Lad at work was talking about DIY Remaps today, and it's something i have never heard of before so just wanted to see what people made of them.

The software to do it is readily available off eBay, some even include thousands of free maps for cars (I'm a bit skeptical about the maps tho, due to obvious reasons)

How ever there's a company offering the map files for £45 and with the cable costing around £20 it's fairly cheap, the website for the company is www.blacksmoke.co.uk they even offer to fix your ecu if anything goes wrong.

Had a search and ukmivis (sp) seem to rate them, is there anyone on here who have had any experiences, good or bad.

Hmmmmmmm sounds like one of those things that really shouldnt be attempted by any old person! Sure Andy will see this at some point and comment............

www.blacksmoke.co.uk

And there's the problem.

www.blacksmoke.co.uk

And there's the problem.

I'm fully aware of the risks involved, but there is no bad feed back about him or his maps anywhere just praise, seems like a genuine guy and as long as the maps good flashing the ecu is common practice these days with software updates ect.

Iv got a friend of a friend whose doing his pd 130, so will update on how it goes :).

i'm getting my 407 remapped next monday and i'm interested in exactly how it is done and if there is any skill involved or just plug it in and hit go.

i know it involves flashing the eprom chip in the ecu and going on that alone it is possible to really mess up your ecu if you make a mistake and there's the possibility of a wrong or poorly designed map.

Personally i dont see flashing the ecu as a big deal, i was more interested in the qualitly of the maps, the lads over on ukmkivis love the guy and theres no bad feedback anywhere, just wanted to see if anyone on here had used his maps.

Flashing maps into ECUs is a piece of piss.

Custom mapping is a different game all together.

Wanging a generic map in is easy, just depends how good it is and how safe it is

www.blacksmoke.co.uk

And there's the problem.

I see no problem there

End of the day if a load of people have used it and all have given good feed back and had no issues, then what does it matter what a bunch of people who have never used it think of it? Diesel tunning is a totally different kettle of fish compared to petrol tunning anyway. if you run a petrol lean you melt some thing and shit gets expensive, if you run a diesel lean it goes slower

Edited 18 June, 201214 yr by Mclovin

Hahaa

www.blacksmoke.co.uk

And there's the problem.

I see no problem there

End of the day if a load of people have used it and all have given good feed back and had no issues, then what does it matter what a bunch of people who have never used it think of it? Diesel tunning is a totally different kettle of fish compared to petrol tunning anyway. if you run a petrol lean you melt some thing and shit gets expensive, if you run a diesel lean it goes slower

I just saw an opportunity to make a bad joke regarding black smoke, I'm sure its a real good business!

Why black, racist

because the website aint called white smoke fool!

had my 407 done today and i can tell you if it goes right a diy remap is easy, but during the 15 minutes it took to flash the data onto the ecu, the battery voltage dropped to 11.5 volts: result bricked ecu!!! which now has to be sent to be reprogrammed which means my car is off the road for the next few days.

the guy i used to remap my car as been doing it for a few years and done hundreds of cars so he's not new to remapping.

he didn't have his battery support unit (he said it was being repaired) so he checked the battery voltage before the remap

and he said it would be ok but during the remap the voltage dropped off. (i suspect the door courtesy lights caused the drain on the battery.) but if he had his battery support unit this would be a completely different story.

it is vital that the battery voltage is kept above 12v during the entire flashing process to avoid bricking your ecu and if your laptop crashes or runs out of battery or you knock the connector the result is likely to be a bricked ecu.

shit happens...

Your tuner obviously does not know what he is doing if it's your ecu has had to be sent off.

Things can and do go wrong from time to time even for the most experienced tuners but recovery of your "bricked" ecu would take less than 30 minutes in total.

Your tuner obviously does not know what he is doing if it's your ecu has had to be sent off.

Things can and do go wrong from time to time even for the most experienced tuners but recovery of your "bricked" ecu would take less than 30 minutes in total.

i don't think he knows what he is doing, he fitted the ecu after it has been 'fixed' and it still won't start it won't even crank!

Really sorry to here your still stuck.

I hope your mapper does not even try and blame your car etc or does a runner.

I run the blacksmoke website (honestly no here to plug my business) and I've sorted a couple of cars when mappers just walked away from the car shaped ornament they have caused. One of them actually cried on the phone.

There are plenty of companies who could repair you brick (not me on this occasion).

Andrew

i've been in contact with an ecu specialist and they say he could of wiped the ecu coding and thats causing the symptoms I'm having.

btw Andrew do you have any insight on an alientech KESS v2? as that was the tool he attempted to remap me car with.

many thanks chris.

The Alientech stuff is fairly reputable as far as I'm aware. The problem here's probably not his hardware, but the fact he made the error of not sticking your car on a booster pack.

Even when you've got tens of grands worth of Bosch ETAS kit and a development ECU on a vehicle it's still possible to kill it if the battery drops out during a re-flash - though sometimes you're lucky and a forced re-flash can revive it if the bootloader's still intact.

The interface mentioned is suitable for your application but something went wrong.

Give me a formula 1 car and I would end up in wall on the first corner.

Putting yourecu into bootmode and re-flashing it is all it will need

i've had an ex peugeot tech peugeot tech look at my car and he found the ecu has been completely wiped!

so the ecu has not been reprogrammed with the original software like the guy said it had.

he thinks he can re flash the original file into my ecu so i'm going to tow my car to his place for him to try to fix it,

hopefully he can but just in case the ecu has been properly screwed i phoned peugeot for a quote for a new ecu which comes to £1018 for the ecu alone without fitting and coding.

according to peugeot ecus can only be matched to a car once so a second hand ecu would not work, I'm a bit skeptical about this as there companies that sell second hand ecus for peugeots.

thanks again. :-)

Edited 7 July, 201214 yr by polo45

Sounds like bollocks to me mate. beware, main dealers can be just as dishonest (in some cases more so) than your local backstreet spanner monkey

I hope your "tuner" is working hard to sort this for you. There are companies who repair ecu's for around £250.

Have a look on some Peugeot forums for someone local who knows what they are doing. Someone who is passionate about coding etc should have the equipment to sort it.

Although its wiped the chips can normally be written over them.

Good luck with your quest.

update.

my car is now in my local main dealer getting repaired and it now looks as it's going to court, he hasn't responded to any invoices i've sent him and has started ignoring my calls so i've been over to the guys house (about 40 miles away) and tbh he (and his wife) wasn't expecting me to turnup on his door step with a final invoice for nearly £1900.

now he has 14 days to pay me for the repairs or it's going to court.

i'm seeing a solicitor on monday, i have a shit load of evidence against him including unpaid invoices, estimates/quotes, witnesses, phone records, texts he sent me and his failed attempts at trying to repair my car.

i've tried hard to come to a resolution with this guy over the last 5 months, allowing him to attempt repairs on several occasions and allowed him to try second hand parts which didn't work correctly and i even got my car towed to his house so he could work on it in his own time.

i will update when anything happens.

Edited 19 January, 201313 yr by polo45

Well that escalated quickly! haha.

As said above, if the battery drops off during the flash it'll usually brick, but provided the bootloader is still intact a reflash is usually possible. Depends on the ECU type, too.

I read up on the Bosch ME7.5.1 (for a plan I has), and it seems you can force them into Boot mode with a certain pin adjustment - ie putting 12v down a certain pin.

You can then use a certain bit of software to re-write the bootloader and all is well..