[Sankar]

It was a stock Swift 1.2 VVT running a Unichip ECU which gave me a small boost in torque and power compared to stock which felt better than a bone stock 1.2 Swift. Later during its evolution i installed headers from N1 engineering and revised the air intake setup with BMC OTA air box which i imported myself. The latest addition was Magnaflow universal muffler which helped making the car respond faster to the throttle pedal.

The car was running beautifully with all these on and because of that i procrastinated in going for a retune of the Unichip at Spitfire, Coimbatore even though it was technically required post these breathing mods.

Power is never enough and as always i wished for more from the car, i was thinking of forced induction as the next step but one fine day the idea of a 1.4 litre Swift sparked in my mind. Soon i contacted JB of Spitfire regarding this, he gave the go ahead regarding Unichip being able to handle it if we go that way, and this gave me some confidence and decided to research a bit into the feasibility of this. My initial findings were good and positive and i relayed the information to JB as i got them and once we had enough details on this, we decided to do it! And so it started - collecting the parts required for the transformation. Once i had almost all the major components with me it was time to visit Spitfire.

I thought there was no point in delaying it further once the parts were in, so in the first week of this month my friend and I set off to Coimbatore to hand over the car to Spitfire for the Job! The Job, which believed to be the the first of its kind done on the new Suzuki K series engine in India! We left the car there and came back home and started the wait. It was a bit difficult for me without the car but i managed thinking about the greater gains! I've been following up with Jb almost every other day regarding the car and soon on the last week of the month the car was ready to roll, to be put on the dyno! The work done included: 1) the Job, 2) mild porting--more like a clean up work, 3) bumped up the compression slightly 4) re-did the Magnaflow install i got done in Trivandrum and 5) cleaned up my DIY air filter installation for aesthetics and robustness.

One thing to take note of was that bumping up the compression on this engine was not a simple head milling job since this engine runs an enclosed timing chain instead of an external belt. So the timing chain cover tolerances had to be matched with perfection since that holds the VVT mechanism among other things.

The dyno day came and again my friend and I landed at Coimbatore early that morning, we didn't have much clue as to what to expect from the engine. Just had a hunch that it will probably be good.

The car was put on the Dastek Dyno and JB went to work! He was very meticulous in his tuning aiming for a very linear map. After the first session it was decided that injector overdriver was to be put in to get desired AFR at a particular band. The first map gave a very very nice figure of 115BHP (at the crank), but it was decided to detune it to 109BHP to be on the safer side with this new engine. I would've liked it to be kept at 115BHP but Jb was very particular about reliability (in all of his projects, Petrols and Diesels) and didn't want to bump it up now. There is not enough documentation or case studies about tuning the Suzuki K series motor, so the engine being new and me staying 500Km away, it was decided to let go of a few horses. Not complaining because the torque figures we got is 145Nm in the detuned mode, 145Nm is no mean feat for a puny 1.4 liter NA petrol! Tuning took 4 to 5 hours and JB was on it till he was satisfied with the outcome. We got two maps stored in the Unichip, selectable using a two way toggle switch; daily drive map is good enough for 109BHP and 145Nm of torque and the high octane map is good enough for 112BHP and 149Nm of torque. This is good for now!

Driving characteristics have totally changed, there is enough torque in all the gears including 5th gear! Acceleration is really fast when comparing with stock, keeping up or overtaking faster vehicles has never been this fun in this car before! On the highway it feels like it could use a slightly taller final drive ratio which should increase the top speed, and return a bit more fuel economy while cruising.

A few things that i am so happy about this modification work:

1) No one will know what you are running inside, not even authorized service center can make it out unless they open up the engine. (I like this!)
2) The engine isn't stressed and it doesn't feel stressed either.
3) The engine didn't feel like it was ever opened, it was as smooth as it was before and drives like a factory-tuned high output refined engine!
4) I couldn't thank JB enough for the wonderful job he and his team has done from setting the engine to the tuning he has done on the dyno!

Power


Torque

[Wildy]

Congratulations for your successful modifications. But is it legally Ok? Does it compile to latest pollution norms?

[streetracer_919]

Good work. Can you post some pics of the engine bay? I would like to see the intake.

