December
A local garage sent a Chimaera 400 to us for rolling road work.
A quick check showed that the throttle wasn't opening fully but we dyno tested it anyway just to see what it was making as the customer had been driving it previously. The result was 190bhp.
We know from our many years of experience that a good 4 litre Chimaera should make around 210-220bhp on our Dyno Dynamics rollers.
Sure enough, once the throttle had been reset the missing horses were found and the car went on to make 226bhp with a bit of a tweak on the distributor.
Probably the cheapest extra 35bhp you will ever get!
December
This might not look like much but what's shown here is the ECU from my Cerbera running twin switchable maps in the original MBE ECU.
Many years ago a company called Austec achieved just this but it was a rare conversion .. we know of only one car running such a system but have never managed to see it.
What we have is a system whereby two completely separate maps can be accessed at the flick of a switch. On my own car this couples with the Red Rose button to give 2 maps each with two offset ignition maps, so 4 possibilities in total.
This switchable map option will be available for all TVR fit MBE ECUs running a removable EPROM. It will also be availlable for Chimaera, Griffith and V8S cars running the OE fit Lucas 14cux ECUs too. Cars which have already been remapped can have a separate map added to the existing remap.
Options might be that you have a second map with overrun pops and bangs on your T350 but have the other map quiet on overrun. Or you might want a map with a lowered rev limit for when you regularly lend your Tamora to your best friend for the day, or one with lambda control disabled in areas of poor running whilst leaving the other map standard on your Cerbera. Or a very weak cruising map. Or a slightly fuel- rich and retarded track day map on your Speed6 Tuscan.
Essentially if youve ever wanted the opportunity to have a second map with a feature enabled then this is that chance.
November
A Chimaera 450 came in to us the other day with the owner wishing to try and reduce the dreaded shunting that is often felt on these engines. We never ever promise to eliminate this trait, it's caused by a combination of wild cams and plenums with upstream throttles .. and is exagerrated by the weak mixture required to protect the catalysts.
However, having said that we never promise to eliminate the shunting it's often reported back to us that as part of the Lucas remapping package we offer that the cars do drive much more smoothly afterwards.
As part of the pre-mapping checkover it was also found that this car's throttle wasn't opening fully and so when all the work was completed not only was it nice to see a reduction in the shunting but the car also left 17bhp up on where it was with the original maximum throttle opening position.
Most certainly a win-win day for us and the owner.
November
The owner of this 5.5 litre Chimaera is exactly the sort of person we like .. always tinkering with his car which he uses regularly for track days.
It already has an aftermarket Megasquirt ECU but this is now going to be changed for an Emerald K6. We don't do many such conversions because the majority of the gains of going aftermaret control have already been realised in the change from Lucas Ecu to Megasquirt Ecu, however the Emerald will give the owner of this car 3 completely separate maps and a proper closed loop adaptive learning capability. The sale of the Megasquirt will go much of the way to paying for the conversion also.
November
Cars turning up with running issues is a common occurance but this Griffith 500 work escalated somewhat from the occasional cutting out and poor driving manners that was originally reported.
Investigation found that both lambda sensors had lost their tips, usually a sign that the precats have moved and hit the sensor ends. This proved to be correct and so the precats were removed leaving the main cat still in place so that emissions wouldn't be an issue when the car is eventually exported over to America in a couple of years time.
The car was then remapped on its original fit Lucas ECU and made just under 300hp. The owner emailed to say that the drive back from the workshop was much smoother and the increased performance very welcome. The owner returned back to the USA and left the car with his son over here, both of them are true British Sportscar fanatics and lovely people. This Griffith is in safe hands.
November
A car mapped by Kits and Classics has just wrapped up the MG Luffield Speed Championship, well done to the owner/driver Dave Morris.
The car in question is a lovely MGRV8 running a standard 4 litre Rover V8. For next year Dave is thinking about moving on in terms of engine spec and hopefully we will see the car back on the rollers once the new engine is installed.
October
We are seeing more and more turbocharged cars through the doors, most of which are running low boost and still on the original Lucas 14CUX ECU.
