Tornado chip + Mark Adams tuneup - recommended

[trefor]

How does 241hp and 245lb/ft torque sound for a Chimaera 4.0L without any mods? Well that's what mine made this afternoon at Power Engineering after Mark Adams performed his magic on it. I *think* Mark said this was the best std 4.0L he'd done

I went in with 207hp, the car was running pretty well, but not at it's optimum. The above result is with one suspectedly slightly blocked injector, thus only 30degress of advance on the timing. There's another 2-3hp there when I get this done too!

Chuffed? Me? Yep!

[manek]

Excellent! That's slightly more than mine got to which itself was pretty damned good. I'll bet you can feel the difference too. I know I could.

[danny hoffman]

Trevor - Didn't you change your cam ?

[trefor]

It was replaced, but nobody knew what type it was (long story). It now appears it was std. All the extra power over 3000rpm I was getting was just the car behaving itself, but being a grumpy b'stard below 3000rpm IYKWIM. It's now as smooth as Kylie's smooth bits.

Of course next time the cam goes I'll hopefully have more time to replace it and be able to get some more 'juicy'

T/.

[HarryW]

Umm thats sounds tempting, 241 from a non lumpy standard cam and a chip change what was the damage and how long was the session??

Was the 207 the optimised figure before the chip was changed i.e. timing spot on etc and the remainder from the chip upgrade?
Almost too good to be true...cheap as chips then must get myself down to the chippy then soon .

Harry

[shpub]

quote:
Umm thats sounds tempting, 241 from a non lumpy standard cam and a chip change what was the damage and how long was the session??

Calm down calm down. There is a lot of variation on TVR engine build and the amount of power very much depends on what Mark has to work with. Whatever the gains and they are usually some, the end result is a lot smoother.

Mark finally finished the Griff yesterday morning. Got about another 14 lb/ft of torque (314) but the curve is flat from about 1800 revs to 4600. Overall bhp is slightly down but the overall acceleration is very noticeably better by several tenths and the response is dramatically better. The car is so sweet to drive with no flat spots but instant bruise your back torque. Bit dissapointed not quite getting the magic 300 but the torque oh the torque.

There is an article about Mark, the Griff and Power Engineering in this months sprint.

Steve
www.tvrbooks.co.uk

[manek]

...and the power curves achieved by Mark are up on PH somewhere from when he did my car. I don't suppose Trefor's results are that different since the figures sound close (209bhp -> 239 bhp).

[trefor]

Maybe my Kylie comment wasn't enough. The biggest change I have noticed so far is how smooth the car is compared to before. This makes it easier to drive in traffic - mine used to be hard to crawl along in, constantly trying to kangaroo into the car in front, requiring constant clutch feathering.

Another benefit is a complete health check of all the monitorable engine/electrical components.

More power at the end of the day is nice too

[shpub]

quote:
...and the power curves achieved by Mark are up on PH somewhere from when he did my car. I don't suppose Trefor's results are that different since the figures sound close (209bhp -> 239 bhp).

And you can get a few bhp difference from day to day depending on conditions.

[HarryW]

quote:
Calm down calm down.....
...........
There is an article about Mark, the Griff and Power Engineering in this months sprint.

Steve
www.tvrbooks.co.uk

I'm calm now I was pretty well astonished to think that given all thats been said about the 4L lump that that kind of power could be extracted with just a chip upgrade to the ECU, even more astonishing without the normal lumpy cam/induction mods as well.
Mines currently at around 210 with a lumpy cam and if it needs's a rolling road and chip to get the proper 240 (forget the 275 ) I'll be up to see Mark like a shot.

Harry

btw Steve very good article in this months sprint 10/10
I'm still interested to know what the day cost though, if you don't mind moi asking.

[trefor]

Do it Harry.

Cost:
Tornado chip - around 350 pounds (I think, bought a while ago)
Power Engineering - 2 hours Rolling road (incl. Chris Todd, one of their staff who certainly knew his stuff too) - 75 pounds per hour + VAT
Mark Adams' time - 2 hours @ 45 pounds/hour

So around 700 pounds in total. Could be more if there are components which need replacing on your car or if your injectors need cleaning etc. (I needed a new coil for instance and had recently fitted new Magnecor leads and extenders - something I would recommend after 3-4 years in a hot TVR engine bay).

[griff2be]

I'm interested in cost too - I e-mailed Mark Adams but didn't get a reply.

