update time,
As you mave have seen Jim, Liam (Hydrocobra) and myself stripped a car yesterday for its LPG. As an added bonus it happened to be a TCT engine so the swapover would be that much easier.. or so i thought, more on that later.
It also had a 'chipped' ecu, now i'm usualy very dubious of such claims as its a very difficult claim to prove/disprove the validity of this. but the rest of the deal was good without this little sweetener so i thought at worst i'd end up with a spare TCT ecu. After getting peeved with the XM exhaust i decided to fit the ecu this afternoon, i took it out for a spin and was very disapointed, it obviously wasn't oem as it was different to the original ecu, it felt a lot flatter really down on power. The setup it came from was with the OEM boost controller so i figured that maybe it was setup for a lot more boost than i was running so i pulled over and upped the boost to a point that would normally send the ec into a tizz and took her for a run...
MY GOD was there a power boost, and with no ECU light on she was happy with the boost levels, i've driven a lot of quick cars and this is easily the quickest thing i've driven, will quite happily destroy a t5.
I *should* have left it there, I actually now wish I had
I decided to up the boost some more, with the logic being that if there was too much boost the engine management light would come on and I would wind it back accordingly. 1st and 2nd gears were very impressive and the normally very settled chassis was given some serious problems getting those rampant horses onto the tarmac. 3rd gear came and we hit full boost, then BANG. Cue swearing.
Frustrating isnt the word for it i can assure you. i was about 4 miles from home and we now had a very loud booming sound from the engine. so not terminal, the turbo was a LOT louder. Annoyingly there was nowhere to pull over so i had to limp back, from the sounds I couldn't work out if it was a turbo boost pipe or an exhaust problem.
I got her back to the house and jacked her up and had a look under the car and found the centre section of the exhaust resting on the crossmember, cue more swearing. once it'd cooled down i had a closer look and discovered that the flange and backbox were both actually ok and that a monkey had fitted the joint previously but all in all i suspect that some paste and a new clamp should have us all sorted. For the 10 or so seconds that the new boost levels were running i was VERY impressed. If i can find the time i'm tempted to go and stick it on a rolling road
Ok, LPG. on the one hand a fair simple job, the installation looks about 90% neat so i suspect a friday morning job with a rush to finish the last few bits as the chip van came round..... injector 4's wiring has been bodged with spade connectors onto the injector so i'll be repairing that properly.
generally though it doesnt look like too harder job, maybe 90mins work once the tank is on. i'm not joking. Oh, one other little thing. for some reason unbeknown to myself the "fitter" decided that the inlet wasnt the best place to place the LPG injection, that the cylindar head was a much better place. so now i have to drill and tap the inlet as i shant be swapping heads.....
onwards and upwards though
BIG BIG thanks to Jim and Liam though
Took mine out for a very pleasurable spin this evening... Not without incident though, had to replace the plip batteries. That's twice now since I've owned it... Shows how long, I've never kept a Xantia for so long as I have my Activa...
