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[Kevin Wood]

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I want Dave walker of Emerald ECUs to set it up but it is accross counrty from me. 

Not sure if he does non-Emerald ECUs. I know there was a time when Emerald mapping was keeping him 110% busy, so he was turning away anything else.

I would get yourself a wideband lambda sensor and map it yourself. One-off cost about the same as a few hours on a rolling road and then you're set up to give it a tweak whenever you like.

[tmx]

if your in Hereford mate pm me i Live in Kington HR5 you more than welcome to benchmark my 3.2 now it has a nice shinny new oil cooler its running well bar emissions light on but this doesn't effect it to much i believe!

I hope your not using Motorsport @ Ross's rolling road its given the hereford chav's ideas that their VTR's are running 170bhp try Saxon motor-sport if their Rolling road can do RWD cars?

the problem is that you could make it a 450bhp car but it doesn't handle like a BMW and so a 318 will destroy you on a windy country road iv'e tried it and its why i'm gonna get rid of this 3.2 still i got it fairly cheap so wont loose money on it plus its manual

[2woody]

I reckon an Omega is at least as good as a 318 handling-wise.

[lozzzzzz]

Stuart,
That’s awesome, I felt honored to meet him, and you’d be more than welcome to come have a look, that would be great. 

I’m not surprised to hear you say that about Reliant, it would be easy to go off on a tangent and design something different with a medium sized manufacturing company at your disposal. 

I’ll let ou know what the LPG figure is, but I’ve got a good idea what percentage you’d lose.  The Canems website has a dyno read out of a Capri with an X30XE on both petrol and LPG, so even if the hp figures are inaccurate, the percentage difference won’t be.  It made 238hp on petrol and 206hp on LPG, so I guess you loose 13.4% power on an injection type LPG set up, its obviously a lot more on a carb type. 

As for the Dyno Day I’ll let you all know nearer the time, and see what the rolling road operator says, but I’d love it if I could have a compare car, and I guess if you’re a paying customer you could experiment with some changes too. 
The Capri X30XE can be seen here (dyno read out at the bottom of the page):
http://www.canems.co.uk/casestudy/capriv6.php


Henry D,
Thanks, I’ll keep posting as soon as I’ve got time to work on it.  It’s a bit “all work and no play” at the moment.  Its doing my head in tbh.


Kevin,
He does seem to be rather popular if his PPC articles are anything to go by, I’ll see what he says at the time. 

I’ll be getting a pair of wideband sensors anyway ( really expensive ) so I can do a fair bit myself and have them finish it off, it’s the ignition timing that’s critical to squeezing the last bit of power out, and I’m not too confident with that as I don’t want to go causing detination.  Although the knock sensors are in place and wired into the ECU, the Firmware isn’t yet available to make use of them, so I’ll ne relying on the ear of a the rolling road operator. 

TMX,
Good to hear there are some members near by.  I guess I’d rather a 3.0 as it’s a like for like comparison, but honestly this is several months off yet .  I’ll keep Saxon in mind for nearer the time, in fact I’ve got a stock pile of rolling road business cards collected from various car shows.  I’ll call them all when the time comes and pick the one that sounds most reputable. 

If the Scim makes 240hp (it should make that at least) and it weighs 1200kg max, with a good collection of uprated suspension parts and redesigned bit, and a descent set of upgraded brake, I think it might be the scimitar that’s doing the mopping hehe

[aaronjb]

Which wideband are you going with? The Innovate LC-1 isn't too bad ($200) though you get no gauge with that (the kit with gauge is $329, which is somewhat more eye watering, I'll grant you!). It's a nice piece of kit, though, and the sensors it uses are standard VAG items so relatively inexpensive when (not if) they go pop..

(I have - had, I suppose - an LC-1 with XD-16 on the MR2, and I've also got an LM-1 sitting in the garage now)

[Nick W]

It may help but you fundamentaly need to get that cooler coolant to the right places.

We know the exhaust headers are pretty poor.....maybe it could be an excuse to fire up my newly aquired TIG set. 

Why would you need TIG for making headers? A MIG would be plenty good enough.  Unless you were planning on making them from aluminuum, which seems unlikely. A mate made new headers for his dad's Ferrari using a £100 MIG and  CO2 , without taking them off the car(over£1200 each new), so it's, more operator rather than tools!

