Has any one had this done. Ive seen a lot of advertising for this method both in the UK and in the USA, Where u ship them your unit and they remap it. Suppose to be good for 20 to 35 add horsepower ,,, They adjust timeing , fuel curves to un detune what our goverment gives them to sell them in the USA. If you have had one done please let me know if it works. Cost betweem 500 and 1000 depending who u trust to actually
perform the work....

 

Have you seen this service advertised specifically for our generation XK8s and XKRs?

If so, post up some kind of information or link so we can know what you're looking at.

 

I'd like to get my 2000 XK8 ECU remapped to improve gas mileage. With the price of fuel and using it as a daily driver I'm not interested in more performance. The gas mileage of this car is not as good as my 95 XJ6 4.0. It definitely should give better mileage than it does.

 

I've had a chat with somebody who makes custom softwareupdates, he told me standard chiptuning won't do much on our cars, the combination of better air intake, boosted charger and sportexhaust will do fine and then do a custom softwaretune on a dyno, costs me 500 euro for the softwaretune but I'm going to twinscrew my kitty first

 

I am aware of three tuners that provide this service.

Eurotek Designs: :: Eurotek ::

ECU Tuning Group: ECU Tuning Group | ECU Performance Chip Tuning

Paramount Performance: Paramount Performance Ltd - Engine tuning, Chip tuning, Diesel tuning

I think Jgaxkr, (or is it Jagxkr?) has done this. He has tremendous experience in doing almost every performance upgrade over a period of years. I believe his final performance package includes Avos' twin screw kit, and included an ECU tune from
Eurotek. Sorry, if I'm not quite right on this info.
His is easily the fastest XKR in the U.S.

 

I spoke to the owner about our xk8s with the 4.0 motor and he told me that with air filter and different exhaust with his ecu tune up that the least horsepower increase i could expect was some where between 20 and 35 horsepower,,,,,,, depending on the mileage and condition of my motor, Well being an old drag racer i asked what exactly would they do to the ecu and he said timing and fuel increases plus other tweaks.... 395 plus shipping not bad for 20 horsees,,,,, u have a choice of where the horsepower kicks in low to mid range is what i want, my gas mileage is good so i want a little more power in my cat........ And no i dont want to buy an xkr , i just want to have a little more fun in the cat I already have.

 

I think you have to add the cost of changing the air filter and exhaust to that $395.

 

I already made those adds , months ago, neither made any great improvement. This is just another lets take a chance investment that i will be makeing again in the pursuit of horsepower. So you could count the cost of those parts if u choose so.

 

It is going to be really difficult, and expensive to get any significant hp boost in a car that has a basically high performance engine to start with.

Back in those old drag racing days, the American car engines were so under engineered out of the factory that you could put some headers, a better carburetor, a high rise intake manifold on them and get dramatic improvements with what were called "bolt on improvements". Then, you could go with a cam and on and on and end up with nearly twice the hp if you knew what you were doing.

You are just not going to get a significant hp boost on these engines in any simple way.

I wouldn't do it, and I have not really heard much about it, but I wonder how these engines would react to nitrous? Surely, if you went crazy with it, you'd probably blow out the transmission as well.

 

I guess it just becomes a question of who can u trust to be telling the truth about tuning these cars. If this ecu can give me a few degrees of timing and a little more fuel then a few more horses will appear. That much i know from experience, so i will give it a try and let you guys know what happens.

 

Keep us posted. I'm a Control Systems engineer and always interested in programming improvements.

 

I think you hit the nail on the head regarding the cars from the "old days". I did exactly what you described with my already high-performance (for the time) 383 Mopar. It was de riguer to put to first play with the carb (larger or different profile accelerator pump cam), tweak the timing, then go to a larger carb, foam air filter, high-rise intake, headers, etc. You generally were able to easily make the engine more powerful but less driveable with basically bolt-ons.

Not nearly as easy these days with more precision and already high-tuned and computer controlled engines.

Doug

 

Its just hard to believe that not one person on this site has tried the ecu tunning . Well i will try it and will let every one know if its real or just another trick, so stay tuned!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thanks, it will be very beneficial for others to have some before and after dynos on XK8 tuning. Make sure that you drive 50 miles at least between the tune and the after dyno, so the fuel system is adapted again, otherwise it could skew the results.

 

What would be really great would be a before and after in some performance numbers, such as 0-60, quarter mile or whatever you can come up with.

I am no expert, by any means, but I would not expect more than a tenth or two improvement in 0-60 with just a ECU and even the minor mods that you have already done. I think that a half a second improvement would definitely be noticeable. If you can get that, then it might be worth the money to some guys on here. As for me, I don't use the capability that it currently has (I don't go around flooring it all of the time, or racing with people) but I'd be interested to see what results you can get. Thanks.

 

Bought the ecu and installed it ..... Went on test drive ,,,,,,, techs say shift it and use all gears, run it hard to let the computer and trans get to know what levels have been increased in ecu..... I was to drive it between 100 and 200 miles. Keeping the car in sport mode 4th gear . Well at 70mph in floored my cat and it jumped to 135mph really quick, Could feel the extra power. The car was very responsive and sounded great. Techs said it would run even better once i got the 200 miles on it.

Well on the way back from my test drive i decided to floor it again at 70 mph and the engine rev went into the red line.. Transmission started slipping. Well long story short I helped an already weak transmission get worse and finally just go into limp mode......... Well i didnt get to see what the new ecu will do on the low end but im impress with the top end.....Getting all the updates put into my new rebuilt tranny ,such as the drum and the valve body. Will test soon and let u guys know what the low to mid range feels like........ but so far so good ..EUROTEK DESIGNS seems to be very honest and thier product seems to work....total cost plus shipping 525.00 . They got the ecu on tuesday an i had it back wednesday........Cant beat that

 

that's sad,

 

Sorry for digging up an older thread, but I've been researching this as of late (shopping around), contacted someone from ECU Tuning Group and these are some of the things that he had to say:

"We can only tune the XKR from 2006 onwards, there isn't a tool out there that can communicate with the older Jaguar's."


Then I asked him about Eurotek and Eurotoys. He replied:

"They use a tool called Dimsport. I know the guy who made that tool and that tool doesn't support your car. I just checked my Dimsport just to confirm. I've been in this industry for 24 years. I know who is using which tool, etc. Paramount used to have the ability but their tuner who had a tool that actually worked left about 4 or 5 years ago."

__________________________________________________ __________

I also spoke to someone at Eurotek Designs, whom stated:

"You MUST tune the ECU with any pulley upgrade otherwise you will easily detonate and trash the engine. Anyone who knows cars and forced induction knows a tune is mandatory especially when going from 11 psi to 19 or greater as the Stage 2 pulley offers. We do the programming for the diff conversions and are the only ones who can do this and the ECU units."


I agree with Eurotek and ECU tuning makes sense to me. I've done this several times in the past with my project car (also supercharged). So it it true that there is no tool available for pre-06 Jags? Which story is factual...and who is misinformed?

At this point my brain is muddled......

 

You could try giving Eurocharged a call.

There is a thread where a member with a 4.2 STR got his tuned.
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...on-str-104033/

I believe the STR is a slightly different ECU, but it's worth a call at least.