Remapping - Generic vs RR set up

[Pixelpeep]

Having a debate with a few friends on this at the moment. I took my Astra VXR to a tuner who have done their own R&D on various cars and wrote custom maps for these cars.

They will not map anything that is not 100% standard to start off with.

So basically its a generic code that is uploaded, tested, road tested then you pay your money and off you go.

I have had people saying 'oh my god, they didnt do it on a Rolling road?!, how do you know what BHP or boost your running, get yourself to one quickly..'

now, i don't care what BHP im running or what boost, i just love the fact that its smoother to drive.

Am i as mad as these people are making me out to be? it's not an eBay map, its done by a professional company who have been in the game for ever, massive 2 acre site and cant find anything on any forum where someone has had their engine go pop after a visit to this company.

should i rush to a Rolling road? are all companies that use generic maps the work of the devil ?

[Krikkit]

If it's done on a stock engine, and a modest map, why bother! If they've used a standard engine, there's no reason why it shouldn't be perfectly safe. It's the same tactic used by a lot of tuners in the US selling plug-in map tweakers and the PowerCommander stuff for bikes.

[Face for Radio]

They might not have had one pop yet, but I'm guessing it won't be performing as well as it can be.

The third one you've missed is the public highway tuning.

When I had my car done, I spent about 20mins on the public roads with an A/F sensor in the exhaust, and he did most of the fueling based on various different situations and load levels in each gear.

Then another 20mins on the rolling road to get the ignition timings all sorted and proper whilst viewing it on the graph.

If it was me, I would never use a generic map. Someone I know had to have their engine completely rebuilt after he used one for a week. Compression test showed 150 - 150 - 90 - 10.

[Engineer1]

If the car hasn't done mega miles, is well serviced and previously stock then a generic remap should be fine I doubt the manufacturer tweaks the standard maps for all their individual engines.

[StottyZr]

They're talking rubbish. A rolling road run won't magically change the ECU settings I'd have one before and after purely to prove the difference.

Since I mapped my car I've heard lots of people (who don't know much about mapping) telling me how a generic map is terrible and I should have gone custom. Bearing in mind the generic map has a lot more R&D than a custom map I don't get their point. (Car is unmodified except from DPF delete which map is set up for as part of package)

[otolith]

I don't see any point in having a custom mapping done on a completely standard car.

[300bhp/ton]

Pixelpeep said:

Having a debate with a few friends on this at the moment. I took my Astra VXR to a tuner who have done their own R&D on various cars and wrote custom maps for these cars.

They will not map anything that is not 100% standard to start off with.

So basically its a generic code that is uploaded, tested, road tested then you pay your money and off you go.

I have had people saying 'oh my god, they didnt do it on a Rolling road?!, how do you know what BHP or boost your running, get yourself to one quickly..'

now, i don't care what BHP im running or what boost, i just love the fact that its smoother to drive.

Am i as mad as these people are making me out to be? it's not an eBay map, its done by a professional company who have been in the game for ever, massive 2 acre site and cant find anything on any forum where someone has had their engine go pop after a visit to this company.

should i rush to a Rolling road? are all companies that use generic maps the work of the devil ?

In theory it's no different to an ebay map though. In fact they might even have purchased the map off ebay.

In reality there's probably nothing wrong with it. But it'll be a rather general map rather than one tailored to your exact vehicle. You'd hope it is on the safe side, this way it should be fine for every/almost every standard vehicle and will always be safe. However it likely isn't maximising the full potential. If it was cheap, then so be it. If it cost as much as a proper RR custom map, then I'm sorry to say but more the fool you.

Of course the flip side is, it's not actually a very good map and without any real data to see what's happening you might not know this.

Edited by 300bhp/ton on Thursday 27th September 10:44

[300bhp/ton]

otolith said:

I don't see any point in having a custom mapping done on a completely standard car.

