Re-mapping an older car

[Alex225]

I have been considering a re-map of my E320 (3.2 I6 CDI) for a little while. I have owned a re-mapped 2.0 turbo charged petrol car and it was great.

That car only had 50k on the clock when I bought it, despite being re-mapped for the 4-5 prior to me owning it. By contrast my E320 has 125k on the clock and is 15 years old but does run absolutely brilliantly.

My question. Would it be wise to re-map a car at this stage in it's life? I know these cars are capable of much higher mileages but I under no illusion that a re-map could cause additional stress to the engine.

Any thoughts would be great. I'm aware these engines can respond to a re-map extremely well in terms of power and economy but I don't want to at the risk of causing issues.

 

[merc85]

i had my e320 cdi rempapped at 84k Went really well after, Never hurt anything sold it at over 100k

 

[E55BOF]

I bought a 2003 E320 CDI with 170K miles on it, which had had a TDI tuning box on it for four years and 40K miles. It was fine, and ran very well.

 

[Alex225]

I take it the TDI tuning boxes are pretty good as well? I did look at them, I'm guessing they're a generic re-map but handy to be able to swap maps and not unreasonable at £370.

 

[E55BOF]

I thought the one on the 320 was pretty good; good enough, in fact, that I bought a new generation one for the E350, and had it reflashed and transferred it to the E320 V6. I'm sure the boxes are generic maps, and all the tuners seem to claim, accurately or not, much the same results. The TDI boxes both worked well for me.

 

[GordonTarling]

A tuning box is not a remap, it simply fudges things to get the ECU to add more fuel when needed. A proper remap will improve things much more. I had an S211 IL6 320cdi until the beginning of this year and always shied away from getting it remapped (even though I wanted to) because of my worries about the gearbox being able to cope with the extra power. I fitted a tuning box to my old S210 IL6 cdi and removed it again after about a month. It did give extra power, but the Royal Navy makes less dense smokescreens. I also had a V6 320cdi and had that properly remapped, which was WELL worth doing!

 

[m600]

you can always opt for a standalone ecu!