Haha!

 

Stuart, your gloating made me go and re-read what V8S posted. Maybe there is more to what he said if you are so visibly celebrating the thread getting shut down?

 

I'm not gloating. I've just never been called a Thug before, thought it was funny.

The thread wasn't shut when I posted this. I'm guessing it is now. I didn't comment on it, report any of the posts or ask for it to be closed.

All I read in that thread was a bunch things other people had said or posted, being attributed to us.... and some crazy nonsense about lawsuits.

We have nothing to hide, have been transparently responding to questions on here for years.

 

Glad you kept a sense of humor. I couldn't make heads or tails of his last rant.

 

It would be best to let this all slip into the past and hope that there is not a 3rd incarnation of this gentleman in the future. And no … the flat deployable panels on the back of our cars are not wings. They are spoilers.

Wing:

Turn it upside down to use it as an aerofoil (wing) on a car.

Sorry...had to get that off my chest.

 

I tried, but decided I wasn't fully inserted into the stream of the conversation.

 

+1 Thug Life.

Love these guys and their products!

 

I was patiently waiting for this occurrence. Much credit to your restraint, Stuart.

 

 

I knew that both spoilers and wings are used to reduce rear end lift, but didn't know the principle of operation of a spoiler is different from a wing. I always assumed that spoilers are just badly designed wings. So I learned something from that debacle.

So you reply wasn't a complete waste of time.

 

Later part of that thread did go down the insanity hole. However, one of the questions asked appeared to be valid - what are the downsides, aside from voiding engine warranty, of VAP tunes?

As a non-customer (I am not considering tuning my F-type with any tune, yours or otherwise), I am curious why Jaguar doesn't just copy your tune and/or hire you as part of SVR team? They certainly know about VAP since you are very prolific. Dyno-proven gains you shown with your tunes are not trivial, so I don't see them simply ignoring it. So what is the downside/risk of these tunes? I assume some form of long-term reliability hit or emissions this and that. Do you have any idea what it is?

That is, what does VAP tunes do that JLR can't or won't?

 

Emissions, fuel qualities, state laws, air quality. As such Jaguar write a tune that is safe to run on any fuel, even really poor stuff as they have a big safety margin in factory tune, there cars are tuned for Octane 91, certainly in the UK anyway (RON95), they are also tuned to run in the harshest enironments and to meet strict emissions.

When you tune your car particular for best power, you advance spark timing more, as such Octane 93 is normally a requirement unless you specify a lower power tune for octane 91. The tune will also have less safety margin in it for harsher environments and of course the tuner won't be so worried about the strictest emission laws, this is where you can always gain power.

Also remember Jaguar themselves offer a 600PS tune for our engine/SC combination on the V8 and a 400PS option on the V6. To put that into perspective VAP are not getting much more than Jaguar's best tunes, about 420PS on a V6 and 620PS on a V8, so Jaguar really did quite a good job and most of those gains probably come from Octane 93 use of fuel, maybe more if your lucky enough to have Octane 94 or RON99 like we do in the UK, as UK typically has better fuel quality than US, hence E85 been a popular option in US for higher power, but I believe the Jaguar platform does not support E85.

If I was not changing pulley, I'd simply go with the Jaguar Project 8 600PS tune or the V6 400PS tune to have the benefits of a factory tune.
Where VAP comes in is if you make hardware changes, upper, lower pulley, highflow catalyst, meth injection, porting of SC etc. then you really need a custom tune to prevent limp modes and to take best advantage of your modifications. This is some VAP and other tuners can offer.

