New Emerald to be.
Discussion
Yep, I'm standard apart from the trumpets/spacer/insulator and a full decat which makes any changes in induction noise rather less obvious 
eta - mine is only a piddly 4 litre so has 38mm intakes rather than the 45mm - I assume your 450 has the same 45mm as the 5 litre, otherwise yes you would need to open up the inlet manifold to get a 45mm trumpet setup on.
eta - mine is only a piddly 4 litre so has 38mm intakes rather than the 45mm - I assume your 450 has the same 45mm as the 5 litre, otherwise yes you would need to open up the inlet manifold to get a 45mm trumpet setup on.
Edited by andy43 on Saturday 10th December 16:55
motul1974 said:
300 was the figure he quote I should be there or there abouts when finished.
Depending on your needs 300 Bhp is more than enough. I think back now and I'm so glad I had the presence of mind to build my cars engine with nothing but torque in mind, I remember telling Dom at Powers about my grassbike racing as a youngster and how the 500cc single 4 stroke engines with enough grunt to pull you in one gear from 0-60 mph wheel spinning all the way before you'd need to change gear, he understood what I wanted, the 350 ft lb torque I now have is what makes the car seem really fast, on the road if I went Bhp I'd have to be going very fast to feel it so I find with the big toque curve I've always got the sense of big power even at low revs which is about 80% of the time.
I might be talking rubbish and going against many on here but I think the 38 mm trumpets help rush the air in at anything but high revs which helps with getting the torque curve up at these lower revs, I get really good fuel economy figures if I make an effort
that excites me more that the engines running so well rather than it saves me a few pennies and the car is still pretty darn fast, I loose out over 4500 revs but that's lasts about 1.5 seconds max before we're changing gear again and the torque starts again, My point is on the roads I'm always experiencing instant grunt, unless your on a very smooth road Bhp appears for such a short time period as in 4500/6000 revs it's all over very quickly.
The idea of loosing any torque for Bhp is and has never been a good idea to me on a low revving road car.
I've got the MBE. Very happy with it
Ok. I'll be chatting to joolz's this week ,hopefully. I agree with you, torque is where it's at for me too, as most of my fun driving is around the peak district where the flexibility of having great pick up whilst driving the twisty stuff is worth a great deal more to me than ultimate top end.
motul1974 said:
Ok. I'll be chatting to joolz's this week ,hopefully. I agree with you, torque is where it's at for me too, as most of my fun driving is around the peak district where the flexibility of having great pick up whilst driving the twisty stuff is worth a great deal more to me than ultimate top end.
MBE plus some goodies and I agree with you about good torque. Was out today, 4th gear, 1.200 revs and floored it and off we went, no judder, hesitation just that nice whoosh. As above, mine's only a piddly 4.0 litre with 481 ft/lbs 
Emerald isn't bad, but it certainly won't be fit and forget, it is designed for racing use and not so much for an every day driver. After having an Emerald on my 450 for around 8 years, I've removed mine this year and have just fit the ultimate ECU for Rover engined cars, a Lucas-Sagem GEMS. I've just written a long artical about it for Sprint which should be out in February's issue which might be of interest to you; having the 450 engine, you have the necessary mounting points for the GEMS sensors as standard (knock sensors & crank sensor). Its a little bit of work, but it's a much more refined and powerful ECU than the Emerald!
Also, don't go blended base - you may gain 2bhp at the top end but you'll lose a chunk of torque out of your mid range for it. Some good discussion in this topic: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Also, don't go blended base - you may gain 2bhp at the top end but you'll lose a chunk of torque out of your mid range for it. Some good discussion in this topic: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Edited by 450Nick on Monday 12th December 15:26
450Nick said:
Emerald isn't bad, but it certainly won't be fit and forget, it is designed for racing use and not so much for an every day driver. After having an Emerald on my 450 for around 8 years, I've removed mine this year and have just fit the ultimate ECU for Rover engined cars, a Lucas-Sagem GEMS. I've just written a long artical about it for Sprint which should be out in February's issue which might be of interest to you; having the 450 engine, you have the necessary mounting points for the GEMS sensors as standard (knock sensors & crank sensor). Its a little bit of work, but it's a much more refined and powerful ECU than the Emerald!
