Finally found a chip!

[superstardjmatt]

at last: a specalist who'll do a custom chip for me GTI!!!! yay!!!!

not bad either £260 all in, only thing is the guy said I can expect a power hike of 8bhp upwards depending on what else has been done to me baby. Ive got an K&N induction kit and a "sportier" back box so what does everyone think i can expect over the standard 125??? and is this worth doing or will it create problems later on?

[Joe]

About of interest who have said they'd do it? is it local to you?

As for power, you might have 1-2bhp more but a backbox alone wouldn't do much, and the K&N may/may not add power. A catback exhaust would help, and changing the manifold would also increase the figures

£260 doesn't sound to bad for a custom chip. AMD can remap a gti to give upto 10bhp and that costs quite a bit more I think

Edited September 29, 2006 by Joe

[Max69vk]

Who's doing it? IMO the main remap companies that you hear of have built up their reputations (hence why everybody knows about them), Im not too sure how I'd feel about an unknown company having a fiddle with my programming, unless they've come highly reccomended from someone else.

[Tigz™]

at last: a specalist who'll do a custom chip for me GTI!!!! yay!!!!

Do they know the ECU is sealed with glue, so you can not 'chip' it?

The only thing you can do is a Serial Remap.

[beach]

piggyback chips dont have to involve the opening of standard ecu though. they can remap an ecu by intercepting signals etc.. and so on. £260 sounds a bit cheap for that though. maybe the price is for a seriel tune?

Edited September 29, 2006 by beach

[Tigz™]

A piggy back ECU doesn't work well on the Lupo.

As said, a serial remap is the only real way to go.

[beach]

isnt it a case of a piggyback is only as good as the tuner who sets it up?

[Tigz™]

No.

The standard ECU and piggyback will through out errors when run together.

If you remove trhe wiring from the stock ECU and fool it into thinking its still controling the engine, then add a stand alone ECU to just control the engine its fine.

But togther, theres not enough adjustment without getting an error.

[Teflon]

cutom code do serial port remaps the the lupo gti as well

custom code

Edited September 29, 2006 by Teflon

[beach]

interesting pricing. £300+vat for a job that takes a few seconds on seriel? and only £100 extra for 1 to 1.5 days of tuning custom mapping. second option is a comparitve bargain.

[Tigz™]

The cost of the code includes the development time taken to build the base map.

To be honest, the extra £100 just includes a couple of hours in the passenger seat while you take a drive around so they can fine tune it.

Although, contery to populer beleif, there is some bargin VW tuning around!

http://www.clubpolo.co.uk/forum/index.php?...696&hl=lupo

[superstardjmatt]

Well... the guy that mailed me back said "Lupo GTi, not a problem" so i presume he's got his head screwed on.

They're not local to me either, they in Bradford and i'm in coventry so it could be tricky ifsomething goes wrong and i have to get back up there to sort it too.

Their url is www.abvss.co.uk

[Tigz™]

Dont presume anything mate.

Hes messing with a expencive piece of your car!

E-mail him and tell him that the ECU is glued, and if he is able to do a serial remap.

Just make sure they have done something like this before, its a long way to travel to be told, "Sorry we cant do it"

[superstardjmatt]

Dont presume anything mate.

Hes messing with a expencive piece of your car!

E-mail him and tell him that the ECU is glued, and if he is able to do a serial remap.

Just make sure they have done something like this before, its a long way to travel to be told, "Sorry we cant do it"

yeh i just read all the replies, cheers btw fellas, i asked if he'd done it before with a loop gti and what exactly he's got planned for it. Lets see what he says.

[nfbr]

Do they know the ECU is sealed with glue, so you can not 'chip' it?

The only thing you can do is a Serial Remap.

Was just about to say that

[Snoopy]

interesting pricing. £300+vat for a job that takes a few seconds on seriel? and only £100 extra for 1 to 1.5 days of tuning custom mapping. second option is a comparitve bargain.

That's the same argument used by people reckoning the drug companies are ripping people off for AIDS medication that costs $1000 per month, the argument being that it only costs the companies 5 cents to manufacture the tablets.

Which is true, of course. Except it's only the second tablet that costs 5 cents, the first one cost 400 million dollars.

