damianscott71

Hi @xact64This looks great. Do you think you could knock up an adapter for me? I'd be happy to pay. Damian

Good work Rifleman, everything works a treat now. Much appreciated!

I've booked to have the camera retrofitted at the end of this month, by a company in Nuneaton. Cost is about £500 inc VAT.

You could probably get one retrofitted for a little over £300. I'm picking up a Sportline Estate on Tuesday that doesn't have a reversing camera, so I've just sent OEM Retrofits in Bradford a message via Facebook. I haven't had a reply back yet. When I do, I'll let you know how much they're quoting.

I've always found that having a remap alters the trip computer's reporting of MPG and isn't to be trusted, I'm sure it's the same with tuning boxes as the ECU will be blissfully unaware of the extra fuel that's going through the cylinders. I tend to get on average 450 miles to a tank of diesel, maybe more if I do a few long runs and don't put my foot down so much. So I'll have a point of comparison for after the remap. The thing about remaps though, is that you tend to use the extra power and don't really see any saving on fuel whatsoever!

Hi Beast, Can I ask what you're getting to a tank, before & after fitting the DTUK box? Thanks, Damian

I think that it'll all get figured out in the next few days and weeks. If Shark have done it (and they use the same kit as everyone else) then the other tuners will be able to do it too. It's good to hear that you've had good results from the tuning box though, I've been oh so close to buying one for the past 6 months. Sent from my XT1039 using Tapatalk

Have you tried winding your windows down, perhaps? In all seriousness, diesels don't sound like petrol cars. If you were to attach an induction kit or even straight through exhaust, you'd only make it sound more like a tractor, not more like a sporty petrol car. If you have a shire horse and stick a Cornetto on its head, you still won't have a unicorn. Nuff said? Sent from my XT1039 using Tapatalk

I think that he thought he'd be able to read the file, as per the new 1.6tdi ECU. I had my doubts to be fair, but as his unit is only 10 minutes drive from where I live, it was no problem for me. Sent from my XT1039 using Tapatalk

Do you think it's possible to have a conversation about remaps without someone crying about warranty? WE ALL KNOW ABOUT THE WARRANTY ISSUE! WE'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS WITH OUR CARS! Rant over. Sent from my XT1039 using Tapatalk

So, last week I went across to Motech (literally just a 10 minute drive for me) and they couldn't get the file off the car because the ECU is locked (yeah, we know!) So in a week or two, I'll be heading across to Warwick with Mike from Motech to have the ECU removed, cracked open, unlocked and mapped. Watch this -----> <---- space. :peek:

In my experience, induction kits and panel filters have little/no benefit on diesel cars as diesel cars already run with more air than is required to combust the fuel effectively. On my Civic 2.2CDTi a few years back, Pipercross used my car to develop their replacement panel filter which I then took to Superchips HQ in Banbury to do some rolling road plots and was surprised to see that when equipped with the Pipercross foam panel filter, the car actually produced less bhp & torque than the OE Honda paper filter. The one benefit of the Pipercross filter that was noticed, was that the car didn't suffer from "heat soak" on the rolling road in the same way that the OE filter did. Heat soak is when the car can't draw enough cool air into the engine and cuts the power. This phenomenon was only noticed on the rolling road however and not during normal driving. In normal driving, I found the Pipercross filter adversely affected the way the car accelerated and drove too and soon changed back to OE.

Hi Defenderben, The remap on the 2.0 CR was pretty straightforward although it was an "ECU out job". I didn't have it rolling road tested, but I suppose the car was running around 210bhp. It was a nice smooth, progressive map and fuel economy wasn't adversely effected from what I recall. The better fuel economy comes from the extra torque that the remap delivers. This means that you can drive at a lower speed in a higher gear, without having to change down which can aid economy. However, many people who have their cars remapped tend to have a rather heavy right foot and as we all know, the harder you press the "GO" pedal, the faster your fuel gauge goes down! Drive it sensibly and you'll save money, drive it with your foot to the floor and you'll get fewer miles per tank. To my mind, it was a worthwhile venture. I think Motech would charge £300-£350ish for this and you'd probably have to travel to their workshop in Warwick to have it done as the ECU probably has to come out.

