Tuning Day at Bailey Performance

[Ben_Copeland]

I had my car tuned at Bailey Performance on Friday and I just thought I'd share my experience with everyone.

Day started out with Dale looking all over the engine bay, asking plenty of questions about the install etc. Mainly so he knows its been done to a good enough standard, but also he's just a generally nice guy and is enthusiastic about every car that come into his place.

Next we have the ECU out, mine is a Megasquirt MS2v3 and I knew Dale was good with these and knows his stuff. He checked it all out, change a few bits and made some updates. This was impressive to me, as its going above and beyond really. I've never seen another tuned do this.

Once that was done, we plugged it all back in. Did a bit of replumbing of the vacuum system as I'd accidentally connected the recirc valve directly to the ECU instead of the inlet manifold. This involved making up simple pipe reducers etc. Nice simple engineering, but worked impressively well.

Now that the cars already to go, Dale started tuning, mainly adjusting graphs and figures manually before even starting the car.

The car performed amazingly, I was having nightmares of it blowing up, or not making it all day. Overheating etc. But nothing, apart from a minor oil leak from the Turbo Return pipe (bit of smoke in the videos)

Dale swapped out the spark plugs to ones he recommends as he noticed it wasn't sparking strongly enough. The majority of the tuning was done and then it was time to turn the boost up. Dale did loads of tests to see what boost it would safely run, then we did some runs and tweaked it so it boosted 1 bar.

As soon as the torque started climbing the wheels started spinning on the rollers, even spraying spray glue on the rollers to keep traction, but nothing worked. I had to remove the diffuser so we could strap it down tighter, which eventually worked. But started melting tyres !!!

Once peak power was set, Dale set about fine tuning the curve to reduce any dips and then tuned the cruising stages etc.





Final result was 272bhp and 307ftlb of torque, the things a monster! Boosting hard from 1800rpm but very progressively all through the rev range.

All in all, Dale worked on the car from 10am up to 6.15pm and went above and belong to get the car right, even taking me down the local autoparts to try get some new leads and supplying spark plugs, pipes etc all inclusive of the quoted price (which is a bargain in my eyes and I'm a tight git)

I can say that if you want your car tuned... GO HERE !


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0lndNHN5eY

http://youtu.be/UwI5m5JHzGk

[rpjg1975]

Out of interest how much did it cost (if it isn't rude to ask?)

Sounds good in the videos by the way

Russ

[Ben_Copeland]

£250 for the whole day including all the little extras he did.

[rpjg1975]

That's not bad at all, especially considering the length of time etc. Well worth the outlay i'll bet

[Ben_Copeland]

Yes and he hasn't stopped helping me since. Giving advise and help on finding the right spark plugs and suggesting a change of coil etc. I'm even sending my ecu to him so he can modify it to send out a tacho signal.