THE POWER AND THE GLORY- ZX

[Turboselecta]

This is almost certainly a silly question anyway & engendered as much by a lazy approach to site searching as anything else but........ has anyone any experience of fitting one of the 'performance enhancing' modules to the ZX TD?? You know the kind of thing, HUGE increases in bhp AND better fuel economy(!). I've always had trouble believing that combination, conventional wisdom insists that if you want to go faster, you have to use more fuel.
The notion that anybody should want to go faster in anything, especially a ZX diesel, is of course a nonsense- we should all be slowing down, not speeding up!! Surely the ZX oil-burner is all about sedate cruising, built for comfort, not speed

[Peter.N.]

I didn't think any of the ZXs had electronic management? There is a case for improved power to also improve economy, that is that if you can increase the low down torque you have to change down less and thus keep the revs lower, this is brilliantly illustrated by the fact that the 2.1 engine is almost always more economical than the 1.9, it has masses of low down torque and for that reason is also higher geared.

You can increase the torque on the ZX by increasing the overall fuelling by adjusting the pump maximum output screw, easy on a Bosch pump, not so easy but possible on a Lucas/CAV. The problem with this is that if you overdo it it will smoke and probably fail the MOT, also smoke is a sign of incomplete combustion - again not helping the fuel consumption.

The tuning chips for fully electronic management systems do work well, but if you use the extra power you will increase the fuel consumption, increasing the turbo boost on the ZX will improve the performance but only at high revs which will definitly increase consumption.

[citronut]

i know nout about these chips, but i have had experiance of very much improoved power to my old BX estate 1.9 N/A D,

when the head gasket failed my X workshop landlord, who dose cylinder head work for a lot of racing people across the country, gas flowed the head, even though the car used to get up and go previous to this, i found it excelerated far quicker and smoother throughout the range, also it made her able to drive round town at 30mph in 4th gear, wear citroens usualy dont like this,

so in doing this it made her faster (not much more top end ) and more economical, as it bought the revs down in most gears

regards malcolm

[Peter.N.]

My son came in this morning with his P100 pick up, the performance has never been very good so I opened up the fuel screw, 'it goes like the clappers' he said 'but I got pulled by the police because of the smoke'. We never normally see the police here being a very rural area, marvelous isn't it. Anyway he was very nice and just said get it fixed, so I am just about to do that.

[deian]

More 'speed' doesn't necessarily mean more fuel. Acceleration is due to torque, the bhp keep the torque going... i.e bhp is a measurment of power over time.

So if you can increase the torque, theoretically you can go faster without using more fuel.

I had a ZX not so long ago, and it had the bosch fuel pump, and I whacked the fueling up until it smoked quite a bit, and it constantly dragged it's bum on the floor when accelerating. It did use more fuel yes, but the gain in torque I had was more than the increase in fuel consumption (veggie oil at the time). I did it for fun and education, not to choke the boy racers.

So yes it is possible, shouldn't be too hard, no need for a piggy back unit in a ZX though.