On low boost you are ok with this ECU, granted it's not ideal to have only control over the fuelling, and the somewhat limited fuel table in the 14CUX means that the remapping is more of a compromise than using something with signficantly more fuel table sites, but in the end you can make it work and more to the point make it fuel safely.
And so it was that a 4 litre Chimaera made just over 330bhp from its owner-installed turbo system once remapped on our dyno.
The engine in question has well over 100k miles on it, but if the worst does ever happen the owner has a plan for improvements if that rebuild is ever required.. in the meantime he will enjoy power that owners of standard 5litre cars can only dream of.
October
Sometimes even the best garages have to admit defeat, and so it was that a Cerbera 4.5 came to us with very poor driving manners. The garage that looks after it is very good so we knew that if they couldn't fix it then there was more going on than just a bad set-up ..
A quick look on the diagnostics showed that although the lambda sensors were both switching the response was very slow and lazy. Also there was significant differences in the airflows of adjacent butterflies. As part of the correction process the owner also elected to have the Whirlwind8 Short Induction kit and full bespoke remap.
In the end the car was trasnformed .. road driving manners were now well up with the best that a Cerbera v8 can manage, but it also now had over 390bhp for the owner to play with.
We do a lot of "problem cars" for other garages so if your car has had a persistent running fault that is now cured it may be that the car has actually been to see us in the meantime!
October
A lovely (and rare) Mk3 Tuscan S convertible came to us last week. The car had a slight hesitation at very low revs and light throttle applications. The car is looked after by Mat Smith and when we got in to setting the throttles up we found there was nothing to improve on, good work as always from Mat then.
The other issue we had is that actually TVR made a really good job of the mapping on these later cars so we were goingto have out 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. Here it is on our dyno.
August
Former TVR challenge Champion Mat Smith trailers his race Chimaera to Kits and Classics for Emerald K6 ECU remapping. The car had previously featured a very high hp 4 litre Rover V8 but now has something a little bit larger under the bonnet.
As ever where Mat Smith is involved , the car behaved impeccably on the dyno.
August
The almost-finished engine bay of the Drive By Wire Griffith 500 showing the pedal position sensor (side of plenum) . The throttle actuator is invisible in this shot at the rear of the plenum under the bulkhead. The new Accel ceramic HT leads fitted and re-routed. The engine bay is completely rewired with separate fused relays for twin fans, hot start mod, fuel pump, injectors, coils, ecu, wideband lambda and main control relay. Road testing is still to be completed but this has been an excting project as we believe it's the very first drive by wire TVR ? And all made possible by the use of the excellent Emerald K6Plus ECU, our ECU of choice for all our aftermarket conversions.
August
On the basis that you can never have too many classic british sports cars in the fleet here's a picture showing the latest addition to the group .. new Tuscan (foreground) and soon to be for sale Cerbera (background)
July
A local V8S owner came to us with a request to make his car drive a little bit better, it was shunting at low revs and the owner wanted to maximise the smoothness of the car .. outright bhp wasn't the issue.
However when the car was run on the dyno the bhp was an issue, also the low rev limiter was an issue, the soldered ECU chip on the circuit board was an issue .. in short the car had a standard Land Rover ECU fitted rather than the correct TVR part.
The ECU was fitted with a chip carrier so that we could begin to remap the car and sort through all the associated problems which included a faulty air flow meter and a leaking intake pipe.
In the end the car made more power as well as being better to drive at low rpm which of course was the original brief!
It's just another case of a good diagnostic session and a bespoke remap bringing rewards in excess of what was expected.
July
Regular visitors to the news section of the website will already know of the 5.2litre Griffith we work on, sporting its large bore single throttle body feeding the de-butterflied Rover Vitesse Twin Plenum engine.
This single throttle was our way of getting over the throttle spindle wear issues which plague these old plenums, but the owner sometimes finds the hair-trigger response of the large throttle tricky on bumpy roads in low gears.
A plan was therefore hatched whereby the Emerald K6 Ecu was updated to K6Plus specification, which is now going to be running drive by wire throttle. This will enable us to use one of the three map slots to run a throttle actuator action which is dulled in its response to pedal movements at low revs, whilst keeping the response pin-sharp at higher revs.
