I installed a racelogic traction control on my fd this weekend. i know there are several people on the forums here that have working setups, so i just want to verify that i've done everything right.

the documentation doesnt specify which leads are supposed to go to which wheelspeed sensor, or to which injector. for the wheelspeed sensors, i'm convinced that it doesnt matter, as the calibration step figures out which wheels are driven. but for the injectors, i'm a little worried. it looks like the system expects that all injectors are the same, and its expecting to cut fuel to separate identical cylinders as necessary. for an fd application, how does it know which injectors are primary and secondary? i really dont want to see it cut only the primary injectors when i'm at full boost. i'm worried that in that case, there may be enough fuel for detonation.

racelogic provided a printout of the pins that i was supposed to map from the ecu connectors to the tcs. the 4 pins specified did correspond to the 4 injector pulse wires, so i followed the directions exactly. however, that same printout said that the abs controller was in the passenger side of the trunk (which may be accurate for rhd japanese cars, but mine is lhd). in any event, the abs controller is on the left side, be it passenger or driver side. the printout was also wrong about one of the pins to use for wheelspeed. while it was a wheelspeed sensor pin, it was the wrong wire in the twisted pair. thankfully, the racelogic diagnostics are very helpful in figuring out whether the sensors are working.

i'm reasonably confident that i've done the right thing. i'm just looking for some assurance. i've sent an email to racelogic, but i'm not sure how familiar they are with rotary applications. so if anyone who has installed it on an fd would like to chime in, i'd really appreciate it.

 

I don't know much, but the TC system will cut all the injectors at the same time. No fuel = No spark => No detonation.

Hee hee hee, I'm local. We should me sometimes.

 

Did you buy the system through the group buy? Why not contact the RaceLogic rep? Jeremy at Matrix Engineering is the one to talk to.

Matrix Engineering
10250 SW North Dakota St.
Tigard, OR 97223
(503) 443-1141
racelogic@matrixengineering.cc
http://www.matrixengineering.cc/

 

i bought it from jeremy at matrix. i've talked to him about it, and he has a pending inquiry with racelogic -- hoping to hear from them tomorrow morning. he and i both believe that my configuration is the right one, i just want someone to tell me for sure before i go cutting fuel at 15psi.

jim, perhaps you can expand my limited knowledge of how the injectors work. for reference, i have the stock 550cc primarys, and aftermarket 1200cc secondaries.

when are each type of injectors used? are the primary and secondary injectors used at the same time? or, am i always only using one or the other (per rotor). my main worry is that i'll have only the secondarys spraying when i'm supposed to have both. but if i'm never supposed to have both spraying, then the racelogic will probably do the right thing all the time.

 

V8's dont have secondary fuel injectors...

 

The secondary injectors, when needed, flow along with the primary injectors (same time). Although they will have different flow times per pulse (usually). Because I am not too familiar with how racelogic cuts fuel, whether all at once or whether it cuts one at a time, I have the exact same question as you. I will be getting my RLTC system in, in a few days or so, so if you find out how it works, please let us know.

Adam

 

ok here's what i go from matrix integrated / racelogic:
now that that's settled, i thought i'd post the wiring schematics that worked for my install. i've marked the pins that you need to splice from the abs controller and from the ecu. i've attached pictures cut from my wiring manual. in case the pics are hard to read, i'll list the wire colors here:

wheelspeed sensor pins (from the abs controller):
white
light green
yellow
red / white

ecu injector pins (from the largest of the 4 connectors on the ecu):
light green / black
light green / red
light green
light green / white

rev speed pin (from the 2nd largest connector on the ecu):
light green (this comes from the igniter)

power pin (from the 2nd largest connector on the ecu):
black / white (from the condenser)

this is what i used, and it seems to work. i hope this saves people time when installing racelogic in the future.

 

Wow, you're not worried that the secondary will inject enough fuel for detonation? Especially since the secondary is the 1200cc? I'm not an expert on rataries, but make sure others have run it this way without problems and are setup exactly the same way. Like I said, I personally wouldn't like that. If anything, I'd probably set it so that the cuts for both primary and secondary would trigger some type of circuit and have relays cut both injectors at the same time... *shrug*

Hell, Racelogic should just have an option for it.

I don't know what I'm talking about though :-P

Good luck.

Boris

 

Cutting the primary injector and having the secondary injector flowing, sounds pretty damn dangerous. They have to have some kind of way to stop both injectors at the same time. Can we maybe splice the wires?

I have 1600 cc secondary injectors, so i kinda feel even more worried!

 

Try RICE RACING. He posted as recently as 3/4.

 

I don't have any experience installing the Racelogic TCS, but rather just have some basic knowledge of the fuel injection circuits that might be useful. Here it is:

The injectors should have a common ground, or perhaps more likely a common +12v. If you interrupt that connection with the TCS unit, it would stop all the injectors that are using the common connection.