I do have a TIG set, but I bought it because I had the money at the right time and because I plan on making various aluminium radiators and other parts for my hot rod projects. Otherwise, MIG and oxy-acetylene are MUCH more useful for car stuff.

Simple. Tig gives a much nicer weld joint and you could even use stainless.

It does, with a lot of practice. Stainless flows really nicely; the backbox I welded for a mate was done with stainless lockwire as it was all I could find at the time.
But you still don't need a TIG for stainless, it's perfectly viable with a MIG. In fact, you can weld stainless to ordinary steel that way.

[Marks DTM Calib]

Indeed but as I am sure you are aware, the mig joint is more brittle.

I am very fortunate to have Mig and Tig and of course the Tig also makes a very good Arc to.

Horses for courses for me, I mostly use the Mig on mild steel but the Tig for most other things except outside work where the old rods come out and we head back to the dark ages 

[lozzzzzz]

Aaromjb,

I was thinking of the LC-1 I bl**dy missed one on ebay the other day that went for £67 with the sensor,  I was miffed to say the least.  I'm just keeping my eye out as I have the luxury (annoyingly) of time. 

Whats the differenct between that and the LM-1?

[aaronjb]

The LM-1 has a big control box that does data logging and so on - it's designed for standalone tuning (i.e. stuffing the O2 sensor up the exhaust on a hanger); discontinued now for the LM-2 - http://www.innovatemotorsports.com/products/lm1.php

If you want it permanently installed then the LC-1 is the better bet, it has digital (serial) and analogue lines to go to a laptop and the ECU respectively. XD-16 is nice to have to keep an eye on things, though (although the gauge is a bit on the gaudy side!)

[Marks DTM Calib]

What about the wideband O2 project which was part of the megasquirt project?

[lozzzzzz]

I've had a little look, is that another product from megasquirt? It would need to less that £100 for sensor and controller to make it worth while. 

[Marks DTM Calib]

Yes, I recall they have a list of 'donor' vehicles for the sensors hence a trip to 'the yard' can get a cheap solution

[Kevin Wood]

I’ll be getting a pair of wideband sensors anyway ( really expensive ) so I can do a fair bit myself and have them finish it off, it’s the ignition timing that’s critical to squeezing the last bit of power out, and I’m not too confident with that as I don’t want to go causing detination.  Although the knock sensors are in place and wired into the ECU, the Firmware isn’t yet available to make use of them, so I’ll ne relying on the ear of a the rolling road operator. 

I'm not so sure, TBH. In my experience, with a modern combustion chamber design such as on the V6, the power plateaus over quite a wide range of ignition advance (about 24 to 30 degrees BTDC at WOT on my Zetec IIRC) so you just back it off until the engine  feels "flat" then advance a few degrees and you've got it at the "safe" side of the plateau. I admit it's not easy to tune with a "seat of pants dyno" but you are only going to lose a few BHP over a couple of hours on a dyno. Tuning fuel is much easier, IMHO. It's blatantly obvious when you've got too much fuel and when you know what mixture the engine likes on the wideband you can just tune for that everywhere at WOT.

What about the wideband O2 project which was part of the megasquirt project?

There was this... http://www.megamanual.com/PWC/. I'm not sure what came of it. It has been "coming soon" since I was last seriously involved in megasquirt in about 2004.

I built a TechEdge wideband controller around that sort of time.. before the Bosch LSU4 sensor got that popular so mine is the "rocking horse poo" NTK L1H1 that was used on a couple of Hondas and nothing else. TechEdge still offer some decent kits. http://www.techedge.com.au/

[lozzzzzz]

I'm still really stuggling to actually find a site with a price or a buying option for megasquirt controller.  I'm still thinking the LC-1 second hand might be the one to go for. 

[Kevin Wood]

The megasquirt wideband controller? Don't think it ever made it as far as a kit being available.

Tech edge or Innovate are the best options IMHO. Both do decent kits that use the LSU4 sensor these days. A mate of mine is the importer for Tech Edge http://trigger-wheels.com. He's a helpful chap who will be able to advise, I'm sure.

Innovate stuff is available from a few places in the UK. http://www.innovatemotorsports.com/dealers.php