Just got back from a ride across Nevada's Hwy 50. Governor clamped down at 113 mph. I know this speed was acurate. I was using a WAAS enabled GPS with 7 satelites locked on.

Was surprised to find car speedo was very acurate. Usually just 1.5 mph over the actual.

Does anyone know how to defeat this darn governor? The tack was only at 5K. There was plenty more juice to be had.

At first I thought it was a buggy rev limiter, so I put it in 4th gear and took it up to 6300 rpm without so much as a hiccup (which also topped me out at about 113 mph oddly enough).

My only other complaint about the 3 is that with my car, there's a nearly 2 second delay when you take your foot off the gas before the car actually starts to slow. I'm a big user of trailing throttle in the twisties to get immediate slowing going into a turn. I find this problem very annoying and bordering on dangerous. How can you drive a car fast if your transmission responds like it's an automatic and lets you coast for 2 seconds before going into trailing throttle?

I suspect it's something to do with getting better gas mileage. The EFI chip is mapped to avoid the gas sapping habit of people who can't keep a steady foot on the accelerator.

I'd like to know if it's just MY car, or if others have found this too? Also, if the dealer can adjust this in any way? And if going to a new chip like a Power Commandor, will fix it?

Anyone?

 

mazda's ecu is integrated very tightly into the car computer system and it is very hard to change out the ECU

 

Thanks for the feedback.

When you say "very hard to change out the ECU", does that mean no one makes upgrade chips for the 3? I admit, I'm not real savy about car EFI's. More familiar with motorcycles, and many newer motorcycles with Electronic Fuel Injection allow you to slip in a new chip, (Power Commander is the biggest supplier), that will remapp your engine programming. Some of these will then even further allow you to download different mappings, created for specific desired characteristics, and load them onto the new chip.

Thanks

 

Nope, no chips currently avaialble for the 3.

 

I've read that JetChip can reprogram the ECU depending on your upgrades (the spec sheet you complete). They claim like a 10+HP gain (possible). I don't know how accurate or how viable this is but I do know that it's not a piggyback, they reprogram your ECU. If it's as they say, it's not a bad cost ($400) for 10 HP. Anyone else have any thoughts or experience with this product or similar products?

 

I don't think they have anything available specifically for the 3 that isn't some kind of piggyback or standalone computer (no reprogramming of the stock ECU) ECU's and how they can/can't be programmed varies from manufacturer to manufacturer.

 

When I was looking at tuning (for the CAI/Exhuast) I ran across the site (www.jetchip.com) and under Mazda 3 they offer a reprogram for the ECU. Like I wrote before I don't have any experience with this mfg but I assumed it could be legit. When I added and open air box and exhaust on my Ducatis there were either modified ecu's or in some cases with efi a power commander that allowed some tuning to accomodate the upgrades. Having the bike dyno-tuned made an incredible difference, moreso then the 9-11 HP gain in ugrades alone. So I figured there must be something out there that does the same thing for the Mazda3. I found some vague references from mfgs like Greddy but Jetchip was the only one that specifically points to the Mazda3.

 

To my knowledge the Stock Mazda ECU will learn around any tweaks you may make to it. That's why people have gone the piggyback (signal modifier) or stand-alone method.

Mr. Tea (on this site and others) has a ton of experience tuning his 2.3L Turbo Mazda6 (Not a Speed6) To run the turbo he went full stand-alone for the fuel/air management.

Motorcycles are held to completely different standards than cars are with respect to engine control/emissions and it doesn't surprise me at all that your Ducati was completely tunable (as it should be)

 

Got ya. You know I read that Dodges were experiencing the same thing. On one hand too bad for tweaking any easy HP but on the other great for no tuning needed to take care of the basic mods. Thanks sst.

 

Goodfellow,
I just found your post and I'm inquiring about the same thing. I didn't have GPS but my speedomator showed 118 when it toped out. I also noticed that the car also has a cut out rev limiter, probably to protect the engine. Have you any findings on how to bypass this speed limiter?

I have a 2005 -3 2.3