Back home, I just posted his on our club forum:
http://www.mkivsupra.net/vbb/showthread ... ost2258334
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Home and VERY happy!
I arrived up at Scooby Clinic where the car has been since December and met Pat (Solaris' technical director) so we had a chat for an hour about how the car was to set up, what was learned along the way and how it is now running. Pat is a really nice chap,
extremely knowledgeable and has many good ideas for the future development of the Solaris ECUs which I shall really look forward to seeing implemented (when he gets time!).
So, on to the car....
I started it up (it had been stood outside overnight) and it fired up better than it did on the MoTeC, which considering it now waits to see oil pressure before starting ignition, was an impressive start. It no longer hunts when cold (it was terrible for this before; the tacho would bounce from 500rpm to 1000; now it just sits still and behaves itself
)
Driving it around when cold and when it'd warmed up it felt completely different, in a good way! I suppose I had got used to the little foibles and not
quite perfect characteristics of the MoTeC's setup on my car and the finicky actions and throttle adjustments you had to take to pull away from a junction smoothly for example; there is
none of that now, it felt like driving the brand new Mondeo hire car I had the other day and knowing how difficult that can be to achieve and how different it now is Vs the old setup, I am
seriously impressed. It's lovely to drive 'round town'.
Cruising home on the motorways there was ample opportunity to watch the AFRs behaviour at a steady 50mph (through 10miles of road works on the M1!), 60mph, etc. Because it's now running 'closed loop' and the ECU can 'see' the AFRs, it trims as necessary to always achieve that perfect (give or take) 14.7:1 ratio. Actually I think it sat at about 14.5 (never really more than +/- 0.2), but that's splitting hairs in my book. Again, very impressed and happy.
Finally there is the all important ultimate question, what's it like WOT? At full boost the car simply flies. Being totally honest, my
initial* thoughts are that it's a little weird because it doesn't
feel much (if any) faster than before, but
it is! Because boost comes in lower down and power arrives very smoothly and because the VVTi is now working, the edges have been knocked off the sudden surge of the power graph I used to have and I just get
lots more 'go', earlier and more....
politely.
Effortless is another word I'd use. WOT in 3rd and 4th and.... ooh look at that!
It's very, very fast.
* = "initial"; the track day on 1st March will no doubt reveal more.
Thanks a billion to Pat and to Ryan.G for all their hard work, Ryan has a couple of teeny finishing off jobs to do and we need to set up the traction control, but it's clear to see that the boys have already put in a HELL of a lot of effort and I am most,
most grateful. My car is ace!
