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I approve of this thread derail. So now you gotta spill the beans.. whats the mod list?
The mod list is way too long to post. Previous owner is an engine machinist and took the time to really build it nice and did the engine build himself. The highlights though are completely built LSA honed 5 thou over, -11cc dished Wisecos, EP H-Beams, CNC ported heads, Texas Speed valvetrain, Texas Speed 2" primary headers and 3" x-pipe, Corsa axle back, custom grind cam, Jokerz Full Tilt ported blower, McLeod RXT1200 twin disc, tons of IAT cooling mods, trunk tank, the list goes on and on. Basically everything that I could think of to do without going to a 2650 or twin turbos. Makes over 800 iced on e85.
The mod list is way too long to post. Previous owner is an engine machinist and took the time to really build it nice and did the engine build himself. The highlights though are completely built LSA honed 5 thou over, -11cc dished Wisecos, EP H-Beams, CNC ported heads, Texas Speed valvetrain, Texas Speed 2" primary headers and 3" x-pipe, Corsa axle back, custom grind cam, Jokerz Full Tilt ported blower, McLeod RXT1200 twin disc, tons of IAT cooling mods, trunk tank, the list goes on and on. Basically everything that I could think of to do without going to a 2650 or twin turbos. Makes over 800 iced on e85.
Sounds extraordinarily similar to the build on my second V.
With the Jokerz ported 1.9L blower, its actually surprising how little incentive there is to go to a 2650 unless you really wanna cry your way to the bank (at which point, the TT makes setups are much more cost effective).
Originally Posted by turbofan
We all have build threads here. No such thing as too long to post
get crackin'
What a crazy year... It was my first and last chance of 2022 to get the car out on track before it inevitably becomes a garage ornament for the winter. There was a HPDE event at Road America last week Wednesday (the last event before the repave) so I took the opportunity to shake the car down with the fastest driver/friend I could find (Evan Pecore) for what is planned to be an exciting schedule in 2023.
In short and sweet summary, the car performed really well. We learned a bunch of key items about the car specifically around the braking system, alignment, and aero balance, which I'll speak more on later in another post. With some further focus put into those key areas, the car will definitely have more potential and go faster. Oil pressures didn't flinch at any point in the laps nor did the coolant temps with the new cooling system package I designed on the car, which was awesome to prove out. Evan ran a burner of a lap at 2:35.9 in the instructor group (especially given it was his first time in the car on track). 9 years of experience here shows! I ran a 2:46.7 in the intermediate group and admittedly was knocking some rust off myself from lack of track driving this year. The only outing I had in this car otherwise was MATG. For my first time out at RA ever, I'll take the time, but I can't help but want to go back to continue practicing going deeper on the new brakes, trusting the aero/tire grip through blind corners, and maybe most importantly getting a clean lap without the other pesky 400+hp cars slowing me down. The HPDE event was a Ford sponsored event so the amount of GT350/GT500's in the run groups that wouldn't point by was staggering, but I digress. I know I can do better, and I have done better. I'll be back for redemption...
Road America is notoriously hard on equipment with the long straights and heavy braking zones. We both reached speeds of ~133mph which is closer to gearing out a miata than I'd ever pictured I would be 6 years ago (6spd/4.3 for reference). For the car to survive not only drive up 1hr to the track, handle the 40min of abuse I threw at it, handle the 40mins of abuse Evan's threw at it, and then casually drive the 1hr back home with the radio on goes to show that the car means serious business for a little N/A 2.4L "street car" that's been pieced together in my garage and driven across the country multiple times. It appears that most of the teething issues that come with any engine swap have been sorted through *knock on wood* as my current maintenance schedule really just consists of changing the oil and filling it up with gas. The main thing left is the fun part and that's to practice, practice, practice (and maybe I'll finally wash it).
In preparation for Gridlife ClubTR next season, I need some help/inspiration on ballasting the car up ~120lbs to get to the 2250lb min weight. I made a separate thread on the topic, so any input would be appreciated.
