Nathan

Hi Syed, OK, the Auto math one is an HP Books title, author John Lawlor. ISBN 1557880204 I've now realised that I lent the Nitro book to someone and as usual when you lend things out you don't get them back.... WIll try and 'retrieve' it and let you know the details. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC

OK, will try and dig them out tonight and will let you know Monday hopefully. Probably, but I'd better not tell you any more in case Terry gets on my case again for not providing enough technical input...... Cheers Nathan TDI PLC

No worries Keith- send me your address off-list and I'll whizz it in the post Monday for you. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC

Easy. Just remove the 12 or so allen head bolts from the central plastic spark plug cover and remove it. Then you will be able to get to all the bolts that hold each cam cover down. Be careful on their removal and you should be fine to re-use the rubber gaskets again. Nothing else much really to worry about except the usual extreme caution in not letting anything drop into the now exposed camshaft gulleys. Cover them with a bin liner or anything you can get your hands on. Do NOT leave them exposed. HTH, Nathan TDI PLC

Nope. Sorry Pete, never had to 'go there' so can't help Regards, Nathan TDI PLC

LOL! Well, I could quote directly from books but as Ian C says the list has been through all that...usually from Corky's book... Explaining maps is not trivial as I'm sure you know. I think directing people to a source (an abundant one at that) of extremely relative information is the only real way foward. Besides, some of us have work to do Cheers Nathan TDI PLC

I don't think I need to comment on the above... Good luck with your hybrid venture though. If you are totally against big singles and twins then it sounds like you may well be seeing the next best thing. Be careful how much metal you take out of the stock manifold..... Regards, Nathan TDI PLC

I've got all of them so ner...... I've also got 'Automotive Supercharging & Turbocharging Manual' as well. Hardback. John D. Humphries. ISBN 0-85429-880-0. Worth getting. I've also got what I'm sure is another PowerPro book which is similar to the Earl Davis one you list above but is purely based on N2O. Again, worth getting. Actually, I've got 2 copies of the 'Turbochargers' book by Hugh. Have you already ordered yours? I'm happy to let you have one for nowt if you want. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC PS I've just realised I've got another one called 'The Auto Math Handbook' which is real handy too. I can try and find the ISBN if you want.

Wez, There are no 'specific' settings that can be applied to any boost controller. Every car will be different. You could copy someones figures to get you in the 'ballpark' but I certainly wouldn't advise it unless you are going to keep a very close eye on boost levels. Even if the boost does just happen to sit on what you want it to be it doesn't mean your boost curve couldn't be better. It has to be said that setting up a boost controller on a Mk4 is something of a black art (trading between offsets and peak boost levels) and even I don't fully understand it. Thats why I got the boys downstairs to sort mine out! The only people who don't reccomend EVC's are people who can't set them up properly.....a word of advice; never use the 'learning' function on Mk4's. Cheers Nathan TDI PLC

Agreed. We've never used them here. Theres no reason too. We only change to the adjustable HKS one when we fit the HKS fuel rails as the OE one doesn't fit. They can be beneficial on some cars (mainly NA stuff) but the MK4 isn't one of them IMO. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC

Agreed. We've yet to pop any electronics through jump starting and that includes the industrial mobile starter we use if a battery is REALLY hammered. And believe me, it goes. I've yet to find anything it won't start! I'm not quite sure why some people are blowing electronics via jump starting to be honest. Only the foolish would have hundreds of pounds worth of add-ons fitted without fuses... Cheers Nathan TDI PLC

A thousand apologies Damn those fiddly laptop keys.....should have dunged out my old Vic20... Nathan TDI PLC

Get a cylinder leakage test done as opposed to a compression test. It will confirm quite a few things. Any garage worth it's salt will be able to do it and FWIW we would charge about £75 so it's unlikely to cost more than that. Money well spent IMO if you have oil burning problems and need to decide between turbos or bottom end/valves. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC

And the fact that it's crap and looks like it came from an RS catalogue (Seddon Atkinson section).... Well............ I do know of a really nice stepper motor (not crappy solonoid) that is robust, looks lovely and is compact....... I think you do too...... The problem is price. Leave it with me. I'll PM you if I get any good news. Cheers, Nathan. TDI PLC

