To remind everyone, my car's a lightly-modified 2005 C2S (full AWE exhaust and BMC-F1 panel filter).

I'm going for a custom re-map so I can be sure that the map accurately matches the engine's characteristics with the hardware changes I've done. It will also allow all of us to see how sensitive these engines really are to hardware changes. Some motors you can modify quite extensively and the demands on timing and fuelling change very little, others require extensive changes for small changes to the hardware.

Once the re-map is completed, I'll report back with dyno plots and (hopefully) with what the tuner needed to do to get the most from the mods - not just the amount of any timing/fuelling changes but where in the operating range they were required and applied. I've also briefed the tuner that I'd like the map to work optimally with 99-RON Shell V-Power gas, so I'll comment (if possible) on the changes this requires too.

I'm also hoping to gain as much extra knowledge as possible about the inner workings of the Bosch DME and I'd be happy to ask any questions of the tuner that readers here might have. I just hope they're feeling talkative on the day!

So please let me know if there's anything you'd like to know or anything that you feel might benefit us all, as a group, to find out.

Thanks

 

Ian looking forward to your results. Keep us (at least me) posted, as I also would love to get a tuner local here in Los Angeles that can do this.

Dave

 

Thanks for the effort Ian. Looking forward to your outcome.

 

with all due respect and the intent for constructive advice, i think you're wasting your money on a tune.

IMHO, you dont have the the hardware to necessitate or require a tune. i have been down this road with many cars and using the biggest names in the business only to end up with a car that pops codes from time to time or pings when the conditions are less than optimum.

add to that an over active cooling system with raging fans to keep things 'cool' and the fact that most tunes dig into the built-in factory safety parameters to extract a few more ponies that the dyno barely registers and your butt wont feel.

the placebo effect is off the charts though

 

Makes more sense to me to go w a custom chip rather than one developed for a stock machine, assuming the guy know what he is doing. If they leave the throttle mapping alone you will have a better idea of what is going on. A pre/post visit to a drag strip or a few timed roll-100 runs would rule out the dyno factor. Post it....

 

Interesting comments.

I would suggest however that they're surely more relevant to generic remaps where you don't know what has been done, don't know if it's relevant to your engine, don't know if it circumvents the factory safety systems and don't know if the throttle mapping has been changed to give the feeling of more part-throttle power when there isn't any real gain.

At least I will be able to watch what's happening and I will know what changes have been made. I don't expect this exercise to produce more than a very few peak BHP - certainly only single figures - but I do expect it to produce results lower down the rpm band. Headers on this engine change the exhaust scavenging quite markedly and there will need to be timing changes to accommodate the revised torque curve. These are likely to only be +/- 5 degrees or so - not enough for huge changes but a gain of, for example, +10BHP at 3000 rpm would be more than worthwhile.

This exercise will also confirm whether there are any areas of the standard maps that are a long way off once some modifications are made. If the timing requirement for one part of the map is way-out, it can cause the ECUs to adapt in a way that kills the performance of the engine. I have felt this on my car and others on here have reported the same - reset the ECU and the car runs fantastically well; 100 miles later, it's flat and all the car's performance has gone away. The difference here can be getting on for 40BHP, so just to stop the ECU adapting wrongly by correcting major errors in the map would be worth the money on its own.

The main point is I will know, as will everyone here, the real value (or otherwise - it might be there's absolutely no gain to be had whatsoever) of remapping the ECU on these cars given the mods we all like to do.

A few facts. 1) The cost to me for the day is less than the cost of most generic remaps so it's hardly wasted money - it's costing less than I wasted on the plenum that's on my shelf! 2) The tuner in question does the mappings for 90% of the UK Porsche Challenge Cup cars (and the teams go back there every year - must be doing something right) so knows modded Porsches well. 3) This tuner set up in business because of personal frustration about generic remaps not matching hardware on the cars.

Let's condemn, if necessary, after the event. In the meantime, let's see if there's something useful and positive for us all to learn that will help dispel some of the myths and misinformation around ECU tuning.

 

Ian as usual...look forward to an update. Hopefully on 2 May we have a full report..