DIY Chip-tuning - Done it? Advice?

[Crawford]

Evening,

Just wondering if anyone here has experience of chip-tuning? It seems like this might be a way to combine my enthusiasm for both cars and computers......

In particular, having bought a tuned 535d i'm amazed at what can be done. It set me thinking that it would be fun to try doing something similar on cars across the family, where there are quite a few diesels (~5, 2005-2015, value all <10K).

I don't really fancy paying £500 a pop to visit a "garage" where they simply flash something they downloaded if i could buy something to do it myself.

My initial reading is that KES clones are cheap and sell in large numbers, but cannot actually work. I then got a bit lost in the world of alternatives: is there one? Happy to spend up to £500, and as much less as possible......

C

 

[norm]

I flashed the ECU myself on my Mk6 Fiesta 1.6 TDCI Zetec S.

Not hugely complex, I used a BDM100 adapter and connected directly to the BDM port on the main board. Opening the ECU case was the hard part as the case is bonded together, so had to be heated and gently pried apart.

The worrying bit is the thought of bricking the ECU, so once I read the flash file off the original I wrote the modified version on to a spare ECU I bought just in case.

In terms of the actual "remapping" as I understand it's a very technical field, I used HDI Tuning who provided the remap. It's not something you can just go into by altering parameters because the different power tables all interact with eachother.

A direct connection to the ECU isn't 100% necessary nowadays I think there are devices that will reliably do it over OBD.