 

Your question is valid, however its not just applicable to Stuart/VAP. I imagine everyone that modifies a car for the first time has these concerns. I've been modifying cars since 1993, and I can tell you there are and have been performance enhancing modifications available for most every make and model. Fact is, when a OEM manufacturer designs a vehicle, they have a long list of objectives, which include much more than obtaining the absolute maximum performance out of each engine (e.g. driver safety, linear/controllable acceleration, emissions, MPG, and driveline component longevity just to name a few). I can't speak for Stuart, but most tuners exploit some of the tradeoffs the manufacturer baked in the design to unleash extra power. Does it mean parts of the vehicle won't last as long? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Does added power increase tire wear - highly likely. Now, does it make the differential fail? Normally no, but added stresses of more power could be a contributing factor. Transmission? Crankshaft? You get my point.

I always look at a particular vehicles track record before modifying and assess the degree to which I am enhancing power and assess the risk of problems due to modification. Our F types have only had a few engine failures I know of, and at least 50% or more of those appeared to be on unmodified engines. So I rate it a good candidate for modification.

On other forums I belong to, folks are adding insane power (larger turbos) etc to make engines produce more than double their initial output. Failures do happen, but are more rare than I would have imagined. and remarkably, the drivelines seem robust enough to handle the added power. Fact is if one is intelligent about how they modify and then drive and maintain the car properly, my 25 years of modifying cars tells me its a relatively low risk activity.

That said, I would never take my F type out to death valley mid summer at like 120 degrees and decide its a good time to do back to back top speed runs. Some folks do that sort of thing. I say, in that case, you pay to play (or be stupid).

 

Probably because they are well versed enough in the calibration of their own engines that they don't need us showing them how to do it?

What is the risk? Well for one if you're doing this you're stepping outside of the warranty sphere into a pretty grey area. We're pretty up front about that.

I think your more pointed question might be why would a manufacturer leave power on the table? Although you're using VAP and Jaguar as an example, you could just as easily be using VAP and McLaren, Cobb and Subaru etc. The reasons are manifold. Firstly, as you are all no doubt aware, virtually all manufacturers will limit power initially in order to make headroom for further higher performance versions. They pretty much all do this now. Engine development is one of the biggest chunks of cost in vehicle development, and they can't be coming out with a new one every 2 years. So you'll see a 6-8 year cycle where power is incrementally increased. Or where there's a 'Base' and an 'S' model and you pay more for the higher powered variant.

So... the V8 SC comes out with 495 in the early Bosch Variants, then 550, then 575 and finally 600. We get just over 600 with our tuning. There's no magic pixie dust but if you have a 495BHP 'S' we can get you there. Same with the V6. That now makes 400BHP. We can go slightly further than that.

If you want to get into specific technical changes in the calibrations that discussion may go beyond what would be manageable at a forum level of understanding, and it would require Chris to explain because I certainly don't understand much of it on the level he does. That said, in broad strokes? Yes, the manufacturers will have somewhat different goals in terms of the way the car drives, how far away from the ultimate maximum it is set up, and so on. For example, the 5-10% of FType owners who are interested in tuning may prefer a much sharper throttle response, higher torque demand at all times, whereas JLR might be setting it up to please a broad range of drivers, including the 80 year old little old lady who just wanted a Jaguar convertible and may not have as sensitive a right foot as some of you (no offense to little old ladies, and apologies for the hasty generalization!)

Secondly, yes, even in their highest form of calibration the OEM's may back WELL away from the ultimate performance point of say, AFR or ignition timing, in order to allow for someone getting in a car that has 6 month old fuel that was garbage to begin with and ragging the sh*t out of it in the middle of the Dubai summer. We are pretty conservative, for example, we might run low-mid 11's for AFR on a tuned car, whereas the stock is maybe 10.5:1

So, if you take your V8S and throw a crank pulley and a tune on it, is it going to last as long as if you left it stock? Most likely not. Any time you're increasing output like that (and using it) stress is increased on most components. That being said, you may see decreased wear or stress in other areas. For example, if you now need less RPM, you're now turning the crank less revolutions in order to achieve the same speed. Offset against higher in-cylinder pressures, compressive load on rods etc.

If you have an engine with a known, pre-existing issue (perhaps not even manifested yet) like say, timing chain tensioners going bad, and you tune it, will that push it over the edge? Quite possibly.

