My story of a bit of a nightmare conversion, that stole 2 months of driving from me earlier this year. I decided, after a bit of web forum interrogation that he new PTP170 kit was the right one for me.........I originally posted this in the Technical area, but thought I'd post it here to make more people aware.
The PTP kits are sold with various options, depending what you already have installed on your car. If you have a sports exhaust and sports cat, then you don't need to buy them - hence the variation in price.
The kits now come with an Emerald ECU and vernier pulleys.
I have had an RS170 kit installed - however a word of caution. The ECU is advertised as coming with an "engine tune that has been developed exclusively for PTP"
This tune never existed. After the kit was installed on my car it was hardly drivable. After much discussion, PTP found and paid for, a specialist who was able to create a map using a rolling road and by driving the car. PTP also refunded some of the cost of the kit to me.
Also - if you have an S2, the ECU does not plug directly into the available harness plugs. You have to cut the wiring loom and hardwire into the S1 style plug. The wiring diagram they provided had a mistake in it, which meant that the cooling fan would never come on. I had to troubleshoot this myself.
Fortunately all this was completed prior to the alpine summer tour this year. See the picture on September of the 2008 SE calendar. Mine is the blue car, the yellow is Andy_snap.
As for performance, I've now sold my 320ps 911.
The car runs really smoothly in all gears from idle until the rev limiter cuts in - even in 5th gear.
For MOT or (TüV as I'm living in Germany) the map in the ECU can easily be changed to make it pass.
So in summary PTP have good hardware, but buyer beware. There is now a small disclaimer at the bottom of the PTP web page stating that a rolling road set up may be required.
PTP RS170 Buyer Beware
Forgot to say. The kit was installed by a lotus centre recommended by PTP called Red Motorsport in Germany. They had experience of installing PTP kits. The news of my conversion troubles and another S1 owner in Germany set fire to the German Elise forums - over 4500 views in 3 days. As a consequence Red Motorsport are now not offering this conversion.
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thinfourth
- Posts: 3177
- Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2005 12:06 pm
- Location: Playing in the mud near aberdeen
Okay you bought a PTP kit and there was some niggles and PTP got your car set-up on a rolling road at their expense and they also gave you a discount because of this.
Personally i would be very happy with this level of service
When ever you are modifying a car or buying some thing else that comes in small batches you can expect problems and how a company responds to these problem is the true measure of their value.
If you had gone to some of the dodgier tuners out there i think you would still be with an undriveable car so are you completely sure it is buyer beware. I would say from reading your story a big thumbs up for PTP
Personally i would be very happy with this level of service
When ever you are modifying a car or buying some thing else that comes in small batches you can expect problems and how a company responds to these problem is the true measure of their value.
If you had gone to some of the dodgier tuners out there i think you would still be with an undriveable car so are you completely sure it is buyer beware. I would say from reading your story a big thumbs up for PTP
The car was dyno'd at 165ps and 180Nm of torque. It still has the standard inlet manifold. PTP no longer supply an increased volume inlet manifold (plenum) but I intend to get this installed next year which should give somewhere between 4 and 10 ps increase, once it has been re-mapped again.
As far as performance feeling, it made 2nd gear acceleration in my 911 feel slower. I have not done any 0-60 timings. 3rd gear is vastly improved - I used to feel I had to wait for the change up light to come on, now the rpm increases so quickly i need to make sure I change up in time before hitting the 7400rpm limiter.
140mph+ on the autobahn is interesting....
As far as performance feeling, it made 2nd gear acceleration in my 911 feel slower. I have not done any 0-60 timings. 3rd gear is vastly improved - I used to feel I had to wait for the change up light to come on, now the rpm increases so quickly i need to make sure I change up in time before hitting the 7400rpm limiter.
140mph+ on the autobahn is interesting....
[quoteOkay you bought a PTP kit and there was some niggles and PTP got your car set-up on a rolling road at their expense and they also gave you a discount because of this.
Personally i would be very happy with this level of service
When ever you are modifying a car or buying some thing else that comes in small batches you can expect problems and how a company responds to these problem is the true measure of their value.
If you had gone to some of the dodgier tuners out there i think you would still be with an undriveable car so are you completely sure it is buyer beware. I would say from reading your story a big thumbs up for PTP[/quote]
PTP sold the kit incomplete. They admitted they had never even modified an s2 with this kit prior to my car. Even although they said they had. The ECU map did not exist for this configuration and the instructions supplied with the kit did not even cover how to do the initial calibration on the throttle body. So my car ran by chance. When I did calibrate the throttle body the engine would not even idle.
I spent 2 weeks on and of the phone to PTP to get my car in a running condition. PTP did send their sales guy to Emerald to learn how to do the initial setting in order to support this.
I am very pleased that PTP did continue to support to get my car running as advertised, but it did take considerable effort on my part to get this conclusion. It is not a plug and play kit, that they claim it is.
Personally i would be very happy with this level of service
When ever you are modifying a car or buying some thing else that comes in small batches you can expect problems and how a company responds to these problem is the true measure of their value.
If you had gone to some of the dodgier tuners out there i think you would still be with an undriveable car so are you completely sure it is buyer beware. I would say from reading your story a big thumbs up for PTP[/quote]
PTP sold the kit incomplete. They admitted they had never even modified an s2 with this kit prior to my car. Even although they said they had. The ECU map did not exist for this configuration and the instructions supplied with the kit did not even cover how to do the initial calibration on the throttle body. So my car ran by chance. When I did calibrate the throttle body the engine would not even idle.
I spent 2 weeks on and of the phone to PTP to get my car in a running condition. PTP did send their sales guy to Emerald to learn how to do the initial setting in order to support this.
I am very pleased that PTP did continue to support to get my car running as advertised, but it did take considerable effort on my part to get this conclusion. It is not a plug and play kit, that they claim it is.
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bertieduff
- Posts: 2253
- Joined: Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:19 am
- Location: Purple Side of the Moon
Kit has been around for yonks - but they have only recently started shipping with verniers & emerald. The previous incarnations had a fixed dowel on the cam shafts and a piggy back ECU with was OK, bit lumpy and could be iffy at MOT times.bertieduff wrote:I thought the S2 kit had been about for a while, so kinda surprised at such teething problems.
Cheers for the info. Hope it runs smoothly. Been thinking about this myself.
Mac
S2 Elise (cobalt blue with stripes) - toy spec
Caterham 7 - hillclimb spec
Yamaha Thundercat - 2 wheeled toy spec
Caterham 7 - hillclimb spec
Yamaha Thundercat - 2 wheeled toy spec