?? Why not? I agree it might depend on the car, but turbo ones especially can see massive gains. But not every car will respond the same. So what works on one might not on another or might run the risk of problems. Doesn't mean you won't see significant gains though.

[Pixelpeep]

otolith said:

I don't see any point in having a custom mapping done on a completely standard car.

More torque, smoother power delivery, slightly better mpg, bit more power, better drive.. for £195, why wouldn't you?

[Pixelpeep]

300bhp/ton said:

In theory it's no different to an ebay map though. In fact they might even have purchased the map off ebay.



In reality there's probably nothing wrong with it. But it'll be a rather general map rather than one tailored to your exact vehicle. You'd hope it is on the safe side, this way it should be fine for every/almost every standard vehicle and will always be safe. However it likely isn't maximising the full potential. If it was cheap, then so be it. If it cost as much as a proper RR custom map, then I'm sorry to say but more the fool you.

they did their own R&D so i was told, they are quite close to Millbrook and do most of their testing there. it was £195 so yes, quite a bit cheaper than most of the other offerings out there,

[otolith]

300bhp/ton said:

otolith said:

I don't see any point in having a custom mapping done on a completely standard car.

?? Why not? I agree it might depend on the car, but turbo ones especially can see massive gains. But not every car will respond the same. So what works on one might not on another or might run the risk of problems. Doesn't mean you won't see significant gains though.

I don't see why with modern standards of build conformity a map developed for one completely standard and unmodified car won't give exactly the same results on any other completely standard and unmodified car. All the cars coming out of the factory have the same mapping as each other.

If you've modified the engine, exhaust or induction, that's a different matter, but applying identical software to identical hardware should give the same results.

[StottyZr]

Pixelpeep said:

otolith said:

I don't see any point in having a custom mapping done on a completely standard car.

More torque, smoother power delivery, slightly better mpg, bit more power, better drive.. for £195, why wouldn't you?

How? Surely the boost levels will be the set to the safe limit of the turbo on custom and generic maps. I really can't see how a custom map can make a big difference.

Is anybody here a professional mapper without any bias? Technically, how different are the lookup tables between a standard and generic? Do you load a generic map, then tailor it slight whilst getting feedback from sensors?

[otolith]

Pixelpeep said:

otolith said:

I don't see any point in having a custom mapping done on a completely standard car.

More torque, smoother power delivery, slightly better mpg, bit more power, better drive.. for £195, why wouldn't you?

Not saying I don't see the point in remapping, saying that if your car is standard I don't see the point in having a custom map done especially for your particular car rather than using a generic one developed for another mechanically identical standard car.

[300bhp/ton]

Pixelpeep said:

they did their own R&D so i was told, they are quite close to Millbrook and do most of their testing there. it was £195 so yes, quite a bit cheaper than most of the other offerings out there,

I'm sure it's fine. But own R&D is a bit vague, I mean it could have meant buying 2 or 3 maps off ebay and trying the all and picking the one they liked the most.

The fact they won't map a modified car sort of suggests they lack the ability/equipment to be able to do so. If that's the case how did they come up with the map in the first place, let alone actually R&D it.

£195 is ok I guess, although I only paid £200 for a proper custom RR map on my car which spent over 4 hours of fettling and tweaking. Chucking on even a starting point map (aka a generic base point) caused some issues and the end result solved these and produced more power.

[Pixelpeep]

otolith said:

Pixelpeep said:

otolith said:

I don't see any point in having a custom mapping done on a completely standard car.

More torque, smoother power delivery, slightly better mpg, bit more power, better drive.. for £195, why wouldn't you?

Not saying I don't see the point in remapping, saying that if your car is standard I don't see the point in having a custom map done especially for your particular car rather than using a generic one developed for another mechanically identical standard car.

ah right - yeh that makes more sense

it has transformed the way the car drives, its much more linear and picks up earlier so the power is more usable.

They claim average gains on a standard engine are around 20-30hp and 65 lbs/ft plus a 10-17% improvement on mpg.

