Superchips bluefin recaps thoughts and advice pls

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Soldato
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Hi folks, looking to get some thoughts from the forum on Superchips and in particular the Bluefin handset mapping they offer.


has anyone used superchips for a map? have you seen any non superchips dyno figures and how do they compare to their quoted figures?
 
I have experience on an Octavia, previously had a "proper" map on another car that was reverted back during my ownership. Bought it as I liked the ability to revert to standard

Was perfectly happy with the bluefin, but it will really depend on your expectations. If you look at the apparent curves for tge car from superchips you'll see that everything looks like standard map plus a %, no real change in delivery. This means that it basically just feels the same but with more go when you want it which works well as the standard power/torque curves are quite well judged anyway.

In my limited experience a proper, custom map is more likely to totally change the way the car drives and when power is delivered plus can be tailored to maximise things for your specific car.

I don't have a dyno graph to compare, but did some boost logs and the peak hits exactly what I would expect with a remap. The requested/delivered charts look exactly as they did prior to remap, with a % increase
 
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I Bluefin'd my car. It took the power from the assumed stock figures of 200bhp and 220 lb-ft to a dyno-verified 240bhp and 265 lb-ft. The power was a little short of Superchips' claims that it will increase it to 260bhp, but who knows where they get their numbers from. A "proper" rolling road remap is likely to yield better results but that's costlier and you can't revert between stock and remapped at your will.

It's not given me any issues whatsoever and I did it well over a year ago now. The power delivery hasn't changed much, save for perhaps a teeny bit more 'old-school' turbo lag low down. It's just... noticeably more powerful, which is what I wanted :p It's great value IMHO.
 
I had the Bluefin for my e91 335d (LCI).

They claimed it could up the power to 351 bhp (+69). I had it dynod and it only made 330 bhp (+48, well, actually I think it was a bit less). So it fell quite a bit short of advertised.

In the end, I did absolutely nothing about it. Didn't even send an email. Dyno's can be a complete lottery. So you can't trust any of them really. The best you can hope for is using the same dyno all the time and having some consistency. The dyno I used this time was at a RR day, where many of their previous customers were in attendance. And they pride themselves on reasonably aggressive custom maps. So I can only assume the dyno was either calibrated correctly or slightly aggressively.

But it didn't bother me really. The car was easily fast enough after the map. The car was only in my ownership 6 days before I mapped it. And was mapped for all but 14 days of my ownership. I didn't have time to get used to the original power delivery before mapping it, but when I took the map of before sale, it was clearly obvious the difference. It was just much nicer to drive with the map. Not that 282/286 bhp was overly lethargic. But I did like how I was able to take it off when the car went in for service (it still had the service pack, and was under warranty during my whole ownership).

TDLR. The superchips is worth it for the flexibility it gives you. But if you want a willy waving power curve, or peak power number, best looking elsewhere.
 
Howard said:
A "proper" rolling road remap is likely to yield better results but that's costlier and you can't revert between stock and remapped at your will.
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Yes you can, you could have a number of remaps and hotswap with ease.

None of the Ford chaps on here aware of Cobb Accessports?

www.egdgeautosport.com

Thats where we get a large volume of our MPS stuff from
 
OK, fine. You can't usually revert back unless there happens to be a company, such as the one you mentioned, that offers a bespoke remap in conjunction with a portable handset for your car.

Normally you just drive in, you pay them money, they remap your car, and you drive away with more horsepower.
 
Aye look into the Cobbs :)
They seem very popular in the states and europe.

The biggest benefit being that if you do come to sell you can simply uninstall from the vehicle and sell the accessport and license on.

I'm not big on Fords so don't know the people to look to but I'm sure there'll be highly respected Tuners for the platform :)
 
They don't appear to support any vehicles that we'd drive over here, other than the Focus ST and Mustang.
 
Did anyone try rolling road testing the original map and the bluefin map back to back?

The stock figures from the factory may have been higher than reality to start with in some cases.
 
I looked into the bluefin for my ST225 but have heard it mentioned quite a lot that the bluefin never gives anything near what they quote whereas a proper remap like Mountune, Revo, Collins etc gives what it says in terms of gains. And it's always better getting them to check it out first and rolling road it to make sure it's running ok before mapping.
 
I bluefinned my mondeo 2.5t originally, went from 217hp (tested on rr) to 261hp, a gain of ~44hp (advertised was 49hp)

Should add the power increase was nice, but the best part was removing the flat area from 2k-4krpm, felt much more lively through the entire range.
 
In my experience the Bluefin is a good product - customer support from Superchips is very good and the ability to swap maps back and to can be useful.

They aren't always the only company to offer the ability to swap maps, or give perhaps the absolute highest in power/torque figures, or the best driveability of those available but you're getting a well developed product that pretty much delivers as advertised. You have to consider that they are not likely to take their maps as far as a specialist in the brand would, due to the wider range of vehicles they cover.

And of course peak dyno figures don't always paint the full story by a long way and it helps to have before and after runs to see what gains you've got as opposed to going off what the brochure says your car is supposed to have.

