[lsowden12]

Timing looks like this, don’t know if anyone else is able to comment but that looks pretty alright to me, looks like the inevitable is due

[itcaptainslow]

Is the crank sprocket timed up correctly?

[lsowden12]

Is the crank sprocket timed up correctly?

There was a picture of it (the pulley) in the album I uploaded but only one picture displays on here, but yes I believe it is

[961tat]

Is the crank sprocket timed up correctly?

Exactly take the crankshaft pulley off only way to be sure .

[lsowden12]

The pulley has marks on it that line up but I guess I'll have to pull it off and have a look underneath another day

[Dorchester]

Initially I'd got a LHD 2002 25 83bhp.
With a LHD the only thing you've to do is cutting that bit of plastic which limits the aperture at 50% and that's it. The cable is still the same.
It was then much better.
Afterwards I swapped the paper filter for a K&N one and drilled 6 holes at the bottom of the air box to ease the air flow. Better.
Then I swapped the backbox for one twin tailed coming from a 25 1.8 VVC. Lovely growling sound but not too much invasive.
At last I swapped the original 48mm TB for a Dell'Orto 52mm one while finding the best location to attach the cable with a rat tail file, just in the middle of the 2 initial notches. So much better: the pedal answer is so much quicker that I was flabbergasted the first time I tested it. Even my better half (the 25 is her daily) noticed it and I must say she's not at all interested in any car!
BTW in the meantime I've swapped for ethanol (E85, plenty of it on that side of the Channel, less than half the price...) thanks to a few mods (mainly 2 resistors on both air and coolant sensors, cheap and cheerful! bargain!) and now the 25 is close to a GTI: amazing!
And mind that I bought the car in 2015, that the mods were done 8 years ago in June 2017 and 32k mls were done without the faintest problem.

[lsowden12]

I need to update this post with some very useful information for whoever may need it in future. I wrote a very long post detailing all the information we had gathered over the past few months but it never sent for whatever reason

Essentially as a quick summary, if your R8 came out of the factory with a 56mm throttle body and alloy inlet manifold, swapping to a 52mm and a plastic manifold as a replacement for an issue with your intake system is NOT a viable option

We have spent the past 2 months testing various outcomes and the claim that there is no reason to swap to a 56mm tb from a 52mm because theres no performance gain is actually not completely true. We tested my car with the 52mm plastic manifold and a relevant ECU for that setup and a 56mm alloy inlet and relevant ECU together multiple times and actually found that on its respective ECU, the alloy inlet and 56mm throttle body actually genuinely generated more power. We do not have any official testing data to back this up, this is just what was observed on the day, each setup was tested multiple times to account for anomalies.
It is also relevant to mention that if you used the wrong ECU for the setup, you would lose a massive massive amount of power, the two systems are not interchangeable whatsoever. The MEMS system does not seem to be able to account for the change in physical throttle body regardless of what fuelling readings it gets. No one has really documented this before online as far as we have been able to tell
So if you are ever in a situation where you need to swap the intake system, you NEED to swap the ECU to one from the system youre swapping to, you cant use your original ECU

I hope that anyone suffering from this issue in future is able to find this post and use it to resolve any issue they may face in this regard