Remapping - What Side affects?

[Pablo]

Hey guys,

With so many people now remapping TDi's and Turbo'd Petrols, what are or will be the long term side affects of this on a car?

Would you avoid buying a car with a remap like the plague, just as you would one that's a CatD etc?

I'm guessing the standard manufacturer components are far from built to cope with an increase in bhp, torque and power, hence meaning the engine components and driveshaft will take a lot more of a hammering?

Is it that much of an increase to seriously increase wear on clutch, gearbox and all the engine belts for example? Would you even consider lowering the service schedules on a car that's been remapped, or would this just be an over reaction and no worse than your average lightly modified car?

Thanks,

Pete..

 

[GordonD]

The problem with buying a remapped turbocharged car is that its possible to get quite large power increases that way. And if that was done the car could have been quite seriously overstressed and abused. Manufacturers don't limit the output of engines for no reason.

Buying a remapped normally aspirated car is less of a risk because you can't get much power increase that way, so the remap in itself is only likely to have used up all the safety margin in the design the manufacturer allowed. If you get one with problems is more likely its because the sort of person who'd do that to their car is more likely than someone who left their car standard to have thrashed the living daylights out of it.

The manufacturer's standard tuning is a compromise between power, economy, driveability, emissions and durability. People doing remapping move toward a compromise that puts less importance on economy and driveability, and ignores emissions and durability issues. Which doesn't mean there will be problems there, only that there might be because tuners are measuring themselves on one thing, power output.