Yes the headlamps may well affect the Cd as will the wider wheels, i do not have a body kit fitted though.
I looked more in depth at the ride height idea this week while i have had some time off and been using the XM fair bit, i have 137mm clearance between the ground and the bottom of the front subframe, the rear end has 425mm from the ground to the rear boot floor chassis rails, this actually gives the car a nose up attitude if you measure from the bottom of the sills to the ground, these run parallel to the floorplan and as far as handling at high speed and engine cooling is concerned this cannot be a good setup?
I also played with the height controls and moving the height lever 10-15mm back and engaging sports mode will lower the car about 30mm fairly evenly at the front and back ends and does make the car feel stiffer and more stable on smooth roads but on rough surfaces does not feel so good which is what i was expecting.......or hoped, so this idea is a go, i just need a contact switch to be able to automatically engage sport when this height is selected which will be easy* to sort.
I have noticed that sometimes under harsh breaking the car dips diagonally down on the O/S/F wheel and further investigation has revealed some unwanted noises from the rear arm bearings in the location of the o/s/r so a new pair of bearings are on the cards for this winter, a strip down and clean will hopefully reveal all that is needed is to spend £10 with the bearing boys and not £100 with GSF for both full kit's.
I brimmed the tank last weekend and having used half a tank of fuel which is roughly 8 gallons over 182 miles i have come to the conclusion being gentle with the right foot with this engine does reward the pocket, my last attempt at this calculation after much hoonery resulted in a number i do not wish to reveal, having said that the smiles/gallon were off the scale.
The fuel cutoff issue between 1750-2100rpm and extended crank time to start from mildly luke warm is still present and while i have put many armchair hours into solving this problem, very few spanners have been brandished, i did swap to Johns manual ECU a while ago again as outlined above and while the fuel cutoff issue was resolved the engine missed and coughed something awful under even the smallest bouts of accelleration and so was promptly removed, the trouble is after swapping back to the auto ecu this behaviour continued in varying degrees (although not as bad as the manual ecu) for many days to the point where it now pulls like a train again, neither ecu has power to the front knock sensor still but i have a third ecu on it's way to me and if it is not code locked i shall try that.
All in all, i am enjoying the V6 experience, i would still not recommend the conversion as i don't believe the few extra ponies justify the sheer amount of time and money such a project consumes if you do not really love the challenge of the conversion itself. Having said that though and having owned more powerful equipment one thing i will say is the noise, oh the noise
one thing the old 2.0 engine and most mainstream turbo engines do not have is a good induction noise, this thing does, a quick stab of the throttle gives a roar from the intake and at 3-5000rpm a howl from the slightly modified exhaust, at low revs below 1500rpm on a trailing throttle there is also a subdued burble and popping from the exhaust which does not get boring.
The auto box is fine when cruising about normally and a little cumbersome when trying to push on mildly but for full-on luny driving it is best to leave the selector in 2nd gear and let it keep the engine whizzing around the red line, this keeps the shifts very smooth too so there are no unwanted surprises mid corner! and you are free to enjoy the old school soundtrack this engine has, the noise did surprise me too as most PRV engines i have heard in video's sounded fairly flat, rattly and awful if im honest, not sure if it's a sound quality thing or the smaller Volvo and deloren units did just sound flat and rattly?
D