Superchip on test in VVC engine

I had a chance to try out the superchip with the accelerometer today, on our VVC engined Midget. The engine is standard MGF apart from a 55mm throttle body & larger exhaust.   The superchip used simply modifies the ignition map, and doesn’t change the injection map.

I weighed the car as part of setting up the accelerometer and discovered it has put on weight – 875kg including the driver (need to go on a diet!) and 470kg of this on the rear wheels (very interesting, that makes 54% on the rear!)

Results from fitting the superchip were good!

In summary:

0 – 60 mph dropped just over 0.5 sec
Peak BHP up 3%
Acceleration rate (and therefore torque) up 6-7% RIGHT THROUGH THE RANGE.

In detail:

Using second gear all the way standing start to 60mph, I carried out 5 runs prior to installing the superchip. I then repeated immediately after installing the superchip, doing another 5 runs.

Second was used to do the run as I’ve found that this method provides the most useful data throughout the rev range, and to eliminate the 1st-2nd gearchange factor.

The following results are expressed as a range lowest to highest for each parameter, usually reflecting variability in the take-off technique.

Without Superchip:

0 – 60mph range 8.2 – 8.6 sec.
BHP recorded at 120-123 at the wheels.
Acceleration recorded as follows:
At 20mph: 0.32g,
30mph: 0.32g,
40mph: 0.33g,
50mph: 0.34g,
60mph: 0.29g

With Superchip:

0 – 60mph range 7.55 – 7.9 sec
(The slowest in this group was still faster than the best without the superchip)
BHP recorded at 126 -128 at the wheels
Acceleration recorded as
At 20mph: 0.34g
30mph: 0.34g
40mph: 0.35g
50mph: 0.36g
60mph: 0.31g

At the end of all this I had a play, going through the gears to 60mph instead of 2nd all the way. Time dropped to 6.3 sec, could have been better but the car was on very ordinary tyres and being on a public road and I didn’t want to be too irritating to the locals with copious wheelspin…. Also, I didn’t get to changing a very dirty air filter which would have slowed things a bit (ie I forgot till afterwards!), but it was at least a constant factor.

All in all a very interesting session.