Go Faster…

The next move was more power, it had come to light that Superchips in Buckingham were modifying Cappuccinos to increase boost pressure.
I’ll have some of this I thought…..

The Long Wait

I turned up at Buckingham Superchips, it was a miserable day. 4 Hours later, fed up with V-Rally on the Superchips supplied PlayStation, fed up with the coffee also supplied by Superchips, fed up with the drum of heavy rain on the roof, not supplied by Superchips!

Techie Bit

To increase the boost on a Cappuccino what you need to do is to disconnect the pipe from the turbo to the wastegate, fit a longer pipe and add a bleed valve. This is how it works. As the pressure increases the wastegate is pushed open directing the exhaust away from the Turbo and straight out of the exhaust. By adding a bleed valve to vent off some of this pressure the car needs to produce more boost to move the wastegate. Simple. But a real pain to do and partly the reason for a 4 hour wait.

Testing Time

“Take it for a spin” they said. Not bad, but not a real difference I thought. But out on the open road you really feel it. The in gear acceleration is so much better than before and adds to that extra bit of fun you always wanted.

She goes, but can she stop?

The brakes needed upping. If the car goes faster it needs to stop quicker and I’d already figured out that the new wheels and tyres had SO much grip that it was a hard job to try and lock them up. Nobody could help with a Cappuccino disc, then I struck lucky. My dealer in Colchester found that the front discs were the same as a Suzuki Swift 1.3 (not the Gti) and a letter was duly sent off to Tarox in Italy (in very poor Italian) and they supplied me with the dimensions, though not the part I required. Those came from Black Diamond Discs, who I had make a set of Grooved and Cross drilled discs for the front leaving the rears standard.

Ohh! Sparklies!

I always had this idea to replace my intercooler pipes with Stainless Steel units, all polished and lovely, but being told not to be silly, by friends and family, I never investigated. Then… A Japanese web site I visited had a Cappuccino with what looked like a set of Stainless Steel Intercooler pipes fitted. Back to the exhaust place. One set of highly polished intercooler hoses please Sir. Small Samco hoses were fitted at each end to allow
for flexing etc. and the polishing kit came out.

Fiddle, Fiddle, Fiddle

A visit to a bike show (I love my motorbikes as well as my cars!) turned up a set of blue anodised bolts and the wrench came out once again! I changed all the non stressed bolts for the anodised bolts. So now I had matching bolts and silicon pipes!