"mark" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:2SGEc.3109$iN2.1929@newsfe2-win...
> as anybody chipped their td5 disco.I'm thinking of having one.Don't know
> weather to have a tunning box(piggy back chip) or ecu chip remapped.Any
help
> would be appreciated.A friend of mine has had his done by superchip works
> great (slightly better on fuel increased torque)
Yes, I have (and the insurers know about it as well.) Mine's a '99 manual.
I tried the Superchips chip and was pretty impressed. It drove very well.
But speaking to Superchips, it seems they're not doing anything particularly
clever - they're adjusting the injector pulse length.
I then looked at some torque curves and decided the van Aaken Smartbox would
probably be a better bet. I've been running it for about 4 months, so I've
had a chance to get used to it. At first I found it was pretty naff,
actually, but recently I've had it back to van Aaken and they've fiddled
with it, and it's much better. The extra power/torque comes in at about
1800rpm, which is a bit high really, but if you look at everybody else's
versions, none of them seem to do much below that, which is a shame.
The van Aaken box has jumper settings so you can tweak it by hand. It has 4
settings (one of which is 0 = "don't change anything"). The first setting,
which is what they supplied it on, will make the engine run nice and
smoothly but doesn't produce a huge difference in performance. It also made
mine run slightly more economically. The second setting, which I'm using
now, feels good and doesn't smoke too much, but I've found my economy
slightly worse than it was before. The third setting makes it run like a
beast, but produces clouds of black smoke and economy in the early 20s, so
I've only tried it once.
Again, the Smartbox is only changing the injector pulse length. In theory,
a reprogammed TD5 ECU can alter the fuelling, timing & turbo boost pressure.
So neither Superchips nor van Aaken are making the most of the tools they
have to work with. Autologic/Diagnos have their own modification too, which
I've heard is a lot more ambitious than the others in terms of what it
changes - although Diagnos haven't been able to confirm to me exactly what
they're fiddling with. This looks, on the face of it, to be the one to look
at, but I've not tried it. It's a reprogram, rather than a module, so
you'll need a flash-upgradeable ECU (about £330 if you don't already have
one) to take advantage.
There's also a thing called a Dastek Powerplug (available from Discoparts),
which I've not tried, but shows pretty big torque gains on the curves they
publicise. And there's Jeremy Fearn, who seems to do the most extreme
things to a TD5, but it's up to you how far you want to push the envelope.
I've found the torque / power curves from the different manufacturers are
all over the place. In some tests, the modified car isn't as powerful as
the unmodified curve in some of the others. I've plotted the curves from
all the above in an Excel spreadsheet,
www.lobsternet.org/discoveryii/perf.xls, take a look and you'll see what I
mean. I've tried to normalise these by plotting the "Delta" performance
between each individual company's unmodified vehicle and the modified one,
but quite honestly I think these curves are largely rubbish.
For example, van Aaken's curves show an increase in torque starting at
1000rpm, and levelling out at 1750 - looks good on paper, but in reality the
box doesn't seem to do *anything at all* before it gets to 1800rpm.
Speaking to van Aaken seems to corroborate this. I must ask them why their
curve tells me different things than their engineers.
One thing to consider is do you want more power, or torque - for example,
Superchips say they produce more power than van Aaken, but van Aaken claim
to produce more torque than Superchips. In the Disco you're really looking
for torque. But having said this, you'll really struggle to differentiate
the torque between the different companies' claimed improvements, because
they all use different testing kit and methods. So even if somebody says
they're producing bags of torque, don't take their word for it. Best thing
is to try them, if you can. Bear in mind your insurer may charge extra for
upping the power - mine ups the premium in bands depending on the power
difference - but won't even understand the word "torque".
If I were you I'd try the Diagnos upgrade and see what you think. I'd be
interested to know what it's like, particularly if you can compare it to the
Superchip or one of the others.
Have fun,
David
The one I tried was the AutoLogic one. There's some details/
