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Looking for some proffesional advice regarding mapping and possibly places to take the car to asap.

rageness

Active member
Joined
Feb 20, 2019
Messages
197
There's a lot more to this than I am writing hear, but this is the jist of my current issue.

Ok so I had my car mapped by a well known company, they had my car 16 months with a list of jobs to do/check and a map. It was suppose to be kept inside but I found out when collecting it that the car has in fact been sat outside for around a year in all weather with no cover or front bumper attached. The bill came back relatively low I guess "had the work been done properly", except my car is now fairly damaged due to rust as it was not water tight hence me agreeing to have it inside if they were keeping it ages. If you have seen my build thread you would I am sure appreciate my frustration. I'll possibly go into greater details another time but none of that is helping me sort the immediate issue right now in time for a euro trip next month.

Now before I go any further, I am not blaming any one for any issue's that were already there, it arrived needing what I thought were small jobs especially at a specialist with a ramp, most of the work that I could not do my self (lack of knowledge and fear of breaking it) had been done by a mechanic and I had sent the car to the specialist on the basis that we had done what we could but things needed checking.

The jobs main list was to fix an oil leak, a harsh rattle on the turbo side and check all vacs hoses/solonoids and a coolant leak, then map. The car would start but then cut out (turns out that was just while the car is cold as it still does it if you touch the revs and let off while cold, but is totally fine once warm)

So the car is running knightsports twin turbos, a 450lph pump, 1680 injectors, I believe 800 primaries but cannot confirm as I do not remember, the map says 550 looking at the datalogit. 3 inch straight through hks system, upgraded intakes and rad intercooler etc, all supporting mods and an fpr. NGK r BUR9eqp plugs all around. The car was mapped and sent back to me finally after 16 months, the oil leak not touched, the coolant leak still there, the rattle was way worst than when it was sent and setting off the car just learched/jolted all over at which point I was rather frustrated and did not wish to drive it incase of damage. (the rattle noise was huge)

So after contacting them they admitted it had been mapped with a leak and some turbo bolts/snapped or missing.

So I got to work fixing it all, being told all the way that once it was all back together properly it would run perfect and make the power they had on the dyno and that they had mapped it with the issue's in mind so that once they were fixed it would work correctly. (As far as I am aware mapping a car with any kind of leak is a huge nono)

So I pulled the turbo's apart to start as that was the rattle location, only to find the rear inlet pipe (the elbow made of metal which is held on with 2 x 10mm bolts) was completely loose, I could rattle it around with my hand (easy 3 min fix on a ramp from underneath,) Great I thought, simple fix. Nope, not fixed. So I went further and got the turbo's out altogether, Here is what I found...

An inch gap in the turbo gasket, 2 bolts completely missing and 1 bolt from the turbo to the manifold snapped (which could easily be seen from underneath) The gasket had obviously been blowing and then totally blown out on the dyno as the rattle/leak was much worst when it came back than when it went. I then removed the manifold to find a rounded stud in the rotar. Again, I am not blaming the specialist for this they did not do this work which caused these issue's, but mapping the car like this and telling me it drives amazing and it's reliable and ready to go across Europe kinda takes the piss. IMO the car only needed to go on a ramp and get looked at properly for an hour to see the potential issue's at which point they could have rang me and said, there's a bit more work involved than we thought what do you want to do, but I wasn't given this option at all. The same with it being moved outside, I was not told or asked do I want to bring a cover or do I want to take the car back, it was moved outside and left to rot for a year, £4000 brand new alloys look ******* battered.

So the car was is mapped at 1.1 bar which is 15.6 psi, which is the max I'd want to go as I don't know how far I want to push the upgraded twins as I will never find another set of knightsports twins and I am unsure as to how capable they are, also the power is plenty at that range. Now with all the issue's fixed (the turbo/exhaust leak, the inlet leak, the vac leak, the car is now hitting 18to19psi, and the misfire is horrendous, I would say the car is getting too much fuel rather than not enough fuel as it spits flames and when removing the plugs they were soaked. I do not thing the BUR9EQP's can handle all this fuel and have ordered 2 x B11EGP's for the trailing as they have a better spark but are obviously going to choke if driven daily (it's a track car not a daily so gets thrashed when out). I do not have an afr to confirm this at the moment but I can borrow one, how ever that doesn't solve my map issue. I am assuming the actuator needs adjustment to get the boost back down to 1.1 bar and then the fueling adjusting for the map.

Could I please have some professional advice regarding this as I am now having to take this to trading standards and small claims, I will not mention which garage for obvious reasons unless they wish too them selves. But in their own words, there are not 4 other rotary specialists in the UK who can map a car...

I have missed a track day which was booked for today for testing prior to the ring trip and do not feel like the car is safe to drive as it is, I can trailer it to a mapper if some one can suggest a good one, I am based in Sheffield.
 
