In Australia I have had alot of experience in tuning cars, Fords in particular, with my last car going from 190rear wheel kilowatt to 305rwkw (405HP). I have had numerous tuning units from Piggybacks (Box) to EDITS (ECU). The box format whilst still very good operates by tricking the signals being sent by the cars ECU. In other words it will trick the ECU into thinking it's running a certain fuel or boost ratio when it's not. In some instances this can be dangerous and to a certain extent is outdated technology.

A ECU remap as you guys call it actually changes the factory ECU settings, no tricking, it's as it was set out of the factory but obviously with alot more power. The only downside from the X5's perspective is that if you take it to the dealer and they reflash the ECU with an upgrade you loose your tune.

In Australia we developed a ECU tune which you load in via a little black box directly into the PCM. The box holds 3 tunes for the car and takes 2 minutes to plug in and change the tune. For example you can have a performance tune a standrd tune and a valet tune. The idea is when you take the car back for service you load back in the stock tune and it's undetectable.

The one thing that you have to be careful with in any form of boosting up in particular a turbo car is that the car is Dynoed eg tune on an idividual basis, as mass produced cars these days have different tolerances in the same engines. If you load in a generic tune there is every chance that immediately or over time you will do damage or at worst go bang, it has happened.

The benefits of the X5 however is being a luxury vehicle limitations and tolerances are alot less than cheaper car brands on the market.

From an Australian perspective does anyone know how we can get our hands on the Box's or ECU modifications from overseas?

I have my 120D M Sport re mapped by superchips and got to say I like it they download your current settings on to laptop/pc alter them to be whaterever the setting they use and then re load back up into the car's ECU.

Not sure if AMD do the X5 anyone know?? but was thinking also about Hartge done by Birds they do produce quality stuff.

I would love to hear about any companies in Aus, or companies OS that are prepared to send out to AUS with one of these tunes.

However, my question would be to the guys that already ahve there cars chipped:

Are you getting better fuel economy? even if you drive that bit harder?
Is there a noticeable increase in smoke from exhausts?
Did you have a custom tune or a generic tune in your cars?
What problems if any have you had?

Thanks

JB

I have a tunit and I used to get 19 mpg, now with the tunit I get 20. I know it`s not much but it`s better than nothing.
You do get more smoke if you floor the pedal, but you also get thrown back in to your seat!
Mine is a generic program for the X5 2003.
No problems at all.

:D Whoooooooooshhhhh! That's the sound of a 4.8is going past a chipped 3.0D.. ;) :D


.... followed by the glug, glug, glug noise as more petrol is consumed :rofl: (actually I still average around 19mpg with a best of 27mpg on longer trips)

Yeh, yeh.....Steved I read all of your posts with utmost respect but Sir.......

The depreciation on your 4.8is this year is..... nearly as fast as your car.:thumbup:

Your CSL against my 996 any day! :rofl: ;)

So guys are we talking better fuel economy with the chip? Obviously if you plant the foot it's a different story, but if you drove it the same way you did when stock, I would expect a significant improvement?

Oh BTW how do we convert MPG to L/100Km?

I get 1 MPG more than I did without the tunit box but I get a lot more BHP! I didnt expect better MPG, I expected it to be worse.

Dont know how to convert, sorry.

I noticed on my other cars with Super Chip about a +3 increase in mpg in real terms not taken from the car's OBC.

Dosn't 1 mile = 1.6093KM not sure could be wrong with that one.

Hi JB from a fellow Melbournian. I've been thinking along the same lines as you and when I read your post I 'Googled around' and found a site in the UK http://tunemytdi.com or http://speed-buster.co.uk/ that sounds what we're looking for. Could not find much in OZ but since HP diesels are more common in the UK they would have the tech., experience and demand.

Cheers,
AUSSIE-X5