Depends what you want from the remap, opinions from other owners with same car and Bluefin map can always help too.
 
tl45 said:
They aren't always the only company to offer the ability to swap maps, or give perhaps the absolute highest in power/torque figures, or the best driveability of those available but you're getting a well developed product that pretty much delivers as advertised. You have to consider that they are not likely to take their maps as far as a specialist in the brand would, due to the wider range of vehicles they cover.
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That bit right there. I was a good 20-30 BHP down on the power THEY suggested. All of that quote is just wrong (most of the rest of the post I agree with though).

For a start, they pretty much quote the same expected power increase as anyone else. But, in my experience, and that of many anecdotal tales on the tinterweb, they fail to get close to what THEY are advertising.

The not taking their maps as far as others due to the wider range of vehicles is another bit of BS too though. Each map is supposed to be individually tailored to the "package" (i.e. the engine and model of any particular car). Sure, it likely wont be as aggressive as a custom RR map, but it shouldn't be any less aggressive than any other generic flash map. Any less power output would be the result of a lack of development, not a wider range of vehicle compatibility.
 
xs2man said:
That bit right there. I was a good 20-30 BHP down on the power THEY suggested. All of that quote is just wrong (most of the rest of the post I agree with though).

For a start, they pretty much quote the same expected power increase as anyone else. But, in my experience, and that of many anecdotal tales on the tinterweb, they fail to get close to what THEY are advertising.

The not taking their maps as far as others due to the wider range of vehicles is another bit of BS too though. Each map is supposed to be individually tailored to the "package" (i.e. the engine and model of any particular car). Sure, it likely wont be as aggressive as a custom RR map, but it shouldn't be any less aggressive than any other generic flash map. Any less power output would be the result of a lack of development, not a wider range of vehicle compatibility.
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Cheers for calling BS with my comments and personal opinions. Appreciate the constructive feedback there.

From my experience their maps delivered what was advertised, though the dyno lottery plays it's part there too - different dynos different days different figures.....plus smoke & mirrors involved as soon as you move away from what's measured at the wheels.

Who says a custom or specialist map is supposed to be more aggressive? I was just commenting that with the range of vehicles Superchips cover they won't be spending the same amount of time and resource on developing and fine tuning compared to a specialist would who concentrates purely on that specific model or brand. If anything in some cases the further development time and resource put into a map can reduce it's aggressiveness and give better driveability over a wider range while achieving similar or better peak figures.

imho.
 
tl45 said:
Cheers for calling BS with my comments and personal opinions. Appreciate the constructive feedback there.
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Happy to oblige with personal experience of many maps, on many vehicles over the years.

Aggressive is only really with respect to peak power maps. Of course if you go for a custom map you can get it tailored however you like, but when a map is advertised at a specific power output, you expect it to be "aggressive" enough to deliver that output. Something I didn't experience with my Bluefin, and know of several others in the same situation.

Like I also initially pointed out though, I was actually very happy despite this "lack" of power, as the car drove great for my needs.

Of course, not all generic maps are designed for the willy waving either. The map I have on my Alhambra is set-up more for extra economy (albeit with a little extra oomph for overtaking on these back roads all around me), with it being a people carrier and doing loads of miles. Where the map on my A3 I had a few years ago was set-up for "fast road" (read: before kids).

But the not spending as much time on development of the map, well why should you then use Superchips? Use someone more specialist then.
 
My Mondeo TDCi with 138hp went to 158hp when they claimed 171hp but the torque was pretty much spot on and to be fair it while the "peak" figure was only 20hp more the gap was 30hp-ish wider throughout the rev range until the peak figure near the redline so it did make 30hp more in the "usable" area where the torque increase was greatest too.

Wouldn't buy another though. Live mapping is much better for a similar price (think my BF was £300-ish).
 
xs2man said:
But the not spending as much time on development of the map, well why should you then use Superchips? Use someone more specialist then.
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Aftersales service, known brand, dealer network, ability to use handset to change maps or revert back to standard?

Important features to some people, offset by alternatives which may offer maps with better gains or overall driveability but are loaded in as a 1-hit and don't come with handset etc. or cost more and involve a long round trip to visit the tuner. Or perhaps require the car to be in a higher stage of mechanical modifications to go with the map.

The amount of development time is relative, maybe length of development cycle is a better term - using Collins as a comparison they have rolled out upgrade packages and updated maps for the ST225 long after it went out of production, whereas have Superchips done the same? depends then on what the buyer is after from the map and the obvious difficulty in determining the 'best' map on the market. Which is rather subjective to say the least.

With custom RR maps are ones on offer which can tailor the performance of the car from scratch or more a case of tweeking parameters of more generic maps in line with what the dyno is telling them?
 
Superchips don't quote a peak powergain, they quote the largest powergain at any point on the curve, hence why the figures don't match up.

They may say a 30hp gain, but that 30hp gain could be at 4K RPM over stock, not at redline.
 
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