[deathwalkr]

WHOA!!! Words fail me sankar. Now i really have to get a test drive! On second thought maybe i should not lest i feel sad driving my puny swift afterwards

[EFF-EIGHT-BEE]

Sorry for a completely nob question but, did you installed all new 1.4L engine or you bored the 1.2L to 1.4L? Congratulations for such a supper job, drive safe.

[dhanushs]

Stunning job man!

My neighbor has a garret turbo, with adjustable boost in his Swift. With ~120+ bhp, he says the clutch wears out fast, and he has already bust one gearbox. Have you given a thought into this, what about performance clutches?

Also, could you please share the cost involved?

P.S: Even I absolutely love the sleeper factor of this mod! No one will know..

[tharian]

Good mod job .
Like a member asked earlier, is it bored out to 1400cc, or what was the method used to reach that capacity since you have mentioned the engine looks like nothing was done to it.
The new 1.2 VVT engine lacked initial punch that the old 1.3 used to have , but what I felt was that the mid and top were good.

Also could you give us the power/torque figures at the wheels as well?
You should do a comparison with the 1.4 VVT engine that is running on the Ertiga regarding power and torque., the Swift will much faster anyway.

Regards

[deetjohn]

Awesome job there Sankar. I wouldn't have got the guts to rebore and port a new engine.

The gains on the chart looks great. I really like the red line in Torque chart.

Why does the charts say 87/97 Octane? And some pictures of the engine bay please.

[Sankar]

Some pics of the cleanup job done.
Before





After





After head milling

Originally Posted by Wildy

Congratulations for your successful modifications. But is it legally Ok? Does it compile to latest pollution norms?

Thanks. It has passed the PUC check without any problem.

Originally Posted by EFF-EIGHT-BEE

Sorry for a completely nob question but, did you installed all new 1.4L engine or you bored the 1.2L to 1.4L? Congratulations for such a supper job, drive safe.

Thanks! The existing 1.2 was stroked to 1.4.

Originally Posted by deathwalkr

WHOA!!! Words fail me sankar. Now i really have to get a test drive! On second thought maybe i should not lest i feel sad driving my puny swift afterwards

We'll meet, how about today? I'll be meeting JK today.

Originally Posted by dhanushs

Stunning job man!

My neighbor has a garret turbo, with adjustable boost in his Swift. With ~120+ bhp, he says the clutch wears out fast, and he has already bust one gearbox. Have you given a thought into this, what about performance clutches?

Also, could you please share the cost involved?

P.S: Even I absolutely love the sleeper factor of this mod! No one will know..

So far the clutch is ok and holding up fine. We'll look into it when if it becomes an issue. I really doubt that the clutch would give up on this engine at this tune level. When i go for forced induction it will become a necessity.

Originally Posted by tharian

Good mod job .
Like a member asked earlier, is it bored out to 1400cc, or what was the method used to reach that capacity since you have mentioned the engine looks like nothing was done to it.
The new 1.2 VVT engine lacked initial punch that the old 1.3 used to have , but what I felt was that the mid and top were good.

Also could you give us the power/torque figures at the wheels as well?
You should do a comparison with the 1.4 VVT engine that is running on the Ertiga regarding power and torque., the Swift will much faster anyway.

Regards

Thanks. The engine was stroked to get 1.4 liters out of it. The new 1.2 engine especially the VVT variant lacks initial punch, the non VVT 1.2 was better with regard to this.

Dastek dyno uses a coast down test to find the crank figures, and to the best of my knowledge it doesn't depend on dyno operator entered TCF figure to convert the wheel HP/TRQ to crank figures.

Originally Posted by Dastekdyno.com

I understand that you use a coast down test to determine flywheel power. Why, when wheel power is what makes you go?

The problem with measuring wheel power only, is that many factors can affect the wheel power output - tyre design, temperature and pressure, wheel alignments, gear box oil, viscosity temperature and level, wheel speed, final drive ratios etc.

As an example; take two very similar cars with similar modifications, both are tested on a 'wheel horse power only' dyno, Car A has 12 Bhp more at the wheels than Car B. The owner of Car B and/or the dyno operator begin looking for problems with the turbo chargers, ECU calibrations, CAM timing etc. If the test had been carried out on the Dastek Dyno, the coast down test would have revealed the transmission loss would have appeared excessively high, thus taking the focus away from the engine fault and pointing us in the direction if the drive line problem. The fault was in fact a partially seized brake caliper, which was converting the power into heat.

http://www.dastekdyno.com/faqs.html

Originally Posted by deetjohn

Awesome job there Sankar. I wouldn't have got the guts to rebore and port a new engine.

