MartinSullivan
31st August 2005, 06:10 PM
As some of you know I have been modifying my car over the past 18 months or so , starting off with the usual air filter, exhaust and remap and then getting a little more extreme with 17% pulleys, larger intercooler, spax suspension etc etc. I have now got the car to a stage where I am running out of things to modify without getting into the heart of the engine for ported heads and modified cranks – all of which cost considerable amounts of money.
Having done a bit of reading I decided that the last two things I could easily change with out spending too much were a modified throttle body and some larger injectors. Having done my research I decided to give NMS sponsor Essentialmini a shout to see what they could hook me up with. As well as providing chip tuning products and carbon fibre styling Essentialmini are also the UK distributor for M7 tuning products from America. Now for those of you who haven’t heard of M7 they are a well respected tuner with an interesting and well engineered product range.
As ever Simon at Essential was helpful and after a brief discussion he offered to relieve me of a grand total of £370 in return for a M7 modified throttle body and some M7 400cc injectors. M7 take the items on an exchange basis, so there is a small deposit to pay on placing the order which is refunded once your old items are returned to Simon. The items were out of the stock in the UK but were delivered from the US to my desk within one working week.
In addition to the throttle body and injectors I also applied for one of the new MTH tuner maps to cover the modifications to my car. As many of you know I have run my car on MTH for getting on for 18 months now , and was intrigued to see how much more power and torque the new tuner map could give me.
Upon opening the package I was impressed with the quality of the workmanship on the throttle body. Essentially what M7 have done is bored out the opening of the throttle body from the standard 57mm to a much more impressive 63mm (who says size doesn’t matter ;) ) using a stack cut from top to bottom. This larger orifice allows the throttle body to supply more air to the engine, which of course equals more power. It also offers the added benefit of improved throttle response.
The 400cc injectors were nothing special to look at, they look exactly the same as the standard items but the chamber is capable of supplying more fuel to the engine under load. The upgraded 210 BHP JCW kit includes some new 380cc injectors , so of course I had to go one bigger ;) Prior to installing the injectors I had got into situations where I felt that the car was not receiving enough fuel so I was hoping that this modification would offer some good returns.
The Map was provided via email from Simon. Obviously I have access already to the cable required to download the ECU information from the car, once done I emailed it to Simon and detailed what modifications had been done to the car. Within an hour I had received the modified map back into my email box, that in itself is a big improvement over the week or so that I sometimes had to wait for a modified map back from MTH in the early days. Simon is also able to offer help and advice to users – something that was sometimes a little hard to get when MTH was a “hobbyist” item. Both these things plus the fact that EssentialMini offer the tuner version of the MTH map justify the extra expense, especially when the cost is still considerably lower than most other tuning companies out there.
OK installation was carried out with the assistance of a friend. Nothing too hard really, no need for jacks or axel stands – just removal of the cars intercooler. The whole thing, including the ecu download was completed in about 2 hours , including a couple of tea breaks. Worst part was removing the fuel rail prior to installing the injectors , this did involve spilling a fair bit of fuel all over the garden ;)
Now for the testing :D Well what can I say – I’m Lovin It :D:D:cool:
The car pulls even better from the line and continues all
Having done a bit of reading I decided that the last two things I could easily change with out spending too much were a modified throttle body and some larger injectors. Having done my research I decided to give NMS sponsor Essentialmini a shout to see what they could hook me up with. As well as providing chip tuning products and carbon fibre styling Essentialmini are also the UK distributor for M7 tuning products from America. Now for those of you who haven’t heard of M7 they are a well respected tuner with an interesting and well engineered product range.
As ever Simon at Essential was helpful and after a brief discussion he offered to relieve me of a grand total of £370 in return for a M7 modified throttle body and some M7 400cc injectors. M7 take the items on an exchange basis, so there is a small deposit to pay on placing the order which is refunded once your old items are returned to Simon. The items were out of the stock in the UK but were delivered from the US to my desk within one working week.
In addition to the throttle body and injectors I also applied for one of the new MTH tuner maps to cover the modifications to my car. As many of you know I have run my car on MTH for getting on for 18 months now , and was intrigued to see how much more power and torque the new tuner map could give me.
Upon opening the package I was impressed with the quality of the workmanship on the throttle body. Essentially what M7 have done is bored out the opening of the throttle body from the standard 57mm to a much more impressive 63mm (who says size doesn’t matter ;) ) using a stack cut from top to bottom. This larger orifice allows the throttle body to supply more air to the engine, which of course equals more power. It also offers the added benefit of improved throttle response.
The 400cc injectors were nothing special to look at, they look exactly the same as the standard items but the chamber is capable of supplying more fuel to the engine under load. The upgraded 210 BHP JCW kit includes some new 380cc injectors , so of course I had to go one bigger ;) Prior to installing the injectors I had got into situations where I felt that the car was not receiving enough fuel so I was hoping that this modification would offer some good returns.
The Map was provided via email from Simon. Obviously I have access already to the cable required to download the ECU information from the car, once done I emailed it to Simon and detailed what modifications had been done to the car. Within an hour I had received the modified map back into my email box, that in itself is a big improvement over the week or so that I sometimes had to wait for a modified map back from MTH in the early days. Simon is also able to offer help and advice to users – something that was sometimes a little hard to get when MTH was a “hobbyist” item. Both these things plus the fact that EssentialMini offer the tuner version of the MTH map justify the extra expense, especially when the cost is still considerably lower than most other tuning companies out there.
OK installation was carried out with the assistance of a friend. Nothing too hard really, no need for jacks or axel stands – just removal of the cars intercooler. The whole thing, including the ecu download was completed in about 2 hours , including a couple of tea breaks. Worst part was removing the fuel rail prior to installing the injectors , this did involve spilling a fair bit of fuel all over the garden ;)
Now for the testing :D Well what can I say – I’m Lovin It :D:D:cool:
The car pulls even better from the line and continues all