55 plate vectra 1.9cdti sri 150ps chip/remap

hi

Thinking of either a remap of one of the plug in modifications to increase bhp and torque. Would appreciate any recomendations as there seem to be a lot of companies out there offering this service. Some say they are recommended by vauxhall sports club etc etc.

My vectra is quick enough but a little extra will help keep the saxo's at bay

Thanks

Blakey

Reply to
colinblake
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A proper remap will do the trick. The plugin boxes are nowhere near as good from experience. It should add another 30BHP and make it far more responsive. Most things can see off a Saxo, you will be leaving the Civic R well behind. if you want a decent job you will be looking at a minimum of £500.

Reply to
Ian

Thx,

Any suggestions of places to do these mods. I am based in Norfolk, but have car, will travel.

:)

Reply to
colinblake

Depends which one. Shite as it may be, a VTs will nail most Vectras without breaking a sweat.

Hmmm. You appear to be full of shit. Bad luck.

Reply to
Lordy.UK

hmm

i seem to have opened up a topic of vectra vs saxo

yes a vtr did give me a run for my money.

To be truthfull i have no idea what the top speed of a vtr is and havent a lot of interest. All im interested in is remap info for a vectra

Get a grip peeps!

Reply to
colinblake

You need to speak to JackH, sometime poster in this parish.

He's been doing a bit of work for someone with the kit and a rolling road not too far from you.

Reply to
SteveH

I know a chap who had a very hairy turbo'd VTS. That would blitz most Vectras, but wasn't very good at straight lines.

That's just bollocks. You'd need a 3.2 Vectra and over 300 hp to do that, I should imagine.

Reply to
Pete M

Hello there

Okey dokey... most of my experience is with VAG TDIs, but the principals are the same so I'll try and help below.

On the VectraC forum, there seems to be, (or rather, there seemed to be the last time I spent any time over on there), a fair number of posters who were happy with the extra performance they were getting out of a CDTi 150 with a basic resistor tuning box, which they tend to refer to as a 'Caterman box', apparently named after the poster who first found the boxes on eBay rather than the company he was getting them from.

You can pick these up for a VectraC like you have for around =A350 to =A360 IIRC.

These boxes work by altering the values certain sensors in the engine bay are reporting back to the ECU. In the case of VAG PD TDIs, the ECU is being told that the fuel coming into the engine is much colder than it actually is, and the ECU then alters the map to suit this 'colder' fuel.

The net result is more power, (and a bit more smoke under heavy throttle conditions).

Drive flat out everywhere and the economy noticeably drops... drive 'normally', as in not full on throttle everywhere, and the economy stays about the same, but the fuel computer will tell you you're doing fantastic MPG. ;-)

However... these boxes can occasionally cause for the ECU to detect 'CEL' codes, (basically error codes, and especially if your car has been inflicted with a 'DPF or 'Diesel Particle Filter' in the exhaust' which incidentally may also die as a result), and you will normally need to get the car hooked up to a diagnostics machine to clear these.

With VAG stuff, we use something that's relatively easy to get hold of for this purpose, as in the VAG-COM suite - I'm not sure how freely available any equivalent is for CDTi / Multijet engined cars, but someone on the VectraC board should be able to advise you on this.

Earlier non-PD VAG TDIs didn't suffer with error codes being kicked in by a tuning box, and had a variable resistor, so you could adjust the box so the car created quite an impressive smoke screen under full throttle. :-)

The other thing these boxes don't really do, is alter the shape of the torque curve of your car - most standard VAG PD TDIs I've looked at recently tend to have a 50 to 100 rpm wide spike of peak torque around the 2,000rpm mark.

A tuning box keeps this spike in place, albeit with more torque overall but with it tailing off to nearer the standard level at the higher end of the rev range, hence why anything tuned in this way tends to not have anything in the way of more top speed or power to get up hills etc, if kept at higher revs.

Anyway... I've had stuff on the dyno which I've done a run in without a resistor box and then with it, and they do increase available power.

And I've run enough PD TDIs in the last two years with and without these boxes to determine that economy overall isn't affected in normal driving conditions.

The alternative to the above (or living with it standard) is, as you've mentioned above, getting it remapped.

This is normally done in one of three ways, with me having now experienced the first two at first hand:

  1. Flashing the ECU with a ready made third party map.
  2. Fitting an inline piggyback unit to the factory ECU which then allows you to set your specific car up, taking into account any other modifcations it may have had done.
  3. Fitting a completely new third party programmable ECU.

Option one, I recently had done to my Passat 1.9 TDI Sport (130), which bar the remap, is totally standard.

