Help me choose a remap thread

Fr0dders

Fr0dders

Fr0dders

Caporegime
Joined
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West Yorks
Im having some difficulty choosing what company to get my remap done with.

I've asked on the VXR forums, but because these sorts of threads always errupt into tuner wars with people defending their favoured tunrers (and quite often the tuners themselves post as well, which means anything negative gets argued with), getting inpartial and sensible answers is difficult. So im hoping OcUK can step in to provide some impartial advice.

So anyway here's the alternatives

Option 1) Thorney Motorsport

http://www.thorneymotorsport.co.uk/tuning/Vectra_VXR_Performance.shtml

Price is £400 for the remap and £75 for dyno time to customize the map to suit your particular engine.

Sold by thorney, its actually a superchips remap. Almost the same as the superchips one, but with a few tweaks requested by thorney. The product was a joint development.

They offer a 3 year warranty on their tune, and have a nice tie in with vauxhall, which means that if anything fails in your engine bay, either vauxhall pay or thorney pay, so you dont loose your manufacturers warranty as one of the two parties will pick up the bill.

Bad sides ? well its superchips which dont have the best of names. And recently somebody on the VXR forums had an issue with misfire whilst on the remap. Not present without it. They spent ages replacing parts etc.. till somebody from courtenay pointed out you need to check the gapping on the plugs ..

Option 2

Courtenay sport.

http://www.courtenaysport.co.uk/index.php?act=viewDoc&docId=87

A full £100 more expensive than thorney, and not actualy offering any extra power. In fact the cars with highest torque figures (420 lb +) have come from thorney. They only offer a 1 year warranty, and there is no set procedure in place for vauxhall to refer to if they receive one of their cars in for work. Unless you've got a very sympathetic dealer, expect to be told to get on yer bike.

But, they were the tuner that spotted the plug gapping issue straight away. so seem to be more knowledgable. But out of all the people on the forum that have remaps from thorney (most) nobody else had any issues so make of this what you will.

bottom line

1) better warranty, cheaper, potentially dubious knowledge about the product if it doesnt go as planned

2) not as good warranty, more expensive, but potentially better after sales. Same end result, possibly not as good as option 1.

Any idea how to choose ? because im damned if i can :S
 
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that was down to pure hooliganism flooring it away from a standstill :D

what car wont light the tyres up with wheelspin if you put your foot flat the floor.
 
thats pushing it slightly isnt it ?

so you can do a 0-60 run by putting your foot flat to the floor on the accelerator from a standing start with zero wheelspin ? and no throttle modulation ?

if it was that easy, why does everybody comment on having to manage wheelspin for doing 0-60 runs in the G meter thread ?

amigafan2003 said:
Give Motorsport Developments, Blackpool, a ring and see if they do a live mapping service for your car:-

http://www.motorsport-developments.co.uk/

I've had four cars done there and been very happy with the results. They also helped me dial in the spark map for my Pinto, which pushed 182bhp later on the colleges rollers.
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im going to stick to a respected vauxhall tuner. The vectra's ECU is renowned for being tempremental and difficult to map. There arent many about (less than a thousand) so most tuners will never have come across one. People on the VXR forums have tried this, the tuners have said "yeah we'll have a go" and because they've no experience of this particular model ending up knackering the ECU and requiring a dealer to chragably reflash it.
 
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Muncher said:
Courtenay without a question.

I know of so many horror stories about TMS! Just check out some of the discussion of their work on the VXR forums.
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yes, and thats half my problem

Theres so much bias on there. As soon as somebody critices one tuner, another group of fans pounce and then arguments ensue.

Funny thing is, speak to housey and the BMW crew love thorney
 
amigafan2003 said:
Your choice but you should read some of Stu's article on tuning. He's a technical genius and he DESIGNED his own water injection, closed loop control, ECU chips (not simply reflash existing Superchips). I bet he's tuned more Vauxhalls than Courtney.
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how many vectras has he tuned though ?

the 2.8 Z28NET is only found in the vectra and due to its odd combination (crappy brand name with relative high power level) isnt very popular.
 
but they're £100 more and potentially actually lower in resulting torque output.

Paying more for less is a bitter pill to swallow when so many have had good experiences with TMS vectra maps.

Its a question of "do you want to chance it?" as if you dont have problems (like most of the owners) then you've got yourself a bargain . But if you're one of the unlucky few who have problems ..

I just dont know what to do, especially as Thorney have a stage 2 remap written especially for the milltek exhaust.

Ive not got involved in the Corsa Saga too much, but much of the problem wasnt with thorney themselves, just their "proof" that regals corsa was tuned too much to make it reliable and it was there fault that cars were melting piston 4.

That was where those comments came from. The issue was him claiming that the EDS tune provided by Regal was at fault. Not any direct criticism of the thorney/superchips map.
 
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the dyno remap chart is not a quoted "minimum" figure. It belongs to somebody on the forum and its the actual results they achieved.
 
Courtenays maps come from Klassen in germany

Thorneys come from Superchips in the UK.

they arent from the same place. The other map going round for the Vectra is the one used by 888 - EDS in germany. And as muncher said, EDS and Klassen have a bitter rivalry. They most certainly arent all the same :)
 
Muncher said:
Courtenay without a question.

I know of so many horror stories about TMS! Just check out some of the discussion of their work on the VXR forums.
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Matt82 said:
the main difference between those two plots is the thorney one appears to spike the torque up which it holds onto for marginally longer up the rev range, hence the slightly higher bhp figure.

the difference is marginal, ie the sort of difference youd expect to see going from one dyno to the next.

of the two plots, the courtney one looks like the more civilised usable power delivery. it doesnt spike up so badly. the thornley one looks almost verticle between 2k-3krpm, which will make it feel "nippy" (20vt) style and give spectacular wheel spin and the tyres dont know what to do with the arrival of the massive torque.

so given there is almost nothing in it between the output figures, id be inclined to go for courtney based on the torque plot looking to be more useful. looking at the thorney one, it looks like a massive rush of torque followed by exactly the same drop off as courtney. the courtney one is better before the spike... so id go for courtney
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lordrobs said:
Based on those plots I'd go for Courtenay
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well after having a long hard think, im going to ring and book courtenays today

One of the reasons is that the thorney warranty is 3 years, 60k miles or the remaining period of your manufacturer warranty .. whichever is least. Ive only got 6 months warranty left, so thats what they match.

Not quite the sparkling 3 year warranty they keep banging on about.

So with that, and also that i'll probably be in safer hands at courtenays. Im going to book today.

300bhp and 400+ lb/ft of torque here we come :D
 
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