Remapping a car

GunJack wrote: »

better off putting the 180 towards your next car...

You resurrected a 4 month old thread to say that?

Remaps and tuning boxes can be an easy performance upgrade at a relatively low cost

As someone who remaps cars and has done for many years (using professional equipment in the correct manner), I'll put my unbiased view across.

I've owned many vehicles over the years. Some I have remapped, some I haven't. If it is really worth doing, I will. If it isn't, I won't.

Yes, it is true that for certain vehicles you can download the relevant files and using a generic OBD cable you can re-write the software on the ECU yourself. I'd never recommend that anyone does this, even if they're quite literate on such things. Manufacturers are making it more difficult for this to happen now though, and even with the correct equipment, most new vehicles since around 2012 require the ECU to be removed from the car and unlocked via a tuning bench before reprogramming.

What are the positives to remapping? (I'm talking about a professional job here, not DIY) You get more power and torque (in basic terms) and you almost always get increased fuel economy (I guarantee at least a 10% increase on any turbo diesel car. Money back if not satisfied. in 99% of cases, turbocharged petrols should be the same too).

Who should consider a remap? Obvious answer first. Those who want to increase the performance of their vehicle. Then, those who drive a turbo diesel or turbocharged petrol vehicle who cover high mileages. They will soon recoup the cost of the remap in their fuel savings, whilst benefiting from the increase in performance.

What are the negatives? There are very few if your vehicle is what I would consider "ideal" for remapping. It's one of the very best pound for pound upgrades available and in some cases, as previously highlighted, it can pay for itself and then some.

You obviously need to look at warranty implications if it's a newer vehicle. Some manufacturers/dealers will offer a tuning/remapping service. Such as Mountune for Ford. They will remap your new or nearly new car and add hardware upgrades if desired, and it will still be covered by Ford's warranty. I know of certain VW/Audi/Skoda dealerships who do the same. BMW now have a similar performance arm. Naturally, these are more expensive then your average remap, but that's understandable.

There is an increase in wear and tear on consumable items on your vehicle. This is not as much as some people would imagine, but it is only natural that your clutch will wear more quickly with 300LB/FT of torque being put through it than with 240LB/FT of torque, which is a reasonably expected gain on some of the "ideal" vehicles that get remapped by myself. Again, this depends on how you drive the car. The clutch on the standard car will wear out more quickly if the car is driven by someone who likes full ball launches from every set of traffic lights than it would in the tuned car driven by someone sensibly. But yes, if you remap a car where the clutch is 80% worn, it is fair to expect that the clutch will wear out quicker than it would if it was left standard. Again, the margins will be fairly fine. It won't wear out all that much quicker as the car will be driven by the same driver. Then again, when someone has their car remapped, they can have a tendency to drive it a little quicker and more aggressively to begin with to enjoy the extra power or show friends what difference it has made.

People who don't know so much do tend to believe that the extra strain on the vehicle from remapping must be too much as otherwise it would have that power to start with. This is a fair assumption from the outside, but it's a long way off the truth. There are two major reasons why this is not the case. One reason applies to all cars, the other one applies more so to certain manufacturers and higher performance vehicles. The first one is that all vehicles are set to a state of tune, which naturally has a a fairly significant performance reserve set on it. This is to compensate for different grades of fuel used in different parts of the world. Our grade of fuel is much lower than Japan, but much higher than America or parts of Eastern Europe and Asia, plus we have the option of higher octanes than the standard 95RON (petrol). Manufacturers in general can't afford to spend many many millions optimising every vehicle for every country they're being sold to. They're generally set to a standard level to be sold everywhere, so if you run your car on UK fuel or better still, higher octane UK fuel, you can safely extract more power from your vehicle. Also, manufacturers have to allow for "bad" maintenance. Obviously, manufacturers set out service intervals for a good reason, but many people don't stick to them. If the manufacturer knew that their service schedule was being stuck to religiously, they could afford to increase the power levels of their vehicles as the components would have a longer life expectancy, but the manufacturer knows that even in 5 years time when the second owner of their car is having reliability issues due to the first owner's negligence on servicing or even just the garage that serviced it being a little lax, it will still reflect negatively on the manufacturer, so they compensate on that as much as is possible from new.

The second reason if down to performance and price differences in a manufacturers car range.

The two best examples I have come across are the E90 BMW 335i and the E90 BMW M3. When these cars first came out, the 335i was the top of the "regular" 3-Series range and the M3 was a flagship performance car from the M-Division. There was a big difference in price and quite a big gap in performance. The M3 had a Normally Aspirated 4.0 V8, which is difficult/expensive to tune for a significant power increase. The 335i had a 3.0 Twin Turbo Straight 6, which is comparatively very cheap and easy to extract a lot more power from and could easily be tuned to produce more power than the M3. BMW could have done it, but it wouldn't be good business for them to have a "normal" 3-Series that was faster, on par, or even too close in terms of performance to its new M3.

The second example is a more recent one and one close to me as I was the first person in the UK to work on tuning the ECU of this particular car and that's the Audi S1. A tiny car with 231BHP as standard and from a basic remap it went straight up to 301BHP and was a little pocket rocket! The only reason for Audi holding back so much power from new is that in such a small car, that would wipe the floor with its bigger, more expensive S3.

On the flip side, I don't recommend people get their NA 1.2/1.4/1.6 Hatchbacks remapped as the power and performance and economy increase is so small, it doesn't justify it. However, it can still be used to iron out "flat spots" that these cars may have at certain points of the rev range, so if people love their own car enough to want to improve it in that little way, then that's fair enough.

As people who know about car tuning will know. A standard car getting a remap will be a "Stage 1". if they want to go beyond this, most turbocharged cars will have a recognised "Stage 2" and "Stage 3" and then beyond that it becomes major tuning. The Stage 2 onwards will require hardware updates. IE/Uprated exhaust/Filter/Intercooler/Turbo etc etc. So any reputable person/company remapping vehicles will know the limits of the standard components and when they need upgrading.

Again, any reputable tuner will give the vehicle a full health check before touching it and again after it has been remapped. They will also give you a warranty/satisfaction guarantee period themselves (typically 30 days).

If a car came to me and I test drove it and there were warning lights on the dash, there were odd noises, there was an oil leak or there was play in the turbo shaft, I would not carry out any upgrades until it was rectified and the car was in fit condition to be tuned.

As with anything, remapping is great, but it's not right for everyone or every vehicle. Just stick with a trusted professional. Amateurs will have a go at anything, but it doesn't mean that they should!