612 performance Upgrade

Another WORLD FIRST eh Robin !

... Thanks for the excellent write up!

This performance upgrade was just WAITING to be done. It is a huge and dramatic improvement over the standard setup that the factory equipped the 612 with, so much so I'd consider looking at upgrading your tires to Michelin Pilot 4S if you haven't already done so and perhaps carbon pads!

When you see how restrictive the original setup was its very easy to see how much of an improvement this "air restriction" yielded. It is similar to what is done in GT3 racing to help with balance of power rules I can only assume Ferrari wanted to leave "significant" margin for improvement in horsepower with the same basic engine architecture for future models. And as history has proven, that's exactly what they did. Step forward the 599. By the way Ferrari isn't alone in doing this kind of thing!

In fairness Robin has still the headers and hugely restrictive header cats to do next but once that's done be prepare for extremely different personality from the big 4 seat Ferrari. I'm certain with race cats, de-catted headers and the work above along with a 599 GTO-esque style remapping done with some additional upgrades of my own I can achieve close to 600hp out of the old girl.., so the stock 533 bhp goes up to well over 600 bhp.

And who say's you cannot tune a normally aspirated engine

 

If it works on a 612, should work on a 575M, too. Both F133 engines.

 

Yes I'm sure it does .. this upgrade is going to make a lot of people excited, it's a very significant hike in power!

Really Looking forward to doing a full Fabio 6-1 headers with F1 style merge collectors system and this digital air restriction removal and getting some Dyno numbers done.

This upgrade removes intake, exhaust and just as importantly all the digital restrictions! Haven't yet verified if fuel injectors and pump where upgraded on 599 Vs 612/575M but this will all be tested scientifically and duty cycles of the fuel injectors monitored along with all the other parameters to ensure this upgrade is factory quality and reliable in the longer term.

 

Do you think the airbox upgrade alone will cut the 0-60 time to less than 4 sec? I know most people aren't dragging these cars but it would be nice to improve stats to more contemporary numbers....

 

Fantastic! Great work Robin and Trev! Love seeing improvement across these “old” V12s. If it’s possible for 575 I might look into trying this out

 

The whole reason to do this upgrade is to remove the bottleneck of the undersized air flow meters, this is the trick to achieving power gains. Ferrari also did this on special edition vehicles too such as the Challenge Stradale, 430 Scuderia, etc.

Without the upgraded AFM's and software re-calibration (this technically is not even considered a tune) the engine ecu's will be restricting power no matter how big your air boxes happen to be. Ofcourse a tune on top can take even more advantage of the additional upgrades making it a win win. The air box upgrade is mainly so that the AFM's just bolt on without any fabrication being required at all, ie. plug in and play on the 612. The fact they are bigger size is a bit of a bonus but not absolutely essential here (ofcourse it will reduce pressure drop a bit but not as significant as everything else going on). In terms of the practicalities of doing an upgrade, well as long as the diameter of the intake is sufficient to fit the physical AFM's without restrictions upstream this will be enough to do the hardware side of the upgrade.

If you just do the air boxes upgrade alone you won't achieve much, a negligible improvement (if anything noticeable) as the car cannot increase fueling to use the additional air at the point of the air box anyway (remember to make power the engine works on an "Air to fuel" ratio), so beyond the prescribed limits the ecu is going to be capping fueling based on the AFM input. That is because not enough air is available according to the restrictions of the AFM's itself, particularly at higher RPM's. Even if more air IS available its not going to get physically past an undersized air restriction of the AFM's (the diameter is a lot smaller).

Even if you just did the air boxes and the air flow meters its still not enough because then the amount of air at any given point is going to be completely wrong then and the mixtures will be completely off, so will the feedback loop of the o2 sensors, it will likely go past the maximum thresholds of of adaption and result in triggering of multiple CEL's. The car would run badly too and its not recommended to do this at all, maybe even dangerous to use the wrong sized AFM's that don't match the ecu programming. Don't try it. If you do however the ecu upgrade and the suitable AFM upgrade gains are to be had for sure!

 

Interesting write up brogenville, and thanks for posting.

I am curious do you have before and after performance numbers?

 

We only did this literally a couple of days ago so not yet but he knows his car well and it is a significant difference to stock. Also we need to do the rest of his conversion now, i.e. deletion of the header cats. Ideally Robin would "man up" and get Fabio headers for the ultimate 612 performance upgrade

 

Thanks, no I realize all that. What I meant to ask was would the larger air intake plus your software flash change acceleration? I was thinking just those adjustments without headers. I realize headers help tremendously but was simply trying to gauge the effect of the first steps which are easier of course.

..another point to consider is whether new MAFs are needed. I know on some cars these get more easily fouled and/or a performance car is more sensitive to renewing these every so often. I'm not sure if I've seen that discussed here.

 

Yes currently Robin is running with stock headers on my customized firmware for his 612. He's only upgraded so far to the 599 airboxes and AFM's hardware wise and already there is a substantial difference.

 

You may remember this article: https://www.forza-mag.com/issues/90/articles/will-it-play-in-peoria

The biggest single improvment for performance would be final gear ratio change. The stock one is good for a GT car, but limits acceleration quite a much.

612 fuel injectors are 267cc @3bar ( same Bosch ones as in Volvos ) - 599 has bigger ones.
612 and 599 share the fuel pumps.

 

612 injector flow rates: https://www.injectorplanet.com/products/0280156079-180552
599 injector flow rates: https://www.injectorplanet.com/collections/ferrari-maserati/products/bosch-0280158124-ferrari-213635

 

Robin- The other thing we cannot duplicate is the VVT.

Funny, yours has the intake mods and mine has the exhaust mods. Both expensive on the other guy's V12.

 

If the 612 injectors are too small, the next step would be these:

https://www.injectorplanet.com/products/bosch-0280155831-volvo-9186340

Just plug and play + tune the ECUs ( +27% )

 

Any experience with remanufactured?

 

Q- When you have your injectors cleaned and resealed, they are effectively rebuilt. Mine are. They are tested to make sure they are still within spec during rebuild and discarded if they cannot meet specs.

 

Taz, that makes sense but just wondering about a thousand heat cycles whether the time "in-spec" will drop after each refresh. I guess it is hard to know. At the price quoted (especially the 599 or Volvo versions - not sure why they're cheaper than the 612) it's worth rebuilt ones.