08/09/2026
From misfiring, blowing white smoke on free rev, and running super hot and slow, to crisp, snappy and happy! 😍
Absolutely transforming driveability and power while making it more reliable! Who says you cant have your cake and eat it to?
This SAS'd, 2.5 swapped hi mount rig is no stranger to us, we tuned it a while back when it was a 3 litre with a 44mm for the old owner, he ended up cracking a bore after years of abuse and swapped a 2.5 in along with a flex 48mm turbo and had it tuned elsewhere.
Danny purchased it shortly after and was annoyed with how it drove, 5th gear was literally un-usable as egts would sky rocket, it came on boost very late in the rev range, and basically did nothing until 20+psi, it also had fault codes for the boost solenoid being deleted incorrectly and a high rail pressure fault.
He'd literally drive it in 4th at 100kmph keeping rpm around 3000 just to keep it cool, if he left it in 5th hed see 700c just cruising 🔥
It was supposedly out of injector according to the old owner, and it had an issue with the lift pump and cam sensor which was causing the misfire, but in reality it was out of efficiency in the way it was tuned, and the ecu was set-up wrong.
We worked a little magic on the 2.5/3.0 hybrid ecu programming, developed a fresh base file and within the first 30 minutes she woke right up! With no engine light, no misfire, and bucketloads more torque.
We spent the next few hours finessing the tune and dialing down the boost to where its a good compromise between power and reliability, finishing up with almost 300c colder egts at full throttle, an average of 200c colder everywhere else, 6 psi less boost, and boost ramps in over 500rpm earlier while making substantially more horsepower at a leaner AFR, everywhere else in the transient areas off boost made more torque also!
We put this at 260hp at the wheels comfortably through the 33s and patrol drive line based off of similar utes wed tuned in the past on the same sort of tyre size and diffs.
These kind of setups can be a downright pain to get right when they're such a Frankenstein, your putting a smaller engine, with a bigger turbo in a heavy chassis topped off with having an ecu that was programmed for a 3 litre running the show.
Another absolutely wicked ute done with a customer smiling ear to ear! 😁