Got the car all cleaned up for a Harley-Davidson employee car show at an end of year party they hold for the employees. Got 3rd last year out of 50+ cars without even washing it (brought it straight from the track covered in brake dust and rubber scuffs), so shooting for that #1 plastic trophy on a car that has no business winning any sort of car show award.
In more build related conversation. I'm reviewing my camber settings from Road America. I'm currently set at -3.4F / -2.8R. I was running 30psi hot for the runs and general tire wear was good/even across the tread. It seems like I'm not utilizing the entire contact path of the tire to the best of its ability however. Based on the fact that RA corner speeds are about as fast as they come, I'm putting some strong consideration in moving to -3.0F / -2.5R. Would the MT crowd here agree with that approximate assessment?
Front tires
Rear tires (ignore the rub marks from fenders that I need to pull a bit more with the slightly fatter RT660 rubber)
Running the same tire/wheel setups, and I did the same move to reduce the camber, ended up at -3.0 front and -2.5 rear, couldn't go lower because of ride height and ELBJ. Have yet to test it in proper weather thought, but I think it will be better this way.
The Miata is looking great. As for your question about camber, I'm on a similar quest. I've learned I need to get a tire pyrometer to really analyze how the tire is performing and heating across the contact patch, and adjust camber accordingly. I'm thinking it might be somewhat track-dependent though if taking it to that level of fine tuning?
A pyrometer is the real play here, you are probably right, but I need more driver mod before getting to that point. For now, old school "tire reading" and sticking to one alignment across the season is the move I'm sticking to.
Went to one of the last cars and coffee events in the area before the deep freeze of old man winter hit. A lot of cool exotics and equally a lot of cool owners who came over to check out the car. Ironically, I didn't take a photo of any of the other cars there except my own when I was the last one in the lot. I guess that's how you know it's a good event when you don't have time to waste on your phone
Got Mike from Chatham CNC to make me a sweet little custom badge. Honestly not sure when I'm going to put it yet, but it seemed fitting for the car and I enjoy supporting the small miata vendors.
Speaking of small miata vendors, I reached out to Hall Roadster Parts for these little bits. More to come on these 2 parts, I'm sure you all know what they are for, but big thanks to Charles over there for meeting my custom request. I'll be modifying them to work with my setup here shortly.
Last but not least, the sad truth of the year is the car is stored now
No huge plans for this off-season as the main mod the car needs is a driver mod
Got the car back up on lift dollies (still probably the best $100 I've ever spent)
Put the jongbloeds w/ shot RS4's back on so I could keep the Konigs w/ RT660's in the basement where it stays warm
Off season is time to nerd out, so I made a helpful tractive force calculator to aid in understanding gearsets and selecting which is best (rather than trying to blindly trust the internet). Check out the new post that I made here: https://www.miataturbo.net/race-prep...9/#post1631682
On that note, one of the looming questions that I've always had was "Is my 6spd really any better than my 5spd for my purposes?".
I got my 6spd (which is currently installed on the car) for a nice deal from a local, and given how easy it is to swap transmissions out, I blindly decided to give it a go without any real math supporting it. My 5spd that I had in the car at the time was completely fine and I definitely didn't need the 6spd from a torque reliability perspective as I'm only making 186wtq peak, which is well within the limits of the 5spd for a long healthy life.
So using my newly designed tractive force calculator, I plugged away and entered my data, which got me here:
Overlaying the plots, 6spd 3rd-6th shown in blue and 5spd 2nd-5th shown in red, got me the following output to review. Note that 5th gear in the 6spd and 4th gear in the 5spd are overlaid as the same red line as they are the same ratio.
Looking back at my track video from just over 2 months ago, there was 1 single instance of being as slow as 47mph in T5 at Road America, otherwise all other corner min speeds were around mid-50 mph (or higher). Knowing this, and referring to my above tractive force chart, it is easy to see that 3rd gear on the 6spd on that one corner (T5) has dramatically more force to the tire than 3rd on a 5spd would, but you are in 3rd gear on the 6spd for a VERY short amount of time in that part of the track and required to shift to 4th very soon after prior to reaching T6.
