Look what I found under my engine cover today:-

Yep, I've finally succumbed and gone forced induction with a Courtenay StageII SC conversion and it's really rather good!! 😃

It's been on the cards for a while and this was the week. Hence my desperation to get the suspension refresh and the wheel saga sorted for last Saturday when I was originally meant to drop the car off. For quite a while I was set on going the self fit route that Muncher and Joe_589 have recently followed but, in the end, I just felt I wanted the reassurance of the experts fitting it and knowing that everything was properly sorted. With the help of NickB777 I fitted the ProAlloy chargecooler pre-rad and ran the hoses down the sill to save on some of the labour cost for what is a bit of a ballache of a job. I dropped the car off with them on Monday morning and Jon at Courtenays gave me a call on Thursday afternoon to say it was done and give me the good and the bad news. See, you knew it couldn't be all good as it's me we're dealing with here.

The good news was 262bhp at 6850rpm and 223ftlb of torque. The bad news was that my fuel pump is feeling a little "tired" and on occasion isn't entirely happy with pumping the volume of fuel required at that level of engine speed. So, Jon has revised my rev limit down to 6500rpm (and only 259bhp 🙁 ) to limit any risk of anything nasty happening, if the pump decides it doesn't want to supply enough fuel. Courtenay's are working on, in an ideal case, a drop in replacement for the pump and if that doesn't look viable, then it will be a swirl pot and secondary pump.

I sampled the delights of public transport again at 5:45am this morning to get over to North Walsham to collect the car, only to find a few familiar faces there for a Z22SE.co.uk dyno day. So the secret conversion is no longer much of a secret. As if it ever was. :lol:

I know you've heard it all before but this really is the conversion the 2.2l VX220 screams out for. Whilst I was reasonably happy with the results of the NA tuning I'd done last year it didn't ever feel entirely right and was never quite enough. Now, the driveability is just brilliant as the power delivery is so seamless. It'll happily potter around in town traffic and feels no different to a standard car whilst cruising but press down on the throttle and all of the extra power is there instantly, whatever the gear. Had a lovely drive back this afternoon made all the more enjoyable by the 50 mile cat and mouse game on the A11/A14 with a grey S2 Elise that just couldn't come to terms with the way the car could just leave him behind whenever I felt like it. Childish in the extreme but hey, I was desperate to get out of his Norfolk territory ASAP.

Love it? I should say so.