The Hidden Truths Behind The Tuning Industry!

The remapping industry has rapidly grown over the last 10 years with mobile ecu tuners popping up all over the place, this is seeing its fair share of winners and losers in the industry. More and more tuners see remapping as making a quick pound note in your pocket and move onto the next job as quickly as possible, now thats when the problems start to occur. We hear horror stories from catastrophic engine failure to minor niggles and engine lights on, all of which are most unwelcome for consumers and for the good tuners running a honest quality business. So with mobile tuners and garages buying tuning equipment in every town its hard to know who to choose for a remap on your £50,000 new motor right? Choose the wrong tuner and you could be left ringing your breakdown recovery which could be the start of a long and expensive repair and not to mention very stressful.

We have made the way as one of the worlds most trusted tuners and remap software developers, JF Automotive in Maidstone, Kent. We  want to re-install the confidence back into tuning and ecu remapping and have lots on offer to back this up, from money back guarantees, full comprehensive insurance and certified tuning files and most of all trusted, friendly customer service from the the initial enquire to the after sales.

Remap Problems – Its not easy, its a specialist skill!

Company founder and Director, John Ford who has been involved in the motor industry for over 20 years was asked how many ecu remap problems had he come across, he said ” We receive countless number of calls every month from customers who have chosen price over product and ended up unhappy and out of pocket. I remember one customer in particular who was looking for a remap to his Renault Megane 1.5DCI. I pointed out that we offer a 30 day money back guarantee if he wasn’t happy with the product, lifetime support for the tuning file if wiped by the the manufacture, £2million backed warranty and insurance, a custom developed map in the uk on the dyno at JF Automotive. The customer still decided to choose the cheaper mobile tuner over us and while we understand you cant win all business, we felt that another customer was going to get a raw deal. Surprise surprise a little over a week later the customer calls to say he has had it tuned but dons’t feel much better and still had the flat spots he wanted removing. We explained to the customer he should contact the other tuner to ask for a refund and have the car put back to original. After a few phone calls and no one answering the customer gave up trying to contact them and decided he no longer wanted them to work on his pride and joy. So we booked the Megane in for a diagnostics check and offered to check the quality of the maps that had been installed on the customers ecu. The customer turned up on time at our workshop in Maidstone and feeling quite deflated about the whole situation, we made a start straight away. After 20 minutes we had read the maps from the ECU and carried out a full diagnostics check which showed no faults. What we was quite surprised about and even more to the customers amazement and disappointment was that the maps were completely standard stock from renault which was why the customer had felt little improvement to the drive of his car. Plain and simple the customer had been charged £200.00 for absolutely nothing, ripped off in other words.

We then proceeded to write a custom map for the customer while he waited taken a just under an hour to complete. We asked the customer to take the car for a 5-10 minute drive to make sure he was happy and confident in the work we had carried out. Less than 5 minutes later the customer returned with a huge grin with words “thats it, it now drives completely different and what a transformation to my car, thank you”.

So although we had reinstated confidence in the customers that remapping does work when you go to the right place, it left us angered at how there are so many tuners out there to make a quick buck at any expense and is potentially damaging to what is a great industry when you do it right.

ECU Remapping – High BHP figures quoted to sell maps!

Some tuners find it acceptable to quote bhp gains that just cant be achieved on a stock or standard engine. Why do they quote these figures? Well mainly to help them sell their maps to consumers who might be power hungry and will only settle with the highest quoted power maps which in facts normally end up with the slower vehicle and basic map configuration. We asked JF Automotive how they verify there quoted figures and this is the answer John gave ” All our power, torque and fuel economy figures come from the research and development facilities at JFA HQ in Kent, UK. Each vehicle undergoes dyno testing while making small alterations to the maps until they are running at their peak performance while also running well within the safe parameters of the engine and drivetrain components. These vehicles will also been connected to a Euro 5 M.O.T complaint emissions tester making sure every map adjustment keeps the emissions within the manufactures levels, and most of our maps will actually make them run cleaner. We will then save all this data to our database so when that models comes into us or one of our dealers, we know exactly what parameters to alter for the customers requested map”

Don’t choose power over quality, pay that extra for a well developed map that wont let you down and is safe for your vehicle.

Tuners that degrade other tuners

Its very sad to hear in our climate that some tuners like to degrade other tuners work to customer to try and sale and win more work. We find this one of the most unprofessional sales tactics being used by cheap software remapping companies. Some tuners simply cant compete with the likes of JF Automotive and we put that to John to him his thoughts on this, ” We have received customer comments that other tuners are trying to bad mouth any companies reputation in order to sell their own remap to the customer, which makes us cross here at JF Automotive to hear this practice still goes on behind closed doors. Just the other week we had a customer send us a copy of an email from a local tuner in Ashford that was trying to lose us customers with defamatory comments and was quite simply unacceptable and unprofessional, these comments were soon pointed out to the tuner that they was untrue and further action would be taken if this happened again. JF Automotive will never accuse others tuners of producing unprofessional work to our clients but only state what we have to offer and let the client decide their tuning route.”

• It might be said that some tuners cant compete with the JF Automotive way of tuning and to list a few points here below,
• As you know the tuning files are all insured.
• Come with 30 days money back guarantee.
• Custom written in house files.
• Emission tested, guaranteed to be UK emission and MOT compliant.
• Dyno tested and proven.

So there we have some of the truth’s within the ecu remapping and engine tuning industry that we thought should be shared with consumers and new potential buyers of an ecu remap.

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