Mike Dale Automotive in Adelaide, South Australia | Automotive, aircraft & boat

Mike Dale Automotive

Locality: Adelaide, South Australia

Phone: +61 8 8369 2882

Address: 8/26-28 Jacobsen Crescent, Holden Hill 5088 Adelaide, SA, Australia

Website:

Likes: 1209

Add/Update information

Reviews

Tags

• Local service
• Automotive, aircraft & boat
• Motor vehicle company

25.01.2022 Dyno guaranteed more horsepower from the latest tech trick ..... Any takers ?

24.01.2022 F9 Haltech.... wow I remember tuning these as ''cutting edge" 25 years ago ! This F9 has popped up in an old turbo 2.2 litre Mazda fitted to an old Mazda 929 Limousine 2 door. It always surprises me what is still lurking out there from the '90s . I'm also really surprised I managed to hook up and connect with this old DOS program , and i'm very happy I still have a working laptop and a serial port.

24.01.2022 In tonight's episode of Evo drivetrain goals... Dogbox by Hewland Engineering and Kaaz LSD New transfer by Mike Dale Auto and Kaaz LSD RS diff by Ralliart and ...Mike Dale Auto... :D

24.01.2022 This may make some of my customers a little nervous and sweaty ?? I always thought it was far easier to seek forgivesness, rather than permission ? May be not !

23.01.2022 Let's do this! Adelaide Hills Rally

23.01.2022 Ford Escort Lotus Twin Cam. One of the more desirable small Fords that many people are restoring these days. here is a lovely example that has taken its owner 4 years to this stage. Today is the day for me to crank up oil pressure and fire up the rebuilt engine I assembled some time ago. Prime the twin Webers with fuel, hit the starter key, and listen to that lovely engine note ...Set the distributor contact points gap, and poke the timing light down onto the crank pulley to check ignition timing. Does any one remember how to set points gap anymore ! Such a lovely Classic !

23.01.2022 Guy Tyler/Mike Dale, Mitsubishi Evo 9, finishing off the last stage of the PMD Rallysprint in dominant fashion, and winning outright the first round of the SA Rally Championship. Have a listen to that "restrictor spec" motor Mike Dale Automotive built and tuned !

23.01.2022 Ford Escort Pinto 2 litre direct fire ignition and sequential injection crank angle sensor. I machined this "dizzy" up today for a guy who is fuel injecting his Ford Escort Pinto engine. He didn't want to go to the trouble of a full on crank pick up trigger setup. This setup is a pretty economical way of providing a cylinder trigger and a "home" signal to let the ECU know when TDC compression stroke for #1 cylinder is coming up ie synchronise the sequential injection and direct fire individual coil spark event . Its a hybrid Magna dizzy grafted to a Pinto dizzy shaft. I've done a few now, and it works fine !

22.01.2022 Technology is leaping ahead in leaps and bounds ! How good are these 3D Printers. Once they were only read about in amazement. Now they are as cheap as chips. So.... we have bought one to help develop plastic prototypes and then send a file to the 5 axis CNC Machinist to make the final product. As a test, we have made a threaded nut and bolt. It actually worked better than expected ! ... The first real prototype do be drawn up in the CAD program will be some "dogbone" brake caliper adaptors. It is great that the program can print threaded holes etc. That means the adaptors can be tried out on the vehicle before committing to the final product . I'm sure we will find a million other things to make !

21.01.2022 Mmmm, maybe i've found the problem regarding lack of power !

21.01.2022 Poor bloke experimenting with his hybrid Rotor ! He was chasing advice on repairs and prices ..... Titanium or steel I asked. He reckons he just wants regular sodium filled stems . I've booked it in a few weeks time 1/4/19.

19.01.2022 Audi A8 Fun ! ( not......) The Audi A8 with its V8 AWD powertrain, is a lovely car to drive. That is not in doubt. However, this great piece of German engineering is "challenging" when it comes to replacing the simple things like faulty starter motors , and oil cooler heat exchangers. Looking up the "how to remove starter motor" section, the factory manual starts with "Remove engine from vehicle" . Being an AWD setup, I reckon this would be around 20 hour round trip ?? We thought we may have a crack without such a massive effort of removing the engine. 4 hours later , the starter motor is now in view !! The starter motor is roughly in the middle of the attached photo. If you own an Audi A8, and you need to ask how much for repairs, you obviously can't afford to own one !!

