- If you've been following this show for a while
you may remember that once upon a time
I was tasked with making the Miata shoot fire.
Oh, shit.
But the problem then
is that we didn't have the necessary fixings
for shooting fire the right way,
which led to me dumping a bunch of propane out the tailpipe.
- [Cameraman] Yo, that's gonna be huge.
- So today we're gonna shoot some fire with the Miata.
We're gonna get three steps set up,
which means we're gonna get launch control
and flatfoot shifting,
and through those controls
I should be able to make some fire shoot out the tailpipe,
which is very exciting.
I'm Zach, and this is "Moneypit".
Let's shoot some fire the real way, baby.
- Big thanks to Helix for sponsoring today's video.
Listen, everyone knows sleep
is the most important meal of the day.
That's why I ordered a Helix mattress for the office
so I could get some rest during our long shoot weeks.
And after the last few months
I decided to get one for my home.
I know how overwhelming it can be to shop for a mattress
but Helix is the solution.
They know everybody's different
and developed this sleep quiz that matches your body type
and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you
based on your different sleep positions
and firmness preferences.
They've got a mattress for everyone.
Since I prefer middle of the road firmness
and sleep on my tum tum,
that's a little personal info,
I got paired with the Helix Dusk Luxe.
And because it's for home, I decided to get a King size.
And it's not just finding your perfect mattress that's easy,
they also deliver right to your front door in a box.
It even comes with a 100 night sleep trial
so you can be sure it's the perfect match
or they'll come pick it up themselves
and give you a full refund.
So what are you waiting for, sleepy heads?
Head over to helixsleep.com/donut
or click the link in the description
to receive up to $200 off your mattress
and two free pillows.
And now back to the show.
- All right, so what even is three step
or two step or five step?
Well, it just means we've got different rev limits
for different things.
Like launch control is a step.
(car engine revving)
So at launch control,
we want our rev limit to be set a lot lower
than our ultimate rev limit.
This car's ultimate rev limit is currently set at 7,200 RPM.
That's way too high for launching.
For launching, we want something like 3,500 RPMs,
(car engine revving)
but if I have to hold the pedal
to keep the RPMs at 3,500 RPMs that's difficult
and I'm not that good at it.
So it would be great if there was a way to tell the car
to just hold the thing at 3,500 RPMs
while I'm trying to launch.
Well, perfect, there is a way to do that
and that is built into this step system.
So we've got launch control as one of our steps.
That'll be one of our rev limits.
Then we can move on to our other step
or our other rev limit
and that is flatfoot shifting.
What is that?
Well, that's our other step or rev limit
that we're going to set up today
and that's a rev limit for while we're shifting.
Now, let's talk a little bit about the theory
behind why you would flat foot shift.
Now in a naturally aspirated car you really wouldn't,
unless you were trying to make a bunch of noise,
but in a turbo car, flatfoot shifting
can help us combat turbo lag.
One of the biggest enemies of turbo cars.
Obviously to get a turbo, to make boost
it takes some time to spool up
and actually sling all that power into the engine.
And even when you're shifting gears,
when you go from two to three,
when you get back on power in third gear,
it takes a second for the turbo to get back up to speed
and make power.
But if you never take your foot off the gas
and you never close your throttle body
well then your blow-off valve never blows off
and releases all that pressure
and boost just keeps cruising through your throttle body
through the engine,
and you don't have any of that lag, which is great.
But if you just do that in a car like this,
well, you keep your foot to the floor during shifts
and you're just banging off your ultimate rev limiter
or 7,200 RPMs in this,
which is noisy and obnoxious and kind of hard on some stuff.
So it would be really nice if I could tell the car
to lower that rev limit while I'm flat foot shifting
to say like 5,500 RPMs, which wouldn't be so dang loud
and wouldn't be that hard on stuff
but it would still keep boosts very close at hand
for when we get into the next gear and let the clutch out.
Well, that's great because we can do that.
That's what our third step is gonna be.
We're gonna set a flatfoot shifting rev limit
at about 5,500 RPMs.
So that boost comes on quicker as we move through the gears
which will make our overall acceleration happen quicker.
So the car should actually get a lot quicker today
without changing any of the power that it's making.
That's pretty cool.
Now, whenever we talk about this kind of stuff
we obviously got to talk about anti-lag.
Now launch control will help us have boost on demand
and through the settings we should be able to tweak it
so that we have the best boost on demand at launch possible,
which is very cool.
