Differences between remaps

thexav

thexav

Pro Tuner
Staff member
Points
407
Car
2002 Clio 172
I'm seeing wild price variations for remaps.

Some companies are charging over £400 for a remap giving a 40bhp increase and some people are selling these remaps for less than half that.

If you get the cables and connectors and software you can even buy remap files for under £100.

Are there any differences between these? Do you get what you pay for or is it just a matter of paying for the name and brand?
 
I would of thought it's about how much input the programmer has to put in. Most remapping companies I've seen are franchises. They've paid to be an agent, are supplied the equipment and software and have just a few parameters to adjust. Other companies have there own Dyno and have custom written their own program and adjust each program for each individual engine.
@RobBentley can you explain anymore on this
 
I've never paid more than 200 quid for a generic map and I don't see why I should. Once the initial development on a few examples of the car is done, that's it. The files are often then sold on to anyone who wants them and has the hardware to apply them.

My old workmate got into flogging on viezu tunes on the side.

I would happily pay 5 or 6 hundred for a specific map for my car, with rolling road etc, done live by a tuner.
 
There is quite a difference, each tuner guards their secrets tightly, some advance timing, fuelling duration and loads of other factors come into it.

Ignore the peak power figures, it's about drivability through the rev range.

Even one engine and year can have 6 or 7 totally differently setup maps from the manufacturer.

You want the power where it's most usable, you have to back off a little down the bottom to save the clutch, put too much power down and you get wheel spin or overuse the traction control and kill the brakes.

It's easy to increase power but not so easy to stop it being smokey and make the power usable.

Generic one for all maps are full of compromises, each ECU has it's own immobiliser settings and other peculiarities, overwriting this with a generic map can cause issues.

I've also seen badly mapped engines blow turbos due to overboosting.

Some expensive maps are rubbish, some cheap maps are very good. I doubt one tuner is able to effectively tune every type of car, there are too many factors to learn. Going to a specialist in your engine or a tuner who has a biased leaning to your cars engine will be better.
 
IME overboosting comes down to wastegate control OR the gate being unable to flow enough exhaust gas to keep it at the set boost limit UNLESS the gate is controlled by the EMS/computer that keeps the gate shut too long allowing the boost pressure to exceed safe limits before allowing the gate to open.

IF the motor is experiencing higher boost than what it has been mapped/tuned for then the danger is that the AFR's will be too lean leading to major rebuild if not rectified.
Basically more boost requires more fuel.
 
I found it varies a lot from car to car and who maps it. My old Saab 9000 came with a pro tune from Maptun with a stage 3 remap which I got told cost over £500 back then including a live mapping session, I had it remapped again by post to stages 4, 5 & 6 for less than £100 each time via a home tuner (best UK Saab tuner imo but he's done a lot of r&d improving the maps) the previous 9-3 also got remapped the same way via T5 Suite to stage 1. On these cars stage 1-3 are more or less generic maps so not much difference between them as tyres no real hardware changes bar a 3" DP. So nobody really uses pro tuners here as its miles cheaper to get the guys on the forums to remap either by post or take a drive to their homes and get it done there. So you can get t5, t7 & t8 cars remapped for under £100 each!! Some massive gains to be had as well, my lpt 9-3 went from 154bhp to 220 :) really good bang per buck factor (B)

This 9-3 has a few different mapping options though and none as cheap as it's the v6, all seem to be around the same price at £450 give or take. Mine was done via email from the states, just plugged the supplied iFlash dongle into the obd2 port & laptop, pressed a few buttons and 5 mins later it was done. Nice & easy. The older saabs I had to buy a spare ECU then send it off to get done.

Also additional maps are free (with JZW) even if I go for more power so the £450 was worth every penny, so handy now as I'll need to remap it a couple more times this year for the bigger turbo and bigger injectors and again for its final stage 5 tun, but some charge around £100 for additional maps or some cases a lot more. I also get 3 or 4 different maps to upload at different stages of tune so it's pretty decent value!

Plus there seems to be a huge difference in performance gains between tuners. JZW & Vtuner gets massive torque from a stage 1 map, similar bhp to the rest but the extra torque is huge! Comes at a cost though as the standard clutch is pretty much clinging onto life here, so tunes like Maptun & Hirsch are a lot more conservative (but still quick!!) they seem to be more linear in power delivery where the JZW tune gives loads more oomph lower down but starts easing off around 4.5k guess it depends what people prefer.

Great fun though ;b/
 
TCJBOLDIE said:
IME overboosting comes down to wastegate control OR the gate being unable to flow enough exhaust gas to keep it at the set boost limit UNLESS the gate is controlled by the EMS/computer that keeps the gate shut too long allowing the boost pressure to exceed safe limits before allowing the gate to open.

