It doesn’t matter whether you’re driving a Golf GTI MK 7, a Mercedes Sprinter or a 2018 Range Rover L405: A hand-crafted ECU remap is almost always the simplest - and most effective - way of increasing your vehicle’s performance.
By carefully recalibrating the software responsible for managing your engine, we can help you squeeze more power (BHP) and torque (NM) out of your engine – as well as eliminating poor throttle response, removing flat spots and smoothing out power delivery to ensure that your vehicle operates at peak performance.
If you’re driving a diesel car or light commercial vehicle, an ECU remap can also boost your fuel economy (MPG) by providing more torque at the bottom of your rev range; allowing you to pull away with less throttle and move up through your gears more efficiently.
Talk of additional torque and power are all good and well, but most people are primarily interested in the way a remap will change their driving experience.
Customers routinely tell us that remapping their vehicle has transformed their the way their vehicle drives; significantly increasing the enjoyment they get out of both spirited and everyday driving – and enabling them to fall in love with their car all over again.
People used to (incorrectly) assume that ECU remapping was the preserve of die-hard petrol heads, obsessed with wringing every last drop of power from cars. But most people now understand that remaps are one of the safest and most reliable ways to improve your vehicle’s performance.
While the word may conjure up images of teenagers crouching over laptops in a dimly-lit garage, our remaps are actually programmed by professional technicians who work out of our 19,000 sq. ft tuning HQ in Tockington, South Gloucestershire.
We work hard to ensure that every map is sensitive to the limitations of its intended recipient; accounting for the peculiarities of individual engines and writing software that’s capable of maximising efficiency without sacrificing reliability – or putting too much strain on delicate parts.
We also write and test our maps using a top-of-the-line Dimsport Dyno (or rolling road) to ensure that we’re unlocking your vehicle’s true potential.
We’re so confident in the quality of our ECU remaps that we offer a lifetime guarantee against software malfunctions or failures.
We’ll also store your manufacturer’s default map on our servers so that you can restore it at any point, providing peace of mind and ensuring that you’re in full control of your car or light commercial vehicle.
The exact benefits conferred by a remap depend on hundreds of interrelated variables related to the make, model and year of your car but you can generally expect to see significant gains in power and torque.
The overwhelming majority of our customers also report that remapping their vehicle has transformed their driving experience.
Modern engines are managed by a complex web of interconnected components and sensors that are responsible for managing everything from air/fuel ratios to the power distribution, ignition timing and the idle speed of your car.
At the heart of these complex systems sits the ECU or engine control unit; a palm-sized metal box that contains the software programme (or map) that tells your engine how to behave in response to inputs from sensors scattered all over your car.
Most manufacturers ship ECUs with fairly standard maps; designed to ensure that their vehicles perform in a variety of very different environments. Mercedes need to ensure that their newest C-Class works equally well in the subtropical foothills of Bhutan, the forests of Northern Germany and the chilly streets of Moscow.
Modern manufacturers also need to account for customers who won’t service their vehicles regularly, and customers who use sub-optimal fuel - which is why they often tone down performance and impose artificial limitations on your engine’s capabilities.
Unfortunately, these limitations can be quite severe. By writing a new map and reprogramming your ECU, we can unlock an engine’s full potential – tweaking settings to unlock previously inaccessible reserves of power and torque.
We can also tweak the settings that govern your power band or power curve, engine timing, fuel pressure and other variables to optimise performance and ensure that your car drives and handles as well as it possibly can.
Most cars are relatively fun to drive. For the first three, six or even twelve months of ownership you’ll find it relatively easy to overlook the tiny niggles that suck the joy out of motoring, but people who love their cars will always find things that they want to improve on.
It could be that your car feels sluggish when pulling away from a standing start, or that you’ve noticed a flat spot at 3,000rpm that you can’t ignore. It may even be something much more prosaic like poor fuel efficiency that’s cutting into your monthly budget.
Whatever your gripe, we can help you remap your vehicle to improve performance and provide the best possible experience. An experience that’ll reignite your love of driving. To learn more about our remapping and tuning services, get in touch with the team.