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Hmmmm, I spent many years mucking about with my daily drivers and can now rebuild and tune the c**p out of a ford pinto in my sleep, and y' right it does take a certain amount of courage, and a fair bit of time begging the wife to drive you places to buy bits to replace the bits you've f****d up 🙂 best of luck with the molgrips cycle
I've just booked the Rs4 in to get a stainless exhaust system and a remap. The guy reckons it's pretty usable power increase with a smoother torque curve and better consumption for normal driving whatever that is in a rs4!! I'll let you know how good it is/ was unless I park it in a tree.
Boring
Interesting post rivet!
Goodness me. Boys, boys.....
OP's question?
Yes. Two cars; A6 2.5 TD and recently A6 2.7 TD. Made a huge difference to the 2.5 (i.e. made it more enjoyable to drive and convinced me not to immediately get rid of it). Made a slight difference to the 2.7 though not so noticeable. Both cars return(ed) better fuel consumption (measured brim to brim) than before, neither car have exploded in a cloud of clutch lining and I haven't ended up upside down in a tree (yet).
For me, I don't drive like a ****t on the public road (anymore) and the remapps have made the cars more 'driveable' (probably means I can get up to top gear more quickly and lazily waft along in this context) and more economical. Where's the downside?
Just done mine with a box from these fella's [url= http://www.dte-diesel-tuning.com/ ]DTE Systems[/url]
, but sourced through [url= http://www.diesel-performance.co.uk/ ]Diesel Performance[/url], who give decent forum discounts. It took literally 15 minutes to fit and I paid £335 inc VAT & delivery.
Read the bumph if you like, but it works. It takes the power of my 2.5l Ford Ranger TDCi from 143 to 175bhp and torque up to 400Nm from 330. The box comes with 4 different maps, with +/- increments for each map to adjust to your preference.
The general concensus is that they are the best system to use short of a full re-map. The difference is really noticeable in my (nearly) 2tonne truck.
I'm not overly concerned as to whether a 2.5l TDCi engine can cope with 175bhp, you would imagine it's going to be ok - I've heard the Duratorq engines are pretty strong anyway. Not sure about the drivetrain, but as I'm not trying to light the tyres up at every junction I'd imagine it'll be fine.
As for bigger brakes, I'm not driving into corners faster, I never drive above a certain (far from max) speed, but I do use the extra power & torque to breeze up hills without dropping down the box and it's really handy for overtaking. I wouldn't say I need any different brakes to the ones I have on now (when you consider it has a 1 tonne payload on top of it's standard weight and can tow 3 tonnes, you'd hope they are ok to start with).
Is that a similar engine to our Landy Defender? It's a 2.4TDCi unit used in the Transit. Only 122bhp but a useful 270ft-lbs of torque. Ours also weighs two tonnes giving a rather comical power/weight ration of not a lot.
think of the runaway toyotas in the USA recently,
part of the safety within your ECU is the system that is monitoring delivered torque to requested torque, the manufacturer has spent a great deal of time making a safe system and yet the bloke down the road offering a "custom" £300 remap can do a better job. Modern diesels are very easy to remap for more performance, but for £300 what work has been done to verify the safety system is still operational. IE a software error may not be detectable once youve remapped and the result can be a runaway vehicle..
PS these custome £300-£400 remaps are normally available from a franchise sales service, most competing companies are offering similar remap gains hence its questionable what is "custom" about the vast majority.
Remapping is just changing the fuel map as far as I know. That is, the bit that says how much fuel and boost to add for certain engine speed, throttle input and whatever else. The safety functions of the ECU will be handled elsewhere in the software.
A remap is not a complete reprogramming, it's just changing a data set. Most cars contain many maps anyway that it'll change itself according to the way you drive or even the kind of fuel you put in. All you're doing is modifying a data set that's designed to be modified.
nwilko - Member
think of the runaway toyotas in the USA recently,
part of the safety within your ECU is the system that is monitoring delivered torque to requested torque, the manufacturer has spent a great deal of time making a safe system and yet the bloke down the road offering a "custom" £300 remap can do a better job. Modern diesels are very easy to remap for more performance, but for £300 what work has been done to verify the safety system is still operational. IE a software error may not be detectable once youve remapped and the result can be a runaway vehicle..
PS these custome £300-£400 remaps are normally available from a franchise sales service, most competing companies are offering similar remap gains hence its questionable what is "custom" about the vast majority
Drama queen......
In the unlikely event that my engine over-ran (unlikely, as the ECU & Mapping box both ultimately get the signal to feed more fuel from the same place), I'd be quite confident of my ability to knock the vehicle into neutral and slow down using the brakes.
saftey function is a watchdog on the control system and thats the point here. the saftey systems are being turned off to allow the clunky remap to give you more performance. But i expect everyone that has had a remap had that explained to them at the time they handed their cash over (or more likely not) so they are (not) aware that their ickle black box now relies on them to step in and correct a software issue that makes the car runaway from them.
Just a few facts on this subject.
I have a Tunit unit on my Xsara HDI diesel, it has been on for 3 years (50,000 miles) and has improved the BHP from 107 to 133 (rolling road shows this), more importantly the MPG has gone from 43 to an average of 50 over that 3 years.
The same unit was fitted to out Picasso, that showed a similar increase in MPG (via the computer display on the dash) and had considerably more torque and power, so much so even the Mrs spotted how much better it pulled. 😆
It has been totally reliable during that period. The miles per gallon improvment comes from one thing, having to use less throttle for a given speed.
the saftey systems are being turned off to allow the clunky remap to give you more performance
Sure about that? I can't see now the safety systems and the fuel map would be llinked.
The miles per gallon improvment comes from one thing, having to use less throttle for a given speed.
You use less throttle, but it's putting in more fuel at that throttle setting. You can't magically make the same amoubnt of diesel produce more energy.
The reason MPG can go up (as explained by a guy selling remaps) is that you can use the higher gears a lot more due to more torque at lower revs. The reason not everyone sees improvements is that not everyone drives like this, and if you spend all your time in top on a motorway it makes no difference anwyyway.
richmtb - Member
I guess it comes down to whether you really believe you brakes are overwhelming your tyres. Most modern cars have quite a lot of rubber on the road these days.My Leon FR is really just a warm hatch and has 225 tyres. In the dry on the rare occasion I've had to call on all the braking power it braked in a straight line without triggering the ABS and pulled up pretty quickly.
My brother has an EVO VIII with 235 tyres and big Brembo 4pots his brakes can have you literally hanging off the belts without really troubling the grip of the tyres at least in a straight line in the dry. The difference in retardation isn't down to 10mm of extra rubber on the road its down to the power of the brakes. If my Leon had these brakes I guarantee it would stop quicker
While I disagree that a chipped car will always need better brakes, tyres are definitely not the limiting factor to braking power in most cases
mailed you matey to pick your brain