So this ends up becoming a compromise of what is better: "having almost 40% more force to the tire for those ~1500rpm (~3seconds) and requiring a shift" OR "dealing with less force to the tire by running in 3rd on a 5spd and saving all the time of an extra shift"
Once you are into 4th gear on the 6spd, the comparable 3rd gear on the 5spd has the force advantage with my setup. Given 4th (on 6spd) is used far more prevalently on track than the ~3 seconds I was in 3rd (on the 6spd), there is very little reason that I can take from this as to why I would want to retain the 6spd. So with that, I'm betting on the removal of a shift being more of a benefit than the ~3 seconds of extra gearing advantage.
The GR shifter and 6spd will be up for sale once I get them removed and I look forward to putting a nice chunk of cash back in my pocket and moving back to the more familiar 5spd with subjectively better shift quality (to me). In the future, if the car ever sees big HP figures (which is probably likely if I'm honest with myself), the 6spd would not be up to the task either way... Lots of future planning on that topic, but I'll save that for another post
Been chatting with a lot of various people through the grapevine on this, but figured I'd make it public here and it would promote some good conversation over this winter when I've got nothing better to do but window shop. Maybe more importantly, I could see this conversation stemming into something I could learn from ahead of time, which would be a huge win as this will end up being another huge pile of money thrown at the car. This post is mainly about future planning for the car, so prepare yourself for a nice read...
While I've been very happy with the car as it sits overall and I'm looking forward to getting some serious seat time in it for 2023 (and likely throughout 2024), a large part of me feels like the car just isn't where I want it to be yet. It's a really fun car to drive on track, but at the same time, it's missing something. Maybe this feeling is from coming from owning a 500whp & 820whp CTS-V (8.6 lb:hp & 5.3 lb:hp respectively), but 231whp in 2235lbs (9.6 lb:hp) just feels like its how the car always should have been from Mazda out the gate and it lacks that bit of adrenaline induced "this car is trying to kill me and I can't stop giggling in my helmet" type of fun that comes with cars that are faster than this. Up to this point, the purpose of the car was to build a dual duty setup where reliability on track and street wasn't compromised and I could afford to do it without the car sitting on jack stands for years on end due to project scope creep. By large, I feel like I've succeeded in that... 2 years of beating on the swap, thousands of street miles, multiple track days, and its needed nothing more than gas tank fill-ups and oil changes.
Looking forward, there are 2 key things I don't like about the car right now:
The wiring... between the combination of kpower engine harness, kpower ECU adapter harness, and Mazda OE harness, it is frankly just kind of a mess. I did my best cleaning it up (and removing 7lbs of OE mazda wiring from the harness already), but I'm pretty much at the limit of what can be done without just starting over.
The horsepower... It's good fun as it sits (don't get me wrong), but I'm missing having something a bit faster than what this is. We all know to keep it reliable though (my #1 priority), my miata transmission and torsen won't be up to the task.... so the powertrain upgrade snowball begins
I know I said two, but its worth mentioning that I'm well aware of this graph and that I'm into the $$$ category given that I refuse to give on the reliability aspect of the car
Let's start with the wiring...
If you are going to start over on wiring, my personal take is you'd be silly to not consider a PDM system in place of what are outdated fuses and relays spread everywhere under the dash right now. I'm looking into the AIM PDM32 kit with 6" display. (https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/pr...sp?RecID=32753). The nice part about this kit is, the PDM has enough channels to control all my street car things (power windows, wiper motor, HVAC blower, radio, interior/exterior lighting, etc) while also providing a logging capabilty for both CAN and OBD2 based ECU systems. Adding channels is as easy as adding another pin and programming it in. Controlling everything is as simple as a CAN keypad. Mako Motorsports also makes a slick dash adapter for the display unit (https://makomotorsport.com/collectio...h-mount-custom) which would look just like this with the 6" AIM display in it.
