The grey double slider bus has been sat in the darkness in secure parking for a while while other projects and travel have taken a priority.
now seemed the time to revisit – the last time i drove it was to move it from MAD-Workshop where we had done a weekend engine and gearbox swap – pulling out the DJ block 2.1l wbx race engine and the fancy 5 speed gear box with the upgrades and ZF plate limited slip diff that Aidan Talbot rebuilt a while back. Swapping in a fresh (ish) 2.1l low compressions MV motor with a 5-speed recon box.
The DTA fast EFI and all the sensors and triggers went back on but the map is for the old high compression block – with a 2280 cam and a load of other upgrades – and some head work – so it was breathing much better than the stock MV.
Needless to say it’s running a little rich – so time to check the valve clearances (the MV had a set of new German hydraulic lifters dropped in while it was on the engine stand having seals and other things done) and give it some fresh plugs…
as you can see the plugs were a little fouled…
The it was time to plug in the laptop and check what all the sensors had to say. running windows on a mac and the the DTAFast software allows you to interrogate the ECU –
when we did the engine swap I set the ECU into closed loop fuelling – meaning it would read the air fuel mixture from the Lambda sensor in the exhaust and dynamically alter the fuelling at each rpm and throttle cell to try and hit a target AFR of 0.89. Even though it had only done a few miles it has started making correction prdictions across much of the map – some of them showing rather drastic reductions in fuel…
using the inbuilt tools you can apply these into the main map and also add calculations across all all areas – we pulled some fuel and took a little timing out of the ignition map – needs some love on a dyno to really see what it does under load – and someone who really knows about tuning !
Sadly the day and the battery ran out of time. Too much random messing with the map and everything is unhappy. However when it fires and runs clean it still sounds amazing – a merged stainless steel Speedshop exhaust combined with the induction noise from the short intake stacks makes fabulous sound – echoing off the concrete walls.
