hey, I live...
I'm posting this from a motel 6 near washington, PA.
It's been a wild ride; BIG THANKS to doug / sheepdog and his bro for making the 2.5 hour drive TWICE down to see me.
I wanna say right away that this isn't some BS infomercial type thing for Jim Rowe, and his son teddy and court... they are really phenomenal people and treated me like family. If I were to say everything good about them that I experienced in the week (!) I was out there... it would be 10+ pages of posts and you still might not get the whole picture... let's just say they are on the approved vendor list.
Jim's operation is a little unusual... but so are his results.
I've been away from home and work for awhile, and I really had to get back to new york... unfortunately I could not spend another day out to finish tuning the car... sad, I know.
so right now:
- the engine is running on essentially a stock chip. Mark D. made some minor timing adjustments, raised the idle, disabled the O2 sensor, and raised the rev limit to around 7600 rpm or so.
- the engine is also technically, still in it's break-in phase... although...
- our test runs were made on 89 octane gas
- my original AFM was screwed... court was able to source one on a saturday night in this tiny town of 1805 people. Ernest is a hillbilly with a semi-non-running 318iS who lives on the outskirts of richland, MO. What are the odds?
While court was removing the AFM, ernest was shooting at turtles with a rifle. They sneak into his pond and eat the minnows and other fish he breeds.
- And finally... the fuel regulator was upgraded to 3.5 bar with 24# injectors (btw, the 4 pintle injectors aren't really meant for our cars, more on that later)
so, we did some test runs.
All I can say is that the overall performance is phenomenal. Doug drove the car friday night and the results we got saturday with a working AFM were even better.
While doing data capture and driving the thing flat out, all I can say is that the thing feels like it revs instantly and could keep revving forever... it makes solid accelleration from 3500 rpm clear up to around 7600 rpm ...the powerband is crazy wide.
Shifting the car at 7600 while doing 120+ down a twisty country road cost me some underpants.
They don't have a dyno on premises, and the dyno they use in town was closed at the time... we g-tech'd the car, and our best run looked almost exactly like doug's figures:
1/4 mile: 14.4 seconds at 98 mph.
(this is on a real road (not a track), 89 octane gas, street tires, with basically a STOCK chip and a barn-door teeny weeny M42 AFM)
Honestly, I personally don't really give a hoot about the 1/4 mile time and speed, but hopefully it helps keep things in perspective.
The craziest thing is that after driving all day yesterday (MO to PA) ...even with my oxygen sensor disabled... with this engine (larger displacement, more fuel pressure, larger injectors)
MY GAS MILEAGE WENT UP about 15-20%.
Driving 80 mph (4000 rpm in 5th) in my old car, I would get around 27-28... now, 80 mph I'm getting like... 32-33 mpg.
I'll try to post more deets as soon as I am back in NYC.
thanks everyone for your interest and support. All I can say is that even naturally aspirated, the M42 has tremendous potential. I think with some additional tuning and related bits... a 14 second / 100 mph car isn't so far off.
