Hi guys,
I'm a newbie - so hopefully have posted this in the right place.
I have been unimpressed with the responsiveness of the MY10 Liberty 2.5NA manual wagon since the 1st test drive, but I had to replace my beloved MY00 Liberty RX 2.5 manual wagon due to it being a hail damage insurance write off.
Now that I still ended up buying one (I just couldn't buy a RAV4 which was the closest match i found), I'm wondering how to get that low rev punch back that the standard RX had.
The newer car's max torque is about 400 rpm higher than the RX (229Nm@ 4000 vs 223Nm@3600rpm), but the difference feels much bigger than that. Off idle it just feels like nothing is there (can you have turbo lag with no turbo!). I just don't understand how the performance went backwards with 10 years of development - I'm wondering if they are just focusing on economy & emissions now. I know the liberties are bigger now, but according to the specs the difference is only 10kg's (1440kg vs 1430kg).
Can anything be done with ECU tuning to improve that responsiveness below 3000 rpm? I'm not looking for turbo like performance or anything crazy but just want a bit more pull out of those 2nd gear corners that I used to have with the RX. Or am I wasting time investigating this, as some of the NA tuning threads seems to imply that you need mechanical mods to improve on the stock performance and an engine transplant for proper gains.
thanks for any advice.