ECU Remap-opinions

spunk_monkey

Decided I will be remapping my car and am wondering who people recommend?

I have priced around a few places, prices vary a lot, is there much of a difference in what I'm getting?

Tigger

Yes

What car is it and what are you hoping to achieve

Owen

This is the 4th thread in as many days about remapping. Man I should get into this. OP, do a search, all your questions will have been answered many times before.

spunk_monkey

Tigger wrote: »

Yes

What car is it and what are you hoping to achieve

mk5 gti , anything up to 250bhp I'm led to believe, depending on the condition of the car in question.

Paintdoc, cheers, ill do a search now...I have researched the idea and am happy to go ahead, but there are 2 mappers that I've heard a lot of good things about, just wondering if anyone knows do all these guys do the same thing, or is it like most things, you get what you pay for?

Owen

You definitely get what you pay for. There's tons of guys out there with laptops, USB dongles for your OBD port and generic maps they've bought in bulk.

There's also a few guys out there who are resellers for the proper tuning houses that run each car on a rolling road, or if that's not possible, tune the engine to within a safe tolerance range while still liberating bhp, torque, and smoothing out power delivery.

Where are you based?

spunk_monkey

PaintDoctor wrote: »

You definitely get what you pay for. There's tons of guys out there with laptops, USB dongles for your OBD port and generic maps they've bought in bulk.

There's also a few guys out there who are resellers for the proper tuning houses that run each car on a rolling road, or if that's not possible, tune the engine to within a safe tolerance range while still liberating bhp, torque, and smoothing out power delivery.

Where are you based?

I'm based in Dublin.

It probably not a good idea to mention the names of the 2 companies I have in mind, but I can pm you them, and if your familiar with their work , let me know what you think..cheers

Squall19

Boys in Ballymena, Antrim are good.

Autotune.

Been up there twice and got great results.

They will put in on a rolling road, test a few different maps etc.

Make sure to fill up on some 99 ron petrol when you are up in the north as well, if you want some very good results.

When you pay 400e+ I want to see the car on a dyno, I want to see the torque curve, bhp curve, etc etc and I want them to change it if I dont like it.

If you get a map without a dyno, your just taking the other guys word, chances are he is telling the truth that it will be such and such bhp, but it's nice to see it for your self and change a few things based on the dyno results.

stealthyspeeder

Squall19 wrote: »

Boys in Ballymena, Antrim are good.

Autotune.

Been up there twice and got great results.

They will put in on a rolling road, test a few different maps etc.

Make sure to fill up on some 99 ron petrol when you are up in the north as well, if you want some very good results.

When you pay 400e+ I want to see the car on a dyno, I want to see the torque curve, bhp curve, etc etc and I want them to change it if I dont like it.

If you get a map without a dyno, your just taking the other guys word, chances are he is telling the truth that it will be such and such bhp, but it's nice to see it for your self and change a few things based on the dyno results.

My friend has had his car remapped with autotune and its a long story, one that is still ongoing and will be finishing with legal proceedings but I would personally steer clear of autotune.

Where are you getting 99 RON petrol up north by the way?

I would get the car mapped on the fuel I would be using day to day.

Squall19

stealthyspeeder wrote: »

My friend has had his car remapped with autotune and its a long story, one that is still ongoing and will be finishing with legal proceedings but I would personally steer clear of autotune.

Where are you getting 99 RON petrol up north by the way?

I would get the car mapped on the fuel I would be using day to day.

I thought you were a fan of them Stealthy?

A few stations had signs for super unleaded when I was up there, it might be hard to get to 99 ron alright, but there is a few stations with 98.

You would no more than me with regard to mapping on which fuel, so your probably right there.

What happenend with your friend?

You can pm the details if you want to say here.

spunk_monkey

Squall19 wrote: »

I thought you were a fan of them Stealthy?

A few stations had signs for super unleaded when I was up there, it might be hard to get to 99 ron alright, but there is a few stations with 98.

You would no more than me with regard to mapping on which fuel, so your probably right there.

What happenend with your friend?

You can pm the details if you want to say here.

I'd be very interested to know what happened too..

Owen

stealthyspeeder wrote: »

I would get the car mapped on the fuel I would be using day to day.

+1 - I can't see the point of mapping with one fuel, and then running with another.

Mapping with a Dyno's overrated. If you use a reputable tuning house like Sedox who have dyno'd cars identical to yours with the same engines, I can't see the point of dynoing again. Maybe if you were going for a track day weapon, but for an everyday car, you're hardly going to be able to tell if the car is developing 240bhp, or 237.

spunk_monkey

PaintDoctor wrote: »

+1 - I can't see the point of mapping with one fuel, and then running with another.

Mapping with a Dyno's overrated. .

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think some mappers put your car on a dyno before they map your car. They do this not just to log the bhp before hand, but also to log boost etc so they know what tweaks to make to the map in order to tailor it to your specific car/engine.

Owen

Most professional mappers are franchise based these days. A central tuning house does the inital reading of car ECU data, and then creates maps based on country's nominal temperature ranges, fuel octanes and humidity, and uses the generic map they created themselves on their rolling road combined with the data for the intended country.

Gary ITR

PaintDoctor wrote: »

Most professional mappers are franchise based these days. A central tuning house does the inital reading of car ECU data, and then creates maps based on country's nominal temperature ranges, fuel octanes and humidity, and uses the generic map they created themselves on their rolling road combined with the data for the intended country.

And those maps are generally rubbish, we've seen them and binned them. Every car is different and responds differently to mapping. We had a BMW 325 in with us, the guy had bought a tuned ECU from a reputable tuning house, after we installed it the car made 2bhp, yup 2bhp. I changed the air filter to an ITG one and the car made 8bhp with the standard ECU.

