I never found these so I had a body shop paint the bumper lenses the color of the car when I had the Arden Sport Mirrors installed.

 

The body shop used a special type of paint that allows the bulb to be seen at night. The light output is dimmer, but you can still see it at night.

 

Since I bought my car, I've been stealing ideas from 03JagSTR. In fact, I bought my s-type because of him.

 

I'd focus on rotating mass. Things I'd do....

Take out spare tire. (not rotating mass but heavy)
Lightweight wheels (forged)
Carbon fiber driveshaft
Slotted and dimpled rotors

as a few examples.

 

While static weight would help he would have more advantages by reducing rotating mass. Light weight pulleys, lighter rotors... Anything that the engine has to turn would benefit from being lighter.

A common formula is for every 1lb of rotating mass you reduce is equivalent to 100lbs of dead weight from the car. So even the material taken off from slotting and dempling your rotors equals up to 1lb per rotor, the engine would have to work as if you removed 400lbs from your car...

Thats why lightweight flywheels, pulleys, driveshafts, harmonic balancers, etc. are sooo important.

Just by switching to RJC Racing lightweight pulleys in my GN I gained 40 extra hp and the engine revved faster and got better mileage.

 

If you want to considerably lighten the rotating mass (critical for acceleration) one of the biggest things is light-weight two-piece rotors instead of an all cast rotor. The hub is forged and bolted to the friction surface. Now from a handling point total weight(sprung and unsprung weight)is important, but it is secondary to how that weight is distributed amongst the four wheels. Suspensions can't really be "tuned" until you have an agreable weight distribution. Having the car "corner weighed" and adjusting/shifting weight will be more beneficial to handing as opposed to just removing weight from random parts of the car.

 

FYI, This is from an email with Eurotek below when I spoke with them, as far as exhaust a friend of mine's shop customwelded one up for me using magnaflow mufflers etc (kept the factory h-pipe) and it sounds great. Total price was under $300 but that is with no labor as I helped and like I said he was a good friend:

We offer the Stage 1 kit which includes the ECU, R Specific intake and Pulley Upgrade, the Jag XP cone intake sounds cool and looks ok but you don’t make any real power.
Our Stage 1 kit is $1495 includes shipping. 35-40hp gain 30ftbs more torque

Stage2: Modified supercharger and throttle body on exchange only with new gaskets and EGR vale set up $1795, this will come with special pulley fitted on blower. Net gain 25 hp and 20ftbs more

Stage 3: Race exhaust No cats down pipes and all, adds 30hp $5395.00

Stage 4: Modification of the cylinder heads and valves this will gain 25hp price on exchange only $4995

Suspension shocks, springs, bump stops, strut hats and all hardware mounted for installation $3000

 

By email...

They're trying to find me somewhere closer to Georgia to do my stage ! package. 88ft/lb of torque sounds great for a ecu flash.

And thank you sir, I'll try and get pics of the jag and GN up sometime.

 

Sir, if you can find me a road worth, reliable set of two-peice rotors for a 03' Stype R I will purchase them right..............about.................now.

 

i have a guy that did my ecu and it gave me aloooooooot of power, he does it for 1500$ and thats alot cheaper then what u can get it for from somewhere else...the most power u can get out of that car is by the ecu....the pulley upgrade gives mostly top end power but the ecu is SICK! ! ! great take off and alot of torque.

 

It seems half our problem (with 0-1/4 mile) is not Hp as much as it is a function of a lazy transmission and lack of traction; i.e. no LSD.

Going from a '03 to a '05 I did notice a higher rev in 1st and 2nd so maybe Jag optimized the shift pattern a touch. That said, I still don't believe I'm reaching redline - so there's one bottle neck in that we're not making the full beans of 400Bhp. Did the ECU retune cure this ill?

Let's assume we break that bottle neck, next we have traction. Without a proper LSD, we could load on the Hp for mid to top end but we're still going slow trot from a dig.

Looking at comparable Hp and Torque cars (heck, even the XJR) and you would think we could hit 5's or sub 5's 0-60mph if the tranny cooperated. If the ECU retune can make this happen, I'm in.

Any noticeable difference in MPG after the retune?