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Whilst browsing the Ebay auction site, I noticed that on offer were tuning devices giving up to 20bhp. The narrative states that these adjust the air/petrol ratio and slightly increases the timing. They were also easy to fit/remove and comparable to very much dearer ECU tuning. I assume these alter the signal from the air mass meter to enrich the mixture. Although these seem to be going for less than £10, are they worth it? Does anyone have any experience of these devices? Although tempted at such a cheap price, do you only get what you pay for?
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Mak, what you describe sounds VERY sophisticated for £10! Even the Ecotek which is a simple mechanical device costs over £40 so I'd be very suspicious of something that cheap offering to do so much!
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No,you must get less than you pay for;so that they can make money.
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Allegedly I hear they are made from a series of resistors at a very low cost (about 50p) and apparently only improve MOST cars by about 7bhp.
Also it is laible to knacker something up by fitting one as most sellers state they claim no responsibility etc etc etc.
I wouldn't bother personally, If u want a faster car buy one!!
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cheapest option seems to be buying an adjustable fuel pressure regulator....increasing the fuel pressure over the entire rev range....not ideal, as it lunches the fuel consumption a bit,but a cheaper option tomessing with the board!...Check out Demon Tweeks catalogue for an idea of prices..
An alternative is to check out the "Hot-wire" plug leads, available from www.nology.com
or their current UK importers.....expensive (for plug leads!) but they are a different approach to ignition timing....
If you can get hold of a current edition of David Vizard's book "Tuning the A-series engine"...[aimed at old mini's].....he ran some tests on the Nology products, with some surprising results.........I bit the bullit some years back, and got a set, to tune an old Ford E93A-type sidevalve engine....sort of experiment, really..[the leads are transferable from one car to another!]....the old sidevalve engine design is not really condusive to the extraction of high horsepower.....but with most of the accepted tuning mods in place, plus the "Hotwire" ign set-up, and an hour on a local rolling road,mainly swinging the timing.......got over 42bhp at the wheels on my Special......wow, wooptydoo!.....but the factory quoted 30 bhp as standard, back in the 50's, at around 3800 to 4000rpm!......and the racing people rarely achieved more than 50-55bhp, at the flywheel, at around sub-5000rpm.....with lumpy cams, etc......so I was well pleased as the motor was quite docile! Torque is the name of the game with these engines!
The ignition timing was set quite a bit adrift from the Ford figures, or anybody else's, for that matter!
The point I'm making is the fact that the leads open up a whole new area of engine tuning, where previously only compromises could be achieved!
Just a thought?
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Had a quick look at the plug leads on the web site; I assume the 'special built in capacitor' is an air gap? Hate to think what a modern enigen's ECU will do when it 'sees' the wrong impedance for the HT lead. Anyone seen an improvement when used on a car with an engine designed less than 30 years ago?
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Seen similar on Ebay.
My understanding is that they make the car run richer for more power.
I would suspect the cat wouldn't last very long and the ECU would be battling against the Lambda sensor telling it to lean the mixture.
Charles
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