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MG MGF Technical - Icon Unit More Power?

Has anyone fitted an Race Icon Unit and does it make the car quicker?
Dave

The performance will increase but I have my doubts about what the ICON will do to engine life. Cars fitted with them seem to have more engine problems, Ask Dirk.

Others will be in a better position to advise, but I won't use one on my F.

If you have a standard F with no modifications, it may be worth having a look at a K&N air filter as the first performance step, this gives around 8 more BHP for less then 100 quid.

The most you can expect from a sports exhaust on the MGF should only be around 2 or 3 BHP increase so not much power for your cash, a nice noise though.

A test on exhausts will be published in a couple of months in MG World (I think) which should give proper figures for various after market sports exhausts, so we will know for sure.

To get much more you will really have to start looking at a gas flowed head with larger valves, new cams and a better designed throttle body. Several other things can be done, but if you are serious about increasing the engine power I think this would be the way to go.

The supercharger is just too expensive and not widely tested by the consumer but would give around 200 BHP total. This option would also require some other bits and bobs for the car/engine to handle this much power.
Tony Smith

very simple: my life turned into a nightmare since I installed the ICON chip.

Not only did it never work as intended, despite huge efforts of SP to make it work, but also 2 head gaskets (after 5 months, then again 6 months later), and 1 VVC engine (again 8 months later) went up in smoke, and every time I had to pay (normally it was covered) since Rover blamed the chip for it (total cost >£5.000!!).

I still await the reaction of SP since it is their (moral) responsibility for what happened. They asked for detailed info of all what went wrong since it was installed (a fax of 11 pages!!), and now they said they will discuss internally what will happen next (I keep my fingers crossed).

I'll inform the BBS what they will do.
Dirk Vael

Ignore the 'Race' bit in 'Race Icon', it's marketing BS. All the Icon unit does is tinker with the ignition timing. Some engines will make a little bit more torque with a bit more ignition advance, because the manufacturers settings are relatively conservative. If the ignition is too advanced then you'll get pinking, aka detonation. If this happens at low rpm then you'll hear it and it's relatively harmless, if it happens at high rpm then it'll destroy your pistons pretty quickly (like in minutes or less).

That's all there is to it. The few extra bhp which the Icon might or might not find won't be enough to put the engine into unreliability territory. If it's wrongly programmed (too much advance) then you will be into catastrophic unreliability territory (holed pistons).

The latest issue of CCC has a mass rolling road test of Lotus Elises (same 1.8K engine as MGF). One of these was fitted with an Icon. They did power runs with & without it, guess what? No difference whatsoever. YMMV.

Mike
Mike Bees

Mike, thanks for making reference to the CCC article- I'll go and buy a copy. Nice to read independent tests on performance goodies for 'our' engines.

No power gains eh? Why am I not surprised? :o/

Was the BBR-GTi Interceptor chip also tested?

Rob
N7 RMB
Robert Bell

No, they didn't have a car with the Interceptor. AFAIK the Interceptor can fiddle with the fuelling as well as the ignition, so if you've made serious changes to the engine (cams, porting etc) then it's a more useful device than the ICON. You're still better off just buying a plug-compatible programmable ECU though.

The purpose of the test was to do some power runs on a range of tweaked Elises on the same rolling road on the same day to get some comparisons. The cars were all provided by their owners. They didn't set out to specifically evaluate & swop around particular pieces of kit.

It's the November issue of CCC by the way (been out a week or so now I think).

Mike
Mike Bees

I think that you are quite right about the BBR chip's capabilities, although I do not know for sure.

Maybe this does represent a good starting point for people starting mods to their car? Especially if they plan to undertake more major modifications like the ones you've suggested Mike.

I seem to recall that BBR sell a 'starter' ket that includes a filter, and an exhaust system, plus their interceptor chip that gives very realistic power gains. But it isn't cheap.

What are the plug-compatible ECUs? Are these available for Rover engines?

Cheers

Rob
Robert Bell

Yes, and they do a few turbo kits for your F I think.
Tony Smith

The Interceptor doesn't come with mapping software. This is a serious limitation if you're buying it with future mods in mind, because you are then limited to taking it to BBR every time you need some map tweaking.

There are at least 2 plug-compatible ECUs on the market which plug straight onto the Rover loom and use all the existing sensors. I have one (er, actually 2...) on my K-series Caterham. I know of several other Caterham owners and at least one Elise owner who have gone this route. They should work on the MGF too since the engine & loom is identical to the Elise.