Just an idea.

-Max

 

the racelogic is designed to alter the pulldown pin going to each injector. it doesnt touch the constant +12V that is common to all four.

it specifically states that if your injectors are wired in series on the same circuit, that the tcs will not work correctly. it insists that you have each injector separately controlled.

<math>

i figure the worst case is at WOT, where the ecu decides it needs full duty from both injectors. if primary and secondary injector flow rates are P and S, respectively, then the total flow rate is P+S. now lets call the air/fuel ratio R. the air flow rate is then R multiplied by the fuel flow rate (P+S). now if the racelogic modifies the primary injector flow to be zero, and leaves the secondaries spraying full. that changes the fuel flow rate to just S. so now we've got air flow = R(P+S) and fuel flow = S. dividing, we get a modified A/F ratio equal to R * (P+S)/S.

the term (P+S)/S is the multiplier affecting the A/F ratio. in my case, P = 550, and S = 1200, making (P+S)/S = 1.46. now lets say i run lean intentionally at A/F = 9.0. if the racelogic kicks in under these conditions, i'm going to change my A/F ratio to 13.1. that sounds like detonation territory to me.

now if instead, the racelogic cut only the secondary injector, my resulting A/F ratio would be 28.6, which wouldnt worry me at all.

</math>

it would be great if someone knew the details of how the injectors really work (and was willing to share that knowledge here). does the primary injector go to 100% before the secondary kicks in at all? or do they always split the duty evenly according to their respective sizes? i'd be very concerned if the two always sprayed proportionaly with their sizes, as that would lead to the scenario i detailed above every time the tcs kicks in (rather than just at WOT).

i'll send more mail back to mike at racelogic. hopefully i'll get a more descriptive answer than he gave before.

 

The injectors are wired in parallel, with a common +12v it sounds like. Does the TCS connection to the injector pull-down pins just T into the existing wire (supplying +12v to stop the injector from operating), or are there two separate connections for the wiring harness side and the ECU side (in which case you might be able to interrupt the common +12v for a pair of injectors)?

I wonder if some diodes (the electronic equivalent of a check valve) could be wired in so that a single signal from the TCS could be used to stop two injectors, while retaining separate control of the injectors by the ECU. If so, you could attach a separate diode to each injector control pin, and join the other side of a pair of diodes to one or two outputs from the TCS.

The PowerFC and other stand-alone engine management systems (I imagine) have adjustable settings for the pri to pri+sec injector transition. But generally, the secondaries are configured to be phased in when the primary injectors reach a certain duty cycle, like 40%. There is some time period over which the transition occurs, and 1-1.5 seconds seems to be typical, though some folks run something a little more or a little less. I assume that the secondary injector duty cycle ramps up during the transition and the primary duty cycle ramps down, since it wouldn't make much sense to have a setting for the time period if the transition happened instantaneously. After the transition, I believe the duty cycle of the primary and secondary injectors is the same.

Is there a way to control which injectors ("cylinders") get cut by the TCS first? If so, it seems like you could configure it to cut the secondaries first, so that you'd never have the secondaries running when the primaries have been cut.

However, there are a number of people using the Racelogic system with their FDs already, so perhaps this is really a non-issue and we're making it more complicated than it needs to be.

-Max

 

You guys are over thinking it way to much, they really have it figured out.

From his first post I can say it sounds like he wired it correctly there is an error in the documentation for hooking to the 4 wheel sensors. On the documentation it has one of the sensors hooked up wrong, I noticed it before I hooked it up because I compared there documentation to a schematic of the ABS I had. But even if you hooked one of the abs sensors up wrong(by wrong I mean to the wrong leg of an abs sensor) you would notice it during the diagnostic phase where the instructions have you do a test of each sensor by rotating the **** to different positions and watching a light blink. The system will learn which sensors are connected where when you do the calibration.

As far as the injectors you need to follow the guide as it has specific connections going to each injector or the sequencing will be off which probably wouldn’t be good.

I’ve been running it for a couple of years on 1/4 mile track and road course with 550s 1200s and I trap around 119 and its by far my favorite mod. Saves tires and bakes other cars off the line and in low gears. I run 1.75-1.80 short time on my street tires if that give you any idea of its performance.

Curios did you get the full throttle shift and full throttle launch?

Racelogic has really good support might take a day but they will get back to you, they sent me the latest windows software with logging in it (I didn't even know my unit could do that) and helped me with some better maps.

My unit is the step down from the top one, but has the full throttle shift and launch control. I think the top unit has internal logging memory.

