Clio trés Dynamique! - Diesel Car issue 171

After tuning many a petrol engine during 40 years of motoring, how would Karl Willis react to his first tweaked diesel?

Victor Harman finds out Britain’s car tuners have good reason to be grateful to Karl Willis of Lancaster: he has poured quite a few thousand pounds into their coffers over 40 years of motoring, during which he has owned a diverse range of cars, very few of which have remained in standard tune.

But his latest steed, a Renault Clio 1.5 dCi 80 Dynamique, is the first diesel he has owned, and while far from unhappy with its off-the-peg abilities, he was tempted by the extra pulling power offered by a Bromleys Tuning Tunit conversion.

Karl’s was the very first Clio dCi to receive attention from Bromleys, and it was not long before the surgical skills of chief technician Eric had exposed the electronic brain of the common-rail engine. Not many more minutes passed before the compact Bromleys pacemaker was neatly installed, between the ECU cover and the battery.

As most recent customers have similarly elected, Karl was paying a modest £30 plus VAT supplement to the £400 plus VAT Tunit cost to have the Laptop Tune, the latest feature of Bromleys services. It enables the Tunit’s vital parameters to be swiftly and individually tweaked on the road to achieve an optimum level of desired performance – not necessarily maximum power, but according to owner preferences.

Having achieved a suitable compromise on the open road, with Karl at the wheel, and after ensuring that there were no signs of over-fuelling in the form of exhaust smoke, the Clio was put on the dynamometer to establish precisely how much of the Renault’s latent power had been unleashed by the Tunit conversion.

In standard form, a substantial 5bhp over and above the factory 80bhp maximum figure was registered, and with the Tunit activated, the figure climbed to 103bhp at the same 4,000rpm, a power increase of 21%. Although we were unable to measure equivalent torque figures on this occasion, approximate calculated figures (from the power graph) work out at a standard 138 lb ft and a tuned 164 lb ft, both at around 2,400rpm, compared with the factory-quoted maximum of 136 lb ft at 2,000rpm. These are more than impressive figures from 1.5 litres, and in a car which weighs only 1,000kg they equate to performance something in line with that of a 130bhp TDI VW Passat or Audi A4. Small wonder that Karl was delighted with the Clio’s gutsy new-found performance, an impression which we expected to increase on the homeward journey, unhampered by the weight of two passengers.

Above all, Karl felt that the modest cost of the conversion and the essentially unchanged docility and sweetness of the dCi power unit compared most favourably with past experience of tuning petrol cars. His fuel costs, at 58-60mpg to date, have plummeted compared with those of his previous Volvo V40 T4, and, on past experience, this is unlikely to deteriorate significantly, even with the extra power now available to him in the Renault.

The upshot was a Clio successfully converted by Bromleys, and another motorist converted to the virtues of diesel power! Call 01257 27400 or visit sales@bromleystuning.com for details.

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