The 2 suppliers that I know of are Emerald and GEMS.
Raceline use the GEMS kit for their Elise conversions (www.raceline.co.uk). The Emerald unit comes with software. The GEMS one might, it depends on who you buy it from. Cost is 500-800ukp, plus mapping of course. Personally I'd go for the Emerald, it's cheaper and I'd use Emerald's proprietor (Dave Walker of CCC) for mapping every time.

Emerald: 0171 737 7114
GEMS: 01784 470 525

I currently have a GEMS box with an Emerald tie-wrapped on top of it, but that's a long story...

Mike
Mike Bees

Mike, another quickie-

do the plug in ECUs alter fuelling as well as timing? I presume that it does from what you've said.

Cheers
Robert Bell

The completely replace the Rover MEMS ECU, so yes they do everything that it does. Well almost - not sure about idle air valve control or closed-loop lambda on the GEMS box, Emerald have closed-loop working now and are 'in-progress' on the IACV.

I could email you the Emerald software (it's for Windows) if you don't mind a 1MB email, then you can see for yourself what parameters you can control.

Mike
Mike Bees

That'd be great, thanks Mike.

Very much apprecriate your help.

Rob
Robert Bell

Hi

Just a quickie to add to this thread;

I've had an 'ICON' installed for a year now with no apparent problems. The power is up and so is the usable rev range. Although it was set up by the guys that make the unit at Superchips.
I do agree that if it's not set up properly a lot of damage can be done, but that can also be said of a plug in MEMS that hasn't been mapped properly.
Whatever you go for, it is imperetive that it is set up for your vehicle and driving style.

Nick.
Nick

Nick,

Do you have any idea by how much power is up by?

Did you do before and after rolling road tests?

When you say it was set up by the guys that make the unit, do you mean that you took your car to the factory?

If so do Superchips charge for this service?

If so how much?

Sorry for the barrage of questions!

I'm wondering which would be the better buy, a chip of some sort or a programable ECU of some sort. I suppose the criteria would be bhp per £ but driveability and where the extra power comes in and goes out would also be a factor.

Anyone care to comment?

Paul
P9 VLS
Paul

>>When you say it was set up by the guys that make the unit, do you mean that you took your car to the factory? <<

If I remember well, I read that Superchips provides some kind of "remote services" (by modem or Internet ?) to tune a chip from the factory.

A colleage who owns an Alfa 33 16v has a Superchip and has told me he noticed a power increase, but above all an increase in torque at low/mid revs.
I don't know if his chip alters the fuelling aswell.
(Before fitting the chip, he had already a K&N 57i, a Remus Exhaust and performance spark plugs and cables)

Fabrice
Fabrice

Paul,

I went to Superchips factory in Hertfordshire to let them have a look at the ICON which i had installed myself (it had gone dead!), they had a look at it and found nothing more than a dry solder joint which they fixed within the hour for me, they then said it needed to be set up to account for other mods such as K&N, SP exhaust and Piper cams. The car was taken out for some test runs on the road, whilst the ICON was programmed via a laptop from the passenger seat. Before using the unit, power at wheels was about 120 Bhp (air temp of 14 degrees) afterwards it was about 130 at the wheels at 5800 revs. Not a bad increase for the price, and on that note, if you buy direct from superchips it's about £100 cheaper than Moss. Set up cost £45.00

I would have answered sooner but my modem has been knackered (windows put wrong drivers in for some reason!)

Nick.
Nick

I've now read the CCC article on the Lotus Elise tests. They compared the same car both with and without the ICON installed. As Mike said- no change in power outputs.

Three explainations?

1. The ICON is of no use.
2. The MEMS is remarkably useful piece of kit
3. The ICON wasn't correctly mapped prior to the test for the engine it was applied to.

I guess we may never know the answer, unless we contact the editor of that story!

Rob
Robert Bell

Having fitted many icon units to MGF i feel they are a very worthwhile performance upgrade saying that though they really require other performance add ons to gain all benifits
lee kilarski

I remain sceptical in view of the standard MEMS 1.9's ability to correctly fuel and time a multiple throttle body set up with 40% plus extra power and an unknown increase in torque.

Rog
Roger Parker

This thread was discussed between 12/10/1999 and 17/10/1999

MG MGF Technical index

This thread is from the archive. The Live MG MGF Technical BBS is active now.