What is Remapping & ECU Tuning?
Remapping (sometimes called ECU tuning) involves altering the settings of a car’s Engine Control Unit (ECU) to enhance various aspects of the vehicle’s performance. By overwriting the existing settings with new software, we can re-programme your car or van to manage fuel injection, airflow, sensors, and more, all within legal limitations.
How Does Remapping & ECU Tuning Work?
Remapping a car involves changing the manufacturer’s default settings and software on the ECU, replacing it with new software that can be tweaked and customised to the owner’s specifications (within legal limitations). When a vehicle is remapped, the old ECU software is overwritten when the customised software is plugged into the car’s serial port (sometimes referred to as an OBD port). This straightforward process has made tuning a vehicle considerably easier and has created numerous opportunities for tuning engineers and specialist ECU software developers.
What Does ECU Remapping Do?
Remapping and ECU tuning allow us to improve the economy and performance of your vehicle by altering how the engine manages components. Whether you wish to reduce your fuel consumption or maximise power output, ECU tuning can significantly impact your vehicle’s performance. Rtune offers three options when remapping your car’s ECU chip:
• ECO – Maximising fuel economy.
• ECO PERFORMANCE – Improved efficiency and more power.
• PERFORMANCE – Maximising power.
Important Things to Note About ECU Remapping & Tuning
Firstly, not all cars can be remapped. Typically, cars produced before 2000 do not have the car remapping software needed to optimise the vehicle’s performance. Additionally, some insurers refuse to insure a vehicle that has been remapped. Therefore, it is advisable to check with your insurer beforehand to understand how the process would affect your premiums and whether the increased prices are worth the enhanced performance.
How Does the Remap Improve the Vehicle?
A full engine remap alters the fuel, boost, and torque characteristics of the engine. By controlling the fuel pressure, injected fuel quantity, maximum permissible visible smoke limit, boost pressure from the turbocharger, and the torque characteristic, a remap can significantly enhance the vehicle’s performance. A Quantum remap offers a fully controllable change to the engine characteristics, while still operating with full engine feedback control and within all the preset engine sensor limits.
This means your vehicle can achieve improved power delivery, enhanced fuel efficiency, and better throttle response. By fine-tuning these parameters, the remap ensures that your engine runs more efficiently and effectively, providing a smoother and more enjoyable driving experience. Additionally, the remap can adapt to your specific driving style and conditions, offering a customised solution that maximises your vehicle’s potential while maintaining reliability and safety.
Does it Affect the Manufacturer's Warranty?
Some manufacturers’ diagnostic equipment may detect a remap. Additionally, many forward-thinking manufacturers often overlook a quality remapping service, understanding that a suitably enhanced vehicle can be beneficial. The official stance from most manufacturers is that if a modification causes an issue with the car, the affected part will not be covered under warranty. However, this does not result in a complete cancellation of the entire warranty.
Our remapping process enhances and optimises the engine’s power within safe limits, not beyond them. This increased power often results in fewer gear changes. Manufacturers design engine components with a tolerance to handle wear and tear, production variations, and to minimize warranty claims within the typical three-year warranty period. Unlike race and rally engines, which are pushed to their limits and are more prone to failure, standard car, van, and lorry engines are tuned conservatively to ensure reliability.
Each engine has different limits regarding how much it can be pushed during a remap, but a quality remap from a reputable ECU tuner will never approach the limits of component failure. The leading companies in the market typically achieve similar performance improvements, reflecting safe and effective tuning practices. Beware of tuners who claim significantly higher gains; these claims are often misleading or indicate that the engine is being pushed too hard, which can lead to quick and frequent failures.
What Do We Do Exactly?
Our technicians connect to your vehicle’s ECU, or ‘brain,’ using a laptop PC through the vehicle’s diagnostic socket. We then read the current engine management file, which is sent to our archives office to be custom-optimised for your vehicle. Once the file is optimised, the technician programs the new file into your vehicle, allowing you to immediately experience the improved performance.
For some vehicles, it is not possible to perform this function through the diagnostic socket. In these cases, the ECU is removed, and either a chip change or boot loading function is performed directly on the ECU. The final effect is the same; only the process differs. Depending on the vehicle, the chip tuning typically takes less than an hour to complete the remap.
You can choose to visit one of our dealers, our head office in North East Scotland, or, depending on the area, we can visit you at your home or office, including mobile services in the Aberdeen area.
Get in touch
We are happy to provide you with a first class service.
Mobile: 079 44554471 Email: info@rtune.co.uk
