6th June 2008: Once the downpipe, wideband Lambda, engine tray, Link G3 and boost solenoid were fitted, it was time to get the car set up. There was a small delay as the rolling road were booked up (always a good sign!), but everything was arranged for the Friday, with me coming down to help out with the road mapping and watch the dyno mapping session.

When I got to Rogue Motorsport, my car was ready to go, all the bits installed, with a basic (safe, rich) map loaded into the ECU from a car with similar mods. I already had a full tank of Shell V-Power fuel. The dyno session was to be done at Race Shack in Tewkesbury, giving us plenty of time to do some road mapping on the way there. Lyndon from Rogue Motorsports connected up his laptop to the Link G3 and off we went. The car seemed pretty smooth from the beginning, just driving on low throttle until we got to the bigger roads. The mapping then started, requiring me to hold certain revs/throttle positions at various speeds while Lyndon modified the various maps and settings on the laptop. Once that was done, we did a series of 'power runs', starting with the ECU set to low boost (~10psi), then slowly increasing the duty cycle of the boost solenoid until we were up to ~17psi, all the time Lyndon was listening to the 'knock box' which is a Mic/Amp/Headphone setup for listening the the engine for knock (and any number of other problems). That done, and with Lyndon prtty happy with the map, we continued to the Race Shack.

Once at Race Shack, Boosty was driven onto the rolling road platform, the system used is a Mustang Dynamometer, which measures and reports at the wheel figures. Matty Walker ran the dyno while Lyndon did the driving / mapping on the rollers. After 30 minutes of mapping (and a very big bang with big flames from the exhaust when the revs hit the hard cut rev limiter that made us all jump), the inlet temps were getting a bit high at 65°C, due to both low airflow due to being stationary, and as it was a warm day. We stopped for half an hour to let everything cool down, while Matty showed me his pride and joy, a Karmann Ghia drag car, complete with tubular chassis, carbon fibre panels everywhere (apart from the shell), custom paintwork, and a very nice engine with a massive chargecooler with icebox. Then the obligatory cup of tea.

We went back to they dyno, and did another few runs, inlet temps down a bit to 55°C. The final run, Boosty made 238bhp / 224ftlb at the wheels at 17psi. Given that the Mustang dyno is well known for under-reading, and also doesn't try to estimate flywheel figures, I'd estimate that this equates to ~300bhp flywheel (+/- 10bhp). I'll attend an MR2 dyno day soon to get some comparisons with other cars, for now, I'm happy with that figure :)

As the car is mapped on V-Power, if I end up with regular 95 petrol, then I'll need to turn the boost down a bit, but those occasions should be pretty rare as you can get V-Power most places now.

The drive home was great, the car feels so smooth, less lag than before (de-cat), loads more mid range torque, and loads more power at the top end. The car really feels like I need another gear now, as 3rd feels like 2nd used to, 4th like 3rd and 5th like 4th. I need to learn that I don't need full throttle to overtake cars, 1/4 throttle is quite sufficient! I'm not sure how this has affected the mpg yet, as I've (understandably) been quite heavy on the throttle so far. Even with my heavy foot, it does seem to have done ~20 miles more on the first half tank.

The exhaust note is quite a bit louder than it used to be thanks to the de-cat, it's still fine in the car, not sure about the neighbours though! Full throttle with the T-bars out has a very nice note.

The Rev6 Engine Fan Lid sucks out a huge amount of hot air, I'm certain that this will drop my intake temperature / overall engine temp. The fans are quite loud, especially combined with the SPAL fan on my Berk Tech intercooler, but they sound purposeful and draw lots of looks as you pull into the motorway services :)

The drive back from the Dyno gave intake temps of ~42° which is quite reasonable for a warm day with a side mount IC. As it was up to 65°C on the Dyno, I wonder how the stock IC would have faired. I remember seeing a comparison of intake temps from the stock IC vs Greddy IC at stock boost and 15psi on a Rev1, and I'm sure the stock IC was over 100°C at 15psi. If I find the link to that test, I'll link it in here. I don't think there's a lot more I can do (or need to do) to drop the intake temperature without going for a full boot mount IC (which is not necessary for my application). A chargecooler would be better at slow speeds, in traffic / town, but on the open road with lots of airflow, there won't be much difference between my Berk IC and a chargecooler. I'm going to get some temperature monitoring kit and record the temps either side of the IC and ambient. Will start a new topic when I do this and post up the results.

A big thanks to Lyndon, Matt, and Patrick at Rogue Motorsports, and to Matty Walker at Race Shack.