Good morning people, I'm heading across to Motech Performance in Earls Barton, Northamptonshire at 10am this morning. During this visit, they'll be downloading my MK3 vRS 2.0 TDI's existing map files for analysis, then in the next week I'll be headed across to their workshop in Warwick for the ECU to be removed, unlocked and the newly remapped files uploaded. My 2 previous cars were both remapped by Motech (MK2 FL vRS 2.0 CR TDI & Yeti Elegance 2.0TDI CR170), having had a previous 5 cars remapped by Superchips and Celtic Tuning with mixed results. I've been delighted with the work that Motech have done for me and can personally vouch for their quality of service, effectiveness and value for money. They don't apply generic maps, instead remapping cars individually to suit the customer's requirement. I'll keep you all informed of how things progress and will add a few photos (if I remember!) Watch this space!

Any chance of a rolling road plot from Shark? I spoke to Matt about a week ago and gave my email address, but haven't received anything yet. Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

No, lots of ECU's have to come out for remaps. They're removed from the vehicle, cracked open, an interface jig applied to points on the board, the encryption is unlocked using a computer. Next the original maps are downloaded, altered and reloaded back to the ECU. The unlocked, altered ECU is then put back into the car. The longest part of the task is often the removal of the ECU, but I think that it's a 2 minute job on the Mk3. Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

I spoke to Shark at the tail end of last week and was surprised at the £649 price. I think that Motech will be be half that price, at least. Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

I'd heard that was the case, however my Yeti had a selectable off-road map, so I wondered if the selectable sports, economy and normal modes of the Mk3 would work in a similar way. I suppose I'll find out in the next few weeks! Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

I've never used a tuning box, and have spoken to Andrew a couple of times in the past few months (he really knows his stuff!) However in my semi-informed view (having owned 7 remapped cars in the past 15 years) is that with a remap, at least the car ECU's have all the relevant data being presented to them in an honest fashion. Whereas a tuning box tricks the injectors into delivering extra boost and fuel, whilst the car ECU thinks that it's doing it's normal job. Do you get my drift? Don't get me wrong, I've had trouble with remaps that have been too harsh that have gone on to cause problems with cars. I've also had maps detected and erased by dealers too. The tuning box vs remap debate will roll on for years and years, as will the "will my dealer find out about the map and will it invalidate the warranty?" discussion. It's certainly been rolling for the past 15 years that I've been tinkering with my cars. Can I say (politely) that I find it a tad boring now? Personally, I'm hoping that the map will just be able to be written to the sports mode map on the ECU, whilst leaving the other settings as standard. This would be a nice addition and one that you simply couldn't achieve with a tuning box, which applies extra "oomph" across the board.

For anybody still following this post, I just spoke to Mike from Motech Performance and apparently CMD have released the unlock codes for the Octavia's ECU. This means that remaps to the diesel vRS are now possible. I'll be headed over there in the next few weeks to have mine remapped. I'll keep you all posted on how things pan out. Damian

This happened to me a few years ago on my Golf MK5. I got it back from the dealer and thought it felt a bit gutless, spoke to Superchips who thought that it was unlikely that the dealer would have been able to over write the map, but when they checked the remap had been overwritten! I'm not sure if telling your dealer that the car has been remapped is a good idea if the vehicle still has warranty, but a good remap company should put the map back on for you if it does get removed at the dealership. Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Shermo, it really isn't that easy... You can't just crack open the ECU and program it. The encryption on the current generation of ECU's of many current cars from all manufacturers is proving to be so far impossible to crack. You can't just replace the car's ECU with a different/better unit. They just don't exist. The ECU in the new Octavia is physically much easier to access than the previous generations, as it's located in the engine bay, and not under the scuttle boards as per previous generations. Taking it out and opening it isn't the problem. Getting a computer to talk to the ECU is the problem, because of the encryption. Hope this helps to clarify matters (don't you all wish you'd just bought the vRS instead now?) Damian

Hi TDI Tuning, Interesting video, thanks for sharing that with us. Just one quick question that I hope you can help with.... What's with the weird dips & peaks in the rolling road plot, after you fitted the tuning box? Thanks, Damian

You can't ignore torque, it's the torque that puts the drivetrain under stress. Torque from the diesel vRS is already higher than the petrol version as standard. The obvious symptoms of excess torque due to a remap would include flywheel judder or a slipping clutch. If this was to occur, you'd back the map off to a point where it stopped, however symptoms like these are routinely checked for as part of the development process of the remap/tuning box.

Having spoken to a few tuning companies today, it would seem that the ECU encryption on the Octavia is still an issue. Therefore a good quality tuning box like Andrew @ DTUK's would seem to be the only option. One company did mention that even the manual gear box can have it's software tweaked to give an extra 15nm of torque, which is something that I've never heard of before.