Perfect Touch result!

Oh Right..
By the way how the hell do you keep it on the road..400bhp must be mental..i know 300 is almost useless until 3rd

It has been a pleasure Nigel, your car presses on with such little effort... and that is on boost setting one!!

With 3 others to choose from it should be an interesting drive home

Cheers

Rob

Well done Nigel.

Ross

At last. Congratulations Nigel.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiice

Congrats long struggle by the look of your posts but well worth it in the end.

What's next

Congrats - been reading the post updates over the last few days at work.

Enjoy!

well done mate, if you dont mind me asking what turbo is that on?

I'm making the upgrade onto forged pistons now myself, what kind of boost levels can be used on the pistons without the rods?

Iain

Congradulations mate!

Been watching this for a while.

I'm sure the first drive will make it all worth while..

Oh YES!

Rob couldn't resist another quick play today and ran it on the rollers again.

result was 405.9bhp and 341ft-lb

I got to Hoddesdon at about 4 o'clock - went out for a quick drive with Claudio to make sure everything was OK, then set off for the blast home.

Its never been quicker - its absolutely manic when its hard on boost. it pulls hard all the way to the new 7,500rpm rev limiter

My request to Perfect touch was a seriously tall order. - my car is a 25,000 - 30,000 mile a year everyday commuting and business car as well as a hobby and competition car. So - I told Claudio I wanted two things:

1) When its on boost, I want 400bhp with a straight line power curve - no dips or lumps, no wavering, just a long seamless power delivery, with a flattening at the very top end and no big tail-off in power

2) Next, I want it to tick over perfectly, cruise smoothly, trickle in traffic without lumpiness, hesitation, fluffy throttle response, no dodgy hot or cold starting and normal fuel consumption when not ragging it

In other words, I wanted it to behave like a completely stock car when I wanted it to, and like a mad racer when I wanted it to.

This was a massively tall order, but through skill and persistency, Perfect Touch have managed it.

After six months of fannying around with a wrongly wired Unichip, it feels like the car it was always meant to be.

So - an official BIG thanks to Claudio and Rob at Perfect Touch - thanks for sticking with it when other tuning shops would have given up. Thanks for putting up with my countless questions and nagging. Thanks for doing what you said you would do.

Superb Nigel - well pleased for you!

Now, how about a passenger ride?

Great stuff What was the wheel power and lets be having a graph posted?!!

great nigle, i knew that you will not give up until you have it back on roads

im very happy for you maty

Hey Nigel

What about the 7500 limiter, I thought from past posts you were not considering raising the limiter with unbalanced internals? Is it really safe then? I have considered raising mine also from 7 to 7.3 or so...
At what RPM does the max power come?

Max power is at about 7,000rpm.

The internals are balanced - Iceberg spent loooong hours with the piston and rod assemblies - he got them to within about half a gram of each other - Fiat tolerance is +/- 10grams

Power graphs to follow later

Ok i didnt knew the internals were balanced...i better stay with my 7k limiter plus mechanic said is no point beyond as the max power occurs at a bit before...

Simply

Excellent result Nigel

balanced internals ( not your guts ! ) means that the rpm limit can be raised, as there is less chance of inertia related damage occuring, BUT It still will not prevent the rods from bending under stress !

Taz - agreed - that's why I've always asked Rob to keep the torque below 340 lb-ft

I also have forged pistons, which are lighter than standard. There's probably less stress on my rods at 7,500 than standard rods at the stock rev limit.

Hope the journey home wasnt dampened (no pun intended) by the rain mate.

IIRC the wheel figure was around 370hp for the 401.9 run.

Cant recall the 405.9 wheel figure but i'll post it up tomorrow when i go back in.

Thanks again Nigel.

Rob

Rob, as live mapping 20vt's has been a success, do u think mapping a 16vt would be easier, the same, or completely different ?

Sorry if this has been asked many times - is a live map likely to give any benefits on a std un-modded car?

ta

Rob - this just gets better and better - its behaving almost perfectly - it idles, its smooth, it picks up properly and when its on boost - well, I can safely say the man from Toyo will be getting lots of visits

It was remarked today at the birmingham meet that under the bonnet, my car still looks remarkably standard. This is by design. However, its impossible to see where the countless hours of mapping time have gone to by looking under a bonnet, so here's the acid proof of Perfect Touch's skills

Torque graph

Power graph

There's a very slight wobble in the power curve and a slightly bigger dip in the torque line - both to do (we think) with the cam variator

7500 rpm is very fast for a std rod, balancing inparts no strength to the rods, balancing does not permit an increase in rpm on std rods, it merely reduces the uneven loading on the crank. Although I doubt you would use that rpm much, on the track I'd change at 7000rpm, the greatest stress on the rod is on the exhaust stroke at high rpm. The std rods have a lower tesile strength then their forged cousins and a shorter fatigue life. Take it easy on them.

Rich

I have the same rods as Nigel fitted into my car and i've been advised not to take it to more than 7000RPM.

Ross

To be honest, I did wonder about 7,500. I had worked out that 7,200 would be a more reasonable increase.

Might get PT to drop it a little when I'm down there for the RR day later this month

What injectors are you using Nigel?

Might be advisable. Where is your peak power?

Ross

Great results Nigel. What turbo are you using? GT28RS? Do you have a boost and/or AFR graph also?

16V coupe will be no different, exactly the same maps are available.

So Glad Nigel, time to enjoy!!

Live map will definately give improvements on a std car, however... if you are contemplating any mods at all, get them done first to save yourself some money.

Cheers

Rob

Fergie - I'm on 16vt injectors - 384cc, but they're very close to their limits. Rob reckoned a 3.5bar FPR plus another remap would solve the problem.

