Sean wrote:
Those figures have been floating around for years. I've heard them from day one of being an MX5 driver with net access. Remember those figures are based on standard ECU and standard fuelling. I've never seen the same car run back to back on any dyno in Australia to prove the results in our conditions, certainly I advanced my timing to 14 degrees and thought i had an improvement, but it could have easily been a placebo effect.
Last improvement I made to my car gained 24h (dyno proven) and I thought it felt less powerful! Smooth delivery of power will likely make you think you have less, but if it picks up some at the top end and looses some at the bottom you may think you MUCH more power, when effectively the car will be slower to top speed.
For this reason I'd take the above figures with a grain of salt over here in Australia cause ther's no real concrete evidence to support them.
The point of using those figures was because they are 'known' and that a person with an aftermarket ECU has the benefit of getting both the low down torque and the upper power without having the compromises associated with the factory ECU.
Your example of making 24h with your programmable ECU is the same point that I was making. Any decent aftermarket ECU can be tuned to produce better power than a standard ECU.