Once you have the AIM PDM and display with logging capability wired in (skipping over all the fun that comes with making your own chassis harness), you open the door to complete customization of your dash. I no longer have to have my Longacre or AEM gauges in my eyeball vents as the dash can be preset to warn me about whatever I want. I can add in brake pressure and steering angle inputs as I get more advanced drivers than myself driving the car to compare my laps to. I also can permanently add in an AIM smartycam to video record my lapping days, overlay the logged data, and send directly to my laptop for review. Incredibly powerful stuff, but it doesn't come cheap.. so the question to those who may have gone down this path already is, is there a better product out there for the money right now that I should be looking at which can do both PDM and data logging (with video)?
Now let's jump to powertrain updates...
Kpower has made it pretty obvious that K24's have no issues holding 500whp on track reliably without too much of an issue as long as you have the laundry list of supporting modifications to go with it. 550whp seems to be about the limit of where you'd comfortably want to run a junkyard K24 based on all my research anyways, so for the sake of what I'm looking for I'm going to consider that my rational limit...
The miata torsen isn't up to the task, so the straight forward answer is to get a getrag with V8R mounting kit and 500hp axles. That's not terribly expensive or complicated.
Where this gets more "fun" is the transmission offerings... KPI has done a good job at offering a kit that allows for big power like this, but I've heard hit or miss things on just how good the BMW ZF 5spd trans shift quality really is. A few locals have moved away from ZF 5spd's on their swaps to more fragile S2000 transmissions just because of shift feel alone. It is also not a small amount of money to go with KPI's solution for "just a clunky 5spd", so I kept digging into alternatives and came to two conclusions: a Gforce GSR 4spd dogbox (like used in Nascar cup cars, based on a friends overwhelmingly positive feedback) or a BMW ZF 8HP45 automatic (which is a junkyard 8spd trans that comes in many variants of higher tq capacity and offers shifts nearly as quick as a DCT). While the cool factor of manhandling a gearbox cannot be denied (Eric Anderson being one of the ballers running it), the GSR dogbox just doesn't make sense when you are trying to dual duty a car given 4th gear has to be 1:1 ratio by design. My tractive force calculator made that very clear.
so then that leaves the ZF 8HP. To be short, let's just say that even the weakest 8HP won't have a problem managing the torque of a turbo K24. There are a few companies in UK coming out with gearbox control units (GCUs) that operate as a standalone unit. The most prevalent of which is this unit from Turbolamik (https://turbolamik.eu/). HTG is another company with a GCU standalone, but reviews haven't been as positive given the lack of closed loop control as of me writing this today based on my googling and facebook group research. the end cost of the 8HP isn't all that different from what KPI's ZF 5spd kit is either. As luck would have it, a guy in the UK already was crazy enough to do the turbo K24 8HP Turbolamik setup in his NC, so I'll let the results do the talking.
Cool ehhh?? I think anyone who has driven a 400+whp miata can understand it can be a handful to keep straight, so for as much as I'm a diehard manual guy, being able to focus only on steering, braking, and throttle input (sans clutch pedal) actually seems like a pretty strong benefit to a fast lap time as a driver. Consistent rev matched downshifts (which can be automated in the GCU), 8 speeds worth of ratios for track and street uses, and fast (<200ms) shifts are all wins in my book. The downsides are that the of weight the 8HP is about 180lbs (a fair compromise I can make given how light my car is already) and the GCU requires DBW TB to auto-blip downshifts. Stupid germans and their electric throttle bodies is a bigger problem for me, so.....
Lets talk ECU's because the Kpro V4 I have doesn't offer DBW
My prime path thought at the moment would be to utilize a Haltech Elite 1500 and swap everything over to Bosch DBW control to allow for auto-blip. As another benefit to this, the Haltech can communicate much more information to the PDM32 than I would have with Kpro. You can also pull in wheel speed readings from an MK60 abs unit for traction control, boost by gear, and launch control functions with the Turbolamik GCU. Any other ECU's that people have been using these days? It seems like Haltech is the hot ticket piece to have for the money at the moment.