Also, don't go blended base - you may gain 2bhp at the top end but you'll lose a chunk of torque out of your mid range for it.
Also, don't go blended base - you may gain 2bhp at the top end but you'll lose a chunk of torque out of your mid range for it.
Interesting, one day I'll become a TVR owner's club member
, I'll have to borrow that edition of the Sprint mag from my mate. I've often heard the Lucas-Sagem GEMS system described as "unnecessarily complicated", but it's my experience when someone describes something as unnecessarily complicated it's usually because they've failed to understand it.
Is it relatively straightforward to map Nick?
ChimpOnGas said:
Interesting, one day I'll become a TVR owner's club member , I'll have to borrow that edition of the Sprint mag from my mate.
I've often heard the Lucas-Sagem GEMS system described as "unnecessarily complicated", but it's my experience when someone describes something as unnecessarily complicated it's usually because they've failed to understand it.
Is it relatively straightforward to map Nick?
To map its really quite simple; you get in the car and drive around and then stop and turn it off for 30 seconds. The ECU works out any changes to make to the map and then applies them for next time you run the car, it learns very quickly and will continue to map itself forever. It can adjust anything on the ECU map from cold start map to altitude, cruise, full power, ignition and fuelling, stepper motor, the lot. It even power tunes itself using the knock sensors, and can adjust ignition timing for each individual cylinder based on knock that it finds. It takes around 100 miles to get a map as good as most good rolling road technicians can manage, and after 1000 miles it is better than Mark Adams (his own admission) - most GEMS systems will never need to go near a rolling road. Mine might as I've got very large injectors and a supercharger, hotish cam and big heads so we're not really sure how far it is from it's base map, but within a couple of days it was running as well as it ever has from a completely guessed base map - it is an amazing piece of kit. , I'll have to borrow that edition of the Sprint mag from my mate. I've often heard the Lucas-Sagem GEMS system described as "unnecessarily complicated", but it's my experience when someone describes something as unnecessarily complicated it's usually because they've failed to understand it.
Is it relatively straightforward to map Nick?
In answer to the complicated part (sorry I missed that!). The programming behind it is ridiculously complicated, it was developed at a cost of millions and ultimately lost out in the market as it was so over-engineered and expensive. Over engineering though is where it gets it's cleverness, and also its ability to self diagnose and correct errors. It can run your car without you realising there is an error even when several sensors are broken, and Mark insists you install an engine warning light as you can be oblivious even to injector problems as GEMS is so good at coping with them. So yes it is complicated, but the loom is not very complicated, and it maps its self so there's not much to worry about. It's also extremely efficient with fuel and emissions to boot!
Edited by 450Nick on Monday 12th December 15:46
ChimpOnGas said:
450Nick said:
Emerald isn't bad, but it certainly won't be fit and forget, it is designed for racing use and not so much for an every day driver. After having an Emerald on my 450 for around 8 years, I've removed mine this year and have just fit the ultimate ECU for Rover engined cars, a Lucas-Sagem GEMS. I've just written a long artical about it for Sprint which should be out in February's issue which might be of interest to you; having the 450 engine, you have the necessary mounting points for the GEMS sensors as standard (knock sensors & crank sensor). Its a little bit of work, but it's a much more refined and powerful ECU than the Emerald!
Also, don't go blended base - you may gain 2bhp at the top end but you'll lose a chunk of torque out of your mid range for it.
Also, don't go blended base - you may gain 2bhp at the top end but you'll lose a chunk of torque out of your mid range for it.
Interesting, one day I'll become a TVR owner's club member
, I'll have to borrow that edition of the Sprint mag from my mate. I've often heard the Lucas-Sagem GEMS system described as "unnecessarily complicated", but it's my experience when someone describes something as unnecessarily complicated it's usually because they've failed to understand it.
Is it relatively straightforward to map Nick?
