Finally made my mind up to go for a blacksmoke remap.
Bought the MPPS cable and read my ecu etc, bought the file from the blacksmoke website and was all armed ready to program it. I hesitated at the last minute as the SW version on my car was later than the file supplied and I was worried about bricking my ECU.
Andrew bent over backwards to give me a solution offering to loan me an ECU while he bench flashed mine or gave me the option to buy a pre-programmed ECU (discounting me for the file I bought). In the end I decided to buy the second ECU then I can always put the car back to standard.
Replaced the ECU this morning no problems and car started fine, cleared down any fault codes with VCDS then took it for a test drive. My car is a 5spd AWX 130PD and the map allegedly gives 162bhp and about 350nm of torque.
Wish I'd done it earlier now! Car just seems to drive like what I always want it to be, OEM+ if you like! No smoke either (got missus to drive it while I followed her down to petrol station and give it some boot).
All in all for £100 I'm happy, I didn't fancy spending £300+ on a bespoke map for such an old car, not did I want an aggressive map, just a little bit extra which is exactly what this is.
Hopefully the fuel economy won't be impacted too much (got 500 mile to do next week so should get a feel for it).
Bought the MPPS cable and read my ecu etc, bought the file from the blacksmoke website and was all armed ready to program it. I hesitated at the last minute as the SW version on my car was later than the file supplied and I was worried about bricking my ECU.
Andrew bent over backwards to give me a solution offering to loan me an ECU while he bench flashed mine or gave me the option to buy a pre-programmed ECU (discounting me for the file I bought). In the end I decided to buy the second ECU then I can always put the car back to standard.
Replaced the ECU this morning no problems and car started fine, cleared down any fault codes with VCDS then took it for a test drive. My car is a 5spd AWX 130PD and the map allegedly gives 162bhp and about 350nm of torque.
Wish I'd done it earlier now! Car just seems to drive like what I always want it to be, OEM+ if you like! No smoke either (got missus to drive it while I followed her down to petrol station and give it some boot).
All in all for £100 I'm happy, I didn't fancy spending £300+ on a bespoke map for such an old car, not did I want an aggressive map, just a little bit extra which is exactly what this is.
Hopefully the fuel economy won't be impacted too much (got 500 mile to do next week so should get a feel for it).
