Rising fuel prices, increased wages and a significant jump in the cost of routine maintenance work mean that fleet operators - and owner drivers - are under a lot of pressure to cut costs and improve the efficiency of their haulage operations.
Encouraging drivers to drive economically will help you save a small amount of money on fuel, as will investing in aerodynamic equipment like roof deflectors and side skirts. But these upgrades can be expensive, and often take quite a while to pay for themselves, which is why a significant number of fleet operators and owner drivers are remapping their trucks instead.
In simple terms, an ECU remap involves fine-tuning the software that’s responsible for managing your truck’s engine.
Our technicians travel out to your lot or yard; plug their computers into your trucks’ diagnostic port and upload custom software that’s designed to alter the way your truck’s ECU or electronic control unit responds to inputs from sensors throughout the engine.
Working like this, we can alter torque curves; tweak air-fuel ratios and fine-tune your truck’s injection timing to improve the way your vehicle runs: Boosting fuel efficiency (MPG), as well as unlocking more torque at the bottom of your rev range and improving throttle response so that it’s easier to pull away and accelerate up through your gears.
For most makes and models of HGV, a well-written remap will deliver 10-20% more bhp, better low-down tractability, more torque and an improvement in fuel economy, although the exact numbers you’ll see do depend on the specifics of your model and engine.
To ensure that we’re delivering the best possible improvements to a given HGV, our remaps are hand-coded for a specific make, model and engine. We can also tweak our maps to meet the requirements of individual drivers.
If one or more of your team have expressed frustration with their truck’s tractability or torque; acceleration or handling we’ll be able to adjust the parameters of a given map to address their complaints and provide a better driving experience.
Our service is simple and straightforward too. In most cases, an Avon Tuning technician or authorised reseller will be able to drive out to your lot, plug a computer into your trucks’ diagnostic port and start transferring or coding a map in a matter of minutes – allowing us to remap several different makes (and models) of HGV in an afternoon.
This is ideal for fleet operators who manage a variety of different trucks and want to ensure that their fleet is fully upgraded before their drivers turn up for work.
Our quick and reliable service is also a good fit for owner drivers looking to significantly upgrade the performance of a single HGV. Irrespective of whether you’re driving a DAF LF45 or an Actros Black Edition , we’ll be able to install and tweak a hand-written map that fine-tunes your truck’s performance without sacrificing reliability or reducing the lifespan of your engine.
Modern truck engines are managed by a complex array of sensors that are responsible for measuring everything from camshaft speed to fuel pressure and injection timing. These sensors feed data back to an ECU or electronic control unit that uses a series of lookup tables or ‘maps’ to work out whether anything needs to be adjusted in response to changing conditions.
In an ideal scenario, the maps your ECU uses would be optimised to maximise fuel efficiency, torque and power but that’s rarely the case. When they’re developing default maps, manufacturers have to account for the real-world conditions their trucks will be operating in – for every region they intend to sell their truck in.
Variances in air pressure, temperature and fuel quality, emissions regulations and the availability of servicing infrastructure all have to be accounted for, which means that most manufacturers make a lot of compromises when writing their default maps.
Luckily, it is possible to change the data in a map; tweaking values to improve the way your truck runs, boost fuel efficiency and improve the overall drivability of your machine.
We do this in-house, using a team of dedicated technicians that have the knowledge and experience needed to remap your ECU in a way that’s sympathetic to the capabilities of your engine.
Remapping has come a long way over the last 10 years. Once the domain of petrol heads in dingy garages, it’s now practiced by experienced technicians in dedicated workshops – like our own 5,000 sq ft. tuning premises in Tockington, South Gloucester.
The technology and techniques used to remap a truck are now widely understood and most reputable tuning companies understand the value of testing their remaps before they install them on a customer’s machine – so as to ensure that they don’t put too much strain on key parts, or affect the reliability of your truck.
We’re so confident in the quality of our remaps that we offer a lifetime guarantee with our software. We also store a version of your original map on a dedicated server so we can roll your truck’s ECU back to factory settings at any point.