Adding extra HP to RRC

[roverturbo]

Any ideas wat I can do to gain a few HP, without breaking the bank

cheers alot

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

er

Wot engine is it to start with ?

Nige

[roverturbo]

3.9L v8 EFI

[FridgeFreezer]

Next question - what size is the bank?

[roverturbo]

wat u mean by bank?

[FridgeFreezer]

You said you didn't want to break the bank

Are we talking £10, £100, £1000...?

Starter for £10 - buy a bottle of Redex

[roverturbo]

oh sorry lol, my brain was in technical mode, i thought u meant sumthing on the car lol..probs in the range of 100-1000 actually..any nifty gadgets like, gota K&N filter installed, that runs directly off the MAF meter, not sure wat else will add a few HP

??

[V8david]

If you're venturing into the engine you could look at performance camshafts.

[roverturbo]

i heard about that, wat kind of price range are they in? and are they all compatible with the engine?

[V8david]

I really don't know much about it. I've heard about it. Have a look here camshaft. I'm sure someone who knows more about it will be along soon! But with a budget of up to £1000 you should be able to do something good!

[roverturbo]

cheers mate

[roverturbo]

all other ideas are very welcome

[Young bobtail Rhys]

Have been informed that K&N's can reduce more HP than gain if not correctly setup with the ecu and if they are not cleaned/serviced regulary, clog up and restrict air flow

Was speaking to John from Brunel about this. ITG is a good one

Also, the tubular 4 branch manifolds are a good upgrade, although the engine would benefit from setting up/fueling correctly for any system. Still works good though, I have the janspeed ones.

[roverturbo]

my K&N runs directly off the MAF meter, since theres no room for a pipe to run off it, any idea how u wud set it up incorrectly? i did feel a diff in acceleration, in a positive way, and it did sound a bit gruntier, i think it may be alredy, manifold upgrade is a gud idea, any idea how much more performance that will give me?

thanks

[Young bobtail Rhys]

Manifolds- not a lot more power, but more responsivness and freeer reving. Which I like

[aaron_h]

You could look into scrapping off the "Old Technology" 14CUX ECU in favour of a Megasquirt ECU.

This way you can tune it your self also if your budget is £1000 ish excluding labour and tuning time you could probably fit megasquirt for under £500. You could change ignition to Ford EDIS 8 were you will be able to tune ingition maps too. Much more efficient then the limmited coil and Dizzy. Its alot better in water too.

I have noticed that there are a few Megasquirt fans on here but not been around that long myself to talk to everyone however theres a guy at extraefi.co.uk named Phillip Ringwood who can sort you out with the following

A manufactured ECU (Megasquirt is kit form and requires building)

Innovative Technology LC-1 Wideband Lambda sensor (Required for tuning)

An air temp sensor

Maybe someone from here can help you build one from kit form for a better price.

At the moment I am 25% through executing the old LUCAS 4CU ECU and Flapper type AFM in favour of Megasquirt with EDIS in the pipeline for later on

Now im told that the 3.5 RV8 With Lucas 4cu and flapper AFM is in the region of 135BHP???? Someone please correct this if im wrong

Once the Megasquirt is fitted.... I have access to a DYNO so i will let you know any improvements to the above. I cant DYNO the 4CU because the Dyno was still being built when i started removing it

[Escape]

I really don't know much about it. I've heard about it. Have a look here camshaft. I'm sure someone who knows more about it will be along soon! But with a budget of up to £1000 you should be able to do something good!

What he says.

Camshaft is a good place to start, along with port matching heads and manifolds. Check out BBC's excellent thread in the technical archive!

But beofre you start spending, do you want more top-end horsepower or more torque low down?

I'm also trying to squeeze some more performance (mainy torque) from my V8, starting with a performance camshaft. You can follow the progress here.

K&N with cold-air intake on the side and a SS sport exhaust system are already fitted.

[FridgeFreezer]

Since someone brought it up, I'm currently selling MegaSquirt ECU's, EDIS-8 units, wiring tails, looms... check the classifieds section.

I can confirm that tuned properly it makes more power than the 14CU setup, which made more power than the Weber 500, which made more power than the Holley 390...

DIY'ing it you can do an install for under £500 and IMHO it's one of the best mods you can do, and an excellent start to doing more as you can re-tune the engine as much as you like, for free, to get the best out of camshafts, heads, etc.

[aaron_h]

At the end of the day you can fit different heads, cam shafts followers etc but its the ECU that deals with fueling all of this.

Yes there are ways of fooling the ECU into thinking more air is going or that the air going in is cooler and therefore more dense and as a result it will inject more fuel.

I would say the place to start with an EFI engine is to Megasquirt it

This way you can get the full potential from further mods

It would be different if you were running on Carbs as you can tune them were you cant really with the factory ECU.

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

1st

Whats the state of the engine generally, no point tunning something thats way off good condition ?

