Archive for category Modification

Piggy Back Unichip

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If you’re European and you’re into aftermarket products for your car, ECU tweaks and stuff like that, we have important news for you: UK turbocharger specialist Owen Developments announced it has taken over the sole distribution, sales and marketing rights for the performance enhancing Dastek Unichip aftermarket engine management system for the European Union.

If you don’t know what we’re talking about, things are this way: Unichip ECU is a product of engine management specialists Dastek meant to give your engine more power and efficiency. The product tweaks your car’s ECU and can be fitted on both diesel and petrol engines, whether they are turbocharged or naturally aspirated.

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VTES electric supercharger (Variable Torque Enhancement System)

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Controlled Power Technologies (CPT) have just revealed details on the VTES electric supercharger (Variable Torque Enhancement System), seeking to maximize powertrain efficiency at the lowest possible cost. The VTES is already incorporated in a major project by engine developer AVL and will also be featured in the Ricardo-led £3 million ‘HyBoost’ program.

According to CPT, “the fully developed and production-ready device could prove timely in helping car makers meet EC directives to cut average CO2 emissions from new cars to 130 grams per kilometer by 2012 and to 95 grams per kilometer by 2020.”

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Introduction on Nitrous Oxide (N2O) Injection

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Nitrous Oxide (N2O), or NOS as it is commonly referred to, is a quick and easy performance boost for any motor vehicle, regardless of whether it’s a car, a bike, a boat or a plane. In technical terms, Nitrous Oxide is a chemical compound that consists of two Nitrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom. However, Nitrous Oxide does not occur naturally as a chemical compound but has to manufactured by applying heat and a catalyst to nitrogen and oxygen compunds. Nitrous Oxide was first discovered by the British chemist, Joseph Priestly, in 1772 but it wasn’t until 1942 that Nitors Oxide was first injected inon an internal combustion engine to boost the power output from the engine. Nitrous Oxide is not combustible and is in liquid form when under pressure. When it is released into the combustion chamber the pressure is removed and the Nitrous Oxide becomes gaseous, releasing extra Oxygen that allows your engine to burn more fuel during the combustion process. At the same time, the chemical process of changing from a liquid into a gas absorbs lots of the heat from inside the combustion chamber, reducing the chances of detonation and pre-ignition. NOS thus provides an instant but relatively safe performance boost.

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Tuning the Suspension

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As you probably know already, the car’s suspension system is responsible for driving comfort and safety as the suspension caries the car’s body and transmits all forces, including power and torque, to the road in what is usually called traction. The suspension is a part of the chassis located between the body and the road, and includes the shock absorbers, or dampeners, the leaf or coil springs, they control arms the wheel and tires, and the steering system. Because the suspension transmits power and torque to the road, modifying and tuning the suspension has a profound effect on car handling and will allow you to get the most out of the performace modifications you’ve madeas increased engine performance will change the dynamic involved when cornering and accelerating.

However, many people just lower the car and fit stiffer springs, believing that the lower ride height will improve handling; unfortunately the suspension and its modification and tuning is no simple matter. As with your engine, your suspension is a complex combination of parts that are designed to perform in a specific manner under different conditions, and the setting for each part can be modified to change the handling characteristics of your car.

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Choosing and Fitting Alloy Wheels

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It goes without saying that a properly pimped out car will be incomplete without a set of the blingiest and biggest alloy wheels on the market. Alloy wheels are much more aesthetically pleasing than their steel counterparts with their plastic hub caps. In addition fitting larger alloy wheels with low profile tires can give your car a mean, tar eating look and it seems the bigger those alloys are, the better they look, but before you rush out to buy that set of 24″ alloys you need to consider a few things, as well as the impact bigger wheels will have on the handling of your car.

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Dropping the suspension

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When you find need to pimp your car there’s one thing that you’ve got to do, and that is lower your suspension. I mean nothing compares to a car that is low on the ground, and then on top of it all, a lowered car generally has better road handling characteristics as Bre discusses in our section on the suspension tuning! However, there are a few catches when it comes to lowering your suspension. Car manufacturers give the car a ride height because they need to take speed bumps, uneven road surface, passenger comfort and road noise into consideration when they produce the car. So when you lower your suspension you also need to take these things into consideration because if you just lower the suspension by cutting your coil springs then you’ll end up fouling your wheel arches against your tires, for example. You could flare your wheel arches to fit over your tires, which is the easy solution, or you could stiffen your suspension to reduce the suspension travel, which is the better solution. And if you’re going to do it properly, then it means that simply cutting your existing coil springs is not an option. You should instead get your hands on a lowering kit with stronger, beefier coil springs, and uprated dampers, but before you rush out to get a lowering kit you need to take your car’s weight into account as cars of different weights need different suspension characteristics. A heavier car requires a stiffer suspension than a light car. Hence, you need to make sure the lowering kit is designed for your car’s weight.

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Choose a tyre

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If you’re planning on using your car on the track, you could find that a tyre upgrade is the single best use of your cash. Good tyres will improve lap times, increase levels of safety and make your car lose traction more progressively on the limit.

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EBD (Electronic Brake-force Distribution)

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When braking heavily in a car you get a dramatic forwards weight transfer. The body pivots forward, the front suspension is compressed, and more weight is transferred to the front tyres. More weight acting on the front tyres means more grip is available, and conversely the more lightly laden rear wheels have less grip at their disposal.

If an equal amount of braking force was applied to the front and rear wheels in a heavy braking scenario, the lighter rear wheels would run out of grip first and be much more prone to wheel lock.

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Mini Tec have bolted a Honda B20 [VIDEO Inside]

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If you want a chunky Mini CUV, you don’t need to wait for the Mini Countryman - you can have this Frankenstein’d love child of a vintage Mini and a Honda engine and all-wheel drive powertrain instead. The folks at Mini Tec have bolted a Honda B20 engine up front, and then they went and built a custom subframe to house all-wheel-drive gubbins blagged from a CR-V.

The result is a stripped-out, widened Mini that rockets off the line and can even do tricks in the snow on Yokohama slicks. If you’re interested in buying one, you need to provide the Honda guts and Miata parts - and the Mini. The rest - the custom fabricated subframe, body panels and A-arm suspension will run you $2,695. Check out  a video after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

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Gearbox technology

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Gearboxes are complex mechanical devices which allow cars to operate at different road speeds while remaining within the rev range of the engine. Many performance cars are now fitted with ‘paddle shift’ style switches behind the steering wheel which are often marketed as sequential gearboxes, however these are often not true sequential mechanisms, but simple electronic manual controls to fairly standard automatic transmissions. Below is an introduction to some of the different transmissions which can be fitted in performance cars:

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