I'm not too fussed about getting extra power (although its always nice) - I just want to get the car set up to run really well and remove the lumpiness at low revs.

But I'd like to have an idea of cost if anyone can tell me? From memory (from shpubs article in Sprint) a session with MA without Tornado chip is approx £200?

Thanks

Andy

[griff2be]

I'm interested in cost too - I e-mailed Mark Adams but didn't get a reply.

I'm not too fussed about getting extra power (although its always nice) - I just want to get the car set up to run really well and remove the lumpiness at low revs.

But I'd like to have an idea of cost if anyone can tell me? From memory (from shpubs article in Sprint) a session with MA without Tornado chip is approx £200?

Thanks

Andy

[JamieBeeston]

Lo

Trefor, mark was saying how yous was one of, if not THE, sweatest 4l engines he has worked on, and was v.chuffed with your results..

Finaly got to work on mine at about half 6, it made 252bhp as std (4.5) with 256 ft/lbs..

Then we discovered that the front 2 injectors were far to lean, and the back to far too rich, with the middle, inbetween :/


alas due to the advancing hours, we had to retire, and reschedule to wednesday week.

they were chuffed with how 'sweet' the engine was atm, and said, well, once the injectors are sorted.. it will be EVEN sweeter :P

Hopeing for around 260-270 bhp... (but i want more more more!!)

Also looking as the possibility of a precat decat...

shall see

Thnx Mark

[GreenV8S]

quote:
I'm interested in cost too - I e-mailed Mark Adams but didn't get a reply.

I'm not too fussed about getting extra power (although its always nice) - I just want to get the car set up to run really well and remove the lumpiness at low revs.

But I'd like to have an idea of cost if anyone can tell me? From memory (from shpubs article in Sprint) a session with MA without Tornado chip is approx £200?

Thanks

Andy

From memory, you will need to have your ECU upgraded to accept the Tornado chip (at about £300 if I remember) (this only has to be done once) then it's an hourly rate for Mark's time plus rolling road time to map it. I guess this was the £250 quid Steve mentioned in his article. I imagine that if the rolling road shows up anything wrong with the engine you'd need to fix that before Mark could map it, this would obviously cost extra.

[trefor]

quote:
Lo

Trefor, mark was saying how yous was one of, if not THE, sweatest 4l engines he has worked on, and was v.chuffed with your results..

Finaly got to work on mine at about half 6, it made 252bhp as std (4.5) with 256 ft/lbs..

Then we discovered that the front 2 injectors were far to lean, and the back to far too rich, with the middle, inbetween :/


alas due to the advancing hours, we had to retire, and reschedule to wednesday week.

they were chuffed with how 'sweet' the engine was atm, and said, well, once the injectors are sorted.. it will be EVEN sweeter :P

Hopeing for around 260-270 bhp... (but i want more more more!!)

Also looking as the possibility of a precat decat...

shall see

Thnx Mark

Jamie - Those figures for your car look good for a 4.5, I hope you get a bit more out of it. Like you say, you can never have enuf power.

T/.

[HarryW]

So we're looking at a realistic £600 - 1000 for ECU change, re-chip, tune, change dodgy bits, tune, blow the eprom go home happy bunny.
Hopefully not a cam cahnge required though or we use the x 2 multiplier to the above max figure

Harry

[griff2be]

quote:

From memory, you will need to have your ECU upgraded to accept the Tornado chip (at about £300 if I remember) (this only has to be done once) then it's an hourly rate for Mark's time plus rolling road time to map it. I guess this was the £250 quid Steve mentioned in his article. I imagine that if the rolling road shows up anything wrong with the engine you'd need to fix that before Mark could map it, this would obviously cost extra.

---

So are we actually talking about £1,000 for this then?

[shpub]

It depends. Budget around £700 plus any other bits but changing bits is effectively at £125 an hour. Worth going to a specialist like Tower View who will chcek out the car for sillies first at a cheaper rate.

As for Harry's sudden vision of 240 ish bhp. Well I would not assume that it will happen because 2 other 4 litre cars got an increase. Mark will improve the car but the amount will and does vary. Yes you will get an improvement but how much depends on what is in the engine. You also can't always believe what TVR Power tell you either. Mist of time etc obscure what may or may not have been done. There have been some very interesting engines that have been standard and vice versa.

Steve

[HarryW]

quote:
As for Harry's sudden vision of 240 ish bhp
Steve

It's a dream as vision's tend to have more clarity

H

BTW I'd be more than happy at 230+ :feetfirmlyontheground: