SP power upgrade

[billybunter]

no that your tracking I think you should spend the cash -go aftermarket ecu and a good tune and your ready to roll- that's what I would do

[KevGoat]

And here's a good one. Does anyone know if you can transfer a chip from another already done ECU into your own ECU?
I can gain access to one. Try before you buy.

If you remove the chip from another ecu and transfer it to your's you can use it, but the tune for mods would have to match yours. I was at one stage going to buy billybunter's chip and transfer it to mine as my mods were almost identical.

Any of you guys regularly track the car with the chip? Or are they just fun street cars?

Mine is just street use (and pretty much grandpa style these days, though with the odd blast to remember what it's really capable of ... ), no track use at all.

[93_Clubman]

Anyone gone down the path of using SAS before?

They were mentioned in an ECU thread, years ago & now probably deleted - might have been SE owner, or former SE owner, 'Tony' from Bathurst, or in an ECU thread he contributed to.

Does anyone know if you can transfer a chip from another already done ECU into your own ECU? I can gain access to one. Try before you buy.

Believe you need to get the ECU 'socketed', like some of us NA8 owners do with our 8 bit NA8 ECUs, to run another chip. Know that the 16 bit NB8 ECUs aren't already socketed, & believe same applies to the SE ECU.

[bmchi]

seems i opened a can of worms for SE/SP upgrades!

how much more gains do you guys think a standalone ecu would really make over a chip torque tune? say the chiptorque tune was done on the dyno too (which is wont be for me as I'm all the way in WA), surely it would be minimal!? probably a larger gap if you were to get a best guess tune chip done I'm sure.

what other mods have you SP owners done? i would really like to refrain from opening that motor up, because if I do......it will definitely be balls to the wall

[KevGoat]

seems i opened a can of worms for SE/SP upgrades!

Kinda got hijacked by the SE upgrades really ... but in defence I don't think too many people do much to SP's by comparison. It's actually why I didn't buy an SP. I drove a couple of SP's and was impressed, but I like to tinker too much with these cars these days and the thought of messing with something so rare just didn't sit well with me.

Going back to the question at hand, in my opinion it's all down to how much you're willing to spend. I can't comment on the amount of difference you could expect to gain between the different tunes. Chiptorque will be relatively cheap at around the $800 mark, and once again referring back to SE's, even if left absolutely bog stock standard, just having the chip upgraded would be well worth that cost to solve some of the stock driveability issues - whether this is similar with SP's I don't know! To do an ecu plus tune will be around $3000 to $4000 ... but the ecu plus a (proper) tune will quite likely add a bit more HP and almost certainly a smoother delivery through the rev range of the available power. NitroDann may be able to help you out with what, if any, differences to expect.

Offset these by the fact the Chiptorque upgrade utilises the standard ecu, so no other items are changed from factory, whereas the aftermarket ecu needs to be set to deal with all these and from what I've seen over these years, there are quite often some "niggly" issues for a while that require fine tuning.

I'm not trying to convince toward the Chip, in fact if I had the budget it would be a no brainer - drop it at Dann's!! What I am trying to put across is that the chip is not necessarily the "lesser" choice.

[NitroDann]

how much more gains do you guys think a standalone ecu would really make over a chip torque tune? say the chiptorque tune was done on the dyno too (which is wont be for me as I'm all the way in WA), surely it would be minimal!? probably a larger gap if you were to get a best guess tune chip done I'm sure.

I don't think you understand the inadequacies of the stock ecu and hardware in some areas.

[KevGoat]

I don't think you understand the inadequacies of the stock ecu and hardware in some areas.

Please explain ....

[NitroDann]

The way an aftermarket ecu works lets you run any combination of parts to the best of their ability, almost all ecus can somehow run almost all engines.

When you start looking to get some features from an oem ecu they simply arent there. You may simply be limited to the fact that the airflow meter has an upper limit it can meter, for example.

Dann

[NitroDann]

The way an aftermarket ecu works lets you run any combination of parts to the best of their ability with parameters which arent limited, almost all ecus can somehow run almost all engines.

When you start looking to get some features from an oem ecu they simply arent there. You may simply be limited to the fact that the airflow meter has an upper limit it can meter, for example.

Dann

[KevGoat]

So what you're saying is a stock ecu has limits to what it can extract from a particular sensor, whereas an aftermarket ecu may be able to exploit more from that same sensor? - just simplifying.

So it's the compound effect that an aftermarket ecu can take advantage of various sensors and other factory or aftermarket parts over what a factory ecu can do that creates the improvement?

[NitroDann]

Lets take a coolant temp sensor, its 0-5v and at 0v it reads -40c and at 5v it reads 130c for example, arbitrarily.

That will work fine for both applications (150hp se and 250hp se) because water wont be outside that range in either example but what about when the oem ecu has to read airflow from a meter when the meters maximum upper limit is 200hp worth of flow?

Im oversimplifying of course but thats the gist.

