DTRONIC Reviews
"It's been a bloody long haul", says Peter Luxon, Managing Director of Safari Automotive Technologies, as we watch a near-new Patrol on the dyno at his research centre and factory at Bayswater in Victoria. Peter is the guiding force behind the Safari brand of snorkels, as well as the Unichip electronic upgrade chip. Few people in Australia have Peter's knowledge or experience in turbos, or in the electronic enhancement of fuel injection systems on petrol or diesel engines. And I doubt if anyone in this country can equals Peter's level of vehicle-related intuition gained from more than 20 years in this particular field of expertise. Nearby, as if in testimony to that fact, there are a range of performance cars - Mitsubishi, Evo 7s and the latest WRXs among them - being given the Luxon treatment: turbos, intercoolers and electronic chips. "We could have come out years ago with an electronic chip that controlled fuel quality, but that's only half of the story, we wanted to control timing of the injection of the fuel - that's critically important - no other turbo-diesel electronic enhancement chip does that," Peter continued. By now he was yelling to be heard above the scream of the Patrol's engine at full noise and the equally-load spinning dyno. It was Peter's seven years of experience with the Unichip that steered him towards developing the DTONIC purely for turbo-diesel enhancement. Like the Unichip, the DTRONIC uses as its basis a set of three dimensional 'maps' of 17rpm positions between idle and full revs and 12 load points between no throttle and full throttle. Each rpm position and load point (204 in all) is optimised for the quality of fuel delivered and for the exact second of injection timing. That equates to better performance in power and torque and improved fuel economy with less emissions. The problem with the Unichip is that it is hard wired into the wiring loom and takes a qualified technician all day to install and set up the system - which adds up to a considerable expense. It also limits who can install the system and where it's available. As well, once it's installed it's not an easy job to remove, making any fault-finding on the vehicle's fuel injection system more complicated. |
After thousand of man hours of design and analysis as well as 100,000km of real-world testing throughout Australia the first production models of the DTRONIC electronic enhancement chip are now available.
Head Office: Safari Automotive Technologies Pty. Ltd.
73 Merrindale Drive, South Croydon 3136 Australia.