Last but not least, is K24 power adder. I'm really not concerned here much as the tried and true method for power across many of the kswap cars is just toss a G25-660 on it with integrated WG, the right fuel system, and proper intercooler and you are set. Kpower is supposedly developing a turbo manifold and downpipe that may work to my existing catback, but I have no issues with buying other off the shelf rwd kseries turbo manifolds and fabbing my own downpipe..
Summary:
It looks like moving to a AiM PDM32 + Aim 6" Display + Haltech Elite 1500 + Turbolamik GCU + Custom Harness + BMW ZF8HP45 + Getrag Diff Kit + G25-660 Turbo Kit is going to be the long term play on this car for the next big teardown. I would have complete ability to vary boost levels to whatever conditions allow, but the main target of being able to vary between 330-500whp is where my brain is heading. Given the big amount of funds this would take (even with selling off my quality parts that are on the car right now), it's going to take a couple years of stockpiling parts before I tear the car down to do this all, so I'm taking it slow (planning to enjoy the car as it is in the meantime) and researching a lot (while saving up) before pulling this trigger. For those who read through this pile of text, would you do anything different when planning out a big hp dual duty miata? If so, I'd love to hear why.
Re the AiM gear, you may have seen my thread on here about my problems getting my new-generation Solo2DL working with my Autronic ECU. For three years I was told I was the problem (well, me and my tuner) notwithstanding that all their documention said it was set up for it, and how to connect, it was only when I started talking about getting my money back, and then went over the head of the local distributor to head office in Italy, that ... aw shucks, maybe we (AiM) have a problem, and it was fixed. The point of this is not to trash AiM (though they deserve it in this case), but to caution that WHOEVEVER you buy from, don't be a pioneer, see someone running the exact same setup, same car, etc though if you are doing a total re-wire the car may be irrelevant - but the principle holds still. When the AiM PDM first came out, the FB group had a lot of people having problems, seems to have died down somewhat now but there does still seem to be some bugs, but I am not the person to say that these may not be installation/setup issues as much as hw/sw bugs.
I'm currently using ASL Track Mk3 hardware with RaceCapture software and a third party dash/video solution (Raspberry Pi based). I have no issues with the ASL hardware, and RaceCapture is OK, though it took some fiddling to get it to talk to my MS3 over CAN. Support was responsive, but honestly not very helpful... you've got to be able to figure things out on your own. I also have a bit of a problem with Facebook being your product support vector. ASL's forums are all but dead, and you can't call anyone... it's all via FB. The other issue with RaceCapture, is it's a PITA to get the data files transferred to laptop. Part of that is my fault for not buying the 'Pro' system with a removeable SD card...
My 3rd party dash/video setup is terrible. The camera is crap, the dash constantly fails to boot up properly and I don't get data or video.... very frustrating. A computer guy might be able to self-diagnose it, and the vendor has tried to be helpful, but I'm at my wit's end with it. The Pi dash is also very difficult to see in the car.
The end result, is I tried to do it cheap, and now I'm shopping AiM. I'm also looking at the PDM32 to clean up the harness and make everything cleaner in the long run, so I'll be interested to hear others' feedback on that.
I fully support these planned changes. Turbo K's are wicked, and to my surprise not *as* big a handful to keep pointed straight as I had thought it would be.
Your AIM dash/PDM of some sort is honestly the best path to go down. I have the budget version of that with my Pi dash/Bussmann. I absolutely love having a configurable dash and couldn't go back to an analog dash at this point, its just so much more pilot workload compared to no red lights=full send.
And yes, Haltech seems to be the move unless you just REALLY want to commit to living on baller street and go Motech. Unfortunately Megasquirt doesn't support DBW(seems to be their archlies heel...) And there's not a worthwhile ECU outside of those two(arguments could be made for a Link but... Ehh...).
Excited to watch this build progress.
