AHHHH.... an Pug engines worst nightmare!!! Both my cars regularly enter
the red zone!! My little 205 GTi 1.9 has 140,000ks on it now and quite
alot of that has been on the Circuit I have "chipped" the engine
management and improved the breathing so it now easily and usefully
excedes the factory redline. My 94 405 MI-16 was a bit of a slug when I
first bought it 2nd hand with 28,000ks as the primary driver was a
cautious female (no flames from any ladies present please!) so the car
never really got excersized, after a couple of weeks of torture from me
it "freed up" significanlty and continues to improve with age.
There are a couple of points I'd like to make here however, firstly I
don't go around bouncing off the rev limiter at every gear change I do
beleive however that a good "Italian Tune-Up" ie a good thrashing every
now and then keeps the top end of the engine free of carbon deposits
which foul plugs and rob performance. Secondly I adhere to strict
maintenance rules I only use good quality oils eg Agip Sint 2000 and
change both oil and filter every 5000k's this may seem excesive to sum
but my cars, especially the little 205, both get worked pretty hard and
an oil and filter change are considerably cheaper than an engine
rebuild.
This leads me to another point regarding running in a new engine, I was
told by a good Italian mechanic (don't laugh) that to properly run in an
engine it must be excersized throughout the rev range this means gently
moving up the rev range not keeping below, say, 3000rpm as some
recommend and when you think about it it seems logical, I mean if you
drive around for the fisrt couple of thousand k's or miles at below a
certain RPM what happens when you start to exceed this? Again this
dosn't mean bouncing of the rev limiter on every change but slowly and
smoothly working up the rev range. I have done this with all my cars
that I've owned since new and always have has troauble free motoring
even on a particular car that had a bad relaibilty reputation here. I'm
sure I'll get comments about this but thats OK afterall thats what we're
here for, right?
-- Regards Matt Bolton 1990 205GTi 1.9 1994 405 MI-16 1990 XU9J4 (the rest is on the way!) http://www.hutch.com.au/~matt205