AJL turbo upgrade options & expectations?

Rfmacaskill

Registered User
Joined
Mar 23, 2014
Messages
158
Reaction score
8
Points
18
Location
Glasgow
So I've a few pennies to spend on tuning the engine of my AJL TQS.

The car was shunted from behind a few weeks ago and I've just recieved a nice fattish cheque from the insurance company. The rear bumper / tow bar and boot lid need replacing but I've got my eye on replacements for those already.

So I've got about £1k to spend on the engine / tune. I know that £1k won't go very far but I'm hoping it could, at a stretch include a KO4 turbo without getting all the other things done i.e. FMIC, injectors, exhaust etc etc. I'll be doing the bulk of the mechanical work myself so other than the tune it's parts only I'll be paying for. So...a few questions to those in the know.

What can I feasibly expect to pay and get in terms of hp/torque for the following upgrades:

1. Standard tune with stock exhaust & KO3 turbo (£300-£400?)
2. Upgrade to KO4 turbo and associated tune with no other upgrades (£1k?)

If some more pennies became available, which they might:

3. Upgrade to KO4 turbo with new exhaust (£2k?)
4. The above inc new injectors / FMIC (£3k?)

What else should I be thinking about?
 
Standard K03 maxes out around 199hp, and all the bolt ons in the world wont really see any more.

A beachbuggy K250, bolted onto a stock engine, might see between 220 and 230hp with a suitable tune. Do the exhaust and intercooler and injectors and you'll be approaching the 250hp mark

Beachbuggy K280 can probably manage 270-280 with the right extras, and ofcourse if you plan to go to this level, then you can buy and fit the K280 and run it without any other mods just now, and still get the 220-230ish mentioned above.

The ideal would be something like: K280, sport cat or decat, decent exhaust, FMIC, bigger injectors and MAF. The limiting factor at that point is the turbine housing and exhaust manifold, but those are pretty hard/expensive to work around.
 
Thanks Aragorn...more reading to do now. From memory, you're fairly local to here (Glasgow) any recommendations as to where the best tune could be obtained from?

slepy, thanks too. I;ve read this post before but it's all tailored towards everything other than a AJL engine.
 
Not many places can tune these old ECU's

Your best bet is to swap it for an A3 ECU then take it somewhere like Unicorn or RTech.
 

Similar threads