We believe drive by wire throttle is a first on a TVR (well, ahead of the new car launch that is!)
The car is also having its fusebox relocated, the ecu wiring re-made to make the loom neater with the new drive by wire cabling incorporated, and a set of in-vogue ceramic Ht leads made to length.
July
I really don't know why you wouldn't choose to run the largest oil reservoir you can in a hard-worked damper, but for some reason the rubber bushed Protech damper was only ever previously available in the smaller 400 series body tube version. We are pleased to say that Protech have now produced a rubber bushed large body 600 series damper for us giving the extra oil capacity (and hence thermal stability) of the enlarged reservoir plus that small but useful extra compliance of the rubber bushings to the already excellent range of Protech dampers we offer. Prices are once again unchanged making them (in our opinion) the best value aftermarket damper you can buy.
July
A Chimaera 500 revisits us for another mapping session, this time sporting an ACT Carbon plenum and a new cam. The result is very healthy and would make a bit more if the main catalyst was replaced with a decat y piece. The owner wishes to keep the cat for MOT purposes and with over 320bhp available already it's still a very fast car.
June
It's often the case that race cars will get an engine change or a rebuild part way through a season so we have just run a Mazda Mx5 racer up on the dyno to run its new engine in and get some power figures. The owner said the engine was completely standard and for once a racer tells the truth .. the 117bhp recorded being absolutely bang on for a well built refreshed standard Mx5 on our dyno.
The car was run up with a standard air flow meter, and again with a modified version, the car made less than 2bhp more on the modified version and there would be no on-track difference in the real world so once again , in the world of MX5 race cars, I'm left wondering why the air flow meters are modified at all ..
June
As cars get older we are seeing more issues with injectors .. a recent Cerbera 4.2 (a late one most probably with the 4.5 bottom end going by the bhp figures produced) had one bank running weaker than the other and the injectors were suspected. They came back in a few days from refurbishment with before and after flow rates showing that indeed two injectors were underperforming.
Once refitted the car was remapped and gave 380bhp and 340/350lb.ft up from the 355bhp/300lb.ft it had previously. These numbers only tell part of the story though .. the real gain is 40-50hp through the uper mid range! That weak mix on one bank coupled to an ECU chip that we had never seen before (with some most unusal ignition and fuelling numbers) was really costing some serious power, and very possibly damaging to the engine if left long term.
Why not book your car in for a dyno run and check over and we can advise if anything needs to be done to get your car back where it should be in terms of power, economy and above all safety.
June
One of the problems with being the last in the tuning chain (mapping is almost always the bit done last ..) is that you inherit all the good and bad things introduced by whoever has worked on the car previously.
Obviously if previous work has been done well it's happy days and plain sailing.
If however you're presented with a car that you know should make around 350bhp based on its spec, but only makes 230bhp you know there's something gone very badly wrong.
And so it is that I'm now stripping back the timing cover on this 5litre Chimaera to reset the cam timing on its recently installed H404 camshaft which should be timed in somewhere around 114deg but is in fact at 89deg!! No wonder it's over 100bhp down.
Picture below shows the spark plug dead stop to get an accurate top dead centre position, DTI gauge to measure equal valve travel either side of full lift, and a paper timing protractor stuck to a carboard backing and then stuck temporarily to the front pulley to get the timing figures from. The timing cover will now be stripped, a proper larger metal protractor bolted to the crank nose, and the cam timed in correctly.
June
One of the most important parts of the whole ecu mapping process is the part that many remapping firms leave out, the on-road experience.
Numerous times we've had cars in that have been mapped elsewhere .. when tested on the dyno the fuelling and ignition is usually very nicely done for all the on-throttle work .. but the very light throttle, and trailing throttle areas are very hard to do on the rolling road and there really is no substitute for hooking the lambda probe into the exhaust and setting off into the countryside. An upstream take off point is best as it limits the effect of turbulence around the tailpipe skewing the mixture readings but failing that a probe inserted as far as possible into the exhaust is good enough ..
This final vital part of the mapping process is often left out but it's the part the the owner will notice as they first pull away from your workshop. We always spend at least an hour fine tuning the part throttle delivery until it's as good as we can get it.
