APR Announces: 2012 Remap Challenge!

[Evan@APR]

Visit www.goapr.com/dealer and type in your postcode to locate your nearest APR distributor and get your remap booked TODAY!

Note: Dyno comparisons may not be available by all APR distributors. If unavailable, participants will be directed to APR UK headquarters for their comparison flash and dyno. Also, APR software will only be installed with written consent of the participant. APR software is subject to a 30-day money-back guarantee. Should a participant choose to decline the offer, the original software cannot be reinstalled by any APR authorized distributor or representative and the OEM software will be reinstalled onto the vehicle.

[Waplord]

So, if we try this and DON'T like your map, you will put the car back to stock effectively erasing our current map? hmmmmm not too keen personally, don't really see APR having much at risk and the customer stands to loose out big time if he doesn't like your map.

[vRSy]

if you dont like the map and want to revert back to previous It'll be like when a dealer flashes your car to stock after a service. just nip to the tuner and they upload the map again.

[Waplord]

My dealer has never flashed my car back after a service and why should another tuner be happy to flash the car back when it's not the same as the dealer flashing it back, you've made a deliberate effort to try a rival product?

[Brimma]

if you dont like the map and want to revert back to previous It'll be like when a dealer flashes your car to stock after a service. just nip to the tuner and they upload the map again.

Which could be quite costly and inconvenient if not local to the original tuner

[Waplord]

Which could be quite costly and inconvenient if not local to the original tuner

Yes in my case i'll just 'Nip' to Mansfield from Swansea

[vRSy]

Which could be quite costly and inconvenient if not local to the original tuner

fair point

[Brimma]

fair point

This could, of course, be offset by APR refunding all travel and ancillary expenses incurred in getting the car put back to how it was previously

[blueR36]

Not worth the risk, and I am more than happy with mine

[Evan@APR]

This offer makes it easy to try something different. APR is confident in our product and hope curious readers interested in something new will see and seize this opportunity. Obviously proximity is a factor to consider while weighing the pros and cons, but I expect the comparative nature of this special to intrigue at least some of Briskoda's technically-inclined contributors.

Regarding any risk, there's really none at all. Travel, flash, dyno, compare, keep or pass.... simple Worst case scenario, you leave with free dyno and an OEM calibration, then get back to your current/previous tuner to have your old map reapplied. It's unfortunate to hear that some of your tuners might charge you to redo or reinstall your current remap if it were erased in any way--we don't do that.

If anybody has any questions about any of this, please don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you!

[Yeti_Man]

That's sounds very over simplified though. I'd have to travel over eight hours all in to get my map put back on. Shark don't charge to put it back in place either but I'd be down around £80 for fuel and would have lost a day in the process. The idea of trying before you buy and comparing is good on the face of it but if the differences were marginal, rather than a big improvement, I'd guess a few people would just stick with it to save the agro of having to run an OE map until they could make it back to their tuners (and hopefully not be charged again). I'm presuming it is a genuine OE calibration for the specific ecu in question on the customers car, not an APR version pulled back to emulate the OE values as per one of your competitors do?

[Auric Goldfinger]

Regarding any risk, there's really none at all. Travel, flash, dyno, compare, keep or pass.... simple Worst case scenario, you leave with free dyno and an OEM calibration, then get back to your current/previous tuner to have your old map reapplied.

Don't wish to sound thick but how can you put the OEM ( calibration ) I assume you mean map, back on when you didn't remove it in the first place. Will your OEM map ( calibration )be identical to the one on the car when it left the Factory.

[Evan@APR]

That's sounds very over simplified though. I'd have to travel over eight hours all in to get my map put back on. Shark don't charge to put it back in place either but I'd be down around £80 for fuel and would have lost a day in the process. The idea of trying before you buy and comparing is good on the face of it but if the differences were marginal, rather than a big improvement, I'd guess a few people would just stick with it to save the agro of having to run an OE map until they could make it back to their tuners (and hopefully not be charged again). I'm presuming it is a genuine OE calibration for the specific ecu in question on the customers car, not an APR version pulled back to emulate the OE values as per one of your competitors do?

Everybody's cost/benefit analysis will be different and it will make more sense for some than others. We're not forcing anybody to do anything extraordinary here, simply offering a new path to try

And yes it will be a 100% OEM calibration reinstalled onto the vehicle, not an APR derivative.

[Evan@APR]

Don't wish to sound thick but how can you put the OEM ( calibration ) I assume you mean map, back on when you didn't remove it in the first place. Will your OEM map ( calibration )be identical to the one on the car when it left the Factory.

We all use different terms to describe remaps, so no worries and sorry for any confusion. Yes, it will be the factory map you had when you bought the car.

[Waplord]

Another question Evan, lets flip the tables here, if i had an APR map and went with a trial with another tuning company would APR be happy to flash my APR map back at no cost in this case? As it would be my own fault my APR map was missing from the car unlike if a dealer was to flash a car back to stock?

