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SteveX

Active Member
Joined
Oct 13, 2013
Messages
166
Car
CLK 55
Hi Guys,

Had a call back from Ray this morning, and happy to report that he had a slot free next Wednesday, so I'm taking the day off and heading down there to see what can be done.

This is where we get to find out if my intake mods and secondary delete actually hindered or helped performance, or indeed made no difference at all!

The primary reason for the secondary delete however was just to hear the V8 a little more, so + / - HP figures weren't my main goal for this one.

I'll see how it goes, but will report back what happened and the overall experience there when I get back next week.

You'll either see me disappointed, or a very happy man, not sure there will be an in between, we will see!


Cheers,
 
SteveX said:
Hi Guys, Had a call back from Ray this morning, and happy to report that he had a slot free next Wednesday, so I'm taking the day off and heading down there to see what can be done. This is where we get to find out if my intake mods and secondary delete actually hindered or helped performance, or indeed made no difference at all! The primary reason for the secondary delete however was just to hear the V8 a little more, so + / - HP figures weren't my main goal for this one. I'll see how it goes, but will report back what happened and the overall experience there when I get back next week. You'll either see me disappointed, or a very happy man, not sure there will be an in between, we will see! Cheers,

Look forward to the result
 
I look forward to hearing the results, the secondary cat delete is something I am considering on my 2003 clk55 coupe. Would love to hear that V8 rumble a little more :)
 
Cheers Paul, and thanks for the offer of help earlier :thumb:

Boyle, check out the vid bellow to get an idea of my clk55 sound in the car with secondary cats removed last week.

Inside the car it is almost identical as before when driving around normally, this is great as there is no booming at all at cruise, it is very tame, and there is no drone or obtrusive noise in the cabin / outside.

What however does happen, is that the V8 can be heard when you unleash her!

In the clip I did some acceleration with the windows open, and cruising with it open and regular driving with the window closed, pop your headphones on and it should give you an idea of what you are looking at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9SQdLzUCUY

Ignore the squeal, that was my new pads making a racket which I have thankfully fixed now (with the help of some copper grease!).

Cheers,
 
Well, I am back after the tune, and the results were positive for the most part.

Car put out 357 hp on stock runs (362 claimed from factory) and once finally tuned put out 389 hp, all tuned on stock pump fuel (95 ron).

He did get an extra 9 peak hp from it above this, but he saw exhaust temps starting to rise, so decided to back it off to a much more comfortable level.

Still quite a large amount of degrees away from knock in the end for reliability as well, and also may see an mpg increase as it was running very rich from 2-4k originally.

We had a lot of trouble getting accurate torque readings though, as the hancooks on the back he said were very hard. He kept running them and spraying them, but they kept slipping on the steel rollers even with the car strapped down. He said due to the tyres being hard and slipping, he was also not comfortable with locking it up in dyno mode with all safety features off as it could over-speed. So he ran it regularly, this meant the torque converter and ESP (although off on the panel I understand still cuts in somewhat at higher speeds) played around with the torque calculation, but overall he was able to obtain accurate peak power and the data from the engine to map the car.

In the end, it was pretty disappointing we couldn't get a truly accurate torque calculation. Initial torque on runs showed a low reading, with a big dip where the slippage started occurring around 2.7-3k. Overall though by comparing to the newer reading there was aprox a 40 ft lb increase.

He did it the propper way as well, not just by flashing the original program from ODBII, he took the ECU out and EPROM to get the correct version and information, then loaded a new program in based on the current software version, so it keeps the factory version.

Once he'd loaded the new map in, he then put the ECU back in and did some further tweaking via the ODBII.

All in all a very knowledgeable and nice chap, and I can really recommend his service.

I just need to get some new sticky tyres early next year and stick it on for a power run.

The most noticeable change to the car is the delivery of power, it picks up and responds much quicker now, and power delivery is much earlier.

Peak HP at 3.6k pre map was aprox 165, post map was pretty much bang on 200. Similar gains are seen all through the power curve.

From the calculation / illustrations of torque, the car is also producing a much steeper curve.

I've yet to test the car out too much, the run back was about 40 miles, but obviously I need to drive it on a normal week when I get back to work to do a full comparison about driveability and mpg etc.


Cheers,
 
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Oh yes, forgot to mention, it wasn't done in 3rd, the car was dyno'd / tuned on longer pulls in fourth by using the selector.
 
Almost 390bhp is a nice real world gain for the work done, NASP tuning is hard at best so extracting these gains with no other breathing modifications is good. I think I would be happy with 32 BHP of NASP tuning after only a re-map, ok, taking into account the exhaust changes.
Did the tuner do an overlay of before and after graphs as this would be nice to see.



