SVT-ST200 Upgrade (56k beware)

st200 ecu is compleatley different or so ive read and i dont think they have the same features any way the cougar us way moire advanced dispite being older. The best im going to do is a superchip (notone that blows my ecu up this time) or dream science repapping unit.
 
Beggers20 said:
I dont mind being lectured lol especially when i know you are rite just that im trying to do it on the cheap so to speak. Spent nealry 600 on this now started off as a 300 quid project lol As for injectors i was told today at the Piston heads show by a tuning company that there wouldnt be much point in fitting the bigger injectors unless i was going for forced induction (if ony i had a spare 3g lol) He basicaly said thet the ecu is only programmed to put a certain amount of fuel into the engine and a lambda burn is the optimum burn that the ecu can set up so uprating them would be pointless? How much he knows about the Duratec v6 i dont know he seemed to know what he was talking about so im in 2 minds onw about the old injectors. Any help or lectures lol
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No thats perfectly true, and he's the expert :) !!

The 19lb green injectors fitted to the ST200 are a bit of overkill... in conjunction with the full works conversion to ST200 spec, and the ST200 ECU they do have a function... but like the guy said you dont need them at all really on a standard engine with standard heads and manifolds etc.

The standard injectors can squirt a fair bit of fuel into the engine anyhow, and i suspect that they err on the side of caution and actually squirt too much fuel in! (a lean mixture kills engines)

What he meant by lamda burn was the stoichiometry of the reaction inside the engine (when it burns the air & fuel producing the exhaust gasses) at the ideal point between lean and rich, and the lambda sensors in the cats and exhaust measure the amount of o2 so the ECU can adjust the fuelling accordingly to stop it from fluctuating either way too much. ( i think? thats how i understand it anyhow)

If you are tuning or upgrading your engine and you want more air going in, then you need more fuel to make more power, but also to stop the mixture from leaning out and making your pistons and valves overheat and melt. So your ST200 TB wont push things too far that you need bigger injectors! But if you wanted to get the most out of all the parts such as the enlarged ported cylinder heads, manifolds TB etc etc.. then they would push you to the magic 205bhp mark!!

The standard injectors can run at fuel pressures upto 100psi i think? ( im sure its theoretically whatever your fuel pump can supply??? i may be wrong though) so if you were planning a modest DIY turbo or supercharger conversion you can get more out of your standard injectors by uprating the fuel pump, and fitting an adjustable rising rate fuel pressure regulator valve to the fuel rail at the return end.

Then you could bolt on a turbo from say an extension of tubing welded up from the exit point of the exhaust Y pipe, have a wastegate actuator set to keep the turbo at a fairly low pressure like 5 or 6 psi, blowing the induction air through a small intercooler, and then up an induction pipe into the UIM (blowing through the MAF) as long as your new adjustable Fuel pressure valve was a 'rising rate' type one, a small boost reference hose plugs into it (same way you would connect a boost gauge) and it increases the fuel pressure by a set amount for each increase in boost psi... the ECU would also be able to sort out all the fuelling for you for such a low pressure setup, and you would have yourself a turbo'd cougar!!
Id try it first of course.. but!!!!!! hahahaha :LOL: :LOL: it could all go horribly wrong and you would knacker up your car!

Anyhow im no expert, Jamie is the guy to talk to about anything cougar, and a fair few members on here are engineers and computer experts!!

I spoke to a tuning guy who specialised in mondeo ST24's and ST200's, and he said that the best real world tuning mod was to fit a brand new set of spark plugs, mainly because the platinum plugs dont just degrade and have widening plug gaps etc.. but they actually start to fail around the area where the ceramic insulator meets the metal plug body.. and you get a characteristic brown ring forming. That means that exhaust gasses are starting to leak between the gap through the insulation... so you're losing compression, and severely burning up your HT leads too... all of which leads to poop performance.

Get your standard fuel injectors ultrasonic cleaned and serviced with new o rings.

