Haha. Yep, form over function! If I can get em both at the same time, great, but a large part of why I chose this car over a 08-12 S5 was looks.

 

Well check this out! I spoke to Tom at Speedkore and it's actually quite possible that they'll make some aero for the F Type! He's looking into being able to do the design and getting back to me and if he says it's doable, I'll start a group buy thread as that's how it'll have to start, otherwise I'd have to pay for the kit plus the cost of R&D and that ain't happening.

 

Wow, I didn’t think they would do it given the cost of their tooling. I live near Grafton and work with several SEMA and OEM suppliers around this area for personal projects. Let me know if you need Local assistance at some point.

 

Yeah that might be good. He mentioned that the cars they make stuff for have diagrams or whatever available online but the F Type did not. A local resource might be quite helpful. I'll PM you when he gets back to me.

 

Still haven't heard back from Tom. Followed up with an email this morning though, so hopefully will hear back soon. Funny, when someone suggested this battery https://antigravitybatteries.com/pro...tive/ag-h7-rs/ I said I might consider it when it's time to replace. Apparently that time is now. Got a message in the info center when I shut my car off when I got to work this morning. Something like "battery is low. please start engine". Cranked it up, turned off the headlights and revved to about 3 grand for 5-6 minutes and shut it off again. Got the same message. So couple questions on that battery. 1) is it worth the extra money (and weight) to get the 60amp-hour or is the 40 good enough? and 2) dealership quoted me ****ing $236 to replace it. It's just in the trunk under a panel. Looks like a 5 min swap out. They claim it has to be programmed to the battery management system. Is this legit or are they blowing smoke up my ***??

 

Smoke.
The BMS automatically re-calibrates over a few on/off cycles after fitting a new battery.
I fitted new batteries to both my XFS and XFR and didn't need any "re-calibrate the BMS" malarkey.
Five minutes may be pushing it a little, I would allow 10 minutes!

 

Haha. Fair enough. 10 min then. Anyone have any input on the battery itself? $900 is STEEP for a battery, and $1k is even steeper. Just wondering if it's really worth it. Sure the weight savings is nice, but is that the only benefit?

 

The time probably isn’t now. Disconnect your battery overnight and check for the message the next morning. Likely it will be gone. Plug anything into the OBD port lately?

 

Actually yes. I recently installed a dashcam that's powered from the OBD port. You think that's the cause? Guess I could stop by autozone and have them test the battery

 

I know that’s the cause. These vehicles hate being plugged into, there’s nothing wrong with your battery. Do a search, probably two dozen threads on the topic. I think that dash cam is gonna be problematic for you if it’s always plugged in.

 

Well poo. They make another power adapter (power magic pro) that is a fuse tap, but I really didn't want to deal with that. Guess I might have to consider it. I'll give this more time and see if any other issues crop up

 

1) you can disconnect your battery for a mere 15 seconds to reboot and enable proper operation of the BCM after the OBD port has been plugged into.
2) As Oz mentioned, the BCM will eventually recalibrate itself after a battery replacement.
3) Since the Lithium battery is a different beast, either a passive or dealer recalibration might never occur. The only downside, if you can call it that is that the ECO stop/start feature will never shut down the engine (YAY!!!).
4) I have the 30 AH version of the H6 antigravity restart battery (actually the RS-30 predecessor) and it has never failed me, even down to 18 degF. The only time it automatically shut down was when I left the ignition turned on with the sound system blasting. Then it was a simple press of a button on the battery to start the car. (if you have an electric hatch, you'll need to carry a small 12V lithium pack in the cabin to get access to the battery)
5) Benefits besides the huge weight savings: a) Lithium batteries last 5-7 times longer than AGM batteries, so even at 3 times the price, the operating cost of the Lithium is roughly half. b) the ability to get the car started before the battery is fully drained.

 

Thanks for all that. I did read about the how the battery will go into a "sleep" mode to keep it from being completely drained, and that is indeed pretty cool. #5 is not really a consideration for me since I doubt I'll have the car more than 4 years as it will be 8 years old at that point and I bought it with pretty high miles to start with (65k on a 2016. for perspective my 2016 Z06 has 17k miles and people tell me that's high miles all the time) so once I get close to 100k, it's gonna be out the door. I don't know if my start/stop feature is broken or not, but whether the light is on or off, it never shuts off when I'm stopped, but I definitely like it that way, so yes I'd say that's a perk of the Li-Ion. I'm gonna try disconnecting it for a while and seeing if that resets it so I don't get the message anymore. Not gonna replace the battery if it's not needed. Wonder how much anyone would care about that battery for resale...

