After determining what the customer is seeking with their vehicle we then decide how we are going to achieve these goals through ECU reprogramming and if necessary, the fitment of modifed hardware. We then begin to create a file that will work well with the hardware fitted at the time of tuning.
Creating a newly modified file preferably requires a copy of the Cars ECU (or TCU’s) original data and the data modification takes place using one of a few software suites that we have at our disposal. In our case we are fortunate enough to have WinOLS, Dimsports Race2000, Swiftec and some others like HPT, Bitedit, Ecuedit, ECUflash, Romraider and Tunerpro.
Reading and Writing a modified file to the ECU or TCU takes place with with the programming tool that we have determined is best for the application and usually this would be a choice of Dimsport’s excellent Genius or Trasdata, or for the very latest vehicles – bFlash’s awesome new tool and for TCU’s, we’d most likely choose the Magic Motorsports Flex – All these are in our view, the best of the best. We also use other programmers for specific applications eg HpTuners, Bitbox, Tactrix, APR and Integrated Engineering’s offerings plus a few more, then there’s the standalones and in some case’s we even bring out the old school eprom burner.
There are situations where we may need a more conservative approach, for example, where we know a vehicle is going to be operating under extreme condtions such as on a racetrack. Even with some of our diesel tunes where we know the owner plans on operating the vehicle under high loads or in a somewhat hostile environment we will always suggest a safe option. Typically this might only involve relatively minor modifications to things like ignition timing and/or fuel mixtures or perhaps some additional hardware.
Having these options at our disposal also allows us to carry a range of operations aside from just Tuning, things like Gearbox and ECU cloning, component deletes, immobiliser removal and ECU recovery – basically anything that involves moving data on or off the ECU or TCU.
*We only use genuine hardware and software, no clones, no pirated software…….no painful experiences