The BMW ZF 6speed has an awesome feel. Tony Montana had the Getrag 5speed conversion and the shifter feel was great too. Both feel like a bolt action rifle in the Miatas.
I do recommend you sit in one and row the gears rather than taking anyone's word on it.
The important part of data logging isn't the hardware system, it's the software capabilities, documentation, user community, and especially the knowledge base. AiM is the most popular system for club-level road racing in the US and that's got huge benefits. Yes, the official company documentation kinda sucks and the UI isn't great (although I haven't seen another data logging system that's actually any better in that regard overall), but there are a ton of resources out there on YouTube and Facebook for how to use it. It's also the system that your buddies at the track are likely using, which makes swapping data with them much, much simpler. It's also likely the system that any coach you might want to hire will be most familiar with.
In short you want an AiM for the same reasons you want a megasquirt if you're building a turbo Miata on this forum.
I can't comment on PDM integration, I haven't used one.
No complaints with shift quality of the ZF 5-speed that I have in my E46, but I have a CAE shifter on it and, well, it's in a BMW, not a Miata.
don't be a pioneer, see someone running the exact same setup, same car, etc though if you are doing a total re-wire the car may be irrelevant - but the principle holds still
I agree with the "don't be a pioneer mentality". I don't have the funds/time to be making costly mistakes of components not integrating to each other well if I'm being honest. Early adopters typically run across reliability issues at some point as well as they are the test mules, and I'm just not interested in that. I know of someone running the Elite 1500, PDM32 and 6" dash combo already on a kswap. The turbolamik GCU integration to the Haltech appears to have been done as well from everything I gather. It seems logical that all of them should talk over CAN appropriately from everything I can gather, but the GCU's are relatively new tech comparatively speaking.
Originally Posted by Roda
The end result, is I tried to do it cheap, and now I'm shopping AiM. I'm also looking at the PDM32 to clean up the harness and make everything cleaner in the long run, so I'll be interested to hear others' feedback on that.
I've built this whole car with the mindset of "Buy once, cry once, do it once, and do it right" which avoids spending money twice on inevitably upgrading something you already bought. It takes time to do (this build thread being prime example of that), but it's been incredibly successful so far as there have been very few things I've had to undo. Arguably this entire electronics and powertrain system upgrade I'm talking about now is the only thing that I'd be undoing at this point, but the setup I have now will hold its value well when I go to resell it, and it was done solely to avoid project scope creep and a car that would never get off jack stands for years. jack stand life is no fun!
Originally Posted by Wingman703
I fully support these planned changes. Turbo K's are wicked, and to my surprise not *as* big a handful to keep pointed straight as I had thought it would be.
While I respect your feedback, you were also hovering right around the 400whp mark during your last outing at Road Atlanta, right? Imagine another 100whp over that, which is where Kpower's track car is at... I'm picturing it turning into a handful. Maybe I'm wrong and it won't be, but planning ahead for electronics that can help "tame the beast" so to speak by boost and traction control capabilities sure would be helpful to have just in case.
Originally Posted by Wingman703
Haltech seems to be the move unless you just REALLY want to commit to living on baller street and go Motech.
Serious question... for my use case, what benefit does a Motech provide that Haltech would not? Based on my limited research, Motech has additional controls for dual stage fuel injection and some fancy high level stuff that provides a bit more benefit to those builds with more than 4 cylinders. I don't have any intentions to get very exotic as far as fuel delivery goes. "Keep it simple stupid" mindset being my plan, and Haltech seems to be able to control everything you could want on a K24 pretty easily (and for cheaper).
Originally Posted by sixshooter
The BMW ZF 6speed has an awesome feel. Tony Montana had the Getrag 5speed conversion and the shifter feel was great too. Both feel like a bolt action rifle in the Miatas.
I do recommend you sit in one and row the gears rather than taking anyone's word on it.
