Quote: Originally Posted by DaFlake (original)
:
That being said, do you consider a 15% pulley a minor
mod ? I certainly don't as you are severely altering the amount of air being shoved into the engine. As you start making changes to the HP, you have to tell the engine what you are doing. That being said, I really think that most people don't really understand what a remap is and should do. The hype is that you can increase HP with it. Sure, this can be done and is a side affect of doing it but it is not the only reason for doing it. What you are really doing is letting the car know what you have done to it and adjusting it accordingly. Back in the old days, you would do a tune up to get the car running better with the parts that you have put on. Well, that art is now in the forum of an ECU.
With the above in mind, to summarize, this is my reasoning:
1) I saw on numerous dyno tests how much the
JCW parts were worth without a remap. Say a tad over 50% (of the promised power increase). The remaining 50% or so was up to the ECU remap.
2) With a larger crank shaft pulley, modified bypass valve,
JCW airbox
mod +filter and a manifold I assume that my car now already differs quite a bit from a standard
JCW . I therefore further assume that the standard
JCW ECU map will not necessarily be any more ideal.
3) GP has a slightly tweaked ECU map with a raised rev limiter (7100?). As far as the latter, I would not go for anything crazy, but perhaps 7200/7250. I guess this is roughly what you get from MTH.
These are the three main drivers why I am curious about what a professionally made ECU tune could do for me at this stage. But again, to be clear, I do not expect the difference to be as dramatic as in the case of my
JCW upgrade.
All this being said, I also hear what Roland is saying and I do appreciate his concerns about long term durability. I fully agree that if the tuner does not know what he is doing this might be a very costly experiment hunting for that last HP. The tune should stay on the right side of conservative. This comes back to the "professionally made ECU tune" under point 2). And ideally, as DaFlake pointed out, this could be based on the existing
JCW map as I quite like it: smooth and progressive.
In my own case it is the question what can be done around the area where I live - Warsaw is not exactly the place where you can find tuners with several tens of MINI ECU tweaks under their belt (though MINIs are getting more and more popular here too). So either I trust some of the local shops to do the job (there are quite a few with BMW tuning experience incl the one I pointed out in the first post) or then find some other "remote tuning" solution.
Sam