[beach]

maybe a bit similar, but the main point is still true in that 1.5 days of labour for £100 is always going to be a bargain. that would only get you nearly 2 hours labour in top garages for labour time.

[Joe]

I'm currently talking to MidlandVW (who do Custom Code Phase 1 & 2) about options available for the GTi.

Bascially for a Phase 2 they think its only worth while if you also have some kind of induction system, sport cat and performance exhuast fitted. Phase 2 is 400+VAT, but obviously its only worth it if you have all the other parts already.

[beach]

That's the same argument used by people reckoning the drug companies are ripping people off for AIDS medication that costs $1000 per month, the argument being that it only costs the companies 5 cents to manufacture the tablets.

Which is true, of course. Except it's only the second tablet that costs 5 cents, the first one cost 400 million dollars.

been thinking a bit more about this. i would say the total development cost for a map to use for a seriel tune would only cost the garage about £400 ish to make. there after it doesnt cost them anything really to port over the new map. so i think they massively overcharge for the product. but the prices are only what they are due to lack of competiton and a bit of price fixing i would say. this is just my opinion of course.

[Babs]

£400? for hours and hours of fine tuning on dyno's and roads? don't think you've quite grasped it! style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" />

[Tigz™]

VVT doesn't exactly make it easy either!

[Joe]

£400? for hours and hours of fine tuning on dyno's and roads? don't think you've quite grasped it! style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" />

Re read the post and I now feel dumb style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":P" border="0" alt="tongue.gif" /> *deleted*

Edited October 2, 2006 by Joe

[MattEB]

been thinking a bit more about this. i would say the total development cost for a map to use for a seriel tune would only cost the garage about £400 ish to make. there after it doesnt cost them anything really to port over the new map. so i think they massively overcharge for the product. but the prices are only what they are due to lack of competiton and a bit of price fixing i would say. this is just my opinion of course.

Lack of competition????

AMD, bicester

SuperChips, buckingham

Morego (Ex BBR), brackley

Custom Code, ????

All the aftermarket ECU/piggyback ECU manufacturers Pectel, MBE, UniChip etc

Most of these places can do a 'Custom Map' for you if you ask.

And that is just UK based, have a hunt around on german websites.

There is loads of stuff to be done to managment systems, you just have

to pay for it...... the more you pay the more you get (as always).

Generally its just that the first few people always get a share of the development

costs, which I think is fair enough as the tuning companies don't know how many they will sell.

[beach]

£400? for hours and hours of fine tuning on dyno's and roads? don't think you've quite grasped it! style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" />

maybe they would spend a few days on the road and on a rolling road setting up the map. this would not cost them more than £400.

even as a busniess profit the mentioned company are quoting upto 1.5 days of mapping for £100.

i am conviced they are grabbing a price out of the air for which they think they can con customers out of their money.

[Snoopy]

I'm guessing you don't know much about running a business?

Taking one of your employees away from the stuff he normally does for 'a few days' is only free if you don't realise there are a whole bunch of things he'd normally do that he can no longer do.

Yes, undoubtably it costs a company less than 400 quid to make a remap, if you assume that they have all the equipment beforehand and that they have people working for them who normally sit around doing nothing!

However, in the real world, they need to buy a rolling road (any idea how much they cost? 6 figures for a top-of-the-range one). They need to either license the tuning software from a third party (such as Superchips) or spend a huge amount of R&D time developing it themselves, otherwise these fancy new maps won't be any good because you can't install them on cars - funnily enough it's not just a case of going to RS and knocking up a cable. You need to pay a decent technician who has experience with this kind of thing, and they don't come cheap. Obviously you have to factor your price into the cost of running your business, which needs to take in a thousand pounds a day just to stay the right side of the rent on the place, taxes, salary expenses, and so on, let alone make any profit! Oh, and a little thing called liability insurance, so that you don't get sued out of business the first time some muppet complains you made his engine go pop.

Yes, it costs them less than 400 quid to put a remap on a car. It costs Paramount less than 17.99 to put a movie onto a DVD. It costs Microsoft less than 80 quid to press a copy of Windows. Of course it does - that's how businesses work! They absorb the up-front costs and make them back over a long period of time.

Finally, so what if they're making a packet of money on every remap? This is what businesses are supposed to do - make money! As shocking as it is, giving things away at cost price does not make for happy bank balances or shareholders.