That helps us battle turbo lag.
And with flatfoot shifting, like we just talked about,
keeping our foot on the gas through shifting
keeps turbo lag from really being that terrible to us.
So you might think, well, that's anti-lag, right?
Kind of, I mean it is anti lag, right?
It's helping us battle lag,
but it's not quite anti-lag.
You see anti-lag pretty much invariably
will have a method for delivering extra air to the exhaust.
So if you're getting that extra air through the engine
often that means you have a throttle body
that you can tell to hang open
when you have anti-lag engaged.
Or you can bypass the engine altogether
with a series of bypass pipes
that deliver fresh air right into the exhaust
in front of the turbo
to help combustion happen in your exhaust manifold
and help keep your turbo spooled,
thusly anti lagging the turbo,
but to add a system to allow that extra air
to get to the turbo even when you're off throttle
is a bit of extra work
and it's really not something that I need.
So we're not going to do a true
like rally style anti-lag style system,
but I am going to combat lag in two spots,
which are pretty important.
Off the line
and through shifts.
So while this isn't quite anti-lag,
it is against lag.
If that makes sense.
I hope it does.
Yeah, cool.
All right, so anyway let's get into it.
Okay, so let's talk about what it's actually gonna take
to get these things set up on the Miata.
Now you already know that we have a standalone ECU,
our Megasquirt.
So that really gives us the majority of the tools
that we need,
it is able to do launch control,
flatfoot shifting.
So the only thing that we need to do
is wire a switch to allow us to engage launch control
and flatfoot shifting and things like that.
What we're going to do is use an existing switch
on the Miata.
The Miata has two clutch switches,
one at the bottom of the travel
that lets you start the car once it's pushed all the way in.
And there's one switch at the top of the pedal
that disengages as soon as you touch the clutch pedal
and that'll shut off cruise control
as soon as it sees you going for the clutch.
So that's the switch we're gonna use.
So the first thing I'm going to do as you might expect,
is to take out the passenger seat.
This will give us access to our aftermarket ECU
and all of our wiring and our options plug,
check them to make sure that the brown and white wire
that comes out of this clutch switch
is the same one that goes over to the ECU.
And it is, that's great news.
So now we just need to do the actual wiring over there
which should be pretty simple.
We're just going to splice from one wire to another.
Okay, so I've got my little jumper cable
that's gonna go from the options plug
on the back of the Megasquirt,
and then we're gonna splice this end
into our clutch signal wire
that comes from our clutch switch.
But this is going to go here.
I'm just gonna feed our clutch wire
into this little channel.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so that is our clutch switch
spliced into our Megasquirt ECU.
So we can use that to activate our launch control
and our flatfoot shifting.
Spectacular.
Now what we have to do is get in the computer
and do a little hacking.
Okay, so the first thing I'm going to do
is go into the Megasquirt.
I'll go to advanced engine,
and come down to launch,
two-step, three-step, trans brake.
So I've got it turned on to launch,
clutch in,
(car engine revving)
2000 RPMs of fury.
Well, I was just gonna see if we could maybe shoot
just a little bit of fire.
I mean, I know we're inside and my car is right there
but you know, 3000 RPMs,
negative five degrees of timing,
that might make a little fire, right?
(car engine revving)
- [Cameraman] Jesus (beep).
You scared the (beep) out of me.
- Fire?
- [Cameraman] No, hang on.
- I wish they made, those Airwick plugins
or the Glade plugins.
I wish they made ones that smell like this.
Right, the Miata actually shoots fire
and not the ghetto way.
So that's cool.
I'm sure the neighbors aren't too happy.
So I'm probably going to stop doing that for a minute,
but that's awesome.
Right?
So it's also not for no reason,
it's to help us get off the line quickly.
So let's go do that.
And we have made it to our super secret
undisclosed testing facility
to do some launch control testing on the Miata.
First off we have two cones set up 60 feet
apart from each other,
and Christina's down at the finish line with a stopwatch.
So she's going to be recording times.
The goal is to see how quickly I can cross these cones.
First, I'm going to launch the car just by myself
with my brain and my feet,
we'll see how quickly I can get across the cones.
And then we'll come back and turn on launch control
and we'll go through all the settings and talk about them.
And then we'll launch this thing a few more times
and see how much we can improve our 60 foot times.
Let's do it.
- 2.25.
That was pretty quick.
