Hi guys

I've recently bought an ex works Ka rally car. It has a nice engine spec running around 100-110bhp from the 1.3, using mainly the original Ford Racing tuning parts but with a recent rebuild. On the drive home it put a hole in two of the pistons - not good.

It's rebuild time and we are rebuilding the engine with forged pistons I think, but I'm concerned as to what may have caused the engine to run lean, thus causing a heat spike and a broken piston. Obviously it's been underfuelling (sparkplugs also tell this story), but why?

It could be the ECU, or perhaps a blocked injector, or a whole host of other things. As the ECU is a sealed Ford Racing unit, I don't have any control over fuelling - or do I?

If possible, I don't want to go down the expensive route of getting a new ECU/mappable management set-up, so what are my options for increasing fuelling, and without being able to alter the ECU fuelling settings, could someone in the know set up the car to the optimum running levels on a rolling road or whatever?

I'm needing to do this on the cheap as I didn't factor an engine rebuild into my rally plans so soon and don't want to eat all of my competition budget away before I've even started!

Any advice much appreciated - feel free to probe if I've not given enough detail about anything.

Cheers

Paul