 

Antigravity now has a wireless fob to wake the battery up. It looks like they also have it in an OEM-sized case for ease of mounting. It's still not cheap.

 

Yeah saw the wireless fob thing and it's pretty cool, for sure. Like you said though, not cheap at all. Hopefully it's a moot point and I don't need a new battery anyway. Disconnected the battery yesterday and I didn't get the "battery low" message again, either yesterday afternoon or after getting to work this morning, so maybe it was just the dash cam and some funkiness with the OBD port. Time will tell

 

Good info to have when I’m ready to get a new battery in 5-8 years. Thanks.

 

Hi Todd,

I'm sorry you feel that our prices are unreasonable. As some others have pointed out, when you're developing parts for an FType versus say, a Mustang the R&D and development cost as well as economies of scale in production are much different. While I understand your frustration that the prices aren't lower, I take offense personally to the statement about 'robbing us blind'. I built this company up from literally nothing, and we did it through hard work, great customer service and working on fulfilling needs in under-served markets. We have our faults, like any company and I'm sure there are always ways to be more efficient and reduce costs but generally we are pretty good in this regard. Our company is profitable, but not unreasonably so - if you saw our P&L you would look at our post tax profits and say 'Yeah that looks about right.'

So yeah, I do take exception to the 'robbing us blind' comments. We've been a part of this community for a long time and helped build & support it. We choose sometimes to use more expensive suppliers or materials if we feel the quality justifies it. And when it comes to software, we have invested more time and energy than I could possibly quantify in producing really good tuning for these cars, not just throwing a couple torque demand increases at the car and calling it a day (believe me, it's way more common than you would think.) All our software is written by Chris Edgett who is a factory trained JLR and Aston technician with over 15 years experience.

We have never set out to be 'cheap' but we have always set out to be reasonably priced and to deliver great value at that price point. I hope we have the opportunity to earn your business.

 

Well I can tell you Stuart that your service has been some of the best I have ever experienced in the automotive tuning industry. I have been around American cars and BMWs for the most part and while the service has always been great it hasn't been as good as yours. I have 3 really big tuners in the Bay Area, California for Chevrolet cars as my previous was a C7 Z06 and it was like pulling teeth to get some of these tuners to reply to an email and get opinions on which way id like to do my build. You have replied and respond to every email in a very quick time and answered every question I had (and I have a lot). That is just amazing right there, you do pay for what you get, and your service is worth everything. Your prices on your mods I don't think are outrageous for what the F types price tag is, in fact I think there price very well considering this is a rather rare car and the tuning world isn't huge here so the R&D isn't cheap either, this is a business and you have to make your money. Your lower pulley, sport cats and tune that I received for Black Friday for my R with the great sale you had made this a no brainer for me. Keep doing what you do, thank you!

 

.....Roasted

 

Sorry to offend. I forget everyone is a special snowflake these days and no one is allowed to say anything disparaging about anyone. Yes, I get that R&D is a lot harder to recoup when you sell a lot fewer units. That's what tax write offs are for and why they say "expect to lose money the first 5 years". Let's be honest, now that R&D is done, it costs you $100 TOPS to crank out a pulley on the CNC machine and a tune is practically free at this point (though obviously I still expect to pay a few hundred for it). I was looking at a dnyo (aka small shop with no "large sample" to sell to) E85 tune for my Z06 (and again don't say "well vettes are cheaper" because this was a CUSTOM tune) where he was going to have to tune it for 93 octane, drain the tank, fill it with E85, tune it for that, and then do a mixture and tune again so that it could tolerate any level of ethanol mix and it was only SLIGHTLY more than what your tune is. And this was an all day ordeal. Said it had to be dropped off first thing when they opened and would hopefully have it done by COB. I feel like at this point you are past R&D. Your introductory post is over 4 years old and it sounds like even at that point you were pretty well established. I digress. Sounds like you've got good customer service (when your feelers aren't hurt), your products work, and people are willing to pay for them. Good on ya. This is merka. We are a capitalist country and if you can charge 10x what you're charging now and still have people pay, I say go for it! It just ain't gonna be me, that's all. There was no offense intended, I just think your prices aren't in line with the product. I'll refer you to airports. The little shops charge $5 for an effin bottle of water because you can't bring water through security and they know you'll pay it. Sure, I imagine rent in an airport is pretty high, but not $5 for a bottle of water high. Your pulleys and tune are a $5 bottle of water. Just my opinion. Another great thing bout merka. We're all entitled to ours and most of em stick. Not saying mine is any different