Rotus Project Build

[Jamie R]

Love this project.
Watching and waiting for the wiring to be done.

Do you know what ECU you will be using.

Done the ecu to engine loom.

Just working on the engine bay loom in the pic

Stock ecu, it's quite clever by all accounts

Got a fella making a circuit board for me that will display the Speedo using 1x omron sensor mounted to an adaptor off one wheel that's completely stand alone as I don't have abs/dsc.

It will also accept gps unit as a back up although the tests we have done, it's accurate as a constant speed but struggles to keep up with accuracy on hard acceleration and braking.

We can also fit a sim card and have gprs and find out where the car is if it gets stolen

My mate was also trying to get me to fit load cells where the shock absorbers mount to the body so we could understand corner weights and use the gps to find out loading on any corner on any track.

But I thought .... don't see the benefit.

Keep it simple


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[Mr Spiller]

Be gone

Crappy gates


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What's happened ?


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Gate hit the pick up pipe, started from scratch

Tig it up this afternoon




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The plastic one from the engine ?


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[Jamie R]

Be gone

Crappy gates


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What's happened ?


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Gate hit the pick up pipe, started from scratch

Tig it up this afternoon




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The plastic one from the engine ?


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Nooooo  hinges as gates




This back wall was too far forward on the first one by 2mm and hit where the oil pick up bolts to the underside


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[Mr Spiller]

Be gone

Crappy gates


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What's happened ?


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Gate hit the pick up pipe, started from scratch

Tig it up this afternoon




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The plastic one from the engine ?


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Nooooo  hinges as gates




This back wall was too far forward on the first one by 2mm and hit where the oil pick up bolts to the underside


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Gotcha
Thanks


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[Jamie R]

Be gone

Crappy gates


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What's happened ?


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Gate hit the pick up pipe, started from scratch

Tig it up this afternoon




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The plastic one from the engine ?


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Nooooo  hinges as gates




This back wall was too far forward on the first one by 2mm and hit where the oil pick up bolts to the underside


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Gotcha
Thanks


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Sorry Wayne my mistake

Where it sucks from

Not bolts on




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[Jamie R]

It fits now

While the bolts look unsightly they help in many ways.

The bottom ones plug up the holes and act as a counterbalance for ensuring the always close.

And bolting them on to the sump work out better as welding them on causes distortion as they curve from contraction then the hinge pin starts to bind .

All in all happy with that. Less than 120 quid in materials


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[boosted]

Spot on mate and with the catch tank drain dont think any oil starvation or burps.. i take 1 for an fd please

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[Jamie R]

Spot on mate and with the catch tank drain dont think any oil starvation or burps.. i take 1 for an fd please

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Lol lemme test this one out at Combe and yeah I'd make you one.

The rx8 performance one is made from 6mm thick aluminium.

I chose 3mm stainless for the flange and base and 2mm on the sides.

I read on t'internet that custom sheet aluminium welded sumps can go soft from the heat of the oil. Which I guess is fine on a piston engine and the block can keep it all in check.

But I guess with a rotary and all the sandwich of parts to make the engine, a soft aluminium sump won't help in stopping the torsional twist. I guess only a problem on boosted high hp motors, which I don't have, but no problem in adopting the same principles.

The stock sump is 1.2mm so this thing is a bit weighty in comparison. But the weight is as low down as can be so I'm not too concerned.

Being 3mm flange I'm hoping it will serve the same purpose as these sump braces you can get to stop leakage on flimsy stock sump flanges.

Just my take on it all ... who knows. lol


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[Mr Spiller]

Spot on mate and with the catch tank drain dont think any oil starvation or burps.. i take 1 for an fd please

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Lol lemme test this one out at Combe and yeah I'd make you one.

The rx8 performance one is made from 6mm thick aluminium.

I chose 3mm stainless for the flange and base and 2mm on the sides.

I read on t'internet that custom sheet aluminium welded sumps can go soft from the heat of the oil. Which I guess is fine on a piston engine and the block can keep it all in check.

But I guess with a rotary and all the sandwich of parts to make the engine, a soft aluminium sump won't help in stopping the torsional twist. I guess only a problem on boosted high hp motors, which I don't have, but no problem in adopting the same principles.

The stock sump is 1.2mm so this thing is a bit weighty in comparison. But the weight is as low down as can be so I'm not too concerned.

Being 3mm flange I'm hoping it will serve the same purpose as these sump braces you can get to stop leakage on flimsy stock sump flanges.

Just my take on it all ... who knows. lol


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Sounds like just the job


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[Grant Monkhouse]

Flange, leakage, flanges.... Sump good too, but not as good as a flange

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[Jamie R]

Done

Clearance on the chassis  and engine mount

Next job.......