IF the motor is experiencing higher boost than what it has been mapped/tuned for then the danger is that the AFR's will be too lean leading to major rebuild if not rectified.
Basically more boost requires more fuel.
Click to expand...

It's quite hard to overboost an engine without chucking in more fuel. Something has to burn to create the exhaust flow to drive the turbine.
 
When I first installed my very first mod a full 3 inch exhaust my car would hit higher boost than the factory allowed maximum setting and the fuel supply cut would activate to reduce power / boost pressure to protect the motor.

So shortly after 2nd mod was a Fuel Cut Defender :D
 
TCJBOLDIE said:
When I first installed my very first mod a full 3 inch exhaust my car would hit higher boost than the factory allowed maximum setting and the fuel supply cut would activate to reduce power / boost pressure to protect the motor.

So shortly after 2nd mod was a Fuel Cut Defender :D
Click to expand...

If fuel is cut then boost will also be cut. You have to have combustion to facilitate driving the turbocharger. We're also discussing overheating in another thread. Chucking in extra fuel as a means of controlling detonation and as a means of cooling is not especially efficient, but it was commonplace in F1 during the 1980s.

What did the Fuel Cut Defender actually do?
 
The FCD was adjustable and it was wired in and allowed a couple of pounds more boost without activating the fuel cut.
I had the AFR'S checked and found that they were on the rich side so my extra boost was safe.
The FCD was late 80's technology.
 
Ahh, the days of affordable fuel. I remember those :)

Turbocharging of standard road cars was in its heyday back then. Thankfully things have moved on and turbocharged engines no longer have that 'now you see me now you don't' feel.

I remember punching pinholes in the vacuum diaphragm of the wastegate actuator to try and allow extra boost on a Fiat Uno Turbo. Carbs and turbos didn't go together too well.

Anyone tried a Montego 2.0 Turbo ?? Unruly at best.
 
HDi fun said:
It's quite hard to overboost an engine without chucking in more fuel. Something has to burn to create the exhaust flow to drive the turbine.
Click to expand...

It's quite easy to overboost say a VAG group MED9 ECU. The fuelling is closely tied lambda, and isn't something that's adjusted much in a tune. You'll request more 'engine load' and thus boost... and it'll attempt to fuel accordingly. Request silly boost, and the ECU will try and maintain its lambda and thus fuel accordingly.
 
Also with regards to just doing development on say the VW PD130 and reselling this over and over again. I only wish it was this easy.. but the manufacturers have so many different software versions its unreal.. and you flash the wrong software number to the ECU and the car isn't going to start. So far we have 86 different software versions on our system for the VAG 1.9 PD130 engine - all of which have had to be tuned. Sometimes its just subtle changes to maps, so this isn't too bad, but sometimes complete re-works of where the maps are stored and what maps are used.

Aside from this, a mappers main costs are ongoing development and a decent income has to be achieved from tuning cars you've tuned before to be able to invest in the ongoing development of support for new vehicles, the required new equipment to support them, annual subscriptions on any software and tools used etc. If everything previously developed was sold £cheap - there would be little investment in new development and the business would die.

Of course this doesn't ring true for those who buy a cheap tool with little or no support and buy cheap files with god knows what in them... but I personally wouldn't be happy taking my car to somebody who didn't know what they where loading onto the car and in the event of a failed write leaving the ECU unable to communicate, did not have the required tools or skills to recover the ECU for me.

The remapping business can be very 'smoke and mirrors' and even those developing their own files will normally give the customer very little information as to what they're actually changing.

Going back to the OP's initial question of do you get what you pay for, I'd love to say yes - but I don't actually believe this. I've seen some very good £250-300 remaps and some utterly awful £1000+ remaps come through our doors. It's a real minefield for customers when choosing who to use, and its obvious every day on the phone, and I have to feel sorry for them! Why should they choose company X over company Y... I wouldn't like to be a consumer having to make that decision. The only thing I believe in is being honest and transparent and letting the customer make their decision from there.
 
Last edited:
Thank you Rob for input. Echoes what I've felt talking to some remapping companies. They just ask for your registration number and seem that's all they want to know. They don't know about the individual nuances of each engine like my PD170s oil problem when mapped.
I've nearly sorted decent funds out to come see you soon for my remap mate.
 
Yes that would be great! I don't require much; now then as to the possible weather conditions on the day, if it's cold then a coffee and maybe a couple of biscuits would be nice, if it's warm then a chilled diet coke and a couple of biscuits ;)
 
T9 man said:
Yes that would be great! I don't require much; now then as to the possible weather conditions on the day, if it's cold then a coffee and maybe a couple of biscuits would be nice, if it's warm then a chilled diet coke and a couple of biscuits ;)
Click to expand...

I love how biscuits are involved regardless ;-)
 
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