19.01.2022 Looking forward to the Adelaide Rally in less than 2 weeks !!

18.01.2022 Guy Tyler and Mike Dale giving the Evo a good flogging in Australian rally Championship and Mt Crawford Forest !

18.01.2022 It's times like this when bushes need to be replaced, but the 'ol "sorry, out of production mate" puts a spanner in the works. The VR4 Galant is notorious for flogging out thin plastic bushes in the gear selector pivot. No problem... lets make our own bush from a sturdier bronze material. All good workshops should have a lathe for spinning up the odd ball parts. So, roughly 30 minutes later, the VR4 gear stick now doesnt feel like the old stick in a porridge feel !

18.01.2022 Mike Dale Auto , on rare time off, cheer on the Champ, Toby Price

17.01.2022 Subaru owners rejoice ! Some old technology has resurfaced, and may be the saving grace for all those knock , knock EJxx motors !!

17.01.2022 ADM TME 6.5 .... Oh, wow, it's not often a clean Oz delivered Tommi this good is seen ! A Mitsubishi Executive used this immaculate Tommi as his personal car for years, before moving it on recently. And yes, it is as clean inside , and underneath as the outside !!

16.01.2022 AUDI RS Q3 brake repairs. So, it's not just EVOs we work on here. I reckon that later model Audis and VWs from the VAG group are great vehicles. Check this "family" orientated SUV ,the great driving Audi RS Q3. In particular , check the front brakes ! However, the rotors and pads do seem to wear out quickly. This example has covered only 30,000 km..... Our friends at Direct Brakes have supplied a set of DBA 5000 series rotors, and a set of Forza brake pads. The kit price co...mes in a fair bit cheaper than the OEM brake kit. Naturally , we have flushed and bled up the hydraulics with fresh hi performance Castrol SRF fluid It will be interesting to hear the feedback from the Customer in a few weeks time !

16.01.2022 102 years old and still having a crack ! He looks more agile and sprightly than most 70 yo I know ! it would be good if I'm punting around like this at 90 years old !

15.01.2022 AT Performance Heat Shield installed Should be right now! Thanks Sanjeet S Marwah for the hook up on a Sunday! Mike Dale, feel like taking it all apart to get the manifold ceramic coated, then put it all back on again? Hehe

15.01.2022 Guy Tyler giving the Mike Dale Automotive gravel rally restrictor spec motor a test session. Guy amd Mike Dale , will be contesting the first round of the SA Rally Championship , in 2 weeks at Mt Gambier. they will competing in a Mitsubishi Evo 7. Looking forward to it !

14.01.2022 Fresh Mike Dale Automotive Grunter ready to drop in the Evo and fill the forests with music

13.01.2022 Guy Tyler testing 3 weeks out from the last 2 rounds of the SARC

12.01.2022 Mitsubishi Triton upgrades. Mike Dale Automotive don't just upgrade Mitsubishi Evo ! Pajero, Tritons , Ford Rangers, Colorados , Isuzus and Toyota Hiluxes also receive tuning upgrades here. This MY17 Mitsubishi triton 2.4 DI-D received a handy 15% power and torque gain today , along with an expected 1 litre/100km fuel economy gain . Nice !... The blue line is the original factory power, and the red line is the Mike Dale Auto tuned power curve.

12.01.2022 Rusty EVO fuel tanks no more !!

12.01.2022 Guy Tyler/Mike Dale .... Almost ready for PMD Race Products Forest Sprint. Rd 1 SARC

11.01.2022 Interesting......

11.01.2022 How to calibrate carburettors 1970s style ... ( or is he resetting the base timing for this old VW ??

09.01.2022 Old Skool Ford Capri front strut conversion for a Mk 1 Escort. I thought i'd go down the path of building my own coil overs, rather than taking the easy path of buying an assembly ! Koni rebound adjustables, 275 lb springs with height adjustment, camber/castor spherical bearing tops. And a little bit of work on my Lathe, and the Mig welder

09.01.2022 Turbo is no good ! A quick diagnosis of a failed turbo , after seeing plumes of smoke and oil dripping from the exhaust tailpipe proved accurate ! Some how the nut holding the compressor wheel of this Mitsubishi Legnum rear turbo has fallen off. Consequently the turbine shaft backed out of the bearing housing and we found it lodged down the exhaust pipe. With no shaft, there was a direct flow of engine oil under pressure pumping unabated into the compressor cover and exhaus...t. The customer was unhappy with the consumption of 5 litres engine oil /5 km ! A replacement turbo has been fitted, and it will take some sneaky driving away from the Laws eyes, to burn the excess oil out of the exhaust ( and clear the oil puddles in the intercooler) !