Did the mapper ryme with hip
 
What afr are you seeing? I take it you have a wideband fitted? And imo 19psi is too much for twins. Too much heat
 
To be perfectly blunt mate, if I was you I would remove the entire engine from the car. Replace the engine wiring loom, test every ancillary and replace anything that is necessary before I would even contemplate mapping. Also it would be a lot easier for others to help if you tried to keep all your posts in one place with regards to the numerous issues you seem to have inherited.
 
Yh I understand, thing is, there was a 45 minute phone conversation where I was told, I needed a new custom loom which wasn't cheap but I figured if it has that it's had everything so go ahead. Didn't get done (apparently after saying it, it was good enough). This last week I (and a friend) have literally tested every vac line with smoke test, every actuator, every wire. Nothing is broken or missing and everything is working, I know that 100%. How ever something needs adjusting either in the map or an actuator or both. But I cannot do anything until I have an afr or some one can tell me where to take it. I was kinda hoping for a couple of pro's to jump on and reiterate what every single person I know has said, which is a car should never be mapped with leaks.
 
My advice would be to get it trailered to jay and Stu at rotortorque. Be prepared for the guys to say it bluntly if it's shit but they will sort it for you. This unfortunately seems to be the way rotary tuning is going at the moment but the guys that do it well are hopefully making some money from the clowns that don't.

Give rotortorque a shout mate, the reviews say it all.
 
I had heard good things about stu, I will look them up, hopefully not a billion miles away.
 
I was not told or asked do I want to bring a cover or do I want to take the car back, it was moved outside and left to rot for a year


What I don't understand is this bit.

They didn't say anything to you for a whole year? But did you also forget where your car was?

Why didn't you just call them? If even my daily is at the garage for 1 hour longer than it should I'm kicking off.

did you not get charged storage?
 
I know you have been trying to tinker with your car in your spare time to fix the issues the previous shop caused, and now you are left with who knows what. My advice would be to stop tinkering and do one of the following three:

1. Take it to Stu and Jaydee at Rotor Torque. They are flat out so don't expect your car to be done this summer but they are genuine (if you are) and will get it working right.

2. Sell it and buy another more well sorted RX-7 because the amount of money you will have to hand over to get this car working and up to whatever your final quality standards are, could be tremendous.

3. Sell it and don't buy another RX-7, or buy any other 20+ year old car. Tuner cars are headaches more often than not, and quite frankly are financially disastrous to the majority of owners. I know many of us have thought of selling our cars at one point or another because they can be a pain in the ass, but so can a GTR, Evo, Civic, etc.
 
I know you have been trying to tinker with your car in your spare time to fix the issues the previous shop caused, and now you are left with who knows what. My advice would be to stop tinkering and do one of the following three:

1. Take it to Stu and Jaydee at Rotor Torque. They are flat out so don't expect your car to be done this summer but they are genuine (if you are) and will get it working right.

2. Sell it and buy another more well sorted RX-7 because the amount of money you will have to hand over to get this car working and up to whatever your final quality standards are, could be tremendous.

3. Sell it and don't buy another RX-7, or buy any other 20+ year old car. Tuner cars are headaches more often than not, and quite frankly are financially disastrous to the majority of owners. I know many of us have thought of selling our cars at one point or another because they can be a pain in the ass, but so can a GTR, Evo, Civic, etc.

Ye I certainly won't be doing 2 or 3... The car is very close to being very well sorted, see build thread, these were a couple of minor issue's that needed fixing and were ignored. In the last 2 weeks I have my self on a sloped drive managed to fix every single issue left bar the ones mentioned, ie a map and it overboosting which I believe is down to the actuator needing adjustment for the over boost and a map with new plugs as I think it's wayyyy overfueling. If it is not sorted any time soon then chances are it will be taken to STU as there names have come up many times as being very good.

Also i've had this car 6 years, it owes me a fortune and I believe thigns should be finished once started, I don't generally give up on things and have had over 400 cars, i've had gtt skylines, rx7's 300zx's 240z's, scoobs, s2k's the lot. The rx7 is and will always be one of my favourite attainable cars as is the nsx. I also like to learn and do things my self where possible, the only reason it went some where was due to lack of time and I do not have a dyno these issue's should have been an easy fix for a specialist.
 
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What I don't understand is this bit.

They didn't say anything to you for a whole year? But did you also forget where your car was?

Why didn't you just call them? If even my daily is at the garage for 1 hour longer than it should I'm kicking off.

did you not get charged storage?

You make some good points, how ever there is a lot more to it, in short, I messaged frequently, often with no reply and I was niave enough to assume they were just very busy. I had called also to be told it needed this or that and parts (ie a custom wiring loom was being made) hence it taking a while.