I always hate getting into the subjective ratings on things. Some love it, some don't. I've driven on one ZF 5spd car that felt just as good as my Miata 5spd which I'll hold as my gold standard for sake of argument, but I didn't drive it very hard like I would on track (so maybe things change in that environment?). I've heard both good and bad feedbacks on the internet, so what I am trying to do instead is look at it from an engineer's perspective and that leads me to the following question: Which trans has the best ratios and most consistent/fast shifts to give a driver the best chance of success (ie: a fast lap)?
Answering that question is what led me to the ZF 8HP... There will be subjective reasoning as to why you'd want to stay with a manual, but it's really hard to argue with the consistency, efficiency, close ratios, shift speed, durability, and power capacity of a modern auto like the 8HP. Even BMW themselves is basically saying "this 8HP is so good, we don't even think its worth offering a DCT anymore" based on their flagship performance product offerings. The key Achilles heel with this whole mindset is "you have to be able to control the trans properly" though, and that is something I'm diving deeply into and not taking lightly. Example: If GCU software gives a harsh downshift / throttle blip that upsets the car in braking zones, all the benefits of a 8HP disappear.
Originally Posted by HarryB
Regarding the ECU, take a look at ECUMaster and Maxx ECU offerings; I think some of these are able to control the gearbox directly.
I will have to take a look into those offerings. Would be cool to have everything integrated, but I'm very unaware with how well either of those options are. The standalone GCU's like I mentioned are pretty slick in that they have their own base tune files and closed loop learning built into the software (similar to have MS has Autotune, but better from what I gather thus far)
Originally Posted by codrus
In short you want an AiM for the same reasons you want a megasquirt if you're building a turbo Miata on this forum.
--Ian
Using your logic, I'm already 99% sold on AiM being the answer for the PDM / Display / Video aspect knowing that pulling in the Haltech ECU data has been done many times by people I am in communication with now.
Haltech does offer a PDM unit (the PD16) which integrates to the ECU in a really slick manner, but 16 channels just isn't enough for my purposes and there is no video integration offered with that PDM which are 2 big deal breakers and further convincing me that the Aim PDM32 is the way to go.
Ideally, I'd love Haltech to come out with a larger PDM that can log data, overlay to a recorded video, and display info to a dash (ic7), so that I can just plug into one port to control, tune, and pull lap data from the vehicle, but the closest thing they have is the Nexus R5 (which can talk to their ic7 dash) and that setup just simply doesn't have what I need (still limited on channels and no video capability) https://www.haltech.com/product/ht-195000-nexus-r5-vcu/
While I respect your feedback, you were also hovering right around the 400whp mark during your last outing at Road Atlanta, right? Imagine another 100whp over that, which is where Kpower's track car is at... I'm picturing it turning into a handful. Maybe I'm wrong and it won't be, but planning ahead for electronics that can help "tame the beast" so to speak by boost and traction control capabilities sure would be helpful to have just in case.
Nope, once I realized how quick I ran out of gear and started getting breakup above 7800rpm, I left the boost at around 12-14lbs, or ~350whp. More power there just means I would have been hammering limiter longer. There's definitely no harm in being prepared with TC and assists, but at no point did I ever feel like the car got ahead of me or was uncontrollable, even in the wet. Granted I was also running around with boost by gear, big aero, and 245 A7's which can definitely help put power down smoothly.
Originally Posted by Padlock
Serious question... for my use case, what benefit does a Motech provide that Haltech would not? Based on my limited research, Motech has additional controls for dual stage fuel injection and some fancy high level stuff that provides a bit more benefit to those builds with more than 4 cylinders. I don't have any intentions to get very exotic as far as fuel delivery goes. "Keep it simple stupid" mindset being my plan, and Haltech seems to be able to control everything you could want on a K24 pretty easily (and for cheaper).
I *think* Motech also has a very advanced TC logic. I have no first hand experience, never worked with it. I just know that Motech seems to be the golden standard by people that have the money for it and use it on high level cars. For us people with actual budgets, Haltech definitely seems to be the most versatile offering, especially with their dash and PDM integration offerings.
09-12-2022, 01:56 PM
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