This article is follow up to  ECU remap guide for beginner – How to not destroy your car. There is no such thing as free lunches – manufacturers employe the brightest people on planet, posses the best tools money can buy. Why do you think you can do it better?

PLEASE READ WARNINGS BEFORE YOU PROCEED !!!

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My research/experiments are based on performance driving on the edge and you have to offset for your driving style. If you want to just overtake hard once per year, you don’t need to worry too much. If you do track days, you need to worry a lot !!!

In order to understand manufacturers agenda, you have to understand what consumers/clients needs. After all it is just simple demand/supply equation:

• consumers want best, cheapest, fancy, sexy,  universal, compromise-free products

• consumers don’t care about maintenance, car condition, efficiency as long as it somehow runs

• constant performance

• one can always dream that’s the only free thing in Nature

HP sells cars but torque wins races and nothing kills love quicker than broken promises. Manufacturers face hard choices how to design a car that lasts at least throughout the warranty:

• illusion of long-life oils and lifetime/maintenance-free consumables such as gearbox oil

• emission restrictions created by misinformed leaders 

• relatively constant performance from, below the sea, Netherlands up to high mountain passes in Himalayas

• below the standards fuels and oils

• main focus is efficiency and thus power and economy

Risks

• clutch is the weakest point of every factory car – my friend destroyed clutch just one month after poor remap

• turbocharging is designed for low to medium engine speeds – pushing your turbo hard at low and high engine speeds is the best way to destroy your turbocharger !

• very few posses knowledge and documentation – most are just pExperts (HOW TO CHOOSE CHIPTUNER)

• every car is as good as its weakest point – car seat is the weakest point of every car. Deadly, if combined with poor engine calibration. (LEARN TO DRIVE FIRST)

• I do not know many people with optimal care and maintenance for their cars – If you push a car in poor condition to the limits, it will break in no time. (LEARN HOW TO LOOK AFTER YOUR CAR PROPERLY)

Limits

• usual design strategy we employ is max. capacity at 80% at full load. It means everything is already designed at 80% capacity and whatever you do reduces only efficiency, increases emissions and heat

• your turbocharger is at about 80% of max. compressor/turbine assembly speed – my turbo has got max. speed of 240,000rpm and engine calibration uses max. 200,000rpm at low-medium engine speeds and 220,000rpm at 4000rpm because who drives car at such a high revs…very few, not even me 😉 

• my clutch is designed for 400Nm and factory calibration limits torque down to 320Nm – if pushed hard, clutch slips and burns just with factory tune…once, again…how many drives at full load…very few because engine is really at full load only few seconds during hard acceleration.

• injectors capacity and duty cycle (how long injector is opened) is already maxed. My injectors are calibrated for max. 60mg/cycle and can do theoretically 70mg/cycle but I have never seen it in reality – don’t be confused about injection duration maps, it is just an estimate !!!

• WHATEVER YOU CHANGE ONLY REDUCE EFFICIENCY, DURABILITY AND INTRODUCE HIGH MAINTENANCE COSTS, HEAT and so on.

• everything relates to everything else – it is always at least three dimensional compromise/relationship.

¨Unless you have compressor map, don’t change boost limiter.¨

Room for improvement

• If you live in Netherlands where highest mountain is -7m below the sea level – you don’t need to worry about engine re-calibration too much. At sea level, I can push my turbo from 2.4 bar up to 2.7bar at medium engine speeds

• If you live in mountains you know that feeling of oxygen deprived engine. In mountains you will see either noticeable power reduction or your turbo blows up if you have played with boost limiter and followed usual +10% increase preached by eExperts.

• cars up to 2008 were over-designed due primitive CAD/CAM systems and there was lots of room for errors – many cars shared same turbo and injectors such as PD130 and PD150 legend.

• time of over-designed cars is gone –  I can now design, simulate and manufacture car with precise point of doom. There is usually 10% margin for improvements. Modern cars are pushed to the limits – after all, manufacturers need to sell cars not to last them forever! You will be lucky your brand new car lasts 300,000km.

• old wives stories preach about “reduced fuel consumption myth” – I want to see one person who pays for chiptuning and keeps driving as before. My fuel economy is same, as long as brick under accelerator stays here.