Do a full compression check, if variances then rings and degalze or even give up and buy 4.6 THL Block assembly.

Check Camshaft and Lifters for wear, replace with a more suitable grunt cam and new lifters pushrods etc

Whats the oil pressure like hot / cold at TO ?

Have heads checked and mild clean up of ports and flashings

Balance the engine internals if your going to get revvy esp if apart

Fit duplex chain and timing gears ARB bopttom ends studs and head studs

What is the compression of the engine there are options, maybe a skim for more compression

Rechip of the ECU by Mark Adams or MS (bout the same cost MS More work)

Composite head and valley gaskets

Megasquirt is a strong contender but 1st you need a A1 Solid basis to work up from

Nige

[vougese39]

bolting bits on to a worn engine will be a recipe for engine problems though the V8 will take quite a lot of abuse when in a worn state you will not rearly benefit form the addons due to engine wear.(classic point my dad had a 110 3.5 v8 which i had moded over the years but it was getting hard to start when cold did a comp test found it only had 55 psi on the cyclinders replaced the engine standard then added the mods back big improvments were made and the economey when up aswell)

starting on the engine if it has a rearly good bottom end i would be inclined to decoke and relap the valves if you can afford newer heads fit the latter type as they have the smaller cc heads better power even some porting won't go a mis flowing the the inlet manifold and increasing the trumpet size to allow more air in is good even a new plenum top with a bigger throttle butter fly as well tubbular manifolds k&n kenlowe fans ecu chipped mine is running close to 300 but is mostly down to a 300 bhp chip in the ecu and the bonus is a steady 70 run 22.5 mpg 17@town

[FridgeFreezer]

Personally I'd differ slightly:

A bigger throttle butterfly is unnecessary, all the way to 4.6 LR fitted exactly the same diameter butterfly and it seems to work OK, unless you're building a high-revving racy engine for a kit-car or something. For a 2-ton range Rover you want torques not screaming BHP.

K&N Filters I dislike as they seem to achieve higher flow by just not filtering anything out particularly well. They also seem to disagree with hotwire MAFs as the filter oil coats the element. I'd find a bigger standard air filter (200TDi are much bigger than stock RR and 110 V8 ones are the size of a dustbin), then you have standard LR filters cheaply available and which actually stop things smaller than your cat being sucked into your engine.

ECU chipping I dislike because it's more money than MegaSquirt and you can't change the tune without re-chipping, which will also never be as close as an MS that's been tuned to your engine by you. Granted it's a bit easier, but these days MS isn't rocket science and people on this forum can supply a pretty good fuel & spark map via e-mail to get you started.

Kenlowe fans are overpriced and the stats are horrid and unreliable, I'd find some fans from the scrappy and fit an X-switch.

Is "300bhp chip" a trade name, because I don't think I've seen a 3.9 crack 300bhp without forced induction and would be interested to see how it's done.

[Bull Bar Cowboy]

3.9 @ 300bhp with just a chip .................. ..................... so what do you think the torque is ?

Trust me when I say that to get that sort of power you are looking at a solid lifter cam, fully ported and flowed heads, larger inlet valves, forged pistons, flowed inlet manifold, larger throttle body, and substantial work to the bottom end. RV8's at this sort of power (usually 4.5, 4.6, or 5L) are very difficult to live with, as the high overlap cam gives you an idle of 1000 - 1500 rpm and the drivability power band is a bit narrow. All of the above mods on a 3.9 will give you about 250 ponies........................BTW ignore TVR figures as they are renowned for being a little optimistic...........

I think you night be very disappointed if you ran it on a dyno..................

[aaron_h]

I agree with fridge, unless you want to keep your engine management standard for some reason

Fitting a performance chip on a rv8 is pointless when megasquirt is available, now on a diesel such as the td5 it might be worth it

Think of it as a diagnostic point when it all goes wrong the factory fitted ecu cant do a great deal to help,

However you can almost see what is happening inside your engine on screen with MS.

Also if you wanted to be impressive you could build an incar pc to display you guages in mega tune

[V8 Freak]

ecu chipped mine is running close to 300 but is mostly down to a 300 bhp chip in the ecu and the bonus is a steady 70 run 22.5 mpg 17@town

Looks like I went at this all wrong...

I thought maybe big number of CC's, oversized (45mm) shortened trumpets, ported inlet manifold matched to the ported heads with double sprung over sized valves, tubular headers and a generous dose of Omex would have got my 4.6 to 250ish.. Maybe !!!

Little did I know I may have had the option of a Hotwire chip, polished Dizzy and I could have had loads more....

Pod.... Where are you man.. You sold me a duffan !! Or is it that I have unbranded cooling fans !

Neil

(Nige..... Cancel that tuning for MS matey.. I'm ripping the hotwire loom back off the old 3.9 and doing it proper...)