6 replies to this topic

[markeff]

As we now have to sadly say goodbye to KE03 HJG I thought I would write a post on VX220.org.uk about the car. Although I have only made a few posts on this forum, you have been so helpful to the ownership of the car over the last year. Hopefully this post will help any future owner of this car.

Prior to my girlfriend and I owning the car, the car was owned by another forum member. This chap did the original stage 2 upgrade with Courtenay. Sadly, he passed away and left the car to his sons who cherished the car until they sold it to us. If memory serves someone else owned the car for a short time from new.

When test driving the car I didn't notice what turned out to be quite a loud knocking noise. When opening the throttle, anything other than smoothly, there was noticeable knocking/thumbing sensation from the rear of bulkhead. I searched for a VX220 specialist on the forum and found MMG Performance came highly recommended and was only an hour away. They had the car for the morning and replaced both upper engine mounts, and also the lower engine mounts had were stiffened up with two Powerflex engine mount inserts. They found I needed a new auxiliary belt, which had been replaced when the previous owner sold the car, but was fitted incorrectly (note to self check any last minute fixes before driving away!).

By reading through many of the discussions on brake pads and disc combinations I selected Carbon Loraine CL5+, developed by Hofmann's Motorsport a quick phone call to them and I was reassured that standard OEM discs (just got mine from Euro Car Parts) were sufficient for road use and occasional track day use.

A friend (who used to be a mechanic) helped me change the discs and pads. These pads were awesome; made such an improvement. Unfortunately I chose not to change the fluid, not understanding what was entailed. I assumed changing the fluid was harder than it later turned out to be.

My first adventure on track was a disaster. The anticipation was so high but after only 3 complete laps of Bedford there was a pretty awful noise from the engine bay as I approached the sequence of corners before the main straight, I thought it had sounded as if some debris on track had got caught and was rattling around badly. The noise lasted 2-3 seconds then disappeared, as I came out of the corner there was no power. We pulled in and the marshals towed us back to the pits. We tried what we could to restart the car but to no avail. I called Liam at MMG and he advised on a bunch of things to check and try, but unfortunately none worked.

When MMG got the car they found pretty much all of the electrics were sick. After some investigate they found one of the auxiliary belt pulleys had failed, this resulting in the belt itself quickly shredding itself. As this happened it whipped around the engine bay (creating the noise I heard) and tore through chunks of the engine bay wiring loom. The air mass meter was also found to be dead. Once the uprated, reduced weight, pulley kit (designed by MMG) had been fitted, and the wiring loom painstakingly repaired, we then learnt that ECU was also dead - the wires shedding had short circuited it. Bad news was that we had not only lost the ECU but had lost the Courtenay stage 2 map that it had been equipped with. Liam managed to source an affordable, second hand, ECU, with corresponding transponders. The new ECU was then remapped to the MMG stage 2 tune. There was currently a group buy between MMG and the forum for this map, although I hadn't known about it, and helped to reduce the cost.

Once we got the car back I was quite surprised about the the change in character of the car. I didn't realise how much difference a regular driver like me could feel between two different interpretations of how to best extract performance from the same engine.

I have to admit that my initial reaction was a tinge of disappointment. At low speeds the car seemed a touch softer, it was certainly much smoother when driving sedately. The flip side to this was when I began to press on the delivery at higher revs was considerably more urgent with equally aggressive intake and exhaust noises. The new banshee top-end reminded me of my previous car - Integra DC2. I queried this with Liam and he explained the map was built based on their experience of extracting the maximum performance from the car; i.e. too much torque early on results in wheel spin, which, whilst cool, isn't the quickest way of getting around a track or B-road. They had smoothed out the delivery lower down the rev range but extracted (for this stage of tune) from the higher end. We have since had the car in this configuration all summer and I can confirm any initial doubt has been quickly washed away!

The day before our second venture on track, disaster strikes again. My girlfriend was driving through Peak district when she noticed the lights on instrument cluster going berserk and saw the temperature was sky high. Long story short: the radiator had gone and the car needed to be recovered to MMG, again. This happened Thursday lunchtime and our track day at Bedford was booked for the following evening. Again Liam was on the case immediately and we were in luck because there was one radiator left in stock at the fabricators. I didn't realise what a big job a rad change is on the VX but somehow he managed to get the car all done Friday morning so when we arrived at Bedford we were only half an hour late.

If any new VX owners are reading this and need a VX specialist definitely give Liam at MMG a call. He specialises in VX and Elises, knows the cars inside out, is a proper petrol head and has very competitive rates.

The track day went well, except the brakes would go very spongy after 3 (maximum 4) laps. The CL5+ pads are so effective they were boiling the fluid. 5-10 mins to let them cool and we could go for another stint.

A few weekends later (again with the help of my ex-mechanic friend) we drained the brake fluid (apparently it was amongst the worse condition fluid he had ever seen) and replaced the brake hoses with braided ones. Despite the inevitable air lock problem in the front calliper (thanks to the forum for helping me solve that one) it was pretty easy, and I can definitely do it by myself next time.

Under normal road driving the brakes feel pretty much the same, the track will be the acid test. Looking to squeeze one more track day in before selling the car. Will report back on what improvement the upgrade made.

Sorry for the exhaustive post but hopefully this documentation may help future owners.

[Goosenka]

Thats a great read mate and I am sure will give buyers confidence in the future

[rob999]

Good write up and glad the car is back to performing well. I went from a TMS to MMG map and could tell straightaway the difference in performance Liam's a good ol chap!!

[Asheey]

Excellent read mate.

[markeff]

@Goosenka @rob999 @Asheey Thanks guys. I thought it might have been a bit too long winded... Tried my best not to waffle on TOO much.

[GiGo]

Nice write up As for waffling, no it wasn't to long, I did a write up and it was a little bit more than that (3 computer typed pages) I had to cut it down when I posted it on here

[dw1]

Cracking read! In the world of nano second attention spans and 156 character posts I go against the grain and love to read a good long article as long as it's well written. You shouldn't need to apologise at all, if it's too long for some they won't read it but don't let that be the reason to not write a good story with plenty of detail. (I'm also guilty of doing long posts) I'm just about to tuck into Gigo's.