No, I haven't messed with the tuning pins. Was never going for out and out performance, just driveability and economy. Sadly my 300tdi awaits my attention as regards bodywork so has been off the road for sometime and unlikely to be back on the road before a while.
As you can probably tell, I am really a bit old-school when it comes to tuning and work most of the time on normally aspirated engines of the 1960s/70s/80s. Turbos and superchargers I do understand but the electrickery of the ECUs is all a black art to me and I would have to consult someone else if I wanted to be bothered. Nevertheless, an internal combustion engine is still that and much of what held true in the old days must still hold true.It is still "suck, squeeze, bang, blow". It is just that some of the parameters that could not be changed at a nanosecond's notice, can now be changed endlessly by the on board computer.
I am hugely grateful to all the posters on this and other threads who have huge knowledge of what works, what doesn't and above all, what goes on inside the electrical boxes of tricks. If life had gone differently I might have had time to keep up with all the latest stuff, including variable vane turbos and VVT cams. But, as you can tell, I have only lately come to get a lot more stuck in on learning all this stuff and passing on first hand stuff to do with LRs that I have experienced and that I know works.
Here's hoping OP gets enough out of this to cool his exhaust, but I am wondering a bit if his problem might be down to his work being towing so he cannot get up to the speeds where the cooling effect would offset the work he is getting the engine to do. We could also talk about exhaust wrap, but that tends just to shift the problem further down the pipe and it is a fiddly pain to do well. Also it would not sort out any head warping problems. Maybe a recored higher capacity rad??
Underbonnet temperatures are often a pain in the kit car world where I spent a lot of time. People get to do all sorts of crazy things to sort it out. From cutting louvres, to using computer fans to cool the fuel inlet areas. Dolomite Sprints used to suffer from this too and I even heard of a guy who fitted a boat's bilge pump to the cooling circuit to help it work. Others put multi-bladed water pumps in. This was really a bit of a design fault on behalf of Triumph although a properly maintained one did not suffer so much. And they warped heads for a pastime. (Guess how I know!.)
200 and 300 can really take some abuse, 200 more so.
Heat defo isnt an issue with the 200, the 300 is more fussy and I have had 2 of them get so hot they started to nip up.
I think the a/c condenser rad is the main culprit which hurts air flow.
Their biggest problem is they are an old tech engine and no matter how much you tune them they just wont give the power or driveability of a modern car.
I reckon an auto 200/300 with a vgt/tweaked pump and larger cooler would be a nice car, but still far from perfect, the auto would get rid of the annoying flat spot when its off boost, but would of course hurt the mpg figures.
Bear in mind an engine is an engine, its all the carp bolted to the outside of it thats complicated, add in the Euro 6 emissions kit and its getting silly complicated.