Also would this no charge to flash back to my APR map be upheld at all APR Authorised distributors or only where my original APR map was purchased from?

[Evan@APR]

Another question Evan, lets flip the tables here, if i had an APR map and went with a trial with another tuning company would APR be happy to flash my APR map back at no cost in this case? As it would be my own fault my APR map was missing from the car unlike if a dealer was to flash a car back to stock?

Also would this no charge to flash back to my APR map be upheld at all APR Authorised distributors or only where my original APR map was purchased from?

Yes. We absolutely do not charge additional fees to put our software on any existing customers' vehicles regardless of circumstance, just like we do not charge additional fees when upgrading through the different stages of mapping--until you get one of our BT kits in which case the software is included in the price. This is and will be upheld by any authorised distributor in the nation.

[Babs]

Why can't you just pull the complete ECU flash off, put APR on, then if the customer doesn't like it, put their original flash back on?

[Waplord]

Why can't you just pull the complete ECU flash off, put APR on, then if the customer doesn't like it, put their original flash back on?

Good point, don't most tuners back up the ECU before flashing anyway?

[Babs]

Good point, don't most tuners back up the ECU before flashing anyway?

It's certainly something I do if I'm putting a new BIOS on a PC or server, or some new firmware on a router.

[PastyBoy]

So this is essentially a "try before you buy" system from APR in the same way as Revo's half an hour trial remap used to be?

But without the road test jsut a dyno? or can a road test happen too?

Those with a stock car will find this attractive, those with already mapped cars will probably pass?

[Waplord]

So this is essentially a "try before you buy" system from APR in the same way as Revo's half an hour trial remap used to be?

But without the road test jsut a dyno? or can a road test happen too?

Those with a stock car will find this attractive, those with already mapped cars will probably pass?

From the wording of the text it appears the discount is only applicable to those who already have a map and would switch, so there is no big gain (money wise) as such for those with stock cars?

[PastyBoy]

I didn't get the image when i first openned the thread hence my confusion

Now I see it I see my error.

Still don;t get it though :S

[Yeti_Man]

In principle it sounds interesting but if I'd paid for a map from a company and I wasn't happy, I'd be heading back their way to get it sorted! If someone is so confident that their map is better then how are they managing that? Are they pushing things harder simply to make things feel quicker and possibly putting additional strain on components? It's easy to make things 'feel' quicker or actually be quicker buts about more than just that surely? Surely a test drive is far more important than dyno figures?! Anyone can achieve big figures. ;-)

[Babs]

APR didn't used to be about this top-end more-bhp willy-waving pub-talk nonsense, that was left to Revo.

Oh how times change *sigh*

[Evan@APR]

Why can't you just pull the complete ECU flash off, put APR on, then if the customer doesn't like it, put their original flash back on?

I like this group. Whether you agree with what we do or not, you guys are very engaged and it's unlike any other UK forum I participate in and I thank you for it.

Babs I understand your question and the answer seems simple, but there are some big differences in how our competitors calibrate, encrypt, store and apply software to a vehicle that hinder the simplicity of what you're proposing. There are guys with a tool that will download your file to his laptop, tweak and reinstall the software to your vehicle--that method would work how you describe, but our system is a bit more complex and modelled to store and provide our entire catalogue of software to the world at any time of day.

Needless to say, we could do it. But let me ask you, would you or your tuner be happy knowing we've effectively taken their remap from your ECU? The process begins with encryption. Software is encrypted. To date there isn't any automotive ECU/software we haven't been able to crack, but it's all about time. There's simply no reason for us to spend time trying to decrypt our competitors' tunes, because A. we're not interested in their remaps, and B. neither you nor I would wait an unspecified amount of time to have this done for each individual car--it just wouldn't make sense to do so.

Next, we get to how software is written. The APR network database stores all of our remaps, which are accessible at any time to any of our distributors. First there would have to be some engineering time spent uploading your extracted code onto our server. With it all being public, your map could accidentally be loaded by someone else with the same ECU part number and software version if it was live; That's certainly not something we want to risk. Could we add this functionality? Sure, but at the moment we don't have it and maybe it's something to consider in the future.

Starting fresh keeps things simple. Some tuners add functionality to the ECU that we can't guarantee will work upon reinstall as we've never done this in the past. For example, the Revo SPS adds map switchability, but we haven't looked at how they implement it. We've never flashed a Revo map and don't know if it would still function properly. I imagine that if you came in for the challenge and weren't satisfied with our software, the last thing you'd want would be to wait longer than necessary while trying to reinstall your previous software and have it not work properly. This is true across most different tuners, but now that I mention it, I believe Shark Performance customers would be best off in this scenario, as they have their maps programmed into their STS and would be able to immediately overwrite the OEM code we've applied.

I hope this provides better insight as to why we are eliminating these complexities by providing the OEM code we have ready on our server for you.