D5 Tuning Chips - are they really any good?

[PsYcHe]

depends on the map... an 'engine map' which is what I had, will improve the car whenn going... a TCU remap will also involve the gearbox which it 'needs, but may kill the box as Volvo seem to have decided to protect it, given that all 3 of my Audi 4WD Auto boxes are happy with a bucket load of torque being just dumped into them.

[don kalmar union]

The MTE software that I sell here in the UK is written in Sweden using the very same tools that you will find in Volvo's own engine development shop.

You install this product yourself using MTE's unique Softloader device as an interface between your car's OBD port and an XP or Windows 7 (32 bit) equipped laptop.

If you are considering this product it is advised that you check beforehand with a Volvo dealer to make sure that you have their latest software revisions installed as, uniquely, they are incorporated into each individual set of callibrations produced by MTE for you to install.

The MTE product costs £435 including VAT, the outputs depend on which original spec. D5 engine that you have in your car. The Softloader device is supplied against a fully rerturnable deposit of £155.

Earlier D5s (163bhp) will give outputs of 195bhp with 410nm of torque, the later engines give 220bhp with 475nm.



Regards, Don.

[The Painter]

Originally Posted by PsYcHe

depends on the map... an 'engine map' which is what I had, will improve the car whenn going... a TCU remap will also involve the gearbox which it 'needs, but may kill the box as Volvo seem to have decided to protect it, given that all 3 of my Audi 4WD Auto boxes are happy with a bucket load of torque being just dumped into them.

The remap will control the amount of torque available in the lower gears, no remap will allow full torque to be deployed in first and sometimes second gear.

[don kalmar union]

Just to clear a point here.

Volvo have torque limiting in place for those cars with auto. boxes.

MTE do offer the customer the option for deleting this limit on the target outputs in the lower gears.

But, consideration should be given as to precisely why Volvo have it there in the first place. You could say that it is possibly not entirely for component protection but to give a more gentle transition through the gears........

Some MTE customers do opt for torque limit deletion and I have to say to date I have heard of no subsequent related issues.

Regards, Don.

[JimG]

Originally Posted by don kalmar union

Some MTE customers do opt for torque limit deletion and I have to say to date I have heard of no subsequent related issues.

Regards, Don.

That's interesting.

[Blaven11]

Originally Posted by don kalmar union

The MTE software that I sell here in the UK is written in Sweden using the very same tools that you will find in Volvo's own engine development shop.

You install this product yourself using MTE's unique Softloader device as an interface between your car's OBD port and an XP or Windows 7 (32 bit) equipped laptop.

If you are considering this product it is advised that you check beforehand with a Volvo dealer to make sure that you have their latest software revisions installed as, uniquely, they are incorporated into each individual set of callibrations produced by MTE for you to install.

The MTE product costs £435 including VAT, the outputs depend on which original spec. D5 engine that you have in your car. The Softloader device is supplied against a fully rerturnable deposit of £155.

Earlier D5s (163bhp) will give outputs of 195bhp with 410nm of torque, the later engines give 220bhp with 475nm.



Regards, Don.

Do you do devices that can be used on Apple laptops as apart from Windows?

[don kalmar union]

The MTE system only works with an XP or Windows 7 (32 bit) equipped laptop.

Regards, Don.

[SonyVaio]

Originally Posted by Blaven11

Do you do devices that can be used on Apple laptops as apart from Windows?

You can get Parallels or VM Fusion for Mac and then have Win7 or XP running as a virtual machine. That will do the job.

[catbert]

I had my gearbox parameters changed for 1,2 and 3 gears - upped torque 20%. It helped make the car more comfortable around country roads. I see no issues with it as im not racing from standing starts on full throttle. Volvo are putting in place limits that will allow their box to survive for 60k miles of serious abuse until they get past their warrenty. In the end it depends how you drive it.

[dera]

Removing the torque limitation on low gears isn't a problem at all. This is controlled solely by the ECM, TCM doesn't send any torque reduction requests to ECU apart for gear change.

Low gear torque reduction isn't there just to protect the gearbox, but its there to make the car smoother to drive with less wheelspin. Its not even active on all engine/software revisions.

No tuner writes the software "using the very same tools that you will find in Volvo's own engine development shop". You cannot use the tools Volvo uses to modify a binary content. MTE software has the same Vatlab VOLVOID tags as the original software which its based on, meaning that the modifications aren't made to the original project data, but to the compiled binary data.

Volvo uses ETAS tools to write OEM software to their cars. Their tools use "raw data" to write the calibrations (99,98% of which is untouched when modifying a map as what usually we call a "remap"), and then compile that to a binary file which is then flashed into the ECM. A project file is usually some hundreds of megs, which is then compiled by ETAS to a 512k or 1024k file (depends on the engine/ECU type). Tuners work with this binary data, and Volvo's own tools cannot be used to work with that data.