ECU Reprogramming

[W210 Fan]

Does anybody happen to know if the ECU in my E55 is re-programable? I was thinking about switchable maps in an aftermarket ECU, no power for fuel saving, standard map and a stupid one, then I wondered if I had to actually buy an after market ECU or I could do it with mine???

Anybody any ideas?

 

[Birdman]

Hi W210 Fan - Good choice of car!

I looked into ECU reprogramming a while back. Then, it was only available from a German company at around £900 iirc. Delimiting the standard ECU gives around 172mph and with an additional 30bhp released by optimising the ECU they claim this rose by around 10mph. Not that you'd need 180mph in leafy Surrey.

The same deal is on offer from http://www.speedtuningusa.com but at a more reasonable $325. The first problem is you have to send the ECU away for reprogramming. Then there's all the 'whatifs'. The ECU is very expensive to replace, sending it away to a foreign company may not appeal, and if the fuelling map isn't exactly right you could in a worst case scenario be looking at a new engine. But then, life is short and if the idea works for you, maybe I'd overcome my natural caution and try it too...

 

[scumbag]

check out this thread.

http://www.mbclub.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=24895

 

[Birdman]

I've followed that robust debate and am no nearer to an answer. They seem to have abandoned the quest too!
Maybe remapping's best left to individual bravehearts!

 

[scumbag]

I've followed that robust debate and am no nearer to an answer. They seem to have abandoned the quest too!
Maybe remapping's best left to individual bravehearts!

how about emailing both the companies on that thread. DMS and the other one?

they will tell you what they can do.

Mine was remapped by a laptop, but the very first ECU off this type of car had to be taken out so they could get to it and see what was in it so to speak.

DMS advertised that the SLK would be upped from 360-382bhp. altho they have since readjusted the remap to make it 400bhp. they will be able to tell you what they can do for your car, if anything.

http://www.dmsautomotive.com/
http://www.torquingbhp.co.uk/

 

[miro]

Hi W210 Fan - Good choice of car!

I looked into ECU reprogramming a while back. Then, it was only available from a German company at around £900 iirc. Delimiting the standard ECU gives around 172mph and with an additional 30bhp released by optimising the ECU they claim this rose by around 10mph. Not that you'd need 180mph in leafy Surrey.

The same deal is on offer from http://www.speedtuningusa.com but at a more reasonable $325. The first problem is you have to send the ECU away for reprogramming. Then there's all the 'whatifs'. The ECU is very expensive to replace, sending it away to a foreign company may not appeal, and if the fuelling map isn't exactly right you could in a worst case scenario be looking at a new engine. But then, life is short and if the idea works for you, maybe I'd overcome my natural caution and try it too...

That dyno curve is a magnificent work of fiction .... it has a wonderful sense of optimism.

 

[scumbag]

That dyno curve is a magnificent work of fiction .... it has a wonderful sense of optimism.

as i am a numpty, would you be so kind as to give a bit more info on your comment please?

i am not suggesting you dont know what you are taking about, but taking it as a learning point! You, as in me, are never too old to learn etc!

I have read, and kind of have an idea, that thread about torque etc. and the scmubagmobile will be going on a rolling road thingy soon. so I may find it useful!

Have I made sense?

 

[miro]

as i am a numpty, would you be so kind as to give a bit more info on your comment please?

i am not suggesting you dont know what you are taking about, but taking it as a learning point! You, as in me, are never too old to learn etc!

I have read, and kind of have an idea, that thread about torque etc. and the scmubagmobile will be going on a rolling road thingy soon. so I may find it useful!

Have I made sense?

Only supercharged cars have a linear increase in power with RPM. The limiting factor is the supply of air not fuel. The only way to add air in this manner is via supercharging.

Thus the curve is a fiction if it is based on a petrol car with the same engine with the same air system.

The only such codinf variant I know of is on the Mercedes diesel which has the same engine and the same ECU for several powerplants. All they did was code the ECU for less power so they could sell it for less as a less powerful car.

An OEM ECU change to the uprated ECU produced more power. I dont know of any other examples of such blatant simplicity. Even the M271 has slight hardware changes.

 

[R2D2]

Just to add to the debate, on my old C200 I had looked into the remapping options and eventually went to Sanspeed in Bexleyheath. Sanspeed have run rally cars for years and have a big tuning set up and a rolling road that copes with autos as well as manuals.

Sanspeed do Superchips but they also offer custom tuning on the ECU. My C200 w202 started life with 136bhp and by the time we had done six rolling road sesssions, added a k and n filter and tuned it to run on 99ron fuel, we got figures of 150bhp amd a peak torque of 183lbft. Whilst a 10% increase in power was only small as it was a normally aspirated car, torque accross the range went and in places by nearly 30%.

Whilst the exercise didnt make my car a dragster, it did make it much more fun to drive and it gained much better throttle response. Several people on the forum drove my car or had lifts on it and commented on how nicely it went.

 

[W210 Fan]

Thanks guys, I shall give the chaps at DMS and torquing BHP and ring on tues and see exactly what I can do with the AMG ECU

 

[Birdman]

That dyno curve is a magnificent work of fiction .... it has a wonderful sense of optimism.

I'm sure you're onto something here.

The German company I mentioned in my earlier post gave as its explanation for these perfectly linear improvements to normally aspirated engines, that the manufacturer deliberately sub-optimised the fuelling parameters to allow for the poorer fuel mixtures available in some markets particularly the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the sub-Sahara countries. Their engineers tweaked the ECU mapping to match the excellent pump fuels available in the rich decadent Western capitalist countries, thus enabling us rich decadents better to exploit our own home-grown technologies. (They didn't actually put it like that.)

The Germans also charged a decadent price for doing the maths. Now as always the market is bringing down the price of performance.

Personally, I use Optimax whenever I'm feeling rich and stupid, and cheap unleaded at all other times.