This may seem obvious to some but its amazing how often I get asked – how often do I have to remap my car – well just once in its lifetime is enough.

In the old days with rotary arms and points it was possible for the ignition timing to “fall out” and the car need retuning, but with the development of ecus the ignition timing, fueling, boost, and all engine sensors are controlled by the ecu – this has software installed on an Eeprom chip in it.

Much like your computer or laptop once new improved software has been installed it will not corrupt or change unless it is programmed over, the only time this will happen is if your car is relatively new and goes for a main dealer service, occasionally a software update from the main dealer will overwrite the remapped data – here at FlashRemapping we do not charge to re-remap the vehicle in this instance.

As you can see here our own VW Caddy van has just clocked up 100,000 miles. It was remapped a couple of weeks after purchase 2 years ago when it only had 37,000 miles, Mpg improvements of 50 miles per tankful or 10% have been achieved with a variety of driving, as well as improved throttle response more power and a smoother torque curve. In real terms this van is happy to drive around town at 30mpg in 5th gear and acceleration while not blistering compared to original spec feels like the handbrake has been taken off.

So what about reliability, well we would never claim a remap will improve reliability in fact if your vehicle has a fault it will most probably highlight that fault the Caddy has been completely fault free. Apart from regular servicing (10k miles) an odd bulb ( note brake light bulb blew about 5 miles before this photo was taken – hence light on dash )and tyres,  the only part of note to be replaced was the rear exhaust box. Not bad for 63k miles.

01/08/2013 Update

The Caddy is still going strong with 130,600 miles on the clock although two faults have just come up

1. The exhaust has needed replacing again – doh should have replaced with a genuine part rather than a pattern one

2. The radiator has sprung a leak – very cheap to replace but quite why VW locate the securing bolts behind the front bumper is beyond me it took over two hours to replace as the front bumper had to come off and the fans moved out of the way – still if it only needs doing every 130k miles its not too much of a problem