FAQs

Because unlike most ECU remappers we understand vehicles.

Unfortunately it’s so easy to set up a remapping business these days, people buy a van, set up a website and download files from the internet. This is also the fastest way to blow up an engine. WE ARE NOT THESE PEOPLE.

We’ve been vehicle tuners all our lives, ask us a complex mechanical question and we’ll be able to answer it. Ask us to strip an engine bare and rebuild it in half a day after blowing it up on a rally stage and we’ll do it. We have over 50+ years combined motorsport experience.

All of our remaps are based on tunes we’ve produced on a 3000bhp, 4x4, state of the art Mustang, motorsport dyno we have shared access to.

Along with our technology partners we’ve tuned tens of thousands of vehicles and completed thousands of miles of testing, we’re that confident that our guarantees and warranties we believe are second to none.

When a manufacturer designs a vehicle they have to ensure it can survive in every environment in which it’s sold.

Vehicles are built to cater for owners who miss or massively extend service intervals, who start their car from cold and thrash it then turn it off without letting it cool down. They build them for people who don’t replace worn components and who use the cheapest and worst fuel and oil available. In short, they build them for people who are the opposite of me and you, in respect to their cars, people who abuse them. The manufacturers also build their vehicle to be down on power to account for the extreme operating conditions vehicles face around the globe. To suit these conditions an all round safe compromise between performance, efficiency, longevity, and commercial restraint is produced.

A few examples are:

• Fuel Grade – Poor quality fuel massively affects how a vehicle runs, example markets are Ireland and Australia. Equally high quality fuel can cause an engine to run badly if it isn’t mapped to do so, example markets are Japan and the UK. We remap your engine to run on fuel we find in the UK, this massively improves the power, torque and fuel consumption of your vehicle by creating more accurate fuelling. This doesn’t mean you can’t use a higher or lower fuel, just that your car will run better on the fuel we receive in the UK.
• Operating Temperatures – A car that is bought and used in the heat of Africa, America or the Far East is mapped to perform equally as well in the icy colds of Northern Europe. Air density increases and decreases in these differing temperatures and so massively affects parameters such as AFR’s (air-fuel ratios). Again we remap your vehicle to work for an optimum for our environment; this doesn’t mean you can’t subject your vehicle to a two week driving holiday in the South of France just so that it will work to an optimum here.
• Emissions Directives – There are hundreds of different regulations across the globe that vehicle manufacturers have to adhere to, from stringent CO2 laws in the important market of California to the stringent noise regulations of China and Switzerland, and everything in between.
• Commercial Restraints – If your car was more powerful in Japan than it is in the UK you’d be pretty upset, equally if your vehicle was more powerful than an identical car in L.A they’d be pretty upset. It would also be an administrative nightmare for manufacturers to produce slightly differing derivatives for each market place so they produce one vehicle for all and this is what leaves room for improvement.

Due to all of these points your vehicle is a diluted version of what it could be. We make some gentle increases to a few key parameters which produce some extreme improvements in performance, bhp, torque, fuel economy and emissions.

We put our money where our mouth is and so:

• All of our remaps are ISO certified
• All of our remaps come with a lifetime warranty
• All of our remaps comes with a lifetime guarantee
• All of our remaps come with a money back promise

Yes it can be.

Whilst we don’t save a copy of your original state of tune, our master file writers come from a background writing files for ECU manufacturers and so we are in the best position to do this. So far to date we have never been asked to reverse a tune for one of our customers.

No. And here’s why, read it all, it’s a long one but an important one.

Firstly all of our remaps are completely undetectable. We write back original alarm and immobiliser codes as well as the original check-sum. An unbelievable amount of tuners don’t do this.

Secondly, we only make gentle increases to data which aren’t far from manufacturers original parameters; it doesn’t take huge increases to produce a lot of extra power and torque, just specialist knowledge.

Official main agent dealerships don’t have the ability to read vehicle ECU’s, when they have a problem they send them to people like us. The only way a remap could be detected is if the ECU is removed from the vehicle and sent back to the ECU manufacturer i.e. Bosch, Siemens, Denso for evaluation and that’s going a long way.

A few years back the EU created a legislation called ‘Block Exemption’. This regulation, in brief, states that a business can’t force its customers to only use them; i.e. if you replace the exhaust on your Ford Focus with a performance exhaust your vehicle is still covered under the manufacturer warranty, because it’s not fair to make you go back to Ford for a replacement. Equally if the component you’re upgrading provides efficiency benefits then it is covered under this same legislation, and that is what covers ECU remapping.