Great results
 
Almost 390bhp is a nice real world gain for the work done, NASP tuning is hard at best so extracting these gains with no other breathing modifications is good. I think I would be happy with 32 BHP of NASP tuning after only a re-map, ok, taking into account the exhaust changes.
Did the tuner do an overlay of before and after graphs as this would be nice to see.

Great results

Thanks, peak power and the improvement in pull seems good, the car does feel a lot more lively.

I am a little confused though as to why the peak power is so late in the RPM range looking at it now, I don't know if the issues he had affected this, could this be because of the longer 4th gear pulls affecting the reading on the dyno?

I noticed that most dynos I have seen are in third for the 55 na lump with five speed.

8911ec6d-a731-4503-9a8c-c0c46e8416ab.jpg
 
Hold on a minute, RPM is reading 1k higher on the plot than it should in the car lol?
 
SteveX said:
Thanks, peak power and the improvement in pull seems good, the car does feel a lot more lively. I am a little confused though as to why the peak power is so late in the RPM range looking at it now, I don't know if the issues he had affected this, could this be because of the longer 4th gear pulls affecting the reading on the dyno? I noticed that most dynos I have seen are in third for the 55 na lump with five speed.

It's probably just a scale problem on the graph, as your stock graph looks out to for both hp & torque.
 
SteveX said:
Hold on a minute, RPM is reading 1k higher on the plot than it should in the car lol?

You beat me to it, it looks at least 1k rpm out
 
You beat me to it, it looks at least 1k rpm out

That probably doesn't help lol.

I just dropped him a mail.

Numbers aside, the car is pulling much stronger, just took it for a quick test again.

I'm guessing he got the data he needed from the data logging and still managed to do a good tune, but I am also guessing the dyno plot was off.

Maybe I should pop back there for a power run next time I go past that way.
 
Well, I just popped out side wondering if I fitted a duff CPS lol, but the autel checks out and I am sure one of us would have noticed, I guess the plot on the dyno is out, so it should be making peak power sooner.........
 
SteveX said:
Well, I just popped out side wondering if I fitted a duff CPS lol, but the autel checks out and I am sure one of us would have noticed, I guess the plot on the dyno is out, so it should be making peak power sooner.........

It should peak around 5500-5700 rpm
 
Steve, glad it went well, that's a healthy figure!

Didn't quite beat my c55 ;)

image-1251358937.jpg
 
Steve, glad it went well, that's a healthy figure!

Didn't quite beat my c55 ;)

View attachment 39677

Hehe thanks, yeh not quite, he did get it to 397 but EGT started rising, so decided to dial it back a bit and the 389 was the result :)

Pleased with overall peak power and the delivery is so much sooner, it's much better to drive.

Just not so pleased with the grip issues and dyno plot lol.

He said tyres tend to get harder as they age, these were giving him a lot of grief.



Cheers,
 
Just noticed yours was done in gear 4 ? Mine was done in gear 3?

Yeh we had the mentioned grip issues in third big time, it kept slipping, so he had to put it into fourth.

So we had low torque readings in 3rd / big dips. I guess that will give a lower torque figure too as there will be less torque to the road / rollers in fourth because of the ratio.

The primary purpose though is to gather data from the ECU isn't it, so I suppose although output on the rollers is nice to see, it is academic.

He let me take it for a drive before parting with cash, and I could feel the difference in the way the car drove, so was happy with the actual real life result.

It was just when I got home and started reading the actual numbers and chart I was like WTF? lol

I'll ask for a free power run next time I am down that way or jump on one at the next meet. Still going to see what he says about the plot though :)
 
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Ray got back to me, he said it was due to wheel slip problems we were getting when also calibrating the dyno, he normally starts pulls at 1500, and the dyno started plotting at 2500 because of this.

He said nothing to worry about, peak power is the same but obviously final torque figures on the dyno plot are out due to the dyno thinking peak power was obtained at say 6.7 instead of 5.7.

I'd like to try a third gear power run at some point if we can get good grip on the rollers.

Aparantly third gear pulls are much less stress and will give less heat soak etc as runs are quicker. Aparantly it's not uncommon to make slightly more power in third due to the gear ratio and lots more torque being applied to the rollers. It can be better to tune in fourth though on a longer pull.

Not sure how I can do that with the grip issues though, I guess my tyres are a bit too hard for gripping steel rollers. It's annoying as they grip well on Tarmac, don't really want to change tyres just to get a dyno plot.

We will see!
 
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