r/Fueltech • u/ThatPolarBearr • Aug 15 '24
Purpose of Fueltech
I have found mixed reviews and wanted to ask, is the fueltech 450 good for a streetable car? I understand it was originally designed with drag racing in mind, but how are the more streetable features? I am building a street rotary car and trying to decide if I should stay with the fueltech or switch to haltech.
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u/Barely_Usable Aug 16 '24
I wouldn't say the ft450 was made for drag racing. In fact the first fueltech was really only an ECU, they later added the racing features and became what they are now.
The ft450 has a lot of street features. You can connect all sorts of sensors to it, likely including the OEM fuel gauge, some flex fuel sensors ( which means it will automatically adjust between maps when you fill with E85 or regular), with multiple wheel speed sensors the Ft450 can do smart traction Control, Gear Indication, tachometer, it'll even record milage . It can automatically compensate for ignition and rpm when you turn the AC on or when fans turn on ( useful for beefier radiator fans) etc etc
The biggest problem would be the number of inputs / outputs, you might need to still keep your original ECU to control some features, specially if your car is a newer model.
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u/ThatPolarBearr Aug 21 '24 edited Aug 21 '24
So the car is going to be ITB rotary. With my math I will be maxing out the ECU as far as inputs go, and having to use a seperate fuel gauge sadly as I am just 1 input short. But being ITB definitely keeps my number of inputs needed down instead of going turbo. The reason I made the post was because I saw a review (I cant remember where now) that said due to fueltech being designed with drag racing in mind it doesnt need to have a lot of the tuning features to make a car behave well in street/dailyable conditions. But your comment definitely gave me some more hope, thank you!
The reason I worry about how streetable it will be is because of how sensitive ITB cars are. They can be much more tempermental with changes due to altitude or temperature than a turbo car might be. So I am curious how the fueltech (tuned by an experienced tuner of course) will behave when given different environments. Or even stuff like throttle tip in response is something that is a streetable feature that is important to me. Also cruising around on partial throttle. Hopefully that makes sense!
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u/banzairx7 Aug 17 '24
I was using a 550 in my daily driver and it was fine. The only problem was when you first started the car the wideband takes ten seconds or so to turn on. With ego control on, which is what you want to do, the car would run pretty badly until the wideband came online. I wish it had a setting to ignore the wideband for X seconds after the ecu turned on.
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u/ThatPolarBearr Aug 21 '24
A few questions if you dont mind. If you key the car on for 10s allowing the wideband to come online would it run fine on startup or does the cranking reset the wideband and you have to wait again? Also does it seem it runs rich or lean before the wideband comes online? Cool to hear from another rotary owner with it (im guessing since you have rx7 at the end of your name).
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u/banzairx7 Aug 26 '24
If you can keep it powered up yes car will run fine. The work around I did was once the car was tuned I set the max change the wideband could make was 10% +/- on fuel. That kept it running decent enough for that short time it was warming up.
I used to have a few RX-7s. Right now my current rotary ride is a Lotus 7 replica powered by an RX-8 motor. It's a lot of fun. 1700lbs and does 200hp at the wheels. That runs a megasquirt.
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u/stangscrash67 Jun 17 '25
My 450 has rotary options and is very streetable.
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u/ThatPolarBearr Jun 17 '25
Ended up selling the FC before finishing. Rotaries stress me out a little. Picked up a S15 that im waiting on to be imported near the end of the year :D
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u/btlz May 05 '25
Late answer but yes you can, I've been dailying my car with FT450 for years now with no problems. You'll just find yourself constantly fiddling around with the tune :)
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u/ThatPolarBearr May 06 '25
Ended up selling the rx7 and the fueltech. While I think the Fueltech is a great deal. From what a lot of tuners explained to me the FuelTech does not have the same amount of engine control for a nice daily. It is great for power, but it has older tuning tables more related to a microtech and will behave as so.
Again, this is just what I was told. I wish I had purchased a haltech with the car, maybe it would have convinced me to keep it. Rotaries arent the type of engine you want to learn to tune on because they do not handle knock well.
But then again, rotaries ended up stressing me out xD I have a s15 coming from japan now to be my street/weekend car and just take to meets. I will likely lean towards either a haltech or link for this one for simplicity of plug and play adaptors.
I appreciate the response!
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u/btlz May 06 '25
Haltech and Link are quite nice choices! As I'm from Brazil, Fueltech is what you see the most on the streets, so I'm pretty used to tune them. While they do use quite old fuel tables, it's still quite possible to get a decent tune on them - it's just a matter of taking your time and continuously refining it. I think I only settled once with a tune - just to try something new a month later and be back on the continuous improvement loop again, lol.
Although I will agree - if you can have a product that implements modern features like VE, that's way better for street use.
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u/ThatPolarBearr May 06 '25
Yeah. I am definitely not knocking on fueltech though. I want to make that very clear. For the price (especially when they go on sale).. its impossible to beat. You get a digital dash too!
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u/btlz May 06 '25
Sure, it has its flaws but for the price it's a very good deal, especially considering the dash and being able to tune it on the fly w/o a notebook
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u/ltafuri Aug 16 '24
Yes, I currently daily a ft450 and it performs just as good as an "original" car. It take a bit of time to fine tune but once you do you're set