Seeing as it's safe to return..... It's been a long while since I did physics but I'll have a stab. And I'm quite prepared to be shot down! Don't take any of the below as gospel but it's what was floating around in my head at 9pm last night. I've pasted this from my word doc so I hope it works... I think the thing to bear in mind here is that I don't think it's as much to do with LHE (latent heat evaporation) as much as SHC (specific heat capacity) and LHV (latent heat vaporisation). Specific heat capacity tells you how much energy you need to put into a substance to increase it's temperature by 1degC. I always thought water injection was to do with the massive cooling found from expansion exhibited by water on vapourisation. (around 4000 times, IIRC). A good point was made by Phil but unfortunately although getting hydrogen from injecting water into a car engine would be very 'interesting' it won't happen. A change of 'state' ie water to steam does not imply 'inter'molecular bonds are broken (i.e. molecules don't disassociate into their respective atoms.. it remains 'water'). However the 'intra'molecular bonds do break... the bonds that hold water molecules together in their 'liquid state'. It takes energy to do this and its called the latent heat of vaporisation.... changing water liquid into a 'gaseous state' i.e. water vapour. Breaking water in to hydrogen and oxygen is a whole different ball game... and it doesn't even follow the same rules. You wont even do this in a top fuel dragster. As for the queries regarding amount injected relative to the swept volume it's actually very small. Using a pretty crude calculation, I was only injecting 0.0057% of the total cylinder volume (it wil obviously vary depending on rpm- the example was made at 7K rpm). And that didn't even take into account pressurization from the turbos. I based that on atmo so the actual amount would be even less. It shows that you don't need a lot of water to make a difference. It is suggested that 10 to 25% of the total fuel injected should be water. I was injecting far less than that. I did work that out as well but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. It was well under 10% though. Some theory suggests that water injection can actually have a positive effect on power output simply because of the huge exapansion taking place when water turns to steam. Oh look. A steam engine ;-) Aside from the fact that I've seen a lot of so-called theory fall down when it comes to practical testing I'm very sceptical of any power increases found purely from adding water mainly because of the small amount used relative to swept volume as shown above. Moot point though and quite interesting. In the grand sceme of things, and to answer the original question, I wouldn't bank on making any meaningful power by injecting water. It does however allow you to push the boundaries as regards to boost pressure and combustion temperatures. My thoughts on water though have always remained the same. I don't agree with (or see the point) for using it on engines that don't detonate (ie any stock supra or BPU one). If an engine is not detting or doesn't have excessive EGT's then fitting water injection will simply be an exercise in getting ones wallet fleeced. I don't subscribe to the 'cooler must be better' idea with water (as opposed to a bigger intercooler) because you will do nothing by injecting it into a non detting/non high EGT engine except create unuseable steam. It doesn't create a 'denser charge' in the way people assume, unless you consider a dense charge of water vapour to be beneficial. Dense charge of air, yes. Water, no. If anyone has any data which shows a benefit on an engine like the above I'd like to see it. If you do decide to use water to push the boundaries then be it on your own head. I for one wouldn't use water on an engine that would det without it unless it was on a race engine where it doesn't really matter and every bhp counts. I fitted water to my car purely because at flat-out speeds although it wasn't detting it was hitting 1000 degC. I fitted water, injecting at the amount shown and never saw over 900 which I was happy with. There was no point in injecting any more. I never noticed any loss in power and neiter did I feel any gain. I felt that it did the job perfectly. It's still not the best solution because pumps can fail as can other parts in the system but I was happy to keep an eye on EGT's (and the 3 led WI diagnostic system) more than I was to try and get an even bigger intercooler in there along with the associated costs. As for claiming higer bhp when mixing methonol (or any other alcohol) with the water think back to just how much you are injecting.... Just something to think about. Cheers Nathan TDI PLC

Hi Pete, What sort of maximum cost would you be prepared to pay to make it worth your while........? As an aside, there ARE plenty of OE solonoids from Scoobies to EVO's to allsorts but many of them won't react fast enough for any real meaningful boost control. Most OE boost control systems are crude at best, failing miserably at worst, especially at heightened boost levels. Not sure on the Lotus one though Darren. Might be worth a go. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC

Hi Julian, I've never seen the Recaro upgrade available as 'electric' but I know that they are indeed adjustable for both fore-aft movement as well as tilt. Very nice seats too by all accounts. Even nicer when trimmed in leather ;-) Hope this helps. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC

Ah...thats better....you know it makes sense ;-) I must admit- I take my hat off to you for being able to hit 1.95 bar on pump fuel without EGT's going crazy from loads of ign retard. I do see your logic with regards to using an engine blow-up as an excuse for going forged though...honestly I do...;-) Cheers Nathan TDI PLC

Agreed. Stock settings are pretty good for the majority of inlet cams for road use. OK, 272's can be played with a little but like you say you do have a bit of a trade-off at other points. We nearly always run between 2 and 3 degrees advance on the exhaust with 264's though- it gets on the boost earlier but you have to be careful and watch EGT's.... Nice figures Paul. Only thing I would mention is that 1.75 bar seems a little high though- I'm sure with some further tweaking you could make the same power with less boost. Do you have forged pistons and rods? Cheers, Nathan.

