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Tornado chip set for engines that have been rebuilt to a bigger capacity Please call us to discuss requirements
Here are the details of the standard Tornado Motronic upgrade. Please note that the programming can be biased towards economy, performance, or a happy medium between the two, according to your preference.
The Bosch engine is mapped in such a way that it produces maximum power when it hits the Rev Limiter, which is set at 5400 RPM. At this point the mixture is rather rich, but the ignition timing is fine for best power production.
Therefore the peak power will not improve more than 2-4 BHP with any upgrade, unless the Rev Limiter is moved up to say 6000 RPM. Although I could do this and the power is still increasing when it hits the Rev Limiter, it would be something of a “smoke and mirrors” improvement. Power increases here are largely academic, since the vehicle will change gear long before this limit is reached.
However the dominant characteristic is actually a huge hole in the torque curve, centred around 3000 RPM. This is filled in very well with the upgrade, delivering an extra 10-15 lb/ft of torque and much faster throttle response. Economy improvement is 10-15%.
When driving a standard vehicle it actually pulls away from a standing start quite well initially, but loses interest once it gets to 3000 RPM. Personally we find this trait especially annoying, and it doesn’t even sound like a V8 either!
The only real pain with the upgrade is that we have to have the ECU here at Tornado HQ for therapy, which of course means that you would be without use of your vehicle for a couple days at best as you are in the UK. This is necessary because each individual ECU has a unique identity, which is combined with the vehicle identity to produce the software image.
Please notify us before you send it (if you decide to do so), so that I can ensure it is returned the same day by arrangement.
Once the software has been extracted from your ECU, it can cloned in future if you should ever lose or damage your original. However, if it gets lost on the way up then it would be necessary to have a new one installed and programmed using TestBook or RovaCom – expensive hassle you don’t need!
Before attempting any upgrade, I would just say that we treat the stock MAF as a consumable. If it has covered more than 80-90K Miles then it should really be replaced. These systems are very sensitive to original Bosch components, so you should never use any kind of pattern part with them
