It is always possible to get more power out of an engine. As long as you don't use that extra power very frequently, it won't cause any harm (B.T.W. who uses the full performance of a standard FL2 continuously ?) but if you want this kind of tuning in order to be faster than all the others at the traffic lights, or to drive at top speed on a Deutsche Autobahn, you should know you'll shorten the lifetime considerably.

The Freelander's Aisin Warner AWF21 automatic gearbox is designed for a max. torque of 450 Nm.
It can't be healthy not to respect this.

Scotster,

This is my understanding of the reasons for the slight de-tune. Feel free to correct where necessary. (I'll go and put my flame proof suit on now )

Land Rover / Ford / All manufacturers all slightly de-tune their engines due to the varying quality of fuel available world wide. This then avoids problems with poorer quality fuels in higher performance engines.

I know that Subaru state the minimum octane rating of the fuel that is meant to be used and they also offer a factory approved ECU upgrade that requires the use of super unleaded to run without performance issues.

With poorer quality fuels in more highly tuned engines this can cause reliability issues that would then be needed to be repaired under warranty at the manufacturers cost, hence the slight reduction in performance to compensate.

Due to the relatively consistent quality of fuel available to us, it is then possible to re-tune the ECU to take advantage of this without over stressing the engine excessively. Obviously if fuel of consistent quality is unavailable then a remap would be a very bad idea and may cause reliability issues.

The trade off is that if you use all of the available performance all the time (Thrashing it) then there will be a reduction in fuel efficiency as it will be throwing a lot more fuel into the engine. However, if you use the increase in torque for acceleration (i.e. overtaking) without changing to a lower gear then you may see a slight increase in economy due to reduced engine rev's.

As Paul says, if you are always driving flat out then you will shorten the lifespan of the engine whether it has been tuned or not. I also agree with the fact that the gearbox also has to be taken into account and by the looks of things the Spider Tune unit would not be very good for an auto box as they are quoting 540 Nm Maximum output (From the Banchory4x4 website figures). The Bluefin unit would be at the upper limit of the auto box at a max torque output of 442 Nm. Superchips do quote an increase of 84 Nm but not at the max torque reading (as seen in the power graph). These maximum values are usually set quite a bit below the maximum value that will cause failure to the box, but should not really be exceeded for a long and healthy life .

I guess that you would need to find out the maximum torque for the manual gearbox as well, before upgrading anything, however Superchips will provide a 12 month warranty on anything that has deemed to have been voided by the manufacturer as caused by the modification. How much this warranty can be relied upon is as yet unknown.

At the end of the day - you pay your money and take the risks if you choose.

Best advice is to research everything thoroughly before taking that choice.

As I said above, this is just my take on this. It is not to be taken as Gospel. - Disclaimer Finished.

If I am wrong, feel free to correct me.

Sorry for the ramble.

Cheers,

Steve

Here is the technical blurb from another tuning company. They do not do the FL2, but have the technical info explanation I was gibbering on about above.

http://www.celtictuning.co.uk/technical-info.html

Cheers,

Steve

Last edited by StevenA on 28th Nov 2007 1:32 pm. Edited 1 time in total

scotster wrote:

I'm very interested by the tuning 'idea' but have a fundamental doubt;

If it is so good... increases bhp, doesnt over stress the engine....how come Landrover/ford - who must have at least a few clever engineers and have spent at least a few dolllars on the project don't supply the 'correct' engine mapping out of the box?

There MUST be some trade off? No? Is the tradeoff just lower mpg?

Scotster

I agree on the "why don't Landrover" part

and i couldn't afford to lose anymore mpg  Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Top response Steven (assuming its corrrect)

If fuel quality is the main driver then surely you would release an ECU map for Europe and one say for Africa where you may have less consistent fuel?

A disclaimer to have the Africa ECU installed in case of driving in countries where fuel issues may be a concern would be all it would take.

Or a button on the dash that said 'premium fuel' 'standard fuel' or 'chip fat'

Anyway, your basic story sounds fine. Of course I understand all the stuff about thrashing the engine but the question I do have is would the engine log pick up on all this?

If I blew the engine/gear box couldi remove the unit (standalone units) or get the ecu reverted back to the original map and my trusty dealer would be none the wiser?

Still not going first with tuner

S. '57 GS TD4 in Stornoway. Privacy, Leather, Tred Cills. From ebay etc.. 18" 12 spoke HSE alloys, rear spoiler, clear side repeaters with clear leds, led interior light to replace bulbs, sports exhaust trim, TomTom 720.
Favourite Off road vehicle, still my Santa Cruz Mountain Bike! http://www.team-banana-racing.com

Scotster,

I think that the main reason is cost that this is not done as standard. It would mean that they would have to adapt every car differently on the production line depending on where it is going. Also, there is nothing to say that you are not going to drive from Blighty down through Africa or the likes & would then have to get it mapped for that country.

