So after my discussing things with Alex and other forum members on his turbo thread, I decided to look into ecu tunes. I did a lot of research into the 4.6 rover v8 in my truck and found that with the bore and stroke of this engine it has more in common with the Buick 300cid than the Buick 215 it is actually based off. Now that engine was making 250hp and 300lbs of torque at a lower compression ratio.

So in theory you should be able to get at least that much out of our 4.6 without pushing that many limits and doing anything to radical to the engine. I have contacted Bosch trying to get some information on the MAF since I was puzzled by just how much an impact adding my simple intake made on it.

This got me thinking, that maybe are limited power out of this engine was rover trying to limit some reliability issues. So I did the next thing possible and started looking at who had already done something like this and remembered Bowler using Rover engines in their TomCat and WildCat. So start looking at Bowlers website and while there is nothing listed for the Discovery they do offer tunes for the Defender that add up to 175hp! I saw that and was like Holy Sh*t!

So I wrote them an inquiry as to if they would be interested in an ecu tune for the 4.6 bosch engine and if they would make a deal available for landroverforum.com members or not(group buy). Now while the ecu tune they were offering was for the stock defenders I did see on their site that they offer 4.0, 4.6 and 5.0 engines that they build for their truck which means they do have experience with these engines already.

My goal in putting this up is to see who if anybody would have interest in this if they do offer a group buy and go from there. I am sure when they contact me they will want to now how many ecu tunes they will be doing. Only thing that worries me is having to send the ecu in, but if we could figure out a way like a boot loader to install the tune it would work even better.

http://www.bowlermotorsport.com/prod...1-engine-tune/

 

I'm Interested, but am pessimistic - I can't see pulling anymore than 15-20HP out of this pig without accompanying bolt ons. There's only so much to be 'tuned' on a stock N/A motor.

 

The 4.6 engine they sell as a bolt in is 300hp/325lbs. If the tune isn't desirable I may consider going that route. I would just be happy to get to 250 to be honest.

 

There's a couple of assumptions being made here. The first of which is that Bowler's advertised stage 1 defender tune is for the same engine as our NAS V8, its not. The advertised HP numbers are the end result of the tune.
It doesn't mean that Bowler can't do an improved ecu map for you, but it's not going to be anywhere near a 170 HP gain.

Polish, port, hotter cam, as someone said maybe 10-15 HP.

 

I'm in. Where do I sign? I can realistically see a 25 hp jump out of this engine, and I can live with that.

 

Those HP numbers for the Buick I believe are "gross" ratings as compared to the "net" HP ratings that have been used for the LR engine.

Understanding Gross Versus Net Horsepower Ratings - Ate Up With Motor

 

See if you can get some statistics and graphs on what they have done with the 4.6s. I really would like to have mine remapped. I think these engines are tuned down about as low as they could possibly do it. I can feel the pickup in midrange powerband, and I want that same torque down at the bottom. I only use super-unleaded grade fuel, and the ECU upgrade requires the highest octane fuel available to you, just a heads-up if you aren't already doing the same.

Check these guys out
http://www.powerchipgroup.com/datasheets/2/Lan0020.pdf

 

I'm interested, but jeez... £1200? I wish there would be some way for the forum to do a group buy on a computer to tune our ECU. Then anyone who wants to use it just pays a rental fee to whoever buys it or to the group that buys it.

 

If you guys are interested in this I would suggest getting a wideband and installing it to see what the stock AFR is at WOT - likely 10-11 AFR stock for safety. Optimum is in the 12.5 to 13 range. Depending on how far off from optimum you will have an idea of how much increase is available, likely only 10 to 30 hp available. It is highly unlikely the spark curve will be significantly off of optimum after decades of tuning and testing by the powertrain engineers.

Any real gains would need hardware changes - I would guess the most increase would come from installation of a roller cam with roller rockers (if anyone makes them).

If you look at the hp and torque numbers compared to the gen IV 4.8L Chevy motors, the Rover is actually pretty respectable, more torque down low at the expense of hp up high - understandable for a 4x4 suv vs sports care. Given the head gasket and hardware limitations of this engine design I think gains are going to be very limited without sacrificing low rpm torque for more power at higher rpm.

Just my 2 cents, probably not worth that much.

 

I agree and when I here back I'm hoping they respond with a group buy offer. I doubt it will be a software we could just install though. If anything similar to the defender you send in your ecu so they can take data from it and they send you back a new ecu along with your original. This way you can always throw the stock ecu back in.

I obviously know this is a different engine. I don't expect our n/a v8 to compete with the turbo engine found in a defender. All I was saying is that if they could provide an ecu with upgrade performance for our truck without having to worry about throwing a bunch of bolt ons at it, it would be nice. The 175hp gain they get is with just ecu though, no bolt ons required. If you look at stage 2 that's where you start changing the bits.

I may look into this. Even the 19hp gain and 27lbs of torque would be well worth the cost.