I've seen peak BHP rise from 142bhp to 173bhp, and peak torque rise from a spike of about 235 lb/ft to a much more consistent 273 lb/ft, with the torque curve remaining consistently higher over the whole rev range.

I suspect the dyno being used is slightly optimistic given some of the results we've had for other stuff run on it, but discounting that, the above figures are still good for before and after comparison purposes.

Overall I'm happy... I saw 50mpg last weekend cruising about the countryside last weekend, it tends to average 47mpg on a motorway run into London, and on a clear autobahn, it now nudges 140mph on the clock - not bad for a barge which has now become affectionately known as 'The Stormtrooper'. :-)

A remap like this would normally cost about =A3500, and the benefits are that because all someone has done is plug a lead into the OBD port and uploaded a new map to the ECU, it's virtually undetectable, at least to the eye. That, and the same lead can be plugged back in to put the car back to standard.

It seems like a lot of money given how quickly you can upload the map onto an ECU... and it is, but you (and the dealer supplying the map), are paying more for the time and development costs of the company that supplied the map than anything else.

The second option, I saw being put into play this evening on an Audi A3 1.9TDI (105). With the main focus on just fuelling tweaks, we saw a before bhp figure of 115bhp rise up to 146bhp.

I didn't note the increase in torque when I looked at the maps on the dyno screen, but it's fair to say it's a lot quicker now on the road than it was standard, and over the next few days we'll be refining the map even more to try to get the best of both worlds, as in more economy when you're driving sensibly and more power when you're not.

We may well be trying this system on my Passat in the near future in order to get a better idea of how it compares to the 'ready made' maps we've used so far.

This option isn't that much dearer by comparison, apparently... something which surprised me given the extra rolling road time required to set it up.

The advantages of this system are that should you have done other mods to the car, the map can be set up to take these into account right the way across the rev range, which should then you getting the best out of your car.

There is also an option to add in a software package that allows you to store different maps on a PDA which you then upload as and when you want to by way of Bluetooth - all good stuff, IMHO.

The main disadvantage to this system is it's a bit obvious, so not ideal for cars still covered by warranty.

The third option is aimed more at the specialised end of the market and I suspect the cost would be a bit prohibitive for something like what either of us own, given the results that can be got from the other methods I've mentioned above.

I may have an alternative option two I can advise on after the end of the month, as I'm off to Italy to look at an alternative system for remapping than the ones we're already using.

=46rom what I've read, the CDTi 150 responds well to remapping, unlike the gutless CDTi 120 inflicted Vectra I briefly owned last year - be glad you didn't end up with one of those!

HTH

-- JackH

Reply to
jackhackettuk

*waves*

I'm 'only' 160ish miles from Norwich, so not exactly on his doorstep. ;-)

-- JackH

Reply to
jackhackettuk

0-60, yes... real world, up the chuff of a Type-R in a straight line, not so sure.

The one I test drove felt very flat and disappointing above 100.

-- JackH

Reply to
jackhackettuk

Thanks for that Jack..

Sounds like a remap is the best bet.

I will try to find somewhere not to far for this.

Reply to
colinblake

Oh, aye. Erm, it's all 'over there' to me ;-)

Reply to
SteveH

As I recall, that engine, when fitted to an Alfa, will easily tweak to over 200bhp.

Reply to
SteveH

I'd be very surprised if you can't find something around Snet.

Reply to
Doki

Doesn't Dave Walker have is Emerald rolling road and Tuning centre somewhere in Norfolk. Now he knows his stuff with petrol and mapping, not sure how up he is on diesels, but with the way car buying and tuning is going it wouldn't surprise me if he was already investigating if not actually already doing.

Reply to
Elder

Lol...........

I really need to have a look around the town I'm living in at moment !

I live in Watton which just happens to be where Dave Walker has his rolling road, 2 mins away.

Thanks

Reply to
colinblake

No worries. Walker is a bit of a legend, and as well as a tuner he is a journo, so if he finds getting more out of a car interesting, it might get mentioned in his column in PPC.

Reply to
Elder

It's a Vectra diesel, so it's highly unlikely.

Reply to
SteveH

Reply to
Pete M

Oh indeedy. If I never get in a Vectra again, I'll be happy. The 2.2CDTi I took around Italy was a complete and utter piece of s**te. Changing to a Focus C-max was actually a pleasure.

Of all the mini-MPVs I've tried (it now seems to be all of them) the C-Max has got to be the best. Short on seats which is a pain, but to drive it is very pleasant compared to the rest. Much better than the Scenic, infinitely better than the Zafira. And the less said about the Tacuma the better.

Reply to
Steve Firth

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