I am certainly not advocating the Tesla SW licensing model, but JLR should make the 400 tune available for a charge to V6S owners... It's still a post sale upsell without all the other bits in the 400 (seats, front spreader etc). Businesswise, there is no better customer than the one you already have...

 

You hit the nail on the head ;-)

 

The FEAD on these cars is the same, as is the block. So yes they are pretty damn similar engines.

"no widespread fatal flaws (i.e. weak engine chain & guides) are reported" - this is not correct. Timing Chain tensioners are a fairly common failure item on these engines (failure resulting in stretched chains.) The first 200 V6 delivered to North America were all tight on clearances and seized/fried pretty much on the docks. Other reasonably common failure items include cam phasers, as well as some of the earlier 3 and 5L cars having oiling jet misalignent issues that caused piston pickup and eventual seizure.

Waterpumps you're correct on. Now.... that being said, I don't believe that these are all ticking time bombs, in fact far, far from it. The nuts and bolts of these engines are incredibly strong, and when we talk about 'known failure items' we are talking about pretty small percentages of failures, but they are common enough that if you talked to a JLR dealer tech they would not be surprised by them.

No, we don't have a spreadsheet running, the number of VAP tuned customers with engine failures I can count on one hand so we haven't deemed it necessary, and we are North of 1000 tuned JLR engines at this point. Every single one thus far has been a 'known' failure item, and/or in one case a car that was simply run out of oil and CEL's related to that being ignored and the car being driven anyway.

 

It might bear mentioning as well - in terms of our 'research' on failure items, we do benefit massively from the fact that Chris is a factory trained Jaguar/Land Rover technician and has seen pretty much every situation imaginable as a Dealer Technician. As well as the frequency with which such things happen. We already have a wealth of knowledge and insight to draw from.

 

I had a very interesting meeting with JLR SVO regarding unrelated matters but we chatted at length about aftermarket tuning and how OEM's address it and view it. They have their own reasons for choosing not to get into it, but suffice it to say that they do pay attention, and have considered exactly what you're suggesting. They have chosen for a variety of smart business reasons not to do so, and to take a slightly different route.

 

By contrast (and funny), for work reasons (not STP Tuning related), I worked on this issue where some manufacturers go way out there with software limitation (even in agriculture)
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...inian-firmware

I had a similar discussion with JLR (US and HQ) as well as SVO when placing a recent order for two cars. The net result was more about the dealer network and service than of course the car's ability, engineering or marketing.

 

Stuart... you said: 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.

How exactly do you achieve the same speed at lower crank RPM? You can ONLY do that by changing the gearing (transmission, differentials) or wheel circumference....

I would love to post an extensive reply in here based on two decades of automotive engineering but I don't want this to turn into another argument.

The concept of engine tuning is to maximize EFFICIENCY. Efficiency in an ICE is defined by energy conversion rate from fuel (gasoline is around 32.7 kWh/gal) to energy available at the crankshaft.
Given a specific CFM intake airflow (tied to a correct stoichiometric AFR ratio), the efficiency of the engine gets maximized by reducing internal friction, inertial forces other parasitic loads and of course achieving the most complete combustion taking place in the expansion stroke of the cycle. That is a net result of intake and exhaust valve opening angles and ignition timing.

In the end, the easiest way to gain power is to first and foremost achieve the highest possible efficiency, the next step is to increase the energy available for conversion. Luckily in forced induction engines, you can increase the virtual displacement by ramming down more intake CFM and correct proportional AFR ratio of fuel into the cylinder. You will of course maximize the efficiency for that (and with forced induction, there are many variables added... most concerning is the true air charge temperature). The way to add more CFM flow to the intake of an engine is of course adding boost (PSI). The result is an increase of stress on the internas that is not linear but exponential. This works against your heads, piston (down to the rod, crankshaft) walls of the cylinder. The portion of the energy conversion that fails to convert to energy at the crankshaft is wasted as heat. With an increase in intake charge volume, you also have heat issues to deal with. .

