so we've actually got quite a nice episode today um the past couple episodes we've been looking
at performance of the vehicle um you know we've tackled the suspension we've tackled the brakes
we've put on mud terrain tyres and obviously the vehicle is also loaded up
so today's episode we're going to be kind of tackling trying to get a little bit more power
out of this little 2.4 diesel motor i think one of the first places to kind of begin with that
is the exhaust especially on a turbo diesel they are very sensitive to heat and things like that so
you know doing something like this a we're going to get a bit of a nice sound out of the car but at
the same time we're also going to start prepping ourselves for our power upgrades going forward
welcome to another episode of roam over landing my name is Adrian Abrahams and last week we head
over and installed a set of cooper tires on the roam 2.0 Hilux now we're heading over to Viper
Exhaust and putting on a brand new stainless steel system and doing a UniChip and tune at Dastek
today we're here at viper exhausts and we are going to be putting in the tuned setup for the
Hilux so I'm going to have a brief chat with Abel the owner here he's been in the exhaust industry
for 40 years so I'm sure he's got some very valuable information for us and he's going to
just run over a couple of the differences between the oem kit and the vapor exhaust kit so let's
get to it if you look at the difference between this one which is the viper downpipe and this one
here i mean you can just see um it's uh quite a difference right yeah so that's substantial
if you look at this when you look at that when you think oh geez that's over the top in comparison
but not really because the idea is to go bigger in diameter then the exhaust gas temperature is
actually reduced because there's less pressure a reduction in egt gives you an opportunity
for tuning and the reduction in egt can be as much as 100 degrees so if you just do this you will
get an improvement if you do the down pipe on the pipeline system you will get an improvement um not
a major improvement because now what you've done on the exhaust side you haven't matched on the
inlet side diesels are funny that way whatever you do on the one side you must now compensate on the
other side once you do this you'll get improvement in terms of drivability in terms of response
not a huge improvement the huge improvement you're going to get once the whole thing is now
done in other words the inlet is matching outlet in terms of fueling boost because you can boost it
now to increase the exhaust gas temperature back to where it was now for me somebody who's got
a heavily laden vehicle I've got bigger tyres on there we're trying to gain back lost power exactly
exactly um especially being at 2.4 so and that's the thing is like for me as well like with the
modification that I make into performance it's not necessarily about making a race car
it's about bringing back the normal performance of the vehicle and counteracting the effect of all
the accessories on the vehicle from the suspension to the brakes to increasing the power and all that
stuff it's just to make the vehicle safe because now obviously it's a bit heavier you've got less
power you've got less response from the vehicle in an emergency situation when you need that response
it's not there so sure there's there's the pleasure of having a beautiful exhaust system on
and you know the sound that it makes and you know the drivability improvements but doing this having
the vehicle tuned properly is also gonna just give you that reactivity out of the vehicle again that
you lose from having a heavily laden vehicle uh there's something else that you mustn't forget and
that is there's going to be a different sound yeah it's going to sound a little bit more sporty yes
and we can tune for sound in terms of silencer box combination is it a bigger smaller or no
box at all yeah a sporty sound suits the car yes i think maybe it's time to get down
and install the new setup and see how it performs we've seen a little bit of the differences between
the viper and the oem kit and now we're going to get to installing the kit i can't wait to
see how it sounds and to see what kind of performance differences we're going to have
out on the open road so far this process has been very educational and there's certainly still a lot
more to learn about exhaust systems but with the old corroded pipes removed it was time to install
these beautifully polished stainless steel pipes now interestingly enough these gd6 Hilux in South
Africa don't actually have catalytic converters so they won't necessarily be too big a difference
in the power of the vehicle with the new exhaust system alone but if you had a vehicle with over
90 000 kilometers on its catalytic converter you would definitely feel more of a performance boost
because it's going to allow the vehicle just to breathe better
now obviously another huge element of exhaust system is the sound
and i can't wait to hear the setup this is viper's off-the-shelf setup
and it could obviously be customized to be louder or quieter but i wanted something that
was a good balance between the sound volume and the actual note but let's hear it for ourselves
awesome so we are done with the installation it's time to get the vehicle off the lift and
get out on the road before we end up heading over to Dastek and installing the UniChip
so today we are here we're back at Dastek we're going to be installing the UniChip on here but
yeah once we've done that then we can start remapping and seeing what kind of power we can
pull out of the vehicle in a safe and reliable way um yeah i can't wait to kind of get going
on it and see if we can just get you know that's just just a little bit more out of this out of
this motor because obviously the accessories and the bigger tires and everything has definitely
put a bit of strain on the vehicle and it's cruising all right on the highway but it would
be nice to just get a little bit more performance out i've been looking for a safe way to get a bit
more power out of the vehicle and all of those recommendations have led me to one place Dastek
and they have been working on extracting more power from vehicles for the past 30 years and are
the developers of the UniChip an installation will require connecting to the current engine sensors
to feed that information into the UniChip before going back to the ecu this is where the signal
manipulation is going to happen meaning that the whole time your standard ecu continues to run
everything else without interference it's actually quite genius if you think about it with opting for
the bluetooth map selection process it also keeps our installation simple the unit chip itself will
allow the vehicle performance specialist to be able to remap and manipulate certain signals
on the engine's ecu in turn allowing the motor to extend outside of its normal operating parameters
but because the union chip is still taking into consideration your engine temperature
fuel mixtures and exhaust temperatures and a bunch of other details it will still keep your