You do have to take a lot of the marketing material with a grain of salt as well. For example, McLaren would give you stats on the % of their later 3.8L engines that is different from the earlier ones, tell you that a 675LT is majorly different from a 540C. But in reality, the long block is the same, so a simple tune, or even a simple tune + minor turbo upgrade would get you the same output. Even the intercoolers and radiators are the same. JLR is no different.

 

Also don't forget Jaguar has no incentive to offer the 400PS tune using the same hardware in the base model if they can sell three flavours of cake at increasing price levels for essentially the same cake. The same reason the SVR tune doesn't come as a "free" option on the R.

It would be nice to have the tune level as a (free) option on the build to order sheet ;-)

So for me, it's not so much about wringing the last horse possible before hardware failure, it's unlocking what Jaguar made available but barred me from because I chose a lower trim level. Kind of akin to the overclocking of CPUs in computer terms. There's no reason the CPU hardware cannot sustain that performance - you didn't pay for the higher performance so that's what you get....

 

And... to give you another example, yes emissions is relevant too. We have been tuning the Astons for nearly 10 years. There is all sorts of vestigial Ford stuff in there in the mid-RPM which is designed to make the cars perform better on the drive cycle testing. Just certain ranges & load values that they know they are going to see on the test, and they alter settings to decrease output.

 

Much shorter answer than Stuart's in-depth and well written response;

- Nothing. JLR does offer tunes very similar to VAP as Stuart noted - you just have to pony up the extra money to buy a car that comes with them as they sure aren't about to sell you a $1,000 tune instead of a new SVR or P8. Likewise long term reliablity, et al, is also likely to be almost identical to the JLR factory tunes at the same power level. Aftermarket tuners don't have to be quite as careful regarding emissions or fuel availability and can make some adjustments there......the only real increased risk is a paper one; a new SVR has a warranty, but an F type running a 3rd party tune may not have the same covereage in the event of a problem (even one not caused by a tune).

2 cents,
Dave

 

AJ133 and AJ126 (basically the same engine) have been around for a while and no widespread fatal flaws (i.e. weak engine chain & guides) are reported. This means that a typical untuned F-type that is on the road toady should see well into mid 2020s without needing engine rebuild. About the only weak spot that I am aware of is water pump and connecting plastic coolant piping, that can result in loss of coolant and engine death due to overheating. To best of my understanding, tuning shouldn't make a difference with this kind of flaw.

Still, no matter how reliable the engine is, some of them would fail prematurely. Typically, this happens early in the car's life and under normal circumstances JLR would replace such engine under warranty.

Stuart, are you keeping track of how many engines with VAP tune suffer premature failure, and have you made efforts to investigate the mode of failure? I know some of the bigger American muscle car tuners do that, to the point that some would offer their own engine warranty on modded engines.

 

It also likely matters how hard you push the car. The extra power does put a lot of stress on the drive train but much like race start, if you just use it occasionally it isn't a big issue. But if you pound the car at every stoplight you will get failures much more quickly. Now on the 6s, since the drivetrain is largely the same as the V8, the car is built to handle it anyway. On the V8s the performance headroom is less and the risk higher. I considered doing a tune and pully on my V8S but given I'm having issues putting the power down as it is, figured there was no point as I'd likely just make the car even less safe. If I had one of the newer all-wheel drive cars, I likely would have done it. In the end though, if you really want to build a hot rod it is likely far better to start with something like a Corvette where there are a ton of folks who know how to do this kind of thing well and a massive depth of aftermarket parts, tools, and experience to do it (not to mention factory support for the effort, GM has a nice line of aftermarket engines for instance. For European cars, outside of sanctioned race teams, the support for this kind of thing is far less robust and the likelihood of getting into expensive trouble far higher. I think a lot of us get into trouble because we think Jaguar is going to be like Chevy and Ford (or even Nissan) when it comes to performance mod support and they aren't at all.