[KevGoat]

So I'd assume most oem ecu's have these limits? And it's when our mods or whatever progress past these stock limits that only an aftermarket ecu and tune can take genuine advantage of these mods? A stock ecu can only do so much?

So let's for example use my own situation of an SE with BEGi intake, BEGi elbow, BEGi downpipe to stock SE exhaust (though tuned for your 3"), GFB boost control @ ~10psi, Denso 321 injectors, eBay intercooler ... from guesstimates (or maybe not in your case) would an aftermarket ecu make much of a HP difference to the modified chip? - already knowing that you could certainly tune in a much smoother power delivery than I have now! I'm interested how much an adaptronic or haltech could improve what I have over the chip for the much bigger $$$ difference.

Not trying to be a smartarse Dann, genuinely interested.

[bmchi]

how much more gains do you guys think a standalone ecu would really make over a chip torque tune? say the chiptorque tune was done on the dyno too (which is wont be for me as I'm all the way in WA), surely it would be minimal!? probably a larger gap if you were to get a best guess tune chip done I'm sure.

I don't think you understand the inadequacies of the stock ecu and hardware in some areas.

Indeed dude i have no idea haha,ive only ever done a bit of reading as i havent really ever considered going down that route yet. I'm guessing the main advantage is being able to run whatever parametres you want?

i guess i was trying to figure out a value proposition of money spent on tune vs performance gains for both options. Mostly to help me make my decision and ease my curiosity about going with the higher end option.

Saying that is it safe to assume that the dollars per gains would increase exponentially as u start getting into the upper limits?

[NitroDann]

Yeah the first 15hp costs only an intake. It's great value.

The stock ecu can only work with the stock electronics and sensors and only has the stock features.

With our aftermarket ecu packages we change the ecu but then also change to much bigger injectors and aftermarket boost control solenoid. We are then completely free to control them however we want. The boost control output from the ecu to the valve is only a simple signal from the ecu, but how is the ecu calculating what signal to send? In the case of an aftermarket ecu we use a 3 dimensional boost control strategy.

The dimensions are :

Rpm
Throttle position
Boost pressure

So it allows us to pick a different boost pressure for each rpm point and throttle position. This allows us to tailor the delivery to feel great but also run the most power safely because we can easily tailor how the boost Is delivered to the engine.

Then we can set lower coolant temperature limit so you don't run 15psi when its dead cold. And if the car ever reaches 16psi the safety system kicks in to protect the engine.

If the customer wants flex fuel we use a fuel composition sensor and add a 4th dimension to the boost output strategy.
The ecu goes:

Ok, so it's 50% throttle and 5000rpm, the 98 map says to output 36% duty cycle to the boost control solenoid but in this circumstances the e85 map says to output 56% duty cycle to the boost control solenoid. Now let's see, I've got half a tank of each fuel right now so I'll output 46%.

Then the closed loop functions constantly check if 46% is producing the correct boost pressure and makes minor adjustments to stay on target. As well as constantly monitoring boost pressure against coolant temp and anything else you tie it to for safety reasons.

Etc etc

If the OEM ecu doesn't have the feature you need to get the results you want, where to from there?

[Lokiel]

:If the OEM ecu doesn't have the feature you need to get the results you want, where to from there?

The most obvious feature you're missing with the OEM NA/NB ECU is a Manifold Air Pressure (MAP) sensor.

With the OEM ECU, the Mass Air Flow (MAF) sensor in the air intake is the airflow sensor used to calculate fueling which is OK for a N/A car.

With a turbocharger and intercooler between the air intake and intake manifold, the MAF sensor is a POOR source to use for airflow metering, the OEM ECU must do some fudging to estimate how much MORE air is being forced into the manifold when boosting and also takes into account that the turbo and intercooler actually REDUCE air flow when NOT boosting.

Since the OEM ECU has no boost sensor (Ie. a MAP sensor), the OEM ECU uses internal tables to guesstimate the airflow in the intake manifold based on the MAF sensor reading and other information such as RPM and gear number (more airflow at higher RPM and lower gear number).
These tables were calibrated by Mazda so should be "good enough" but it's still a guesstimate versus the MAP sensor which is accurate.

Optimum fueling requires delivering the exact amount of fuel required for the amount of air entering the cylinder.

Since OEM fueling is based on internal ECU tables that have been calibrated for a specific injector size, specific air intake, specific turbo, specific intercooler and specific intercooler plumbing length, if you change ANY of those components, the OEM ECU's fueling tables are no longer valid - you wont be injecting the correct amount of fuel.

This is why it's important to do all your modz BEFORE getting a ChipTorque mod because the calibrated tables stored on the chip REQUIRE a specific hardware configuration.

WIth a MAP sensor, which NA/NBs don't have, the actual air flow inside the manifold can be used, it's NOT guesstimated based on MAF readings, RPM and gear number.
The lack of a MAP sensor in the SE is another example of Mazda's "half-arsed" effort in producing a turbocharged MX5.