[Guest]

Hi, I'm new to all of this, so forgive me if anything seems a bit naiive.

I recently asked a guy who works for a well known Japanese tuning company about doing some subtle tuning of my 5. This guy has a lot of Group N and WRC Mitsi experience, so should know his stuff.

He told me that the ECU is non-programmable (as I've seen from recent Power Eng threads), however a quick way of getting more horse is to increase boost. He said that the standard car is conservatively blown (around 1 bar) and that running 1.5ish will present no problems for the rest of the engine. Great, so what next?

His reply was that a simple mod can be made to the boost solenoid (I think), the one with two small side-by-side hose ports. Inside one of the ports there is a small restrictor. Remove this, and you'll be running about 1.5 bar. You can also kiss goodbye to whatever paltry fuel economy that you managed before.

He did qualify all of this by saying that this isn't the proper way of doing things, but an extra ?0BHP for no pounds is fairly good value for money. My questions are :

1) Is this true?
2) If so, will it shaft my engine?

Thanks in advance for any comments.

 

[Guest]

Dogger,if you remove the restrictor you should achieve 1.3bar it you have done the exhaust and induction.If you are running the stadard ECU however you will experience fuel cuts not good for the engine or your back.

The boost curve will also be spiky and inconsistent.Its better to either fit a boost controller or change the size of the brass restrictor which is located in the small diameter pipe which goes into the T-Piece by the actuator,a0.9 should give you 1.5 bar ish might be slightly less.But you will need to either have a PE re-map ECU or purchase one of the many other ECU options avaliable,many of us have our own views on what is considered the best choice.Running higher boost also means that really you should look at uprating the fuelling.

Your friend was right in saying you can run 1.5 bar with standard engine internals many do,but you would need to consider the above it is not as simplistic as you have been lead to believe.

Look at some of the posts in the technical section ,there are some very knowledgeable guys on this forum and most of your questions have already been researched and answered by others.

Good Luck
Barry

 

[Guest]

Paul,
If you do a search on this forum (on grommet or restrictor or fuel cut ) you should find a lot of discussion on this subject, including instructions on how to remove the grommet.
In summary, yes this is true - there is a removable grommet in the boost solenoid, which will result in an increase of boost when removed. I'm sure other people with more knowledge then I will reply with more information.
IMHO, this is not a particularly smart way to increase boost. You really need to have a boost gauge to accurately determine if you are running safe boost levels after removing the grommet. There have been cases where owners have removed this grommet only to suffer from severe fuel cut due to the standard ECU hitting it's over boost point. Cutting off fuel is probably the best way to quickly shaft your engine.
Hope this helps...

 

[Guest]

Waz and Matthew have pretty much said it all and very well put too.
The previous owner of my E6 removed the 'grommet' (restrictor) for more power and didn't have clue about fuel cuts. I had the car for 2 months and ended up with a bent con-rod, holed block and bent valves all because he read on here that removing the 'grommet' was a good thing, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. If people ask me how to remove the 'grommet' I simply don't tell them and to be honest I find it irresponsible of other people to explain how to do without stating ALL the possible problems associated with it.
I strongly advise that people do not remove the 'grommet', it is not worth the hassle for the marginal performance gain you get, do your mods the correct way. You should not even consider touching the boost levels without a Boost Gauge fitted.

 

[Guest]

i removed mine on standard 6 and ahad very few problems a couple of cuts on very cold days. it dynoed at 285. but i have since returned it. the car feels almost identical so no point really.

 

[Guest]

whilst i agree with both colin and Rob about the safety aspects of removing the grommet, saying a that a boost increase from 0.8 to even a low 1.15 makes not difference is i feel not correct.

i set my car for 0.8 around town (everyday driving), but when we are out for a meet it gets put up to nearer 1.4, the difference is tremendous, even cars which have the boost set to just below the fuel cut, feel much quicker than the stock cars.

i agree it is not the best way of modifying the boost as you can get quite high spikes with the grommet mod (before i fitted the blitz, i could quite easily boost of the guage (1.5)).

as colin says get a guage and play it safe

lee

 

[Guest]

Dogger, it would be interesting to see where this chap works and who he represents, as his advice is not of sound mind. Maybe he is setting you up as a future customer for engine repairs work.

Any tuner worth their salt would know of the pitfalls of such a 'small' mod.

Time to make some more calls to other tuners mate. You'll get plenty of recommendations on here from tried and tested people.