Finally got the car to Emerald and into the capable hands of Dave Walker to sort out a map. Id not been able to drive or test the car before getting it to Emerald so really didnt know what to expect, or what was going to go wrong. With the car strapped down early morning Dave balanced the throttle bodies and got a stable tickover in a few minutes, something ive been trying to do for a few weeks.

After the initial quick few runs to see how the car was managing, Dave found a few small issues. I had to earth the ECU wiring loom directly on the battery, not on the gearbox as the original car was earthed. Earthing it on the battery stabalised the sensors. The other thing that needed doing was a mistake by me. I had fitted 4 new NGK sparkplugs bought individually at Halfords, but I didnt read the plug numbers on the body just assumed they were the same in the box's. I had fitted 2 slightly different pairs of plugs which was causing a slight electrical popping, I was kindly given 4 replacement sparkplugs.

The car was once again up and running on the rollers and mapping began. After an hour or so and only under high load the engine started popping from the inlet manifold. The flames were only coming from cylinders 1 & 4, 2 & 3 were clean. Dave diagnosed this as a ignition problem but we were unsure what was causing it. Pinned out the wiring to the coil from the ecu and that was correct, Dave took the coil to be tested and came back with the answer. The 12v+ and the NEG wire for cylinders 2 & 3 were reversed. When cylinders 2 & 3 fired it trigered the second coil with a weak current and ignited the fuel resident in the inlet manifold.

After this little result the mapping went flawless, and by 3:30 it was all done but not with the result we wanted. The car had made a peak power of 140.4 bhp and 118.1 lb/ft. This is 20 bhp less than a standard mi16. The power curve looked near enough identical to Emeralds own BX Mi16, just 30odd bhp down. And straight off we cant see a reason why its missing so much power, but even with just 140 bhp the mapping is superb. The car drives so smoothly its hard to bring myself to knock the car down and find the problem.

Cant wait to find the problem and get it remapped.