08.01.2022 Piston trouble ! The customer who brought his Evo 7 in took a LOT of convincing his complaints of a dodgy Air Flow Meter was a long way off the mark ! He couldn't hear the motor was running on 3 cylinders . I did a quick compression test and established there was no comp in cyl #4. Fast forward a few days and even I was pretty shocked to find this piston ! The customer had been driving for weeks like this !!!

08.01.2022 New Zealand Rally Otago adventures ! Wayne Mason and I had a quick overnight road trip to Melbourne Friday night, to load the BDA Escort into a container Satu...rday morning. We can't wait to have a crack at those awesome roads in the Otago region, based at Dunedin ( South Island). It was good fun loading up 2 x 40ft containers with several other like minded Historic rally car crews ! The iconic Otago Rally will be held April 13/14th April. These guys are well practised at loading 4 cars per container. Check out how some of the cars are using rim only to keep the heights down and enable the vertical stacking . We just deflated the Escort tyres to grab a few cm extra clearance . Hopefully we have got all the preparation complete for this big event. This Mk II Escort is effectively a 1970s WRC replica, complete with a dry sumped 2 litre Cosworth BDG, 2 48DCOE Webers, ZF gearbox and 5 link Atlas rear end . All in all, a pretty exciting package !

06.01.2022 Evo 7 air conditioner Condensor fan being replaced with this brand new OEM Mitsubishi fan

04.01.2022 Get your entries in by Jan 28 to get the Australia Day special where you get 4x general admission tickets worth $100. Entry includes timer higher for the 2 days of racing.

03.01.2022 Ben and Matt about to have some serious fun tomorrow !

02.01.2022 Evo X Flex Fuel. How convenient is it to not worry about the down side of dual fuel PULP/E85 tunes. Flex Fuel means any percentage of petrol or ethanol can be added to the fuel tank, and the ECU automatically corrects fuel mixtures, boost levels and spark advance. No more draining tanks to almost nothing before filling with another fuel. No more map switching. No more drama being caught miles from home and no E85 outlets. ... All this is possible with the Ethanol Content anaylzer sensor ( pictured), and some trick software flashed to the factory ECU. Mike Dale Automotive have converted a MY14 Evo X to Flex Fuel this week, and the customer is super happy ! Ring now to book your Evo X Flex Fuel Conversion !

02.01.2022 VSV8 Commodore Delco tuning. It's been a while since I've recalibrated the Factory Delco ECU and had to dig deep to remember where my Emulator, EEPROM and chip burning gear has been stored ! A customer fitted the usual 276 duration cam to his Old Skool Auto VSV8 Calais Commo, and typically, it won't idle in gear. Painful. Especially when you just want a cruiser. ... Most of the issues revolve around a simple change of the Target idle speed command line, and recalibrating mixtures at different load points at idle. The longer duration cam runs less manifold vacuum than the stock camshaft, and in these areas, the fuelling is now too much. We fitted bigger injectors at the same time, as the stock injectors run out of puff pretty quick. Its all nice and easy to rescale the injectors in the factory ROM file. Tuning is pretty straight forward. Load up the modified file into an "emulator", and now the Commo is running off the laptop. Make the necessary spark and fuel changes on the fly, and save the file. Burn the EEPROM chip with the new file , and all is sweet ! Long live the Aussie V8 Commos !

01.01.2022 Sorting a few gremlins out with Brads Rheims Blue Evo 6 track car. It's sounding sharp now ! Good power for a genuine 2 litre motor .

01.01.2022 Holden Colorado Diesel tune reflash. Recently a customer brought in his 2012 RG 2.8 litre Colorado diesel turbo ute, thinking that one of Mike Dale Automotive...s in house diesel tune reflashes would sort out a poor driveability issue. Rather than load up a new tune to the ECU, we decided to check the basics, one of which involved a intake system smoke test. This Colorado failed miserably, and the photos show a very large split in the factory intercooler. Strangely, no fault codes were logged in the ECU. The intercooler was replaced with a OEM assembly. Stock driveability has been restored , and the Colorado is now ready for one of our tune upgrades. The customer can expect good torque increases and fuel economy gains with a mild tune upgrade!