Category: Product Updates
Defender L663 Performance Packages Ever since the controversial yet striking and capable L663 Defender had launched its following and tuning base has been growing fast. Equally as customisable as the older generation but with all the comforts you would come to expect from a new Land Rover, this car is ready for the SR performance treatment and that is exactly what we have done. Our first goal was to complete a full turbo back exhaust system fabricated in house with exceptional quality using 303 stainless and purge welded for industry leading…
New Powerflex Products Are Incoming For Late Land Rover And Range Rover Models Land Rover‘s Premium SUV offerings have a lot of boxes to tick, combining practicality, high-end luxury, and the ability to transition from on-road to off-road seamlessly. This is especially true for D7u/x platform vehicles, including the latest Discovery and Defender. Naturally, given the weight and usage of these vehicles, they can be hard on their bushes, and an area that suffers most is the large oil-filled bush in the front radius arm, where excessive wheel deflection and ‘snatching’…
X100 Manual Conversion: Here and ready for the road.. Developing a high-performance automotive product is a meticulous process that takes years of refinement. Over the past three years, we have perfected every aspect of our manual conversion, creating the most advanced iteration of the X100 to date. From Concept to Reality: Engineering Evolution Jaguar originally conceptualised a manual transmission for the X100, with a prototype developed by SVO. However, it was never fully realised. Drawing from our motorsport expertise, we have taken this concept and engineered a comprehensive solution that surpasses…
We first looked at performance exhaust in the October 2023 edition. Since then, we have continued to design and develop new products, most specifically catalytic convertors. Our recent exhaust development process has taken a leap forward thanks to the use 3D scanning to map the Jaguar range. Taking a detailed scan of the underside of the car enables us to map out every detail of the vehicles shape and undulations, allowing us to design and test fit items before they are made, saving time and materials when designing exhausts and ensuring…
Back in May 2024 we took a brief look at how upgrading to silicone hoses can future proof your car and cut down on long term maintenance costs. Now more specifically we are going to look at some very common replacements on supercharged models. A big driver for Swallows Racing performance parts is to find alternative solutions for the components that regularly fail. As we have our own garage for maintenance of Jaguars, we are perfectly placed to know what components regularly break on cars, and those that have become discontinued.…
We have covered damper and coilover upgrades in the past but now we are specially taking a look at the packages we have created for the XJS. The XJS was the longest running production car that Jaguar built, spanning twenty-one years, until it was replaced by the XK8 in 1996. There has never been a Jaguar with more model variants than the XJS. The grand old GT can now be truly considered as a classic with early Pre-HE models approaching fifty years old. It’s very noticeable when you drive an XJS…
Anyone who has owned a Jaguar for any length of time with almost certainly have some suspension bushes replaced at some point. Let’s face it we don’t own the lightest cars on the planet and nearly all Jaguars will require some new bushes during their lifetime. Rubber bushes can also degrade on cars in storage as rubber is a natural product that is affected by the environment. For many years we have advocated fitting Powerflex bushes, they are made from Polyurethane, and they don’t degrade like standard rubber bushes and come…
This month we are going to look at fabrication and manufacturing of small quantities of parts, bespoke parts and the technology used to design and produce them. This now plays a major role in the Swallow Racing performance parts set up. A few years ago, parts manufacturing meant expensive design and tooling and high-volume parts manufacture. Now low volume parts and even one-offs can be produced at a reasonable cost using the latest technology. As with many other of our performance parts our design and fabrication department has been directed by…
In the December 2023 magazine we wrote about tyres and the part they can play in upgrading the performance of your car or as part of an upgrade package. Tyre technology is such a large subject that I said back in December it would be something we would return to in the future. That time has arrived, and in the six months that have passed we have been able to work with our tyre partners at Yokohama a bit more closely to understand what makes their tyres so effective. So, tyres…
In our series of posts so far, we have largely talked about mechanical performance upgrades such as brakes, tyres, suspension, and bushes. Apart from exhausts we haven’t really touched on anything that has any effect on engine performance. This month we are going to look at arguably the biggest modification you are likely to make to engine performance, which is known as ECU or engine mapping, remapping or historically, Chipping. Our modern cars have a ‘brain’ known as an Engine Control Unit (ECU). ECU’s first started appearing on cars as far…
