Pretty exciting day yesterday when I installed the new program Stuart put together for my DBS.

I should start by saying that this was literally the first time I had ever plugged anything into a OBD port on any vehicle. While I've built race cars from scratch and am capable of any level of welding, fabrication and most all mechanical work, I guess you can say that computer/ecu stuff has always been well outside my wheel house. I'd feel more comfortable pulling the oil pan off my DBS than hooking a lap top up to it.

Even for a guy with my "limited" experience in this world, doing the install with the slick touch screen programmer was a piece of cake.

The process basically consists of Velocity shipping you the "V-Tech ECU flashing tool" and an email with some simple instructions as well as a link to a software download for your computer needed to upload the files from the tool to your PC (and back again). You simply plug the scan tool into the cars OBD (?) port and it reads the file as you follow along answering a few basic prompts. This takes just a few minutes. You then plug the tool into your PC and again some very straightforward instructions to upload your cars (original) file to email to Velocity for their guys to perform the Voodoo that they do. You provide them with a list of any modifications done to your car already so they can design a program customized to your vehicle as well as some other basic vehicle information. 24 hours later the files arrive back in your inbox and once again you follow along the instructions to download them onto the PC and then to the tool and finally into the car. Your original program is also stored in the tool to easily return your car back to "stock" should the need arise.. (you'll never want to do that though).

I'll be honest in saying I was a skeptic going into this and really had no idea what to expect. Yesterday afternoon I was able to get the car out on some back country roads and really lean into it and I was truly blown away by the transformation.

I had already experienced some significant gains with the removal of the OEM secondary cats in favor of a Xpipe as well as the "muffler delete" set up I also obtained from Velocity Performance so it isn't as if the car was "lacking" for power and I expected a little bit of a "seat of the pants" bump but we got far beyond that.

At the risk of sounding like a teenage gearhead, I'm going to try to describe my first experience with this beast. I can tell you that this car has never been completely comfortable just blazing off the tires while easily being pulled into second.. And then 3rd gear like it does now. Its absolutely wild! The V12 cars have always pulled really nicely while rowing the manual transmission through first and second gear but where I REALLY feel the additional power is when I push the lever up into third! It just keeps pulling like a freight train..this was where I used to feel things start to flatten out (very typical), but not now. It's amazing that 10min with a little programmer in my hand was capable of plugging in all this extra grunt. Dollar for dollar, the best way to get the most easily accessible horsepower there is.

I did about 30 miles in my DBS yesterday and I'll post some more feedback as I get more time in the car but I wanted to give a big "Thank you" to Stuart and the guys at Velocity for the amazing work they do for all of us.

 

Awesome feedback and great to hear! Mine's arriving in a few days, can't wait!

 

The best part is - you haven't even put the stickers on yet. Each of those is worth at least 3HP. Not quite as much as the 6BHP Mugen gets from their stickers though....

 

To be expected, really. Mugen's been in the sticker game for so, so long.

 

Will this work with a MAC, or just a PC?
CATTMAN

 

Stuart - do those sticker make 3HP at the crank or the wheels? Also do you have dyno graphs representing the HP gain from the stickers? before and afters would be preferred. additionally will the drag from the edge of the vinyl sticker negate the HP gain? Also why are the Mugen sticker making so much more HP? must be a different dyno!

Thanks
E

 

Ummm.... every sticker manufacturer...ummmm.... tunes differently...? Yeah, yeah that's the story.

 

Only on PC. But you don't need to be hooked up to a PC to read/write, it's just to download the file to email and vice versa. So you can go to a friend's house, or work or whatever if you only have MAC.

 

I have the Velocity AP tune on my V8 Vantage and it is righteous! Especially with their headers, sport cats, muffler, and air filters.

 

 

Headers are next on my list for sure!

Let's talk about some numbers on the V12 Stuart.

Cat delete (Xpipe or test pipes) 15hp?
Hi flow air filter 3-4hp?
Ecu tuning 20hp?
Headers?? 30hp??
Stickers? Dyno results pending?

My seat o' the pants dyno feels like 100 hp from the secondary cat delete / tuning / stickers.

 

little known fact: yellow Mugen stickers gain you 10, to the wheels!