Nice numbers, what were you running for timing?
Very conservative. At WOT it's in the 20's. I figure I've got at least 10-15 degrees of advance to play with. This car should be making 190-200 whp. I just need to find dyno time to work on the timing.
Not gonna lie, I got goosebumps at the flame. Great numbers, man! Especially with your break in tune. That car is going to be SO much fun on track.
It backfires ALL. THE. TIME.
I took the car to the Tail of the Dragon this past weekend. Yes, track days will be fun! I just have to watch temperatures when I'm in a crowd. The Dragon is relatively low speed and when you're in a pack it's hard to find clean air to keep things cool. I was seeing oil and water temperatures consistently above 200 degrees at one point so I had to back off and shift into a higher gear.
I went to the Deals Gap Rotary Rally for the first time this past weekend. I've put over 1000 miles on the car in the past week AND NOTHING BROKE (well, one thing but more on that later). Sustained highway driving, short trips, low and high speed corners, triple digit speeds, etc - everything seemed good. I had an absolute blast and learned a ton. I even took home 1st Place in the "FC" category at the car show on Saturday! I learned my "break in" tune was actually pretty lean pretty much everywhere except idle and WOT. Closed loop control was doing a lot to mask the problem. I had a free afternoon so I took advantage of some of the knowledge in attendance and did some road tuning. IT'S SO MUCH BETTER! I think a lot of my transient throttle issues were because my map was lean. We turned off closed loop control and disabled the fuel temperature corrections and went about fattening up the fuel map. There's still some hesitation and a slightly lean tip-in but it no longer falls on its face when I mash the throttle. I also got a lot of advice on how to self-tune so I'm going to be doing a lot of that myself in the near future. It's pretty much limited to fuel right now since I don't feel comfortable playing with timing unless I'm on a dyno.
The general consensus is that my injectors are too far away from the intake ports on the engine. This is probably why my idle is rough compared to other N/A cars and why I've been having difficulty tuning the transient throttle. Even though the road tuning helped significantly I still think I'm going to move my injectors down to the stock primary location on the center housing. I'm going to try to avoid running secondaries at first. I came across a few people this past weekend with setups like this, even turbocharged, and they didn't seem to have any issues with only air going through the secondary intake runners. Defined Autowork's 4-rotor FD is running one injector per rotor and has the injectors as close to the intake ports as possible so that says a lot about this arrangement. The good news is I already have everything I need to make this change: injectors, fuel rail, various adapters, extra -6 AN line, and a bunch of AN hose ends. I'll probably need to make two new fuel lines although I'm hoping I can salvage the existing feed from the fuel filter. I shouldn't have to make too many fuel adjustments. Hopefully this will address my fuel-in-the-vacuum-lines issues too. This will make the engine look cleaner since the fuel rail and injectors will be hidden under the throttle body.
The bad: (1) my reverse lights aren't working. I know they worked before my trip last week but now they don't. I'm hoping it's just a bad switch or a broken/loose wire. The system isn't complicated: provide power and ground to switch and when the car is in reverse the switch closes the circuit. I haven't had a chance to inspect the switch yet. (2) my suspension is VERY noisy in the rear. It squeaks, pops, clunks, etc. I noticed the squeaking before the trip and I'm sure it's the rear sway bay bushings again. I'm going to try the Teflon tape trick next. As for the other noises I first noticed them after running the Dragon on Friday. I need to get the car in the air to make sure nothing has come loose or broken. (3) My exhaust SUCKS from the manifold back. It bounces around, hits the bottom of the car, falls off its hangers, etc. I'm getting a new system fabricated as soon as I save up the funds needed. (4) my hatch leaks. The car car rain for the first time and the rear window leaks despite the weather-proofing foam we used. I think there are some small gaps near the reinforcement bars.
In other news I've committed to reinstalling some of the emissions equipment. I'm sick of the garage smelling like gasoline all the time and it wafting into the housing whenever I open the door. I'm going to put the charcoal canister and PCV back in. The RX7 uses a slightly more complex PCV system but I think I have a way of making it work that involves a few more vacuum fittings.