Refreshed, Revised, and Reeeally Fun

"R3?", you read??? I could only imagine Proton's "heffer-of-a-car", the Perdana, being improved by Proton's R3 division. But heck, I just couldn't resist using this title/connotation, with all the "R" abbreviations in our daily automotive banter. A summary and continuation from my Cuore Sostituzione posting, Silver (as the Silver Banana will now be known) has been refreshed with a new breath of life, running on a revised heart and it truly is much more fun to drive.


The old heart sitting at RPM, tired and weary.
With a failing crank and trouble breathing, Silver was refreshed by RPM with a 4G63 DOHC that promises gains in more ways than one. The initial "drop-in" was completed in a hardly believable day (since everything is plug and play), with the wiring taking just another day to complete.

Here's Chun and Joe checking out the head after opening it up in god knows how long.
It still looks "ponna" clean with no residue or gunk to be seen anywhere.

I'm not one for painted valve covers... So I got down to stripping the paint with some paint stripper and Joe did the finer crevices.

The valve cover all shiny and.. er... blank!

I got this awesome Mitsubishi strut bar from a buddy in Sg. Petani. Fits like a glove, and I ain't seen anything like it before.

Engine hoisted up and locked down.

An original Mitsubishi oil cooler came with the engine, so heck, anything that comes with, goes with right? So Joe hooked it up without a single hitch.

The DOHC sits in nicely with loads of room for them to work, still.

Here's Chun doing some final inspections and prepping for the initial crank. Some simple maintenance was done to ensure everything was running smoothly and off we were for tuning!

This is my first experience going for an on road tune and Fer (my mech) offered to drive whilst Mael (my tuner) did all the fiddling on his device. I just sat back and enjoyed as they pulled gear through gear en route. First round of rough tuning were completed and I was told to putter around to feel and feedback on lacking areas.

Finally, here's a pic of Silver at Kiong Lee to revise the piping diameter as the engine is suffocating from the stock exhaust system from 14yrs ago. Honest! I'm not really one for changing pipes. Kiong removed a restrictive resonator and retained the stainless steel reflective one (yes, I run 2 for noise reduction), and a new 2.2" pipe was installed in its place up front. Bring the noise!
Touge sessions were inevitable to test out Silver's new and hefty heart and how it would affect handling and control. After just an initial session, I found that acceleration has been much improved and I needed to increase the amount of steps in my throttle control to reign in the wheelspin mid-corner.
After 3 weeks of driving Silver, I can't wait to book Mael for my next tuning session with him for fine tuning and hopefully improved driveability and fuel efficiency. Not that I'm complaining though, I'm getting gobs more power (esp. torque) and only 2cents more per kilometre. I guess hitting 2 out of 3 of my initial targets (referring to the Cuore Sostituzione post) ain't that bad. Now I just gotta wait it out to see how the durability of this lump holds out.

I'm just loving this new lump of metal right now as its a whole new bag of tricks and I just can't perform enough to match it. Time to tighten up my lines and increase the level of pedal control.