Can a Novice Car Owner Remap the ECU of His Car?

Now day’s trend of remapping car’s engine has become a common practice adopted by most of the car owners planning to buy the new car for driving by selling their existing car. It is a universal truth that every machine depreciates due to its regular wear and tear and therefore engine of your car is not an exception to it. The engine of your car is like heart in the human body and as due to regular pumping and hectic working schedule people of today’s generation have to undergo different types of heart surgeries to enjoy healthy life. Similarly as your branded car gets older there is decline in its performance and resulting in low power and torque generation efficiencies followed by decrease in fuel efficiency figures.

The problem becomes complex for the car owner when he has to invest huge portion of his income towards the maintenance of his car. To get rid of this problem the person tries to sale out his beloved car with half heartedly. But, interestingly today going through the vast technical developments the owners can remap the engine control unit (ECU) of their car and enjoy the drive of their dear car as they had been before.

What is ECU Remapping?

In simple words, it can be defined as the process in which the settings or program of engine control unit is re-written by erasing the existing setting. Doing this result in improved power and torque generation efficiency which helps in enhancing the fuel efficiency figures of your car.

Today there are various car modifiers which by making use of necessary remap tools improve the overall performance of your car.

Can I remap my car myself?

It would be interested to know that cars manufactured today are miles ahead from their predecessors and today their performance can be enhanced more easily with help of computers. Interestingly going through this there are lots of car enthusiasts who prefer to remap their car at their end by purchasing the required car ECU remapping software from any of the modifiers online. But, now the question arises that is it possible for a layman or a person with substantial knowledge of computers to remap the engine control unit of his car?

Well an answer to this question in simple words is “NO”. This is mainly because all of us are mostly amateur drivers who consider car cleaning, filling petrol and air pressure and checking engine oil, brake oil, and coolant level sufficiency for car maintenance. Whereas the fact is that car maintenance is beyond all these and also involves towards the maintenance of various other components too including clutch system, braking system, suspension system and many more. Anyhow at present we are discussing about car engine unit remapping so returning back to our topic if you are planning to remap the car yourself then there are certain factors about which you should learn before trying your hands on the new project.

Understanding the working of engine:

The engine of car operates with the mixture of fuel and air. Although there are various parts which help in generating the power inside the engine causing the wheels and different components including clutch, gearbox, pistons, driveshafts, connecting rods making your vehicle run smoothly on the road.

The mixture of fuel and air is critical combination. The excess of fuel will not ignite whereas abundance of air will let the mixture explode like a bomb that could damage the engine and other parts. While determining the settings of these mixtures in an engine different types of parameters are determined by the manufacturers which result in smooth flow of these elements across the engine. When you remap the engine control unit the new settings are determined in accordance to determined parameters.

Risks involved in remapping the ECU yourself:

1. Due to lack of knowledge you might get the engine of your car damaged;
2. Although engine remapping is not covered under the warranty, but still trying the same without bringing the same in knowledge of original manufacturer might invalidate the warranty of your car;
3. The keys of your car might stop functioning;
4. The overall performance of your car might be affected.

Benefits:

1. Improved power, torque and fuel consumption efficiencies;
2. You can enable the not required features like automatic gearbox shift points, DPF, traction control, launch control, EGR etc.
3. Enjoy the improved functionality of components like brakes, suspension system, exhaust system and other.