Thread: Proton energy pills

When you get one of these and put it in your TD5 it will give you the power of 20 atom bombs for a period of 20 seconds...


well umm no, it wont and it certainly lasts a lot longer than 20 seconds but chances are you wont need it to last that long as inside the 20 seconds you'll be out past most legal speed limits in australia (or you'll run out of gears).


Ok Ive been hinting at this now for a couple of weeks so heres the scoop.

Big Red has a new brain in her... Its a Tombraider special the conversation that was to define what I was after was ment to go "give her everything she can safely handle" now either my anticipations on what was safe were grossly underestimated or tomby missed out on the word safely but to tell you the truth after a week of testing Im happy.. Theres exactly one thing Id change and I might be able to work around that.. but more on that later.

yes yes I know I said I wouldnt rebrain her until I had her breathing right but thats under control I have a new bigger intercooler lined up and a 3 inch exhaust under fabrication. A window opend up that would allow me about a week where I could do without big red so the brain was ripped out, mailed zapped mailed back and installed to the sound of much giggling.

Not knowing what to expect (and it was raining at 23:58 last friday night) I took it easy till i got onto a quiet stretch of the base road... I didnt know you could launch hard enough in a deefer to light up traction control..... I do now. So with a grin that required oversize signs and escorts on my dial i eased her home, packed her up for the australia day BBQ on bribie and headed off with a full belly of fuel for the first part of the fuel consumption tests. Essentially bribie and back driving hard to the speed limit with the aircon on and a trip up the beach to the campsite... That second bit had the potential to go terribly terribly wrong...

so its late on saturday arvo heading to the evening and I decide the bugger it I am going off to the camp site and Im going to take connie to the local markets in the morning.... WRONG... What happened was that against a rising tide that was nearly full height we made a dash along the beach in high range in 3rd gear, cdl in, on road pressure tyres on softening sand and untill I tried to get up the really soft sand of the access way to the campsite I didnt even get the TC light on. Just for a change instead of having to hold the pedal flat on the stops I actually had to modulate the pedal to stop her from going faster than Id have liked in the situation (and given that I was racing the last 1/4 of the tide that was about 45kph) and after making the site and setting up camp the last of the beach dissapeared to the tide and we were stuck.. thats ok theres a low tide coming but as timings would have it it wasnt till about 1030 the next day that we got away so with the tyres down from getting up the dune we cruised back... 3rd high again all the way with the cdl out and no sign of TC... (well once when i pushed up into some soft sand to make sure it was still working). by the time we were out and re-inflated the markets would have been wound up so we trapsed on home.

I honestly believe that if i didnt have the extra power on tap Id have been stuck up on a dune somewhere waiting out the tide, I might have made it but TC would have been getting a work out and Im damn certain that the low side wheels would have been lapping water when i got to the turn in for the site As is when I got there I was willing to go for another 10 minutes or so before making for the high ground to wait the low tide.

fuel consumption a bit more than 45l and just over 320km which included some other running around and plenty of playing with the noisey pedal.

the rest of this week has been spent driving big red around not so agressively and with the aircon off when it wasnt needed but on for the run out to and back from the australia zoo for a day with alex (had a ball). Just going off the gauge as I havent refueled Im pretty much on par with my expected fuel economy with 520ish kms on the clock with the gauge about a needle width above the 1/4 mark. normally Im at about 550-560 by that point but I havent strictly been adhereing to the "gotta save fuel gotta save fuel the lights on and its 90k to the servo" mantra and we had the aircon on full chat for about 300 of those KM. I reckon driven for economy Im going to get a good return from the tank but its bloody hard to do which leads me to the one gripe that I have about the rebrain.

The noisey pedal... I think its too sensitive too early, the difference between "engine braking please" and "race the F111" isnt very much. It feels like the first 1/3 or less of pedal travel gives you about 80% of the noise and the last 2/3rds is spent allowing very fine control of the top 20% of the power. This doesnt really suit my driving style as I like to keep the minimum amount of power on and thats usually less than 1/2 whats availalble but If I need to move I'll bury the boot to the stops and then sort it out on the gear changes and finesse the one i wind up in. The short solution might just be to manually trip the low range select switch.

Just for poops n laughter over the weekend I got the call to come and unbog a bogged (higher than the tow hitch) toymota... another thing I didnt know is that when you have the CDL in and have a veryy bogged toymota acting as an achor point when you hit the limit of the snatch strap in 2low you will spin all 4 wheels without lighting the TC up untill the strap breaks and then you will launch like.... umm I dont know anything on wheels that got the same feel as that happening.... think of unslamming into a brick wall and your on the right track... Anyway when you recover the stuck toymota you dont want to be in 2 low as when he gets off the noise you'll just skulldrag him in a very unprofessional looking manner as his wheels lock and turn against his engines compression

Planting the boot tends to leave a smoke screen that puts most russian tank smoke generators to shame but as mine exits out to the left I can watch it in the left fisheye so thats not a big issue at this point and I expect that with the new cooler and exhaust that too will be minimalised.

Turbolag... ummm no the time it takes me to get to 3rd when im being serious about it is less than it took me to get to 2nd. If theres lag its got to be in the kind of timeframe that can only be measured with optical triggers, super computers and atomic clocks.


All up Tombraider done good.....

next week will see the hill climb up the towoomba ranges and a proper run for fuel economy.

then some towing the week after that.

Originally Posted by incisor

nice write up dave

could you put it in the reviews section please....

Sure when its complete I still havent tested everything on it I'll append to the first post as I finish my testing regiem (both pre and post intercooler swap over as apropriate). I also dont remember the full details of which proggie he uploaded into the brain, when I get that I'll put the review up with the full name as the title.

Originally Posted by 5teve

Blk

Which did Tombraider give you? im toying (once mines running better again) with going another program.. i have the standard tombraider conversion but was thinking of a little more grunt still.. obviously need the intercooler too..

still other things need sorting otherwise it'll be a waste of time... dont you just love intermittent issues....

Thanks

Steve

The BIG one..