me 2

 

my 08 lancer is my 5th car but my first automatic (CVT). I outgrew my days of peeling out at red lights. Girls prefer the nice comfortable shiftless drive. Well the better girls anyways.

 

I find that the throttle response is very sporadic sometimes. Even in the same trip it will have more power at times then others. Sometimes it feels real sluggish off the line and other times its got a lot more pull and responds quickly. This all has to be a software and sensory problem that just hasnt been tweaked to be all that it can be.

 

Given that your car goes into Limp Mode every 6 seconds, I'd say you're not exactly a perfect candidate to judge the CVT...

 

my bet is that your driving your car with your A/C on.

Turning it off takes away the sluggish and sloppy random accel.

Its easy to see the car has serious issue with the power sap of A/C

 

^+1 Its surprising how much the A/C drains the power out of this car...I mean it takes a toll on all cars but this is much more noticable than my previous vehicals.

 

this car needs mods to free up power. Ideally, Its surprised me that havent developed a passive A/C system instead of the current active one.

A passive system would divert that power sap back towards car performance. Situations such as moderate to hard accelleration. Detection of additional load such as up hill senarios.

The amount of fuel that could be saved would be great. The only downside would be a expected shorter life of the a/c motor due to on / off's

But still.

 

Its getting off topic but a/c robs a little bit of power...not very much...

Try taking the belt of and turning the a/c pulley with you hand (not the clutch, that just spins when not engaged). Its stiff but still turnable by hand. So, yea it does take a bit power

BUT, your a/c compressor does not run all the time. its cycles on and off. Varying with the low and high pressure sensors and the demand for the a/c. So really its not going to make you car going faster disabling the a/c.

If you wanted to launch fast you should have bought a 45000$ car with cvt and sportronic or a 5 speed lancer... I still wish I had the 6th gear.

 

I can bet you that this application of the lancer will and does sap minimum 9 to 20% of power during normal driving operation. Dynos on my other cars and personal driving experience of the lancer says to me at least that it does not handle driving with the A/C going well during certain zones of the RPM power band.

The reason for disabling the A/C is two fold. To recover lost power from the A/C draw. And second and more importantly, (going to use one of my famous odd analogies" the human body has muscle, if i give you a 40 pound back pack and tell you to run up the hell. over time if you do it enough, your body will adjust and your muscles get stronger over time. Your body will work efficiently as possible to get you and that additional weight over the hill. A car has muscle in a similar way but it does not have the capacity to develop or grow over time. Putting a load / additional load on your car, over the long term can advance your powertrains wear and statiscally lead to a higher chance of mechanical failure. maybe only by a few % maybe more. that would depend on the load. We can off set these factors by increase the effiency of our engines, (muscle) by basic mods. Exhaust, Header, Intake, those few TQ or HP points make a difference over the long term.

IF you dont beleive me, then next time you go for a drag race, with a fellow Lancer, turn your A/C on and leave his off and i am sure he will beat you by a 15% margin every time.

Its not so much in the high power zones is where you get killed its the low end that will kill you. Max power output for your alternator happens in most cars above 2 to 2.5k RPM. at your Peak TQ and Peak HP points the draw from an A/C will be minimal. everything else, especially below 2k is where the fuel economy and power just get murdered

If you ever want to get a feel for a cars performance, drive it moderately hard under A/C conditions. you will feel every hessitation, every breath so to speak. refering back to my protege, I know that car inside out, i know exactly how much A/C can sap my engine, i know exactly at what point my car can begin powerlifting in terms of the power band. generally 3500 is where the effects of the A/C drop off considerably, but having a 5 to 15% penalty on your engine up to 3500, can cost you considerbly on the track.

anyways my two cents.

Cheers

 

I wouldn't even recommend even trying to launch that car. I also have the GTS and while not impossible it's more damaging then it is cool. Don't even bother trying. Enjoy your new car. In the future may be a different story but I believe the CVT will be hard to modify because of it's design.

 

I think you notice the sap stop at certain RPM's b/c cars are designed to shut the a/c compressor of after certain rpms in order to prevent overpressuring. Also most cars will disable the compressor at 100% throttle. However, the blower fan will continue to pull a larger load from the alternator stealing power.