New to Site

[Dazturbo6502]

Hi all
I am a Vauxhall Technician, and a Vauxhall/VXR enthusiast. Been following BTCC for years supporting Vauxhall obviously, Ordered my Astra VXR in MAY 2005, picked it up end of January.
Mine is Flame Red with the 19's, AFL and climate conrol.
I couldnt ask for any more, the car is superb, i cannot fault it!!
Hope to hear from any of you

[Sparky]

Welcome to the site and enjoy. Post away. What dealership do you work for?

[Catherine]

I think it is always excellent when staff buy the product that they are employed to look after.
Congratulations on the purchase and welcome to the site.

[VXRMANN]

Hi guys,
My name is Dave and I live in the Isle of Man (road racing capital of the world - for bikes!).
I've just joined the forum and it's great to be with like minded enthusiasts who appreciate what Vauxhall have done to produce this brlliant piece of kit.
I ordered my VXR back in August last year and because I was being messed around with delivery dates, and being impatient, I decided to cancel my order (I know - stupid) and bought a 2nd hand 350Z.
My dealer, bless'em, decided to not to cancel the car and it finally arrived at the showroom in January. I had already test-driven the ST in early January and had decided to order one (I know - stupid). Five days later the VXR I had ordered back in August arrived and my dealer rand to tell me. I took it out for a test drive and that was that!!!
The ST is a good car but it ain't anywhere near as exciting to drive as the VXR. As for the 350Z, nice car but it had to go. I believe that the VXR is actually quicker than the 350Z which has a 0-62 time of 5.9secs.
I have just had my dealer fit the full Milltek supplied by TMS (great guys) and holy **** the car is quick and sounds superb with a nice double or tripple pop after gear changes. I fully recommend it - it's how the VXR should sound.
I'm thinking of adding the ECU remap from Courtenay but I better not stray off thread too much. Needless to say I love my VXR and I just keep smiling and driving!
Good to be with you all.
Dave

[Dazturbo6502]

For those who wanted to know what dealership i work at, it is:
Perrys Vauxhall - Canterbury
Lookin into the Milltek system now, cant resist it any longer.

[A11VXL]

I can really recomend installing the Milltek, I have had to wait untill we finished our stage 1/ driverbility remap be for I could fit mine, (stage 1 being based around the standard car), however this was completed this week so its now been fitted.. really good fit, great sound and with the full system the turbo spools up much quicker and more power across the whole rev range

[gemmell]

Good to here you got the stage one finished, thanks for your time earlier this week, I know you were busy with Stephan fine tuning the map, what power level did you both settle on in the end ?
PS, nice to meet Stephan too I thought I new a little about engine set up but he completly lost me !
Cheers

[A11VXL]

Hi Archie, yes we finished the stage 1 and I got Stefan back to the airport at 5.30 am Saturday morning we worked out that we had only had 19 hours sleep over the whole week ! what a week that was ?
As Stefan had already completed the stage 2 back in November you would think it would be fairly simple to just turn the power down to complete a stage 1. However as the stage 1 is designed around standard 2 cat exhaust system we did a lot of work particularly based around exhaust gas temperatures.
Mapping for absolute power on engines equipped with pre cats and denser cell main cats will leave the exhaust gas temps very high, due in part to the extra back pressure from the pre cat. If you run the car in this manner (i.e lean for maximum power) it is very possible to burn a hole in the piston not good ! Also this is not good for catalyst protection & durability. So for this stage of tune it is important to use a richer mixture, this in turn lowers the exhaust gas temps, protecting both the cats and the pistons. This is why manufacturer's will run there cars at far richer mixtures (at full power) than say a tuner would once the car has got a sports exhaust for example.
This is also then why we would NEVER run a stage 2 map in a car with the stock exhaust, run like this you will get more power, but at the long term expense of your pistons . We do like to sleep at night.
Stefan had already done a lot of work on a Stage 1 OPC in Switzerland however we wanted to be sure that what was done for this customer would be valid for a car in the UK. We actually did do 2 variants of the stage 1 the second variant was for when we get a cars that have removed the pre cat and installed a front pipe. Power is 260-265 bhp.
As I said back in my first post having just taken delivery of the car, I found the throttle too aggresive and this was further exaggerated with the increase in power of the stage 1. For this reason we have made the throttle map far more progresive, making brisk 1/2 throttle acceleration manouvers, like for example coming off a roundabout accellerating through 2nd and 3rd gears much more controlable, this is better news for your tyres and transmission, not to mention making better progress excesive wheel spin does get you any where quickly :wink:

[gemmell]

Wow, sounds like you were busy and put a few miles on the dyno !! at least you only wear you front tyres down and you don"t get any stonechips. :wink:

[A11VXL]

Wow, sounds like you were busy and put a few miles on the dyno !! at least you only wear you front tyres down and you don"t get any stonechips. :wink:

Yea yea
Actually whilst we did spend allot of time -and fuel on the dyno we did an awfull lot of work on the road, late a night on dynamic loading i.e on and off the throttle lond burst of power through the gears lifting momenteraly for a corner then back on hard on the power again this was hard work but great fun , we plotted these sessions (dyno and road) on a data logger this way we could look at all the data.. boost ,EGT (exhast gas temp) lamba, timing etc this was very usefull, also stopped Stefan being sick in my car, due to having to concerntrate so hard on the lap top. :P
So suprise my car is actually very dirty !!!!

[the vxr mothership]

Good to hear you've got the mapping sorted Jon , seems everyone has arrived at similar power outputs on the VXR .
We'll be interested to see what has to be done to go to the next level )
Stu

[A11VXL]

Hi Stu

Good to hear you've got the mapping sorted Jon , seems everyone has arrived at similar power outputs on the VXR .

Yes it was a very productive week, (although in work hours it was closer to 2 weeks ! ) we got a really good feel for what is acheivable with standard componants and Milltek sports exhaust, and more importantly whats not !

We'll be interested to see what has to be done to go to the next level )
Stu

I think you already know :wink:
Regards Jon