I know that the guy from Celtic Tuning can carry out a Dual map on the likes of the new Astra diesel that can change from normal map to a performance map using the sport button on the dash. The standard car uses this button to change ECU settings and is then adapted to use the new maps and his higher power map is up from 150 bhp to 205 bhp. This can then be selected on the fly using the factory button. See Link Below for a review of the Astra 888 which had a similar setup:

http://www.topgear.com/drives/E7/A3/roadtests/25/01.html

As far as I am aware, Subaru's could also be remapped with a dual map. Not sure what button it used to swap maps but I think it could have been the rear de-mister button (Haven't had my Subaru for a while now so I have forgotten ). I am not sure if this could be done to the FL2 using a similar method. It would need something that is linked to the ECU, but again I don't have the specialist knowledge for this.

With regard to the engine log, I am not sure if the Land Rover diagnostic computer can detect it if it has been put back to the factory map or not. It may log the time of the last ECU flash which would probably be just before it went in, but you would need to ask someone that understands this a bit better as I don't know what these things pick up. The engines I work on don't have all the fancy gizmo's on them for this.

Cheers,

Steve

Cheers Steven.

I don't think the challenge would be cost - flashing a E2PROM with one map or another costs nada. I'm not sure that LR could manage that though especially if they can't manage to ship factory fit options such as climate packs that have been ordered reliably

Driving from UK to Africa? Do that often do we?

You just go for the Africa map from the outset, surely?

I'm sure the log would detect a Map or ECU flash, it may even reset it completely.
Anyway, enough rambling.

Who's going first? '57 GS TD4 in Stornoway. Privacy, Leather, Tred Cills. From ebay etc.. 18" 12 spoke HSE alloys, rear spoiler, clear side repeaters with clear leds, led interior light to replace bulbs, sports exhaust trim, TomTom 720.
Favourite Off road vehicle, still my Santa Cruz Mountain Bike! http://www.team-banana-racing.com

Yeah, you're probably right about the potential for mistakes as this forum has quite a few examples of mucked up orders.

When I last spoke to my local dealers, he did say that they were carrying out remaps of the older models, but at the time there wasn't any available for the FL2. Don't know if this is still the case, but as far as he was concerned if you got their remap then the warranty would still be valid.

Don't know if this is still the case though.

I know a few people that have had their Subaru's remapped without any problems, but they have been custom maps due to exhaust modifications / new turbo's / etc. but they did not have the warranty issue to deal with.

I think if a dealer version was available then it would be a no-brainer, but I'm a bit like you and not sure about mucking up the warranty on a £20K+ car to get to the next section of road works quicker.

Had 2 Subaru's & a diesel Audi A4 and kept them all standard due to warranty concerns.

The Bluefin looks OK if your car is 2 years old as it has a 1 year backup warranty with it, but from new I too share your concerns with the manufacturers warranty.

Time will tell though.

It is up to the individual to decide if they see it as a worthwhile modification. Me - I like the idea, but also have concerns over the warranty so doubtful if I would do it. I just found the web site so thought I would let people know who may be looking for a bit more power that can be set back to standard as they wanted.

I have bigger doubts over the plugin units as I don't understand how they work with the ECU. At least with a remap all the factory safe guards are still available. I don't know if this is the case with the plugin units as they appear to trick the ECU into changing the fueling which could cause problems to be missed by the factory units.

Best advice is that if you have doubt's about it then give it a wide berth.

Also if you are not that bothered about a slight increase in performance then save your money.

However if that two don't describe you, then go for it & let everyone on here know about it to allow them to make a more educated decision.

Cheers,

Steve

I used to frequently (and still do) use TT forum when I had one for a couple of years. The tuning scene is very very prominent in VW/Audi circles due to the quality of the engines/components. Stevens opinion of the situation is one which is consistantly quoted as being correct.

Manufacturers will never give us the capacity of the engines they fantastically engineer, why should they? It's a damn good bet that its the "suits" who make the money that decide what the engine options are not the engineers who actually design them.

My TT was a TTR150Bhp but it had the same 1.8T engine as the TT180Bhp and TT225Bhp just tuned differently and without quattro to control the extra power but that's dynamics not the ability of the engine. Even the owners of the 225 model can tune theirs to 250+. Who makes the cash by having 3 variants instead of one? Mr Audi!!

I'm not a big fan of the scene but horses for courses and all that.

joe MY11 Fuji white Td4 150 GS straight up no mixer.

Thanks for the input Joe.

Does that mean they are going to bring out a FL2 2.2 TD SPORTS using the same engine?

Is anyone running this engine in any car with a higher rated bhp? '57 GS TD4 in Stornoway. Privacy, Leather, Tred Cills. From ebay etc.. 18" 12 spoke HSE alloys, rear spoiler, clear side repeaters with clear leds, led interior light to replace bulbs, sports exhaust trim, TomTom 720.
Favourite Off road vehicle, still my Santa Cruz Mountain Bike! http://www.team-banana-racing.com

One of the cars equiped with the same engine is the Citroën C5. The engine develops 170 hp. and 370 Nm. Contrary to the engine of the FL2 it has 2 turbo's.