I'm in York, so really it's a 150 mile trip to a good tuners which is why I'm contemplating the bluefin so much = cost effective.
If people are happy with them I may plumb for one.
Little bit late on replying but I drove over 200 miles to Darkside, who tuned my car, and I had to get a hotel as they kept the car for 2 days.
Likewise when I originally had some tuning work done at Rtech (my first original remap), which are over 100 miles from me, because the quality of the work and the dyno figures, health check etc, are well worth the small (relative) cost in travel. I would travel to North Scotland is that's where Darkside where and I needed some tuning parts, but that's just me.
An R-tech map is like, £250-300? And a Bluefin is, £375? Is it going to cost you £75-125 in fuel to drive 200 miles?
Now it's hard to try and explain things without putting peoples backs up but I would say you've made a bad decision, personally.
Any tuning that is done without logging the car and making sure it's healthy, with a rolling road, is never going to get you good results in comparison to a proper one. For example R-Tech would have spotted the dogdy DV straight away and either offered a replacement (I can't remember if they keep bits laying around) or given you the correct advice.
Peak power is never an accurate measure of a cars performance, I would rather drive a 280bhp Golf which has smooth, perfectly mapped fuelling and a wide torque and power band, than a very peaky 310bhp Golf, which has all of it's power and torque in the last 3000rpm of the rev range, with poor fuelling negatively affecting both fuel economy and throttle response.
You wouldn't notice a difference of around 5bhp anyway, but you would notice the flatspots that may possible occur from a dodgy map.
It's like painting.
You can draw a picture of a Mini yourself;
Or describe the picture of the Mini for someone else to draw.
Very recently a member on another forum I use put a remap on their car, against the advice of people who knew what they were talking about, 2 weeks later it shat their turbo.
Ultimately, as long as you are happy at the end of the day that is what matters. I'm glad changing the DV made a big difference, it must be night and day.
