Engine tuning

[Mark]

As anyone on here done any proper engine tuning? Dont mean the cone airfolter sort, talking more of skimming/porting.flowing of cylinder head, cam change, injector change, balancing, lightening and so on.
Looking to up the power of my 1.8.

 

[Tom]

Get yourself a set of C&B cams, a Dastek piggyback ECU and a few hours on the rollers. 145BHP or so is realistic.

Unless you're going for really lairy cams with peak power at a much higher RPM (you will have to use a different ECU anyway) then lightening parts will just cost you low end pickup.

Unless the internals are unbalanced (they will have been done at the factory) then balancing will gain you pretty much nothing but cost a lot as its an entire engine stripdown. Its only needed if you're changing parts or going to much much higher RPMs. No point having an engine balanced to run to 10k when the cams drop off at 6.5k and the pistons fall apart at 8k.

A poor port job (the modduhs favorite port'n'polish) will generally cost power rather than gain it. A quick cleanup will give a very small gain for minimal cost. A full on port job should and will cost many hundreds to be done properly. Anyone offering to do the job for less will just stick a flapwheel down the ports to shine them up and make you think they've done something. You might as well have done it yourself for free.

If they don't have a flowbench and don't ask about the cam profiles you want to use then walk away. A port that flow best at 12mm valve lift is not going to work well with cams that only have 10mm of lift.

 

[Mark]

Thanks. I'm using the car for road rallying so want a bit more power without spending too much money at once (looking to do it in stages while keeping the car in use.)
What sort of power is poss from a 1.8? The other option I was looking at was fitting a Sedici engine that I happen have in the garage.

 

[ant]

wouldnt it be cheaper to buy a hgt, then tune if necessary?

 

[Tom]

Check the regs of the class you are entering before messing around too much. Unless you're just doing 12-cars.

 

[Mark]

Dont want to spend money on another car, like you said a HGT would be a cheaper option but I really like what I've got. I was going to use my Delta but from 1 Jan you cant use cant use turbo 4x4 models for road rallying.

The regs allow almost any modification from next year, but by making some changes it will move me out of the standard production car class but I'm out to have fun and dont expect to win anyway.

 

[Anonymous]

Have a look here:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/15639/thread/1154973106/