to be burned through the motor instead of the acidic sludgy crankcase oil.



And always bear in mind the number one killer of rotarys is heat, and after that, bad tuning (or not compensating for the effects of mods such as an air filter and turbo back exhaust).



There is a rule of thumb on FDs called the rule of 3, do 2 power mods and the third should be a ECU I think is what it is. I'm sure someone can correct me.



Rotary engines are a very balanced motor, so long as you maintain the balance and not go extreme in one area while leaving the othere sytems behind your motor should be happy. Once you start trying to do not well though out stuff you will start hacing problems.



:edit: Wow that sounds really deep and spiritual....lol

rowtareh

There is actually a discussion in this same sub-forum on premixing. Good reasons to do it. I would more than likely do it on my next RX-7, with or without heavily modification. It just seems smarter to do it.



First modification from what everyone says is a boost gauge. The FD did not come with one in the stock gauge. So that should be the first buy.



Any luck on finding a worthy FD Daemon?