Thread: ACE as option? And few D2 questions

I'll also stand up as a great fan of ACE. The thing stays flat like a gokart when corners. It's a big gain, but the biggest gain from ACE is in the off road capability. ACE syspension give significantly more articulation when offroad, as in about 5" from all reports.

Originally Posted by Trevhoare

We have just switched from a TD5 Auto with ACE to a TD5 manual without ACE.. both with SLS.
Frankly the difference in body roll is not that great, at least as a passenger. The steering response is perhaps a little sharper with ACE but our experience on indifferent country roads is that the very stiff ACE rollbar caused some harsh responses on bumpy corners at speed...

And then there's all that hydraulics and computing to wear out, need maintenance and go wrong.

As for the Auto that is the main reason we changed. From our point of view the TD5 does not work well with that auto. After having a TDi manual for many years before the auto and with the TD5 manual we really appreciate being able to have the engine working in its prime torque rev range in all gears and the extra gear.. Having only 4 gears is a limitation for the Auto and the loss of direct drive with a torque converter meant that the engine always seemed to rev too hard unless you were doing over 80 Km/Hr when the torque converter locks up. It is not possible to get the engine pulling on the Turbo at 1800-2500 revs in the lower gears.. as soon as you use any throttle the gearbox changes down and the TC slips so the engine is doing 2800-3200 revs... and the lack of engine braking at normal road speeds also frustrated.

This might better suit the V8 and they also use a different TC which might change the way it works.

On the bright side the auto is verrry smooth.. and clever.. if you read the manual and use the mode switch it does work as a manual to lock in gears in low range for example..

Cheers

Trevor

I agree that the the auto is ideally suited to the TD5 engine. I have seen some pretty embarrassed Disco V8 & BMW X5 drivers when I leave them for dead at lights
My auto locks up torque converter at about 83K/HR.
Ideally it should lock up about 70K/HR, as engine is still well within torque band. Does anyone know if ZF computer can be modified?

Cheers..Bruiser