He also said buy a brand new MAF, just a standard one, and your car will fly... because they get damaged over time and gunked up, being a hotwire type they are meant to burn up any deposits that contaminate them... but it doesnt work 100% so a new one and a minor tune up and adjustment will see you getting the claimed MPG figures and also you get all the horses back, which will have escaped since your cougar left the factory!! :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:
 
At the moment im putting out 184bhp from new plugs and leads aswell as my k&N and heat shield. Ive got the st200 UIM & LIM ready to go on and a mongoose exhaust and power chip in the pipeline. The st200 throttle body was the latest adition to the ever growing list of st200 parts i have. I also have st200 cams i missed the end of an auction that ended at 12 quid for a block and st200 pistons :eek: Im hoping to get around 200 from the inlet and outlet gas upgrades. (someone tell me if this is unrealistic) As for the cams god who knows if they will ever make it into the car thats going to require some serious work and i figure whilst the engine is apart for the cams (all 4) why not do the rest of the internals lol. Might need a load of saving for all that tho. Ive just purchased a center exhaust cat to gut to add to the exhaust system hoping for an extra 8bhp fron that (will be used on track days only :wink: ) and i want some headers from the good old USA when i find a place that sell them. Once all this is done ill be 90 years old then looking at a turbo kit lol. Thanks for all your input. Im sure we met at CF you didnt have a cougar at the time i think you were in an Astra. Bet you cant guess what i was driving lol. You got the lamda burn spot on nearley the exact wording of the guy eariler lol Ive seen fuel regulators on ebay but have been warned to steer clear of them decent tuning websites such as burton power sell them so they cant be all that bad can they? I did a load of research on putting a turbo on the car about 6 months ago when i had some money but Shagmonkey put me off the idea saying id kill the engine & gearbox unless i did some serious work to them hence my new plans. Even had a garage that were going to do the turbo and had a 20% off deal planned with a contour turbo supplier in the USA :roll:
 
:LOL: Yeah... i can tell we've both been down the same path ideas wise! hahaha, yep from all the research ive managed to do on those ebay AFPR's lots of people have said that they fail because the screws on the body vibrate loose and the unit comes in half splashing fuel everywhere! :eek: ... or the adjustment screw you can turn on the top of the device can perforate the diaphragm inside and cause it to suddenly fail... and if this happens as you are happily boosting along in your turbo converted car.. then you get a fully lean mixture and blow the engine!

I think though that if you get a decent one (ie not a ?ú20 cheapo one!) and you dont turn the top screw down too far, it should be ok. Also you're meant to take the screws out (the ones that hold the two halves of the body together) and reassemble it all with locktite or superglue on the screw threads, and then just keep an eye on your air fuel gauge for any signs of trouble! Should be reliable enough.

Besides i was interested in doing this type of low pressure turbo so that when the car is off boost, it is essentially running the standard amount of fuel and compression... so the economy shouldnt be too bad, then if the boost threshold was about 3K rpm it would wake up pretty smartish and you could have the performance while the extra ports were opened up on the LIM! Seemed like a plan? I can see why shagmonkey might have warned you though, it is very very expensive to get it right, and any DIY efforts will carry a modest risk!


Even those air:fuel gauges you buy arent that great.. theyre definitely better than nothing! But you need an expensive wideband o2 sensor to hook up to them so that you can tune the fuelling settings properly and also keep an eye on your mixture! The narrow band lambda sensors that come as standard measure in really big increments so the reading they give for the air:fuel gauge is really inaccurate.

Yeah i was at CF haha, but i was in a black focus TDCi!!! Im planning to absolutely come what may.. be in my own cougar for this years fest, even if i have to tow it there and just pretend!! I can push it into the lineup for the photos if its not working!!! :D

Going back to something else you said in an earlier post about using the ST200 ECU on a standard cougar engine and loom... when i did my st200 transplant, it all fitted in pretty ok, had to change a few plugs and bits of wiring here and there but on the whole it was very very easy. BUT!!! when i tried to start it up the immobiliser light was flashing fast on the button next to the traction control switch (because the ecu and immobiliser are one unit, and the ST200 ecu i was using with my transplanted engine wasnt coded for my ignition key).
I plugged in my old standard ECU and although the plugs were the same and it plugged in... i noticed that the immobiliser light wasnt flashing at all, and nothing happened, i got batt lights and airbag etc on the dash but totally dead, no starter nothing. So it must be true that the pins on the ST200 ECU might be configured differently and will only work with the ST200 engine wiring loom. Once i towed the car to ford and put the ST200 ecu back in, they just recoded my ignition key to the ST200 ecu and it fired up immediately!!! (cost me ?ú80).

As for the cams, you may as well put them in if you have them?! Its a mission to strip the engine back far enough to get the timing cover off, and you WILL need a big puller to remove the crankshaft pulley, got to take the sump off too before you take the timing cover off... so it is a huge job! But perfect for a good all round bit of service... you can inspect everything while youre at it, and maybe even upgrade to the oil sump pan from the jag 3.0 S-type, if you change the oil sump and pickup tube your car wont suffer the dodgy crankshaft bearing failure!
The options are endless... but id be happy with 180 bhp!!! thats plenty!! haha
 
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