Does anyone know if the EL has any Torque Reduction Modes - ie. below certain temp does it limit torque - or if any sensor inputs aren't right??

I'll be interested to see what you can find out on this. Im fairly sure all of the V8 eec's have torque reduction, from EB-EL. AU as well i imagine.

At the very least, if the V8 ECU thinks the car is in reverse (this is the default status, unless it is told otherwise) there is severe torque reduction. This occurs up to a speed which is out of range of the reverse gear (prolly 60km/hr?). Hence, some people who have done manual conversions and have not told EEC the box is NOT in reverse have experienced this.

what about the chance of vehicle being in closed loop(when cold)as opposed to open when at operating temp causing "lower" available power?

WOW!!! - You've REALLY caught my interest with that info!!! - here's why: when I fitted the BBM to my ED, along with the JMM Dev4 cam it gave absolutely neck snapping accelleration from standstill and if you "poked" the pedal at any speed up to about 60 ro 70 you'd get neck strain from being thrown back by the sudden jump. Problem was, at any acceleration higher than 2/3 accelerator with no load and as little as 1/4 with any sort of load there'd be massive pinging and instant power loss - so I'd get this tease of potential power but not be able to get fully into it.

This led me to fit an EL XR6 ECU - to which I wired up the BBM control circuit and attached the knock sensor. BUT - apart from a timing setting issue (which I've JUST solved - on EL you have to wait for it to drop into self test which takes as much as 3 minutes or more!) - it's been comparatively a slug off the line - and interestingly enough it seems to "come alive" at about 60kph!!

On another thread I commented about the "great performance from 60kph" and someone put me on the spot by asking what gear/rpm that is. Now why it put me on the spot is that when I really looked into it, the situation seems to be that this sudden liveliness is related to the speed, not gear/rpms - ie. regardless of whether it's under heavy accel with high rpm or taking off sedately in high gear/low rpm the car wakes up at 60kph.

So now I'm really interested in what might be going on - I know the ED Power / Economy switch works in reverse with the EL ECU - now I guess I need to look closely into whether there's a reverse gear torque limiting system in the EL that isn't in the ED!

Mate, if this is my problem and leads to a fix you're up for a bottle of your favorite drop! (carton if it's beer). I'll update with how things go.