The only exception of where a remap would void a warranty is if the remap directly caused the failure of a component. Fortunately for you, all of our remaps are ISO certified meaning that the processes, testing and quality assurances we have in place means we will never make a mistake and over tune your vehicle. This hasn’t and will never happen, but to put our money where our mouth is we have an insurance backed guarantee scheme. This means that if for some reason you have an engine failure and it’s because of a remap our insurance company will cover all the costs in getting your vehicle back to its former state. So far we’ve never made a claim on this policy and anticipate we never will, again you are having your vehicle mapped by a professional with true automotive knowledge and experience.

Once your vehicle has been remapped we provide our own lifetime warranty for your ECU.

The responsible answer to this is yes.

As mentioned elsewhere in this section all of our remaps are completely undetectable, except to the original ECU manufacturer i.e. if somebody wanted to prove your vehicle had been remapped they would have to remove the ECU from your vehicle and send it back to the manufacturer for analysis.

Even then we only make gentle increase so they would have to prove it didn’t leave the factory like that, which is very difficult to prove. A good example is when we remapped our own Audi RS6 5.0 V10 Bi-Turbo, the vehicle had a manufacturer quoted power figure of 580PS, yet our vehicle made 615PS factory fresh and unmodified. Equally, we recently remapped two identical Range Rover Evoques which had 500 miles on the clock each and were unmodified. Both vehicles were identical with matching quoted factory power figures of 150PS, one vehicle showed 158PS on the dyno and the other 146PS proving that there’s no guarantee of the original factory state of tune of your vehicle.

Lots of insurance companies don’t increase premiums after a remap, especially if the vehicle has had an Eco-Blue remap designed to reduce emission and improve fuel economy.

Yes it can.

Very, very occasionally a main dealer will reflash an ECU with latest software and it will wipe the map but it happens very infrequently and we reinstall the map for free.

Firstly all of our remaps are written by master-file writers with years of experience doing nothing but file writing. We develop all of our original file remaps on our 3000bhp, 4x4, motorsport dyno and perform extensive testing so we know the increases are impressive yet safe and within the parameters of what your vehicle can take.

All of our remaps are bespoke, written from data we’ve read from your very own vehicles ECU. We then modify that data to produce the desired effect i.e. more power, more torque, lower down power, better mpg, lower vehicle emission or all of these things. This modified tune is then uploaded to your vehicle and this is a bespoke remap.

Unlike most tuning boxes our remaps don’t leave a tag on your ECU so they’re undetectable. And because our remaps are bespoke they can alleviate things like particular flat spots or areas of over/under fuelling, whereas a tuning box provides a generic remap written for an example of your vehicle that might be very different from your vehicle i.e newer/older, higher/lower mileage and therefore can’t provide a personalised increase in power or improvement in efficiency.

No.

In fact quite the opposite, we’ll tune your engine to work to an optimum and therefore the lifespan of your engine should be increased.

Yes and we frequently do.

An engine become less efficient as it gets older and tends to be quite dramatically down on power from its original state of tune. We frequently map vehicles and vans that have done up to and around 200,000 miles and often the improvements in fuel consumption can be as impressive as 25% on these higher mileage vehicles. Our record is a 278,000 mile Volkswagen Golf.... can you beat this record?

Most vehicles can be remapped.

Reference our vehicle list on this website or give us a call to be sure. Details of the types of tuning are below:

• OBD Tuning - Vehicles from year 2000 onwards
  Most vehicles from the year 2000 onwards can be remapped, although there are a few exceptions. For most vehicles it’s a very simple process which can be done through your vehicles OBD port (on board diagnostic port) and should only take a couple of hours at most.
• Bench Tuning - Vehicles from year 2000 onwards
  On some other vehicles the process is slightly different and we’ll need your vehicle in our workshop so we can complete what we call ‘bench-tuning’. This is when we remove the ECU from your vehicle and connect our equipment directly to the circuit board of your ECU. This is becoming a more common place tuning requirement for modern vehicles (post 2010).
• Chip Tuning – From vehicles up to year 2000
  For most vehicles older than the year 2000 back to the mid 1990’s we can tune your vehicle with a chip. This is when we solder a physical replacement chip to your vehicles ECU circuit board. Our master file writer for this method found fame writing and developing the chip tunes for the BMW Touring car programme in the 1990’s and is a very well respected tuner in the world of touring cars.

No. Your fuel consumption will improve after a remap.