Sorry Matt, only just saw this.. It all depends on what injectors the car has. If it has stock injectors then yes the easiest thing to do it remove the F-Con from the equation which is simple. Take the F-con and loom out of the loop then just plug the OE loom directly into the OE ECU. Fit a cat and off you go. This assumes that the cat is indeed OK condition and the injectors are stock. As has been suggested, if the injectors are bigger then removing the F-Con will more than likely make the situation worse. I hear what you are saying about closed loop Matt but I very much doubt if the stock ECU will send a small enough signal to the injectors. Again, it all comes down to what size they are. I guess the thing is that it won't cost anything to try so give it a go! You won't do any damage. It IS possible you could pop the ECU if it does have bigger injectors without a resistor pack on there but keep the revs down (ie duty cycle) and you will be fine. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC

Hi Mark, If you are interested we can carry out whatever mapping work an F-Con 5/F-Con S requires. the only problem is that we are rammed for 6 weeks so if that is too long for you the only other places I can suggest are SAS or Abbey. As for fuelling, try and find out what the car has. If it is on stock injectors then it really needs to have some work done on it. We don't really use anything other than HKS 1000cc ones these days for big single/twin conversions. We now have several maps and can get them to idle virtually like a standard car. Best regards, Nathan TDI PLC

Mike, Go to http://www.hkseurope.com (ooh getting good at this vB stuff ;-) and then click on 'instructions'. You can then download the EVC-IV setup and instruction manual. Turning the unit off is as simple as pressing the 'Pwr' button ;-) Regards, Nathan TDI PLC

Agreed. It appears that the Mk4 ignition isn't as bullet proof as we at first thought. One of our big twin customers bought an HKS Twin Power ignition amplifier off us purely because he was having ignition problems when injecting NOS on full boost (he was already using brand new HKS S45i's). The Twin Power cured it, but surprisingly he also mentioned that the driveability off-gas was noticeably improved. Full boost runs felt much stronger and the mid-range far more 'crisp'. I must admit that there is more to a spark than just whether it fires or not. A lot of folks think everything is fine if there are no misfires but it seems that you can indeed improve even a non-missfire situation. Like Pete says, it does sound like your problem is with fuel cut but at least make sure you have decent plugs in the car. And, FWIW, I've yet to see a 3 quid plug perform as good as a 15 quid HKS or Blitz iridium jobbie. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC

Fuel cut isn't just dependant on boost level. The length of time that the vehicle stays at that boost level is also taken into account. We're not talking big differences in time, but it may just be enough to explain why it didn't cut at 1.3. Your only real option is to carry out a test in both MANU and regular modes. BTW, I wouldn't run stock turbos beyond 1.2 anyway. Just my 2p. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC

Don't forget that even when, and if, the UniChip becomes available for the Mk4 (I've been told a few times by Gerry at Unichip that it's 'coming along') it is still a 'cludge' in that it can't go beyond the stock maps. Thus, if you are maxing out the MAP sensor due to high boost it won't get any more fuel in no matter what you do, even if the injectors are only at half chat. It would be ideal for those using larger injectors on the stock ECU to trim the fuel down though. Thats not bad-mouthing the UniChip at all. Indeed, it's a fine product, especially at the price; and we have used literally hundreds of them on cars whose owners want something more than the (overpriced IMO) abilities of something like a Superchip. 'Proper' ECU's like the HKS F-CON are able to overcome the headroom problems of the stock ECU by either running their own extended range MAP sensor (say 3 bar) or even more simply by re-scaling the original signal from the OE MAP sensor, but obviously at the cost of accuracy. This is on top of being able to directly access the injector signals themselves. That is, an F-CON is also it's own injector driver, something which a cludge is unlikely to be able to do. In short, if you are in the market for an ECU make sure it can at least run the injectors at whatever duty cycle you want, irrespective of what the stock ECU is saying. Simple signal-altering devices like Unichips, Apexi Super AFC's and HKS Super AFR's have their place but on most Japanese turbo cars with boost upgrades their abilities are limited. Cheers, Nathan TDI PLC