I tried moving the set point to different RPM's but it didnt really gain (low or high). Fiat must have spent some time on that

One other thought, your car is showing a bit leaner than it should be on the DD graph?

Cheers

Rob

Looking at the graph Nigel 7000rpm is your peak power anyways, so your not going to lose out by bringing it back to 7000rpm.

Ross

h2ypr,

It is not a good idea to rev limit at peak power, the engine should always 'try' to rev past peak power.

Cheers

Rob

if you HAVE to change gear at peak power, by definition, the revs will drop to less than peak power

If however you can hang on a little bit past peak power the rev will drop to a higher figure that will naturally be a little closer to the peak.

Also, in some circumstances, it might negate the need for a gearchange, although in my case I'm still going to need 4th a long way before the end of a standing quarter (was hitting 117mph at TOTB)

In an attempt to see just how laggy my car is, I've just spent a few minutes looking for other people's power graphs

If you remember, Highwayman was well chuffed at the grunt he got from his GTi-R turbo at Perfect Touch

Here's his charts:

Power Curves
Torque Curves

Now compare the lower end with mine - Phil has just under 100bhp at 3,000rpm - so do I. Phil has 200bhp by 4,000rpm - so do I. Its only after 4,000rpm that my much bigger turbo starts to romp away.

Personally, I was quite suprised at this, as its normally accepted that big turbo = later spoolup

Any thoughts?

welcome to the 400BHP+ club

Congrats!

BTW I think the reason your spoolup is so good is Barbz' headwork. Made about 700rpm improvement in spool on my car

JohnS - I'd forgotten about the Barbz effect!

Makes you wonder what a car would be like with a superspool AND a Barbz head - does anyone run this setup?

This would be the light at the end of the tunnel you were looking for then Nigel?

Congrats .

I cant look at the graphs,(CAUSE IM AT WORK) but has my graph been compared against nigels? I have headwork from barbz aswell and this is definately helping my spool up aswell.

Ross

Nigel now get to Powerstation and you will have 466bhp...!

That would be interesting actually!!

ROss

Fantastic result Nigel,..glad you are finally happy with the car!!...sounds ideal all from a 2-litre motor..well good!!!

How is the clutch holding up Nigel and what is it like to drive, this has been my greatest factor in going for any more than 370bhp?

Joe

Hi Joe - Clutch is absolutely fine. I can get it to judder very slightly, but I have to try - normally its as smooth as a standard clutch. Now the low rpm running is sorted, I can even crawl the car in stop-start traffic with zero throttle and a bit of diligent clutch control.

OK, its a bit heavier than standard, but I can cope with that. Its already getting some abuse though, plenty of second and third gear blasts and no sign of slip at all.

My only recommendation would be NOT to go for a lightened flywheel - it did me no favours and meant that the car was more on-off in traffic. Probably OK for a weekend toy or a track car, but it made smooth driving at low speed quite difficult.

Found something else out today - perhaps the only negative I could find with the mapping.

When the power comes in, its VERY hard - its a real thump in the back. Entertaining when in the mood, but a little bit difficult to drive smoothly with.

Also, I found a problem when flooring it AND staying on the throttle in 4th 5th & 6th (apart from the fact that I tend to run out of road VERY quickly ). The boost fluctuates - I can feel it through the car, and when I set my Blitz to plot the boost line, I could see the trace alternating by about 0.1 bar.

When I next had to pull up in traffic, I checked the gain setting, and found the cause. The gain was set to 50 That explains the thump in the back! The turbo is obviously capable of spooling up VERY quickly when it needs to.

I dropped the gain to 20 and it was a lot smoother, and more importantly, it got up to peak boost and held it with no fluctuation.

So - Ive decided to use two of the Bltz's four channels for peak boost. One with high gain, for the neck-snapping spoolup and one with lower gain for fast but smooth running. The other two chanels are set at 1.2 bar and 1 bar respectively.

To remind those that use a Blitz, gain settings rarely need to be above 15, and in most circumstances, single figures are perfectly adequate.

I'd welcome Rob's feedback - using 50 certainly made the car lively, but I'm not sure it will have helped peak power, as the solenoid couldn't work fast enough to control the boost, so it was constantly raising and lowering. This wouldn't have been felt on the rollers, as the car wouldn't have given any surging feelings.

Good news is that after three days of blasting and commuting, the car is still running the same as when it left Perfect Touch. On the Unichip, it would have gone very lean by now, requiring an ECU reset.

There's one downside though - the power is so addictive that my fuel consumption has suffered. I can see me having to use base boost on my daily commute just to get four days out of a tank. At the moment, I'm going to struggle to get three days commuting done. That's about 18 mpg for this week

Having said that, I haven't had nine mapping sessions since July in order to minimise my fuel consumption

Congratulations Nigel! Very interesting reading, and it's great that we have pioneers like you who'll spend vast amounts of money while sharing the highs and lows of your tuning experineces for other Coupe enthusiasts to learn from

Well done to Nigel and Rob at PT. Cracking result - you aimed to have a 400bhp car with no Nos etc. and you've done it. Nice one - any chance I can have a go at the rolling road day? ;-) would be really interesting to see what the spool up and throttle response is like from the bigger turbo.

Nigel,

Sorry i havent replied yet, cant believe the work i have come back to

Not so sure on the Gain setting on 50, i must have missed that tbh and kept adjusting the target.. Sorry about that.

In fact i'm suprised it held as well as .1bar difference

Glad you sorted it now though.

Unfortunately havent got time today to read through any more bits but hopefully see you on sunday.

Cheers

Rob