Initially the car was taken in OCT 2017, I needed it back for Feb 2018, despite many messages on my part the deadline was missed (not even started) At this point I had said if it's not going to be done, then take as much time as you need and I will keep my other car, how ever if that's the case then I will not have the money to pay for said work until later in the year as I would need to spend money on the other car for the euro trip and then sell it when I got back. I had also said, this was only ok if the car was being stored and I was not being charged for storage as I was not responsile for it not being done within the 4 months it was there already. They had said that was great and appreciaited the extra time, through out the next 8 months I had sent messages and made calls asking how it was coming what it needed etc. As I say there's a heck of a lot more to this, as it was not done the 1st time around I was in no rush as I had a house to finish and it would have meant storing it at another house and I assumed if it's inside safe then that's great and it will be coming back working.

As I have the owner on my facebook I was in regular normal contact so I had no reason at all to assume it had been moved outside or the work being done would be sub par.
 
Ye I certainly won't be doing 2 or 3... The car is very close to being very well sorted, see build thread, these were a couple of minor issue's that needed fixing and were ignored. In the last 2 weeks I have my self on a sloped drive managed to fix every single issue left bar the ones mentioned, ie a map and it overboosting which I believe is down to the actuator needing adjustment for the over boost and a map with new plugs as I think it's wayyyy overfueling. If it is not sorted any time soon then chances are it will be taken to STU as there names have come up many times as being very good.

Also i've had this car 6 years, it owes me a fortune and I believe thigns should be finished once started, I don't generally give up on things and have had over 400 cars, i've had gtt skylines, rx7's 300zx's 240z's, scoobs, s2k's the lot. The rx7 is and will always be one of my favourite attainable cars as is the nsx. I also like to learn and do things my self where possible, the only reason it went some where was due to lack of time and I do not have a dyno these issue's should have been an easy fix for a specialist.


Fair enough. Take it to Stu and Jaydee then to sort out the final issues.

I'm personally a guy that looks at my time value vs. money and if I need to spend a lot of time working on my car doing this and that, I'm wasting my time as my car isn't making me any money. Hence, I tend to limit myself to oil changes, plug changes and the like and give my car to Stu and Jaydee any time I need something done that will take me more than two hours! Haha. And the money is better spent on their fantastic service whilst I can go about doing other things with my time.

Having said that, I am often envious of the lot of you that have the skills to do crazy builds on your cars yourself.
 
Completely see your point, I guess I put a lot of time into my car as my old business involved doing a lot of car bits so I kinda threw things in with it while I was at it.
 
Completely see your point, I guess I put a lot of time into my car as my old business involved doing a lot of car bits so I kinda threw things in with it while I was at it.

Well, that's sensible since you were able to combine it with your day job and not inhibit the quality of your time that would be devoted to your day job.
 
"At this point I had said if it's not going to be done, then take as much time as you need and I will keep my other car, how ever if that's the case then I will not have the money to pay for said work until later in the year as I would need to spend money on the other car for the euro trip and then sell it when I got back"

If you didnt have the money to pay and they didnt get time to do diagnostic work done then you should have taken the car home straight away, its pretty illogical to assume that a company paying business rates and has a high volume of cars coming in and out would keep a customers car who isn't paying for the storage in the way of it all inside, especially when you live 30 minutes or so away.

BTW boost is electronically controlled in this car, no idea who told you to mess actuators (theres two of them) you only need to set preload and thats it. I have no idea why you haven't just reset the ecu to factory base map and then just go get it mapped again somewhere else.
 
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"At this point I had said if it's not going to be done, then take as much time as you need and I will keep my other car, how ever if that's the case then I will not have the money to pay for said work until later in the year as I would need to spend money on the other car for the euro trip and then sell it when I got back"

If you didnt have the money to pay and they didnt get time to do diagnostic work done then you should have taken the car home straight away, its pretty illogical to assume that a company paying business rates and has a high volume of cars coming in and out would keep a customers car who isn't paying for the storage in the way of it all inside, especially when you live 30 minutes or so away.

You're missing the point, car was suppose to be done for Febuary 2018, they didn't even start it in the 4 months it was there, I had already paid to have it trailered there and was told it was inside, The car had no front bumper so 30 minutes is irrelvant if I cannot drive it. I gave them the option when they said they had not started it, of either doing it asap so I could pay for it and have it done, or taking as much time as they needed as long as it was inside, how ever it would be no good ringing me a month later to say, now it is done as I would have spent the money I had put to 1 side for the rx7 on a car I had no intention of spending money on to take for a euro trip simply because they had not got the car ready.

I do not expect any one to do/store anything for free. If I had your car and I had it 4 months and had not started it because I had miscalculated my work load would you then expect to pay for storage while it was still being fixed? If I told you it would be stored inside while we have it, would you then expect to pick your car up 16 months later to find it's been outside for 12 months and the only reason you found this out is because the mechanic told you it needs new air filters as they have been sat in all weather conditions for ages... You are correct, you have no idea why I haven't done a range of things, because I have not posted every single detail because it's irrelevant and has zero to do with the issue at hand which is, can a car be mapped with those issue's.
 
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