The gains on the chart looks great. I really like the red line in Torque chart.

Why does the charts say 87/97 Octane? And some pictures of the engine bay please.

Thanks man. 87 and 97 octane are the two maps stored in the Unichip ECU, 97 octane map is to be used with better quality fuel.

[Vid6639]

Good work Sankar.

What all parts did you get to increase the stroke? Is it shorter pistons? or shorter con rod? What about crank shaft?

Was the head milling done to increase the compression?

Would you know if the K14 engine in the Ertiga is the same K12 block with increased stroke or is it an entirely different engine?

In which case the K14 internals will also work on the K12.

[Sankar]

Originally Posted by Vid6639

Good work Sankar.

What all parts did you get to increase the stroke? Is it shorter pistons? or shorter con rod? What about crank shaft?

Was the head milling done to increase the compression?

Would you know if the K14 engine in the Ertiga is the same K12 block with increased stroke or is it an entirely different engine?

In which case the K14 internals will also work on the K12.

Vidyut, All three major components are changed - crank, rod and the pistons, and yes, the milling was done to increase the compression. I don't know if both Ertiga and Swift has the exactly identical block, but seems like both are mostly the same. There are a lot of shared components between these two motors, but some critical components seems different.

But without an engine management computer this wouldn't work as well since fueling and timing needs to be optimised.

[Sankar]

The lower graph is the wheel horsepower as measured by the dyno, which is around 90WHP.

[IshaanIan]

Wow! I am no expert myself infact I have just begun delving into my interest with modifications and talking to a few people here and there. But a swift equipped with 110 horses sounds like the perfect hot hatch around. I am a huge fan of chasing performance without the help of the devil (forced induction). Do tell how reliability has been and whether there are any differences in NVH levels. Oh and I just have to ask to get a rough idea: how is fuel efficiency like?

[jkdas]

I drove it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqh3cjPltrw

Torque,loads of it for a petrol. I am used to Safari's and hence was surprised at how this car is now doing in various gears. The best part I liked was how it was in 4th and 5th gears in city! No knocking or sort. We were driving uphill and I had to double check to confirm that it was indeed in 4th; a feat impossible in regular Swift.

Its a bit loud if revv'ed hard ( from the looks peoples face as we were attaining speed.)

Waiting for a longer ride.

[Sankar]

Originally Posted by IshaanIan

Wow! I am no expert myself infact I have just begun delving into my interest with modifications and talking to a few people here and there. But a swift equipped with 110 horses sounds like the perfect hot hatch around. I am a huge fan of chasing performance without the help of the devil (forced induction). Do tell how reliability has been and whether there are any differences in NVH levels. Oh and I just have to ask to get a rough idea: how is fuel efficiency like?

NVH is like what you'd expect from a stock Swift.. except for the loud exhaust. Fuel economy is more or less the same as before. The fuel average we got on our way back is around 16.8kmpl, this covers two lane highways from Covai till Dindigul, the superb multilane NH 7, and again two lane traffic congested highway from Kavalkinaru to Trivandrum. We were doing good speeds till Kavalkinaru and i'm very happy with the fuel average!

Originally Posted by jkdas

I drove it

Torque,loads of it for a petrol. I am used to Safari's and hence was surprised at how this car is now doing in various gears. The best part I liked was how it was in 4th and 5th gears in city! No knocking or sort. We were driving uphill and I had to double check to confirm that it was indeed in 4th; a feat impossible in regular Swift.

Its a bit loud if revv'ed hard ( from the looks peoples face as we were attaining speed.)

Waiting for a longer ride.

You forgot to mention there were three of us in the car and the AC was on... Yep what you said is true the torque is really good now that i no longer have to shift as often and the 2nd gear will do the job of the 1st for most situations. I think a taller final drive will go well with this setup.

Yeah we'll go for a longer drive!

Thinking of putting in the stock exhaust for that sleeper effect, what say?