The importance of checking your engine performance

A lovely early Chimaera 430 came to us for Lucas ECU remapping. This car shows us the importance of periodically having your engine tune checked .. the car was running just fine but had given poor power on another rolling road  and the mixture trace was variable.

After running it on our own dyno the run had to be aborted in the upper midrange. The mixture was indeed going way too weak to be safe, but was also costing power all through the rev range. The culprit turned out to be a faulty air flow meter, a unit which had just been reconditioned by a specialist firm. A good used meter was substituted instead.

The car was remapped to be nice and safe on the full throttle runs and also the mixture was adjusted through the whole of the rest of the rev range so that the lambda trimming was at a minimum. On the road testing showed that not only had the car picked up a significant amount of power (the best part of 50bhp!) , it was also even smoother on low revs and small throttle openings.

Unusual customer requests are our speciality

A customer required his  Cerbera to make lots of noise at the car shows he visits as part of the "Rally For Heroes" tours  .. revving to a high (but not overly high) rev limit, pops and bangs when lifting off the throttle .. that kind of thing.

This is possible on the standard MBE ecu using our TwinMap system but we elected to swap in the Emerald K6 ECU with it's 3 switchable map facility. This allowed us to dedicate one map solely for Exhibition Mode and fill it with dramatic noise. We are pleased to say it's worked brilliantly.

The 3 map switch is located on the centre cubby panel allowing on the fly choice of a standard map, a fuel efficient economy map, and that all important Exhibition Map.

The owner also specified the Whirlwind short induction kit, and with this fitted the car gained 50hp at peak power, and a whopping 70hp at the 7400rpm rev limit. At this point the standard engine output was falling away very rapidly, and whilst we acknowledge that being able to take advantage of that extra 70bhp will only be for a brief instant just before changing gear, it's nice to know you can hang onto a gear and not feel the rate of acceleration diminishing like on the standard set up.

Older car ? no problem ..

A lovely Rover P6 visited us for remapping .. The owner had removed the carburettors and fitted a Lucas 14CUX injection system. We are able to remap these older injection systems on our rolling road. The basically standard engine gave 150bhp when finished, not too bad.

Lotus Elise race car

A familiar sight on the rolling road is this Elise race car .. in for a spot of cam timing testing with recently fitted vernier cam pullies, a task made easy with the rear body section removed. The cams were initially timed in to figures suggested by K series guru Dave Andrews and sure enough moving the cam timing only gave worse results than the initial settings did. It's good to know that when an expert engine builders give some advice it pays to listen.

As usual, the car gave no issues at all .. and the Emerald K6 ecu is always a dream to map.

Race car remapping for owners and engine builders alike

The racing season is nearly upon us, and a new (to us) racer has arrived at the workshop.

The S3erbera is a hybrid racer .. a shortened Cerbera chassis houses a 4.5 AJP8 built by Str8Six. The body is a marriage of S3 centre section with Tuscan race car front and rear sections. A misfiring engine cut short the early mapping progress but now this is sorted we can go on to unleash the power !

We like a classic Rover

A lovely Rover SD1 Vitesse was delivered to us for what was hoped to be a simple mapping session. The car had previously been fitted with a fuel only KMS FA23 management system and it was virtually undriveable at light throttle and slow speed. The ECU had been set up in throttle v engine revs and for this to work properly the throttle signal must very accurately follow the movement of the throttle spindle. Sadly on this car the spindle end was very badly damaged and an incorrect throttle sensor bodged onto the plenum to the point that the spindle needed to turn some 5 degrees before the signal at the ecu changed.

A decision was made to swap onto a good used hotwire type plenum with the later throttle sensor running directly off the spindle end. The result is a throttle signal which now correctly follows throttle inputs. We can now go on to map this car on the dyno.

Sadly the damaged throttle spindle had been missed by the three other garages that the car had visited but the owner can now enjoy the driving experience, instead of the bucking bronco the car had previously been on light throttle.

Modify or replace ?

We can offer both alternatives deoending on budget and end use. Ready to go off to it's new home atop a 5 litre Rover V8 in a TVR race car is this in-house ported inlet manifold, thermal insulator and our machined 45mm blended trumpet base. Fuelling is taken care of by a set of injectors with sufficient flow for over 400hp.

Variety is the spice of life!

Here's a picture which I think represents the wide variety of vehicles we see here in the workshop .. a lovely little Midget 1500 and a gorgeous RV8 powered AK Sportscars Cobra replica. Both cars are a credit to their owners.

Bowled Over

The lucas remapping keeps gaining momentum and another interesting car graces the Kits and Classics rolling road.

This Bowler Tomcat sports a 3.9 Rover V8 running the Lucas 14CUX ECU but the engine was plagued with several weak spots in the map and a very poor idle / off idle response. After its bespoke remap it produced a healthy 146bhp, a really wide power band all the way to 6000rpm, and would take full throttle from under 800rpm without hesitation.

Rare late model TVR

A Mk3 Tuscan S convertible came to us with a slight hesitation at very low revs and light throttle applications. 

 The issue we have with later TVRs is that actually TVR made a really good job of the mapping (unlike the earlier cars)  so we were going to have our work cut out for us to improve on what the factory had already done, but improvements were indeed made and the car left with better low speed manners and a peak power of 371bhp which is bang on the money for an S spec engine on our dyno.

It also looked lovely.

Race Car Remapping and Advice for Championship Winners

Mat Smith's race car has been a regular visitor to our rollers over the years. We are very happy to have been the go-to remapper for Mat, and we are also very happy to have advised him on technical issues relating to his car and help to make it the Championship Winning machine it is today.