engine operating within safe boundaries so we've got the UniChip installed now and currently it's
bypass we're going to do our first run um just to give a kind of our base reading after doing the
exhaust and then we'll do another dyno run with the different maps and getting all the different
maps right so there's five map settings with this UniChip so i'm presuming there's going to be an
eco mode there's going to be a power mode there's going to be an immobilization mode there's going
to be a some 4x4 modes so we're going to kind of play around with that now and then see how we're
gonna set everything up now that's all gonna be connected via bluetooth to an app on my phone and
I'll be able to just quickly select my maps and stuff through there over the past couple stages
of the build I've been doing Dyno runs to get a basic look at performance changes in the vehicle
now dynos are not a perfect science and these are just estimations but the significance in the
changes speaks for itself and we saw the power drop almost 10 percent when doing the new tires
and then come up almost 20 percent after doing the UniChip and tune with the exhaust
which is pretty damn impressive and I cannot wait to see how it feels when
driving
so we are done here at Dastek the chip is in we our profiles are set
all that's left to do now is get out there on the open road and test it out let's go
I've taken some time to really test out the new exhaust system from viper and to test out the
UniChipas well and I think to be honest it's changed the entire drivability of the vehicle
it feels like how the car felt when I got it um before all the accessories like the throttle is
responsive there's you know I can feel that there's a lot more power especially low down
torque and i could feel it when i went off-roading just to kind of test the setup out off-road as
well it really felt i had such good control and low down torque it was actually quite impressive
when i needed i could just i could just give it that little bit I didn't have to really yank any
power out of the motor it's just there from the get-go which is really nice and you feel that
around town it doesn't feel like i'm driving a vehicle that almost weighs three tons you know it
feels a lot nippier it feels a lot more responsive now and it was really starting to feel a little
bit sluggish before now if i drive at 110 versus driving at 110 before the chip in the exhaust
my fuel consumption is down by almost a full liter per hundred which is incredible so i'm getting
under 10 liters per 100 on the highway just cruising which is fantastic considering i've got
mud tires i've got a rooftop tent i've got all the luxuries on this vehicle and my around town fuel
consumption is around 13 liters per hundred so it is bit more um but it's not it's not ridiculous
considering what this vehicle is it's really not ridiculous i was getting 12.5 liters per hundred
in my Jimny on the open road and around town the diesel motor is is amazing and what you can do
with the chip and the tune has really surprised me i didn't think it would be that big a difference
but it's actually it's that big a difference you really really feel it and it's it's been
very very impressive so i definitely want to use it a little bit longer i want to keep testing it
out and just kind of see you know how it feels over the long term but for now I'm
blown away and i actually think this is one of those things where
a good quick look at it is going to give you a nice idea of what's happening much
faster than a long-term review because you're going to forget what it initially drove like
they've got the standard map on here so essentially with no UniChip interference
so you can always go back to you know test it on that but to be honest I'm loving it so much that
i don't even want to change it out I've played around on the ultimate mode a little bit so that's
the one that just gives you the maximum power and it's quite aggressive you really feel it i can
feel that they've tweaked the thought the throttle response and it's giving you a lot of talk down
low and a lot of power up high i find the towing profile is just a nice balance um between it all
i get good economy i get good throttle response all of that stuff but then when i head off-road
and I'm doing some 4x4 i headed into the eco mode and it just dulls down the throttle a little bit
it dulls down the power response a little bit so you don't have this like jerky power
um but when we go into thick sand and mud and stuff we can hit it on the on the ultimate mode
and just crank out as much power as we can out of the motor for that short period of time and
then you know we dial it back again once we on the road so having that adjustability having the
option to pick and choose what you need and when you need it i think that is a very useful tool
for you know over landing vehicle you know because you are going through different types of terrain
you know having the benefit of having the different throttle responses and the different
engine responses to be honest i i think it's well worth it and considering the performance change
in the vehicle it's yeah i highly recommend going you know doing something like this but something
that i can't stress enough is making sure that you do the tune don't just go and buy a trip off the
shelf and put it on the vehicle go to a company like Dastek get the vehicle tuned properly because
it's going to make a big difference you're going to get issues if you've got an engine that's a
little bit older and things like that and you go in your bar off the shelf chip and you put it in
that chip is designed for a brand new vehicle a brand new motor with
no problems with no wear and tear and things like that it's really going to make it a big
problem in the end and you're not going to get the longevity out of your motor
what i like with the dust tick and the way they use the UniChip and everything is that
they're giving safe reliable power we our goal was not to go there and just crank out as much
power as possible our goal was to get reliable consistent power just to open up the engine a
little bit more we've compensated by putting on a wider diameter exhaust path to control our eg
our egts so there's things like that we've taken into consideration Abel explained it in the video
as well how you know the exhaust is the starting point for your tuning so i hope you guys have kind
of learned a little bit about exhaust and trying to get more power out of your vehicle i found it
very interesting this is the first time I've ever done anything like this to one of my vehicles
and i must say it's really impressive I've been very happy so far and i can't wait to just kind of
keep using it and keep testing it but anyways guys thanks for tuning in and i'll check you on the
next episode of ROAM Overlanding cheers thank you for tuning in to this episode of ROAM Overlanding
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on the next episode of roam over landing we head out on the ROAM 2.0 lux's first offroad adventure
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cheers