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[Sprint13B]

Spot on mate and with the catch tank drain dont think any oil starvation or burps.. i take 1 for an fd please

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Lol lemme test this one out at Combe and yeah I'd make you one.

The rx8 performance one is made from 6mm thick aluminium.

I chose 3mm stainless for the flange and base and 2mm on the sides.

I read on t'internet that custom sheet aluminium welded sumps can go soft from the heat of the oil. Which I guess is fine on a piston engine and the block can keep it all in check.

But I guess with a rotary and all the sandwich of parts to make the engine, a soft aluminium sump won't help in stopping the torsional twist. I guess only a problem on boosted high hp motors, which I don't have, but no problem in adopting the same principles.

The stock sump is 1.2mm so this thing is a bit weighty in comparison. But the weight is as low down as can be so I'm not too concerned.

Being 3mm flange I'm hoping it will serve the same purpose as these sump braces you can get to stop leakage on flimsy stock sump flanges.

Just my take on it all ... who knows. lol


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From what I've gathered about Hi Powered Rotarys.
Virtually all the torsional twist is eliminated by using thicker studs and ARP nuts with solid dowels.
Note a external oil supply is needed for a full solid dowel kit.
There plenty of videos from the Rotary Gurus.

https://youtu.be/RhE3alGMAwA

[Jamie R]

Afternoon all, not posted for a while, just thought id update you all and say hi.

Been inundated with wiring and all things canbus related.

Been doing lots of testing as well with GPS speedos.

Bottom line is, the system we built is very accurate at a constant speed, but lags badly on hard acceleration and braking..... to the tune that with the stock speedo in its usual place, a bread board with the GPS unit and aerial, a ESP32 micro processor and all the other gubbins in the passenger foot well and a spare RX8 speedo linked in and sat on the passenger seat, we found some errors.
Left the lights like a scalded cat...... 42mph on my speedo, look across and the spare one says 4mph !!! Car in front coming up, brake hard, down to 25mph.... and the spare one is still climbing up to 42...... hmmmmm

TomTom ( other sat nav systems are available) must have really really fast processors or have a fleet of their own satellites. hahaha

The program in the processor asks for a reading every second, so at slow speeds its hard to determine how much distance has been travelled within a second, when compared to say 70mph on the motorway (officer.) Where a greater distance is travelled within the same time.

So a delay in the info coming from the GPS, to the micro processor, convert it to Canbus language, and spit it out on the binnacle.

Then you need a minimum of 3 satellites or you cant get triangulation on your location, then you drive through a tunnel , not that there are many of those round by me........ but this isnt working out.

So back to sensors, but not stock ones. Weve acquired an Omron sensor which is a device just 5mm in diameter. So I needed to make an adapter, for the stock sensor location and set the face 0.85mm away as per the original.

We have tested this and got some amazingly accurate results, mainly down to the program in the background. which takes the pulses, runs it through some signal conditioning device, (Ive no idea what its actually called), but it neatens up the square wave created by the teeth going past the sensor, converts the info to canbus jibberish and spits the speed on the binnacle.

So in theory, it all works..... 1 x sensor, not 4 as per the stock set up.

Needless to say, I dont have the stock sensors anymore, nor the ABS/DSC system that they ran through. So we have no way of talking to the stock ECU.

So then comes the difficult bit, we need to find a way of shouting messages down the existing canbus, and Im not going to pretend I know what Im talking about here becuase I dont and the likes of Jon and Malcolm would see right through it anyway.

But from what we can work out, the wheel sensor info is part of a "201" code, and i think the total code is 8 characters long. The rest of the code that gets sent to the binnacle is rpm, and so we are thinking of running 2 x canbus. The original canbus will have some data from rpm, which I assume will come from the eccentric shaft trigger sensor; and we will send that data to the second canbus and the programe will merge that data with the data from the wheel sensor to create the 8 character code and send that to the binnacle. Sounds simple, well I dont have to write that program thankfully !!!!

Jon recently pointed out ( after I showed him a vid of our test hub, rigged up to an electric drill on the end of a modified driveshaft ......that the odometer didnt go up.

We recently found that the odometer is a "420" code, and we need to run some more tests from my current RX8 and understand what's being shouted down the canbus and replicate that info.

We have ran a small test and can get the odometer to increase, but we dont know what values within the code relate to how many increments the odometer goes up and the frequency involved.

God Mazda, just stick a speedo cable on the back of the gearbox hahahaha.

We're getting there and Id like to say im missing fibreglass........ but im not!

[Eccentric shaft]

The original canbus will have some data from rpm, which I assume will come from the eccentric shaft trigger sensor;

Thanks for the enjoyable long read! Found the part about eccentric shaft trigger sensors particularly intriguing. You might not want to mess with those!

[Jamie R]

New goodies, colour matched to the proposed paint colour.

No maroon Jon!

Cheers captain Clive !


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