i'm the new guy here and i have a question for anyone who would know .i heard if you advance the timming the car can pick up up to 20 more hp.....if anyone can help me figure out how to do this.....or has advice on not to do this please let me know.........
my car is a 2000 protege 1.8 lx gt...... i have a kit being put on as we speak.........pics will be available soon......

 

I guess you're referring to ignition timing. 3rd gen Proteges do not have distributor type ignitions, so we can't advance timing by rotating distributor caps. There are a number of ways to advance ignition timing on 3rd gen Pro's. FYI: 2001-2002 2.0 liter Pro's come with a 10 degree timing advance stock.

Use tips below at your own risk:

1: Fool the temp sensors (air intake or engine coolant). This will probably advance your timing by about 2 degrees.
2: Get your ECU reprogrammed by Jet Chips (www.jetchips.com). Doing this is essentially turning your Pro into a 140HP MP3.
3. Fool the mass air flow sensor.

Be careful not to advance ignition timing too much or your engine will start to detonate. Ignition timing advances are usually accompanied by a higher octane grade of fuel to retard combustion. So prepare to spend more on gas.

Bottom line, you will get more power while sacrificing gas money.

 

I forgot to mention another item for advancing ignition timing. Ignition timing control modules that attaches to the Pro's coil packs. Supposedly, you can assign ignition curve maps with these units.

Please note that these are not spark amplifiers like the ones from Jacobs Electronics and MSD. I have reason to believe spark amplifiers are useless for distributorless ignitions such as the Pro's.

 

You know I was thinking about this last night and I htought we might be able to put a resistor on the Air temp sensor to mae it think cooler air was heading in teh motor to Advance the timing some any thoughts?

 

Someone measured timing with OBD II loggin software. it was giving some crazy values for advance-something like 32 degrees BTDC at light cruising.
try search, it might pop up unless I read it somewhere else.
Alex

 

Actually, I think Bluestreak was referring to cam timing, not ignition timing. Ignition timing on the Protege will be very difficult to adjust consistently, if at all, during closed loop mode in the ECU. That's everything but wide open throttle if you aren't familiar with OBD2. Cam timing on the other hand, could be just as effective, and probably more effective than adjusting ignition timing alone for power production. That can be done on any Protege engine with the right parts. Adjustable cam gears are the parts required, which are available for 1st and 2nd gen Protege owners with the 1.8L BP engine, but not for 1.8L or 2.0L 3rd gen owners that I'm aware of yet.

 

Actually, the easiest way to adjust ignition timing is to slot the mounting hole for the crankshaft position (CKP) sensor, which allows you to move the sensor relative to the timing wheel on the crank pulley. This will fool the ECU into thinking that the crank is in a different position, and can be used to advance/retard the timing across the entire rev range. This has been done on many 99+ Miatas, which have a very similar ignition system to a 99+ Protege.

However, there are a couple of mandatory warnings. First, messing with ANYTHING EFI-related on an OBDII Mazda carries the risk that the ECU will figure out that something is up, and then adjust the parameters back to stock and/or turn on the "Check Engine" light.

Second, do not listen to anyone who tells you that you will pick up 15-20 hp this way. We are not talking about a 69 Chevelle SS here You MIGHT pick up 5-6hp, but more likely you'll only pick up 2-4 hp. It's still not a terrible idea because it's cheap, but don't expect it to turn your Pro into a rocket

 

Chris, you call that easy? It's not easy to get to the sensor in the Protege engine bay, and if you make a mistake positioning the sensor, the engine won't run.

 

There is a problem with slotting the crank sensor. Our cars have a cam position sensor also and if you move the crank sensor enough to get 3-4 degrees of advance, the cam sensor will see 6-8 degrees out of phase. This may very well generate a check engine light because that's quite a bit out of phase. One way of overcoming that would be to modify the crank sensor for 4 degrees advance or so, and then slot the exhaust cam gear and advance it also. That would give you more low end but pull some power at higher rpm.

 

Traveler, wouldn't that still leave you with the timing difference problem between the crank and cam sensors? Slotting the gear on either cam would be useful for tuning, but would not change the ECU's take on where the cam was positioned relative to the crank.

 

carguycw is right about the gains. Don't expect much gain in HP using timing advances, so keep it cheap.

 

Agreed, I would love to see how this engine reponds to cam timing changes though. especially in combination with the FS-ZE intake/MazdaSpeed exhaust cams. If only someone would make adjustable cam gears for us...

 

I said "easiest." I never said "easy." With OBDII and non-adjustable timing, nothing is "easy"

 

Yes it will because the cam position sensor is in the end of the valve cover on the timing belt end. It reads the cam position directly from the cam gear. The cam gear has two different positions that the sensor reads. TDC and 180 cam degrees opposite. There is a single raised/machined bump on the cam gear and then there are 2 very close together 180 degrees opposite. There is no way to change the position of the cam sensor because it is in a tightly machined hole in the valve cover.
If you advance the crank sensor, the engine will see retarded valve timing. If you advance the cam gear also, this will make the engine think that both are in sync again.

After thinking about it some more this afternoon I realized that advancing the cam gear would retard the cam. This could be benificial because that would move the power curve higher and allow more high RPM horsepower. Rule of thumb is you advance the cams for low end, retard them for top end. If you just retarded the exhaust cam, the engine would probably scavenge better at high RPM. The cam position sensor only reads the exhaust cam by the way. I also was thinking opposite on the phasing. If you advance the ignition 4 degrees, you'd have to advance the cams only 2 degrees since they spin at half speed. That's probably not enough to generate a CEL anyway.

There are kits out that allow you to drill a larger hole where the cam alignment pin goes into the cam gear. Then you place an offset bushing into the cam gear to offset it either advanced or retarded. The sets usually come with the bushings for 0 degrees, 2 degrees and 4 degrees offset. Might be fun to play with. Really cheap too. Summit has them if anyone is interested.

 

I took a good look at the crank position timing wheel and thought it would be a big pain to pull it and modify it. But what I was thinking about doing was installing another pickup for it, mounting two new targets on it that would replace the cam sensor, and also slotting the position wheel mounting. This would lock the timing sigils of the two together so the ECU wouldn’t notice the phase difference, and allow for valve timing adjustment independent of ignition. But there’s the bitch of adjusting the wheel once it’s modified because of its inaccessibility, and the fact that not much would be gained from adjusting factory cams anyway. Due to the work involved and relative ineffectiveness, I scrapped the idea.

Its more practical to fab custom pulleys that allow for independent adjustment of valve and ignition timing on the exhaust cam, but I’m waiting till my cams require it, and I’ve put the custom grinds on hold for now. It would be interesting to see what could be done with that though.

I think Mazda was trying to prevent us from messing things up by using the 2 position sensors, or it may be they were trying to detect a broken timing belt, either way there must have been a reason they did it. I just can’t figure out why else they’d do that. If they’re looking to detect a belt failure, then the ECU may shut down altogether if the 2 are far enough out of phase. If they were trying to keep tuners from messing with it, then they’ve done a good job and its no wonder CARB likes the car so much. Does anybody have any insight on why?

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that an aftermarket standalone is going to be the only way to effectively tune the G3. The ODBDII ECU is the one thing I hate most about my Pro. And it eats at me even more when I consider that Honda just opened their ECU source code to the public. Zoom zoom my ***.