ECU install & tuning in Palmerston North

AVR Performance was in Palmerston North recently to do some work on the FD3 RX7 race cars of Malcolm Brown & Alan Montgomery. A Motec M400 was installed to Malcolm’s FD and then dyno tuned. All four wheel speeds were brought into the Motec to allow the use of full traction control along with many other sensors including fuel pressure & oil pressure to allow safety cuts. The 13B REW is fitted with a GT35 turbo, stock inlet manifold, & a V-mount intercooler setup. Running 98 pump fuel it made 435hp at the wheels at 18psi. For the track Malcolm elected to set the boost for 15psi to help look after the stock gearbox.

 Last time on the dyno Alan Montgomery’s 13B PP turbo had problems with the small boost solenoid not allowing full boost to be reached so this time a higher flow solenoid was fitted & boost tuned to allow the target boost to be reached.

 Both Alan & Malcolm ran their cars at the Manfeild race meeting with good results. Having previously only competed in track sprints this was Malcolm’s first taste of circuit racing running in the NZGT field. He had a pleasing weekend finishing a creditable second in one of the reverse grid races and shaving over a second of his personal best lap time around Manfeild. Alan also had a good weekend, prior to the meeting he had converted the cooling system to a V-mount setup. Previously the car had been over heating during the races resulting in the Motec ecu pulling boost out, lowering the rpm limit & killing all of the fun to be had. The new V-mount setup yielded the results he was after and he was able to complete the 10 lap races with cooling capacity to spare. Now with a decent crack at things he was able to take a full second off his pace (on old tyres that he has had since he built the car) and is now able to concentrate on developing the handling of the car.