After a performance remap most vehicles see an improvement in fuel consumption between 5-15%

After an Eco-Blue (economy) remap most vehicles see an improvement in fuel consumption between 10-25%

All vehicles see a reduction in emissions after a performance or Eco-Blue remap.

Quite the opposite.

If your vehicle has already been modified then a remap will bring out the best in those modifications. We’ll work with you to develop a perfect, bespoke map to work in harmony with the enhancements you’ve already made to your vehicle.

Then let us know and we’ll write a remap that is future/modification proof.

Because our maps are bespoke we can tailor it to suit future modifications and enhancements. We’ll also advise on future modifications you can complete on your vehicle based on budget and what you’re trying to achieve.

In 95% of cases no.

Our remaps provide up to 30% more power and torque but most vehicles are set up to handle much more power than they actually have. If you have any concerns or would like to upgrade any other components on your vehicle then speak to us for advice first.

We make mild increases and enhancements to the following parameters of data within your vehicles ECU that control engine power, bhp, torque, fuel consumption and emissions; these include but are not limited to:

• Torque Structure Alterations
• Boost Pressure
• Boost Pressure Requests
• Boost Pressure Limits
• Ignition Advance
• Injection Timing
• Injection Quantity
• Fuel Rail Pressure

Along with a number of other engine related limiters.

The process varies from vehicle to vehicle but can take from as little as an hour to an entire day. Please give us a call to discuss your exact vehicle and the process to tune it.

No, we have shared access to a 3000bhp, 4x4, motorsport derived Mustang dyno which is located in the West Midlands. All of our customers have the option of a before and after run on this dyno for a small charge.

Our performance remaps are designed to focus on extracting more power and torque from your vehicle with only a secondary concern for improving economy (improved fuel economy is a bi-product of a performance remap).

An Eco-Blue economy remap is designed to increase fuel economy with a secondary concern for reducing CO2 emissions (a gentle increase in bhp and torque is a bi-product of an Eco-Blue remap).

For most customers it’s simply because you want a faster vehicle, but more frequently it’s customers who want improved fuel economy.

When it usually costs thousands of pounds to replace your vehicle a simple remap will only usually cost a few hundred and can completely transform your vehicle making it feel like a new one.

Common improvements are:

• Up to 30% increase in bhp
• Up to 30% increase in torque
• Up to 30% improvement in mpg
• Reduction in harmful CO2 emissions
• Improved drivability of your vehicle

No, unlike other vehicle tuners we won’t rip you off.

Stage 1, 2, 3 etc remapping is basically how much the file writer turns the wick up on the file they write. It’s the exact same process to remap a car to increase the horse-power by 10bhp as it is to increase the horse-power by 30bhp, it’s simply numbers in boxes on a spread-sheet.

Before I started Performance Blue when I had my own cars remapped this used to wind me up the most, how can tuners charge more money to give you 10bhp instead of 30bhp. It’s cheap practice, underhand, unprofessional, unethical and something Performance Blue will never do. The first remap we will write for you will be the best it can be and if for any reason we find a way of writing it better for more power in the future we’ll remap it again for free.

We do offer stage tuning. This is where we provide other upgrades along with our remaps such a exhausts, bigger turbo-chargers, shorter supercharger pulleys, induction systems, sports catalysts, bigger injectors, uprated fuel pumps, intercoolers, gas-flowed cylinder Heads etc. However in all of these packages there are only ever two types of tunes we provide, performance where we remap the car to its maximum safest point or economy.

We have several options to make it easy for you.

If your vehicle can be tuned through the OBD port (on board diagnostics port) then we can either come to you at your home, office or address of choice (provided we have access to power source and a safe place to work).

Alternatively you can come to one of our locations to complete the remap.

If you’re vehicle needs to go through the bench tuning process then this needs to be completed at either our address in Manchester or Macclesfield depending on which one is closer to you.

Give us a call, we’ll invite you to come and visit us or we’ll come out to you. We don’t bite, we are quite boring, all we talk is cars

Contact Details:

Colin Jackson - Director
Telephone: 07775 439 279

Robert Chalmers - Director
Telephone: 07794 893 232

Locations:

HQ – Main Tuning Shop & Warehouse
Performance Blue
Calamine Street
Macclesfield
Cheshire
SK11 7HU

Local Directors Address (We will happily tune your vehicle from here if it is nearer for you)
12 Riding Fold Lane
Worsley
Manchester
M28 2PY

72 Hiltop Avenue
Cheadle Hulme
Cheshire
SK8 7JA