 

Now... you know what would be REALLY cool for other rotary owners? If someone would DOCUMENT THEIR INSTALL. With PICTURES. GOOD pictures. IN FOCUS. NOT Max Cooper pictures. (sorry Max, couldn't resist!)

We get a thread on the RaceLogic system on a more or less monthly basis, and I'll bet there are a large number of people with RaceLogic systems from the group buy sitting in their closets or garages because they don't have the first clue how to install them but couldn't resist the great prices we got. Someone be a pal and document your install so that we don't have to go through this again. OK?

I'd document mine, but A) I decided to get my car up and running first before installing the system to limit the number of things I have to troubleshoot, and B) wiring instructions for eight injectors might confuse some people...

 

i got this from Mike this morning:

i'll try to get the software installed and hooked up today so i can verify that the racelogic is configured for sequential mode. after that, it looks like i'm good to go.

 

i did think about taking pictures of my install, but the thought came late. i was in the calibration/diagnostic phase by the time i considered that pictures would have been valuable to others. sorry.

honestly, the install was pretty easy. it took me about 10 hours, but if you've read this thread first, that time would probably be cut in half. i had to tear apart the trunk twice because of the wheelspeed sensor pin mismatch. (thats with the bose wavetube.) and i spent a lot of time tracing the wiring diagram to verify that the pins suggested were indeed going somewhere that made sense, and then recording the wire colors. but i've provided all that info on this thread (assuming you trust me )

getting to the abs wires was a pain. the connector is rather large and cumbersome. and getting it reattached is even harder. you really want to only do this once. the good news is, once you have it pulled out into the trunk area, you have lots of room to work.

accessing the ecu is trivial, its just behind the kicker panel in the passenger seat (in front of the passenger door under the glove box.) the only trick here is that the wires dont have much slack. you need to cut the injector wires leaving enough room on either side to solder them into the provided couplers. and you'll be doing that soldering while you're cramped up in the area under the glove box.

the couplers they give you are a little tricky. the pins often dont want to stay in the couplers when you connect them. you need to really jam them in there until they wont budge. it helps to do this with the couplers connected. if the injector pins arent all connected correctly, the car won't start. duh!

when you get to the calibration phase there are some other caveats. first, i'll explain how you get into the different modes. the manual is a little fuzzy on this.

if you start the car with the diagnostic dongle attached, it puts you in calibration mode. the green led will blink slow (on for a second, off for a second). when it achieves calibration, it will switch to diagnostic mode.

to get to diagnostic mode, start the car without the dongle attached. after it's started, attach the dongle. now the green led will blink in time with one of the sensor inputs, determined by the position of the selector ****. (actually, i'm pretty sure the led blinks along with the sensors regardless of whether or not you have the dongle attached).

NOTE: when in both diagnostic and calibration modes, the traction control is still active! this means that it will attempt to cut your injector pulses even if it doesnt yet know which wheels are which.

the first thing you should do after you get the system wired up is turn it to the OFF position and go for a test drive. once you're sure the car is working normally without the tcs, you need to test the sensors. put the car in diagnostic mode -- keep it OFF. the rpm sensor should be active. you can rev the car to verify that the rpm sensor works.

next, go find a hill. coast down the hill in neutral, and switch the selector **** through all the wheelspeed sensors while the car is coasting. this will allow you to check the sensors without the system attempting to cut your fuel. the system won't activate below a certain rpm.

once you're sure all the sensors are working, then switch it back to OFF. now you can proceed with the calibration step as outlined in the manual. i screwed this up royally -- i tried to calibrate when not all of the wheel sensors were operational. as you might guess, it didnt work.

thats it for my tips. like i said above, if you read all of this, it will save many hours of install time. racelogic claims that you can install in two hours. i think for a real-world user, its probably more like four if you do everything right.

 

Wow, this makes me feel soooo much better. thanks for posting that.
Adam

 

Didn't I mention that before? Total fuel cut => no spark! Well, no one believes me

I got my TC installed by a shop. I was there most of the time, but I do not have digi cam! Damn, I'm poor .

StrikeRx7, once you're done w/ yours, can you tune mine?? I'll threat you some best Thai food

 

just an FYI. i plugged in the laptop to check the configuration on my racelogic. it was set for non-sequential mode, which is what Mike warned against. I switched it to sequential mode, and now i feel comfortable leaving the system on.

thanks for everyone's help and input.

 

I am in the middle of installing my RL TC and need to know what you guys used as the main, fused power source, meaning, wire color and location, also, my kit did not come with the clutch wire, which i guess i will just have to make up, but is it an option and needs to be popped into the main RL loom plug like the Injector set-up??? And what wire did you guys use on the clutch switch? I have no power to the car so i cant test continuity...

One more, for those of you that have the digital adjuster, did you just unclip/redirect the red wire from the main unit to the adjuster and just used it to connect to the main power?