- All right, not bad.
Not that 2.2 seconds really means much to me by itself
but hopefully we can improve on that.
So we'll do a couple more
so we can kind of establish an average
and then we'll turn on launch control.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so here's our current launch times,
with just me operating the pedals.
They're a little bit all over the place
but that's because it's tough to be consistent
launching a car, you know.
When I was just launching right there
I was doing about 3,500 RPMs and that felt pretty good.
Now we're going to set our launch rev limit.
Let's do some launch control launches,
3000 RPMs,
and see what we get, see if our times improve.
- Whoo, 2.12.
I felt that was a really accurate click
and a very good launch.
So maybe this thing is worth it.
We'll see.
- Yeah, it is.
I think I'm starting to get things dialed in.
I'm tweaking how much timing it pulls
and for how long it pulls it after I launch.
And so there's definitely some time to be gained there.
I'm not gonna go too hard right now.
It's in a good ballpark.
So I think it's probably time that we pull the timing
and shoot some fire.
Okay, so we are effectively shooting fire.
Very cool.
No, that's not for no reason.
What I'm hoping is that burning all that gas in the exhaust
will help to get my turbo closer to spooling up
and making the boost for when we launch off the line.
So maybe those fireballs will make me a little quicker
through these cones.
Well, I'm not convinced,
but I'm ready to find out.
2.15.
Well, so not much change, but it did sound cooler.
And you know what, since we've turned on launch control.
Sure, we didn't shave off a bunch of time
but we have been incredibly consistent
and that when you're racing is really important.
So we'll do one last one.
See what kind of time I run there
and maybe we'll see about doing some flatfoot shifting.
Hey, it felt quick, 2.09.
Boy, that's fast.
That's the fastest 60 feet I've ever seen.
We're getting off the line quicker
and we're gonna be getting through shifts quicker.
I think it's time to go to a real drag strip
with a real timing setup and see what we actually can do.
But now that I ran a 2.09, hell yeah.
Let's do a little flatfoot shifting.
This parking lot is a little bit small,
so it's not like we're going to get a full one two pull
in here, but we've got enough distance
to confirm that flatfoot shifting is working
and show you what it does.
So I'm gonna turn it on real quick.
It's very easy.
It's in the same menu as a launch control.
All right, so with flat shifting on,
so then we can set our flatfoot shifting rev limit.
So when I go to shift
and I've got my foot hard on the gas pedal,
we can choose what RPM it goes to in between shifts.
Instead of 4,500 right now,
and honestly, I'm just going to leave it right there.
So all I gotta do is burn those settings to the car
and then we're ready to go.
So let's get a little one two pull across here
and you'll see that my foot is going to stay hard down
on the gas even when I go to shift to second gear
and we should hang immediately at 4,500 RPMs
during that shift.
So maybe I'll shift a little bit slowly
so we can really see that.
I'm just gonna turn my headlights on now.
Pop up, up and down.
All right, let's go.
Launch control 'cause why not?
Well, I didn't even think I'd gotten second.
I double clutched it there.
Double clutching that granny shifting and double tripping.
Okay, well it worked.
I didn't think I made second.
So I hesitated and hit the clutch again
to try to pull it in.
I was already in second,
but it seemed to work just great.
It held at 4,500 between shifts
and now I'm going to do it again one more time
where I actually do it decent.
Okay.
Pretty cool.
That is gonna make shifts so much quicker
when you're trying to actually haul some ass.
So I really think between launch control
and our flatfoot shifting,
this thing's going to be pretty quick
in a straight line race type scenario.
So I really think it's time
to take this thing to the drag strip
and see what it'll run in the quarter mile
and like a legitimate 60 foot and all that other stuff.
Or maybe we'll go to an eighth mile.
I don't know.
But give us some guesses.
What do you think our eight mile time would be,
our quarter mile time
and we'll see who's right.
I'm gonna guess,
I'd love to be in the 12s.
I'm going to guess a 13.2,
total guess,
but yeah I think we got to do that soon.
We got to hit the drag strip
use our launch control and use our flatfoot shifting
to put down some serious times.
So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
I hope you learned a thing or two.
I hope you had fun watching us shoot some fireballs.
Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to the channel
and you can follow me on Instagram @ZachJobe
and follow Donut while you're there @donutmedia.
I'll see you guys next Wednesday.
I'll do one more launch.
Wow, that's great.
That really is great.