I don't know how much i should read into it but on the way there (110mile drive) i averaged 76mph and 25.8mpg then reset everything and on the way back same average 76mph but got a reported 30.2mpg

[StottyZr]

300bhp/ton said:

I'm sure it's fine. But own R&D is a bit vague, I mean it could have meant buying 2 or 3 maps off ebay and trying the all and picking the one they liked the most.

They'll buy the licence for the map from a company like Revo who will have spent hundreds of hours mapping multiple cars with the same engine to find a generic map that reaches the potential of the engine whilst remaining safe.

The company in question will simply load the map onto the car, your paying for their time, battery charger and equipment that loads a map. Not the code. Your indirectly paying Revo for the code that they probably spent tens of thousends developing.

[300bhp/ton]

StottyZr said:

300bhp/ton said:

I'm sure it's fine. But own R&D is a bit vague, I mean it could have meant buying 2 or 3 maps off ebay and trying the all and picking the one they liked the most.

They'll buy the licence for the map from a company like Revo who will have spent hundreds of hours mapping multiple cars with the same engine to find a generic map that reaches the potential of the engine whilst remaining safe.

The company in question will simply load the map onto the car, your paying for their time, battery charger and equipment that loads a map. Not the code. Your indirectly paying Revo for the code that they probably spent tens of thousends developing.

If that's the case then they have no claim to having done any R&D on it (which the OP says they have claimed).

[StottyZr]

300bhp/ton said:

If that's the case then they have no claim to having done any R&D on it (which the OP says they have claimed).

Ok then. Maybe their business model is to do R&D on standard cars and not modified ones as the time it takes to tailor the maps for modified cars outweighs the profit they can make by only mapping standard cars.

There can be lots and lots of reasons why they will only map standard cars, lots of them don't end with them "buying 2 or 3 maps off ebay"

[myles1972]

Face for Radio said:

They might not have had one pop yet, but I'm guessing it won't be performing as well as it can be.

The third one you've missed is the public highway tuning.

When I had my car done, I spent about 20mins on the public roads with an A/F sensor in the exhaust, and he did most of the fueling based on various different situations and load levels in each gear.

Then another 20mins on the rolling road to get the ignition timings all sorted and proper whilst viewing it on the graph.

If it was me, I would never use a generic map. Someone I know had to have their engine completely rebuilt after he used one for a week. Compression test showed 150 - 150 - 90 - 10.

Hmmm, I think I see the problem!!

My Impreza was real time road mapped, its interesting to see the process, up the road (A road), certain revs certain gears then foot flat, a tweak here and there. Then park up, commit it to 'memory', then a slightly different rev range/gear combo and do it all again. its nice to see the progression of power you have every time!

[300bhp/ton]

StottyZr said:

How? Surely the boost levels will be the set to the safe limit of the turbo on custom and generic maps. I really can't see how a custom map can make a big difference.

Is anybody here a professional mapper without any bias? Technically, how different are the lookup tables between a standard and generic? Do you load a generic map, then tailor it slight whilst getting feedback from sensors?

It probably varies from place to place. But yes, if you are mapping a car you've mapped before you'd start with a "base" map that has already tweaked the settings. This might be a generic bought map or it might be one you've worked on previously and know is a good starting point.

You'd probably do a base dyno run first to see what's what. As it gives a point of reference and you might be able to spot if anything is majorly wrong before proceeding any further. You'd load this map and do another run. This will show you the actual gains vs your base map. You'll also be able to see the profile of the curves and the a/f ratio. From here you can start fine tuning the settings to make it as good as it can be. You can try and eek out a bit more power, but depending on the actual car it might or might not work. You could also set it up to perform better if certain mods are then carried out later on.


Also a map can actually consist of many different things, some cars will have torque management or torque limiters used in lower gears. A map can alter or remove these. You can up the rpms, alter the boost, the timing, the fuel. Maybe the gearbox shift points or settings, throttle sensitivity and rate of opening (electronic throttles only).