Board logo

what do i need to remap a factory tintop?
skinned knuckles - 27/4/10 at 07:46 AM

I'm fairly old school when it comes to tuning and in the past have only done the porting/polishing, air filter, exhaust, balancing etc but have been asked to see what i can do mapping wise for a friends son.

what do i need to have (software and hrdware) to remap a small engined seat arose?

can i just download some software for free and buy the relevant cable to plug into the ECU?

boggle - 27/4/10 at 07:50 AM

can you map the factory ecu???

bassett - 27/4/10 at 07:51 AM

Sorry if you are more experienced that what i percieve but if you dont know how to do it i really would not recommend it. It isnt expensive from the likes of most vag tuners ie AMD, Awesome GTI, Revo/superchip dealers etc and they spend a lot of time developing maps. As far as i know there is not a general base software that can be purchased cheaply

skinned knuckles - 27/4/10 at 07:53 AM

quote:
Originally posted by boggle
can you map the factory ecu???


Thats kind of what i'm asking

ChrisW - 27/4/10 at 08:01 AM

As I understand it, from a purely VAG perspective, re-programing parts of the car via the diagnostics socket is easy.

The older cars without a CAN bus just need a cheap lead off eBay and a copy of VAG COM, which can be downloaded free.

Newer cars with a CAN bus (2004-ish onwards?) need the genuine lead as it has a serial number built in.

However, I'm told that all this lets you do is reprogram the car ECU's, not necessarily the engine ECU. Ieyou can enable features not intended for your car, tweak settings like delays for lights, turn of bulb warnings where you've installed LED's, etc. Reprograming the engine ECU, even if you did have a map, is a whole different world of dealer specific kit.

Don't take this as gospel, I've not done it... yet. Gleaned all this info from a mate last weekend as I'm considering buying a proper VAG COM unit for my Audi.

Chris

turboben - 27/4/10 at 08:04 AM

Is it petrol or diesel? If its petrol theres probably not much to be gained. Plus the leaning curve is HUGE - make megasquirt look like a childs toy! There are 80 maps in my peugeot...

T66 - 27/4/10 at 09:05 AM

I dabble with the BIN files in my Saab.

Which uses CAN protocol, so the lead will set you back around £90 ish...

More or less anything is possible with the Saab ecu, thanks to


www.ecuproject.com


The level of expertise for homegrown diy mappers is excellent ! The regular posters on the forum are very very clever.

There is Volvo section aswell as other models, so maybe there might be a good start for you.

Good luck