June
A car revisits us for ecu remapping to it's Emerald K6 with triple map facility . Some significant engine work was done by V8Developments which has raised its power from 280 to 360bhp and 360lb.ft torque! The owner certainly notices the difference!
June
It's not often we don't have a few cerberas around the place but three in the same week all for remapping work shows that the market is still as healthy as ever for owners wanting to make their fast cars even faster!
June
A good friend of ours is a talented fabricator and markets a range of exhaust and induction options for the TVR sports car range, he also makes the long journey from the Isle of Wight up to us for true indepedant testing of his products. Sometimes things go well, and sometimes they don't .. but that's all part of product development and testing .. and why sometimes an item might appear expensive at first glance until you understand the total investment needed in bringing a proven product to market.
We are very pleased therefore to report that the latest SpeedSix large bore exhaust manifolds from Clive Ford give a clear 5 to 15bhp advantage at the upper end of the rev range. Also depsite what some fitment centres may tell you they can be fitted without removing the engine, though the total job is still something like 6 hours so not exactly a quick job. The SpeedSix engine is notoriously difficult to extract sizeable bhp gains from so these new manifolds from Clive will be a valuable addition for anyone chasing the numbers ..
June
When former Class C and overall DTEC champion Mat Smith wanted his race Chimaera remapped he made the journey from Norfolk to Derbyshire to run it on our Dyno Dynamics 450 rolling road. We are always happy to give Mat technical advice and his race car gave us no issues at all on the rollers. His work on the Chimaera was to an excellent standard as usual, so if you are looking for someone to service your TVR why not give him a call. Here is the car in all its multi-coloured glory.
May
There's a few different takes on how to boost the Rover V8 but the most common question is do you supercharge or turbocharge. Well there's no correct answer unfortunately but I tend to favour turbocharging because you have the opportunity to quickly change the shape of the boosted part of the rev range by adding or removing boost, and mappable aftermarket ecus allow you to tailor the boost curve to your heart's content.
Here's an example of the sort of thing you might do .. a low level actuator pressure only curve, a second curve that keeps the low rev progressive build of the standard actuator delivery but bleeds boost as the revs increase to give a centrifugal supercharger type of delivery, and a full fat more-is-better boost delivery for nice dry tarmac where traction isn't an issue.
This car was mapped by us after fitting an Emerald K6 ECU. The owner is going to see how he gets on with these three maps and if he decides he wants even more then the car will return in the autumn for the required work.
May
With a few cars recently causing more than their fair share of headscratching it was nice to have a relatively simple job in for a change.
This Marcos is an occasional visitor to the workshop, it's a lovely car and a lovely owner. The car was a bit hesitant under initial throttle openings and a new throttle position sensor had cured it for a short time but wasn't a long term fix. The throttle sensor that had been fitted was a pattern part and it had failed after about 40 percent opening. Also the mounting holes had to be slotted to get the idle position voltage anything near correct. These pattern parts aren't very cheap either but are next to useless.
The faulty pattern part was swapped out for a good used genuine Lucas unit, the wiring back to the ECU plug was tested and all was well with the world once more.
April
A Cerbera came in for trialling some high flow injectors .. the engine is an APM built 4.7 and last time it was here it made just shy of 400hp which is just within the range of the standard injectors but the owner wanted to update to some new flow matched versions for peace of mind.
The good news was that the car made exactly the same bhp to within 0.5hp compared to the last time it was in which was over 2 years ago.
The car was tested, injectors changed, and its 3 maps in the Emerald K6 ecu updated all within one working day.
April
Spot the difference!
Sometimes things don't go to plan and when a 5litre Griffith came in for remapping "and maybe the clutch might need bleeding" little did we know the car would end up on the ramp for the best part of a week.
It seems that during a previous series of upgrades at another facility the flywheel was replaced with a steel item .. all OK so far .. but the flywheel that had been fitted was the thicker version used on four wheel drive land Rover and range Rover engines and it wouldn't disengage fully giving severe clutch slip at the slightest touch of the throttle pedal. I must admit that it was news to us that there were in fact two depths of flywheel, but a phone round to some specialists in that field soon put us in the picture.