Re the induction - on carbs the longer the intake generally the better the midrange torque. Go shorter for max bhp on a screamer. Blended base may get you the bhp numbers but maybe big tall trumpets are better lower down the rev range, less scavenging, smoother intake to the cylinders.
eta Bah I'm too slow
450Nick said:
To map its really quite simple; you get in the car and drive around and then stop and turn it off for 30 seconds. The ECU works out any changes to make to the map and then applies them for next time you run the car, it learns very quickly and will continue to map itself forever. It can adjust anything on the ECU map from cold start map to altitude, cruise, full power, ignition and fuelling, stepper motor, the lot. It even power tunes itself using the knock sensors, and can adjust ignition timing for each individual cylinder based on knock that it finds. It takes around 100 miles to get a map as good as most good rolling road technicians can manage, and after 1000 miles it is better than Mark Adams (his own admission) - most GEMS systems will never need to go near a rolling road. Mine might as I've got very large injectors and a supercharger, hotish cam and big heads so we're not really sure how far it is from it's base map, but within a couple of days it was running as well as it ever has from a completely guessed base map - it is an amazing piece of kit.
In answer to the complicated part (sorry I missed that!). The programming behind it is ridiculously complicated, it was developed at a cost of millions and ultimately lost out in the market as it was so over-engineered and expensive. Over engineering though is where it gets it's cleverness, and also its ability to self diagnose and correct errors. It can run your car without you realising there is an error even when several sensors are broken, and Mark insists you install an engine warning light as you can be oblivious even to injector problems as GEMS is so good at coping with them. So yes it is complicated, but the loom is not very complicated, and it maps its self so there's not much to worry about. It's also extremely efficient with fuel and emissions to boot!
Wow, that is cool... sounds insanely good in fact.In answer to the complicated part (sorry I missed that!). The programming behind it is ridiculously complicated, it was developed at a cost of millions and ultimately lost out in the market as it was so over-engineered and expensive. Over engineering though is where it gets it's cleverness, and also its ability to self diagnose and correct errors. It can run your car without you realising there is an error even when several sensors are broken, and Mark insists you install an engine warning light as you can be oblivious even to injector problems as GEMS is so good at coping with them. So yes it is complicated, but the loom is not very complicated, and it maps its self so there's not much to worry about. It's also extremely efficient with fuel and emissions to boot!
Edited by 450Nick on Monday 12th December 15:46
Thanks for taking the time to explain it Nick
I've done a full cost breakdown in the Sprint article, but generally speaking you can buy all of the bits from Ebay second hand (OEM parts will last for years) for a couple of hundred pounds, you'll need:
Coil packs
Crank sensor
Cam sensor
AFM
Knock sensors
2x wide band Lambda sensors
fuel temp sensor (you might already have that part)
OBD diagnostic port
Then you can buy an ECU for about £20, but you will need the Tornado chip from Mark with the base maps to run it (a few hundred pounds). Loom wise, I adapted one from a brand new Land Rover defender GEMS loom, but if I were doing it again I would just start from scratch as it would have been the same amount of work as the TVR is a different shape. Depending on interest from the Sprint article, I may help Mark put together a kit with loom so you can buy a GEMS kit, though currently you have to do this yourself. If a kit were made though, it really wouldn't be very hard to do, GEMS is made by Lucas as was the 14CUX so a lot of the wiring colouring and sizing is the same - plus you can get full wiring diagrams from the Land Rover manual which are very clear and nice to work from. All in, I think you could do a GEMS conversion for around £1k in parts, so it's not super cheap but then it is much more powerful than anything in the aftermarket, and you can save a lot on rolling road fees!
Coil packs
Crank sensor
Cam sensor
AFM
Knock sensors
2x wide band Lambda sensors
fuel temp sensor (you might already have that part)
OBD diagnostic port
Then you can buy an ECU for about £20, but you will need the Tornado chip from Mark with the base maps to run it (a few hundred pounds). Loom wise, I adapted one from a brand new Land Rover defender GEMS loom, but if I were doing it again I would just start from scratch as it would have been the same amount of work as the TVR is a different shape. Depending on interest from the Sprint article, I may help Mark put together a kit with loom so you can buy a GEMS kit, though currently you have to do this yourself. If a kit were made though, it really wouldn't be very hard to do, GEMS is made by Lucas as was the 14CUX so a lot of the wiring colouring and sizing is the same - plus you can get full wiring diagrams from the Land Rover manual which are very clear and nice to work from. All in, I think you could do a GEMS conversion for around £1k in parts, so it's not super cheap but then it is much more powerful than anything in the aftermarket, and you can save a lot on rolling road fees!
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