There is no substitute for a custom map, believe me I see it every day

Owen

Yeah, but is it fair to say that's applicable to all tuning houses? The stuff I see done in a mates place (Who's an authorised agent of a European tuning company) is pretty impressive. He's had my old JCW transformed even though it already had the JCW fuelling map on board, did serious work on my 75, and has made most 1.9 TDi VAG engines sing as sweet as a nut.

stealthyspeeder

Squall19 wrote: »

I thought you were a fan of them Stealthy?

A few stations had signs for super unleaded when I was up there, it might be hard to get to 99 ron alright, but there is a few stations with 98.

You would no more than me with regard to mapping on which fuel, so your probably right there.

What happenend with your friend?

You can pm the details if you want to say here.

Not anymore, I'll pm you!

I think 97 RON is the best I have seen up north, BP ultimate, Tescos and Sainsburys do it.

Gary ITR

PaintDoctor wrote: »

Yeah, but is it fair to say that's applicable to all tuning houses? The stuff I see done in a mates place (Who's an authorised agent of a European tuning company) is pretty impressive. He's had my old JCW transformed even though it already had the JCW fuelling map on board, did serious work on my 75, and has made most 1.9 TDi VAG engines sing as sweet as a nut.

You might think I'm mad but I would say yes it is fair to say that. Any generic map needs to be tweaked and to tweak it properly it needs to be done on a dyno, a dyno measures much more than power outputs. AFR's, ignition timing etc can all be adjusted at different spots along the rpm range, the only wat to know how the car is going to react to this is on a dyno.

Prime example is my own car, we put a map on from a car with the exact same mods and it made bugger all power, with it's own custom map she made a lot of power. Ask anybody around that knows VAG stuff who is the best around, I bet you they'll come back and say Joe Power, each 2wd car he does is dyno mapped

Owen

If I wanted to tune a NA car and get the best performance from it, sure, I'd like to Dyno it. If I wanted to tune a modified car with a fair bit of engine work, I'd like to Dyno that too.

The market for remaps is Joe Soap who heard about it down the pub - like it or not. He wants more power, smoothness and a safe map. Whether that map brings his 2002 320d from 115 Bhp to 147 Bhp, or to 150 Bhp isn't really going to stress him one way or the other. For most people, a safe map with power is all they want, and a Dyno's completely unnecessary.

For other people who like 100% performance, there's Onkle :pac:

Gary ITR

This is actually an interesting one, peak numbers on a dyno mean nothing in the real world really, but it's still an essential tuning tool. I'll go back to my car again, I was hitting 185ish a while back which is up 15ish over standard, not a lot I hear you say but at 6000rpm I was up over 50bhp and that's where it counted. But it's impossible to tune like that without a dyno. Yes you can road map but it's impossible to tell on a road, sure when you wax your car or add an RS4 badge it feels quicker (10 brake in the head )

I get what you're saying with Joe Soap just wanting a safe map and that be that but why settle for second best when you can have the best for the same price? And it's much easier to tell a safe map from a bad map on a dyno run

Nonoperational

The only place I'd let near my Golf GTI is Joe Power from TDR performance. He's a top man, very very helpful, has a rolling road, and does a top top job. Go over to vagdrivers and see the reports on him. 100% positive. I think it's around €350 for a remap with before and after runs on the dyno. I wouldn't look any further.

Gary ITR

gpf101 wrote: »

The only place I'd let near my Golf GTI is Joe Power from TDR performance. He's a top man, very very helpful, has a rolling road, and does a top top job. Go over to vagdrivers and see the reports on him. 100% positive. I think it's around €350 for a remap with before and after runs on the dyno. I wouldn't look any further.

His price depends on the car and which variant, I work with Joe although we haven't seen him for a few days lol

kona

Anybody have a rough guesstamate on getting a standalone ECU set up? Mines running on a Base Map and its crap TBH, I dont think its matched up with the Injectors I specced and so is running stupidly rich and the timing is off as the engine kicks back when I set anything over 8 deg BTDC so Im running 4 Deg for fear of detonation. (so much so Im afraid to drive it)

Gary ITR

kona wrote: »

Anybody have a rough guesstamate on getting a standalone ECU set up? Mines running on a Base Map and its crap TBH, I dont think its matched up with the Injectors I specced and so is running stupidly rich and the timing is off as the engine kicks back when I set anything over 8 deg BTDC so Im running 4 Deg for fear of detonation. (so much so Im afraid to drive it)

Car/Specs? you can PM me if you like

kona

Onkle wrote: »

Car/Specs? you can PM me if you like

Sent you a PM there

Owen

kona wrote: »

Anybody have a rough guesstamate on getting a standalone ECU set up? Mines running on a Base Map and its crap TBH, I dont think its matched up with the Injectors I specced and so is running stupidly rich and the timing is off as the engine kicks back when I set anything over 8 deg BTDC so Im running 4 Deg for fear of detonation. (so much so Im afraid to drive it)

You still driving the Mini Kona? Lad I know recently built an innocenti with some serious mods - the same lad that built the Z Car that's doing the rounds at shows. The innocent's got things like a front rad, lots of cnc milled parts, but it's got a custom ECU (Megajolt or something like that) on it too and custom EFI (Megasquirt). I could ask about it if you like?

Gary ITR

PaintDoctor wrote: »

You still driving the Mini Kona? Lad I know recently built an innocenti with some serious mods - the same lad that built the Z Car that's doing the rounds at shows. The innocent's got things like a front rad, lots of cnc milled parts, but it's got a custom ECU (Megajolt or something like that) on it too and custom EFI (Megasquirt). I could ask about it if you like?

Feck off you I want to see it on our rollers :pac:

Owen

Shilling eh? tut tut