Understanding remapping

[RBPE 198]

First and foremost Happy New Year folks, may your coming days be laden with burnt rubber and trying to use a fortiori statements to avoid fines! 

 

There's always a lot of info on remapping so I thought I would educate you on a few things if you are not au fait with them!

 

A "remap" is such a relative term that they can vary hugely and I think it is important to learn what this entails. Your ecu, be that an older Motronic system like the 12v's or the later ME "electronic" ecu's found in your 24v/R/FSI motors, houses thousands of commands - some are maps like you would expect and some are functions - the ecu performing a task like flicking a switch if you will.

 

When you get a remap it comes down to a wide number of things like who you use, what files the company use if they are re-sellers, work undertaken on that particular ecu and so on.

 

In 99% of cases a remap means manipulating a number of tables to get a good tune and in practice this tends to range from about ten tables to about 200. Main point is to get the air/fuel sorted under various loads and almost all remaps will inexorably have this finite number of changes implemented, but if they work then who's to argue?

 

There are a number of ways in which to do this and various ways to go about it; to cut a long story short these guy's have put some good educational info on the net so have a look at what they say about the various ways in which it can be done in more detail;

 

http://www.motorsport-developments.co.uk/whatismap.html

 

On a live map mods are undertaken in real time so you get a good tune that way, usually requiring some expensive real time measuring probes - if you take a look at the below thread you can see one on the exhaust of the carbon fibre R8 whilst it is being done and the above company say said probe cost them about £8k so never cheap but it is a good way to get a good map! You can get a better map spending months and years tweaking a tune of course but this is not commercially viable unless you are creating bespoke tunes.

 

http://www.vr6oc.com/forum/topic/47106-porn/

 

 

Other ways to tune are what you'll get the vast majority of the time and as mentioned above whereby a finite number of maps are modded to suit, these re-seller "tunes" can in fact range from poor to awesome! Make no mistake though, a name or proven mapping does not a good tune make - just because something works doesn't make it a good tune, one main aspect of that is the fact that many tuners will actually trigger the codewords whereby the ecu will not look at something because that has been triggered and therefore makes it obsolete in it's calculations. In fact I answered to a post on a forum regarding Cat delete on a mk5 R32 and some tuners presumed that switching it off made no difference, but being as anal as I am I know the ecu needs calculations as to to the wall wetting with regards to the exhaust modelling - this is basically where the ecu knows there is a finite amount of fuel dribbled out of the injector as it closes - something the ecu calculates and why if you are anal, you take it into consideration, but there are few tuners who will go into that much detail but say if you were developing an R32 turbo map properly then it is best to cover these things. I always figured that if the ecu wants to calculate this and especially if I was adding 750cc's to a R/V6T then it is something to take into account upon cranking - it's there for a reason!

 

So, to cut a long story short these are your options;

1. Generic re-seller file which can vary depending on how good that particular person is - the vast majority of tunes you get will be these.

2. Live map - expensive but basically done in real time so it'll work regardless of how much detail you go into!

3. Mixture - file flashed over and tweaked to suit.

4. Dog's danglies - basically defining your entire ecu and tweaking it from scratch, what I prefer but can cost a lot commercially and can take days, weeks, months, years even - one of the reasons why it rarely occurs in the trade! Something I would expect a professional race team to do regardless of oem or aftermarket ecu!

 

I noticed the old VVT map discussion on here so if you want me to walk you through it let me know!

Edited January 12, 2016 by RBPE

[Arod0690 1]

Thumbs up, SIR!!! 

[RBPE 198]

Doing a far more detailed DIY remapping thread for these motor's so lot's more tech to come soon hopefully when I get the time. 

Huge variances with a "remap" though, I've spent, as a conservative estimate, over 5000 hours on the V6/R32 ecus alone and the more I learn, the less "tuners" can explain to me when I ask them, or at least 99% of them, some good money in re-seller tunes it seems but I wanted to know how to put a turbo tune on a V6 4 mo and you end up realising these things! Amazes me how much money some people earn through such things without knowing them though I must say!