Normally the go-to people for our Rover V8 tuning items would be V8 Developments, and whilst they were once again very helpful with lots of useful information they sadly didn't have a suitable flywheel on the shelf for us to buy. Here's where Paul from V8 Tuner stepped in to save the day so many thanks to him for his speedy service and helpful advice.
The car is now back together and we can get on with the remapping that should have been done a week ago .. oh well ..
April
A car has come to us that we used to know well. About 10 years ago we fitted a KMS ecu and the car went on to make 350bhp from its 5 litre Rover V8 engine.
In a quest for more power the engine has been worked on by a number of people, but it's all gone a bit wrong and the car hasn't actually moved in 7 years. The time has come for the owner to get some fun from it so it has been trailered to us with the instruction to get it going again.
After about 3 hours the engine finally turns over, but the fuel pump has seized. Why did it take 3 hours to get to a point where it still doesn't run? This is why .. a proper wiring mess. Tracing this loom is proving something of a nightmare, but it WILL live again!
April
A nice early Cerbera 4.5 was in for a new speedo transducer today. This car is for sale right now so if you are interested please let us know and we will pass on the details from the owner. The asking price is offers around £24,500 .. it's had a recent full clutch and flywheel, some engine work and repainted and looks great.
April
A beautiful Chimaera visited today for a few hours on the rollers plus a blended base and large bore air flow meter upgrade. The initial power was ok but not sparkling but a bit of tweaking released the full potential and the car left with over 30bhp more than it arrived with and smoother driving manners. The engine bay was lovely and a credit to its owner.
April
Carrying on our tradition for tuning the smallest engine in the TVR Speed6 range we've had yet another 3.6 litre car through the workshop. This has been fitted with our Short Induction Whirlwind6 Airbox and as a result the engine has picked up a whopping 22bhp at the top end after remapping and no downsides elsewhere.
April
The Whirlwind8 kits for the Cerbera 4.5 V8 are still a steady seller. This car came in with some unusual running faults and a strange pulse driven tuning effect causing the mixture to spike weak over a range of only a hundred rpm or so which was very difficult to map out with rev points only every 250rpm. In the end perserverence paid off and massive improvements were made in all areas of drivability. Power improved by some 40bhp too. Win-Win!
March
Another Lucas 14cux remap comes and goes .. this time on a relatively standard Chimaera 450. The car was already sporting a generic remapped chip in the ECU which was removed and given back to the owner, there is still value is things like this so it can be sold to offset most of the cost of our bespoke remap session. We then started afresh with a standard chip file and modified that to achieve the fuelling we required. It's only fair to say though that the full throttle fuelling on the generic remapped chip was excellent and no gains were made at all on that - the final power figure being within 0.5bhp of where we started. However the part throttle fuelling was trimmed to maximise the drivability areas of the fuel map
March
One of the questions people often ask is just what hp improvements can be had from a session on the rolling road. The answer of course very much depends on how good or bad your car is to begin with. If your car is in good condition with no faults then the raw bhp results can be unspectacular, but refining the fuelling can often bring driveability benefits even if no real outright bhp gains can be found.
Sometimes though you get it all .. a car that makes a great hp increase with gains low down as well as at the top end. If you add in some drivability improvements then it really does become great value for money.
Remember all our rolling road remaps are bespoke to the car- mapped in real time and not a generic chip replacement or ecu file from the internet.
This is the graph for a 4.5 litre TVR that has recently been in, a very worthwhile increase in power and driving manners.
March
A short producion run of large bore air flow meters and in-house assembled adaptor looms. This , when coupled with an ecu remap, allows for a straightforward replacement of the standard rover lucas 5am air flow meter with the larger bore 20am air flow meter. Power gains of 20plus hp are commonplace on the 5 litre and over Rover engine versions.
March
Something a little bit different .. a Scimitar for sprints and hillclimbs but fitted with a 3.6 litre TVR Speed6 engine. After remapping we managed to find another 30bhp which was a great result.
