Hi all,

Just had my 1998 20VT on the dyno for a quick power run to see how it's doing - I only bought it last week and I was interested to see how it's running.

It's got a 2.5 inch turbo back exhaust with no cat, an AEM dryflow filter, a FMIC and an Apexi AVC-R boost controller. I was intrigued as to power figures as in 1st and 2nd gear, I hit 1.0 bar according to the boost controller, so my theory was that it's been mapped / chipped.

On the dyno it made 206.9hp with 279nm of torque, so that confirms it's standard. Not bad for a 25 year old car. But then, why would it have no boost restriction in 1st and 2nd if it's not been remapped? Hmm.

What sort of power do these make on a dyno as 'standard', and is a 10hp loss to be expected with these? I presumed that with a decat and a big FMIC I could get a bit more power, but I guess not. Also, what sort of modifications would I need to do to get this to hit say 250hp (that's a nice round number I'd like to aim for as a target)?

I'm pretty sure it should make more than 1 bar of boost as standard. These cars aren't fitted with a boost limiter, they have a boost rise limiter. The standard chip can overboost to around 1.2-1.4bar but it won't hold it for long. It should then settle at 0.7-0.8 bar IIRC.

I'd be more interested to hear what steady boost your Coupé maintains in the latter gears once the boost settles. The curve looks spot on, just a little lower than it should be across the board.

Thanks for the reply Trappy, been away all weekend so haven't had chance to get back to you! It tails off to about 0.7-ish bar and holds it all the way to the redline.

You can adjust the values on the boost controller to run higher boost and this allows more power. You have to set the values correctly to achieve this. If it’s set too low it won’t allow full boost.

I recently had to set my old controller up and it went from peaking at 1.0bar to 1.2bar and it made a monumental difference. As long as you don’t set the gain too high the delivery of power is good. I can send you the values I was running, but each unit runs differently. Bear in mind I was running a blitz unit. I then change to a gizzmo, ran the same numbers, but totally different out come.

1-5, 2-25, 3-45 and 4-55 the gain was finally set at 14, which felt good and punched all the way through. I was achieving 1.2bar and it was a big difference.

Now on my new gizzmo unit, it suggests the gain to be set no higher than 10, so it’s a new science entirely.

Have a play about and see what happens.

All being said, with your mods I’d have expected a little more.

Hope this helps and keep us posted.