In my experience pushing the V6 and now V8 engines to the extreme, several components needed changing and specialty heat protection coatings. The first weak point was the head gaskets (on the V8 especially). But overall, the worst enemy of tuned V6 and V8 engines on the F-Type is the rather lousy heat evacuation that ultimately affects the intake charge temperature. Unfortunately testing and development on a dyno provides a rather small window of extremely controlled environment. What works on a track is not going to work well on street driving conditions and street driving tuning is not going to deliver the best performance on the track.

In the end, pursuing the very last HP on any tune, is less than ideal for street driving especially considering that many will beat the hell out of the car at traffic lights and low speed when cooling airflow... well... sux.

What I think you intended to say, is that on a tuned engine, you have greater torque at lower crank RPM, allowing you to use the engine at lower RPM to achieve the target car speed and maintain it on a higher transmission gear and therefore keeping wear lower on the engine internals.


No matter how anyone wants to spin this, by adding ANY boost, the internals undergo greater stress. Hopefully I simplified some engineering concepts to be understood by everyone.

 

One point I failed to mention.

Many people will pick a tune based on the max HP. This is the worst way to pick a tune for street use. You need to look at the torque curve first and foremost. Look at the mid range 2500 to 5000 RPM. This is where you will likely drive most of the time. Achieving high HP at 7000rpm is pointless...
Driveability is also a major consideration for a street car...

 

Because you don't need to downshift 1, 2 or even 3 gears to achieve the required acceleration.

 

Maybe Stuart was implying you could use a higher gear because of more torque/hp as a result of the tune?

OOPs! Stuart beat me to the punch.

 

 

You guys got it!

 

More frequent oil/filter changes will help extend engine life.

 

Since I do quite a bit of testing and development on the car I drive daily, I send out oil samples every 750/1000 miles. We change the oil on street cars every 5000 miles and according to Blackstone, it is still perfectly fine. On the crate engines (3.7L) every race day, on the (3.4L) every race weekends. However the 3.4L on daily driving can probably do 10K miles safely. I don't have actual data to confirm that however.

It's important to keep in mind that the oil temperature is critical in determining oil life. On the track the goal is to keep the oil at no more than 225 degrees F. This ensures that any moisture is evacuated while it maintains the desired viscosity (and OIL pressure!!!). In daily driving, if your engine oil stays below 212 degrees F you will retain moisture, that combined with other combustion byproducts by blowby, turns into nasty corrosive stuff and oxidizes the oil quickly. The additive pack on high quality oils lasts for quite a while, no need to waste oil.

If engine life is the primary concern, keeping your engine at lower RPM is key but still, the engine torque required to maintain a vehicle at a set speed is the same no matter the gear you use so Stuart's exaggeration of 1,2 or 3 speeds (gears) is unreal. You may benefit of using one gear up. At highways speeds, the ZF 8HP is usually in 8th gear anyway, leaving the only benefit, te potential fuel saving by having a throttle slightly less open.

As someone else suggested, avoiding very high RPM and bouncing off the rev limiter is certainly great. Gear shifts for lowest engine stress should always be at peak torque RPM or shortly after. In performance shifting many assume that shifting at peak power is best, that is not actually accurate. In a racing environment, the best shift points are gathered with a data logger and lots of testing. Ultimately the engine's willingness to gain angular speed at a given load and gear is charted and while less critical in the lower gears, they make a big difference on taller gears.

 

Out of pure curiosity, how did this thread come to be? I find the OP's original post quite odd, did I miss something?

 

A guy who I think is now banned called Stuart a thug.

 

And alleged we were all shills for VAP. Then It got weirder. He also threatened to cancel our auto insurance policies if we had a tune, and I think he was also planning to take away our birthdays.....

 

To be fair, calling Stuart a thug didn’t get him banned. I think it was the fact that he threatened to somehow get all vehicles with tunes uninsurable, etc. It was like watching the crazy guy outside your apartment window finally lose it.

 

He did seem to be at least a half bubble off level for sure.

 

+1. Under gentle driving conditions, I usually bypass gears 4&5 on my way to 6, and have plenty of acceleration in 6 at any speed over 40 mph not to require downshifting. Tuning the torque to kick in 1000-1200 rpm sooner makes a huge difference.