February
Yellow seems to be the theme with a gorgeous Cerbera 4.5 photobombing the picture of the recently remapped Chimaera which made 323hp from it's 5 litre engine running the Lucas 14cux ECU and our plug-and-play larger bore 20AM air flow meter conversion.
February
With the boost pressure issues on the Mini Turbo now sorted it was time to head back onto the dyno. The result is 207bhp. In a Mini! Should be fun ...
February
Today a lovely 4litre Chimaera was in for Lucas remapping. The car had previously been in and had made just over 320bhp from its turbochanged engine.
This time the boost had been turned up and the car went on to make a peak of 439hp and just over 500lb.ft before tailing off. Fantastic.
February
We seem to be doing about 1 Lucas 14CUX remap a week these days and the vast majority of cars do about what you would expect .. but every so often a car somes in that deserves special mention.
The graph below is a 4litre Chimaera with big valve heads and a warmish cam. As you can see the modifications are working exceptionally well.
The rev limiter was set at around 5800rpm on the original chip so we raised this to take advantage of the peak BHP being generated high up the rev range.
Out on the road this was a lovely sporty drive, revving eagerly and smoothly all the way to the new limiter at 6200rpm and with a peak figure that some 5 litre cars would be happy to achieve.
February
Sometimes bespoke installations require unusual solutions .. we've just TIG welded this together for a Griffith 500 that's in .. the car in question already runs our bypass thermostat cooling system and also an oil/water heat exchanger. Packaging it all into the engine bay alongside the CliveF tubular exhaust manifolds needs a bit of clever packaging, hence this coolant pipework for blending together the feeds from the thermostat bypass outlet and the return from the radiator bottom hose.
February
We see a few interesting cars over the year but this one is really something a little different even for us. A classic Mini with a turbocharged Citroen engine in it.
Early mapping showed that we were running out of injector duration, so a new set of PICO injectors were ordered in and mapping continued.
We havent finished yet .. we've yet to refine the boost delivery .. but initial full throttle testing is showing 190bhp! Should be pretty rapid!
February
Well it's been a long long time since we've seen one of these clutches .. very early solid centre plate AP clutch from a 97 Cerbera 4.5 .. I didn't think there were any cars left with one of these still fitted!
January
The Mazda MX5 race series is hotly contested, with any small advantage or disadvantage in car spec making its presence felt when lap times are separated by tenths, sometimes hundredths, of a second.
One area that always comes in for close scrutiny is the engine, and in particular the air flow meters and fuelling. There are several MX5 tuners offering to upgrade / improve your air flow meter but you need to be careful. From some recent testing we have done on two race MX5s just fitting a modified air flow meter in isolation has been very much a backwards step.
See this graph which shows quite a bhp reduction, and a massive and potentially damaging weakening of the mixture, from fitting a modified air flow meter to an otherwise standard MX5 racecar ..
January
I usually use the Sagen Peugeot coils for my ECU installs but a customer from Southern Ireland recently sent his car over to us for it's Emerald ECU install. He had experienced trouble getting the kit he had already bought fitted in Ireland so the car was transported over here. The supplied coils were Ford Gen2 items so a new coil bracket was made to mount them in front of the engine. They fit well and HT ends are easy to get hold of so in future they may well become my coil of choice too. Here's a pic of the TIG welded bracket, and the coils installed in the engine bay.
The car runs cataysts and a wideband lambda taking care of the fuelling. The emissions tests can be quite stringent over there so the car was taken down to my local MOT station to make sure it was going to pass .. which it did with flying colours.
January
What better way to start 2017 than with a lovely and rare MGRV8. This particular example is used by its owner in some light competition and as such has to remain in a relatively standard specification including retaining the catalysts and the original fit Lucas 14CUX ecu so it was a lovely surprise when it made 210bhp on the dyno.
The full throttle mixture was absolutely perfect but much of the rest of the fuelling had weak areas that were remapped , the owner reporting that the car was more responsive and eager to rev on part throttle than before. All this is important when you're feathering the throttle through a long sweeping bend or holding on to a gear longer than you might normally to save precious tenths of seconds.
The car was a gem, gave us no trouble at all and all in all was a very worthwhile way to spend 4 hours. Happy New Year MGRV8 !
