This morning I had my car remapped by
www.hexup.co.uk and I thought I'd let you all know just how happy I am with it and what lead me to the decision to go with a relative unknown.
A few months ago I had a Revo trial installed on my beloved Golf and whilst reasonably impressed it didn't impress me quite enough to shell out my hard earned on the full version, so I let the trial expire and thought that would be the end of it. I looked into other tuners and decided to give APR a go, however I never actually pulled my finger out and booked myself in to get it done.
So about few weeks ago one of my clients who owns a garage started talking to me about the remap company he had been dealing with, he had received a lot of positive reports back from his customers and as a result I gave Peter at Hexup a call to discuss the options.
Peter explained to me that it was a full remap service, a custom map for each car rather than a generic map based on the model type, when he told me the price of £295 I was sold. Baring in mind Peter's company is fairly new to the industry this price seemed bang on but on reflection I think he is under-pricing himself looking at the competition.
A couple of days later Peter turned up at my house and had a look at my car, checked the ECU for fault codes of which there were none and proceeded to try to download the map. Unfortunately when Revo put their trial software on your car they protect their map by essentially blocking other tuners from being able to map the ECU via the OBD II port, the only solution at that point looked like being a re-flash of the ECU which could only be done by taking it out of the car.
Obviously I wasn't best pleased that this is what happens and that I wasn't informed of this when I booked in for the trial map, but I do understand that Revo don't want their maps being read or even stolen, however a couple of calls to Revo (got to say the Rob at Revo was really helpful with my issue!) and the installer (Allan Fishburn @ The Golf Centre, Darlington) later Allan kindly agreed to re-flash my ECU which he did at really short notice which was great of him. He used the Revo-flash software and it took 10-15 mins from start to finish.
So this morning Peter turned up with his mapping tools and worked his magic, downloaded my map, custom mapped it in front of me based on my requirements and my installed gubbins (Magnex Cat Back un-resonated plus ITG panel filter) and re-uploaded it to my car.
My first drive was in the wet and getting used to it meant a lot of free-revving wheel spin, but the car feels amazing. I am amazed at how the car copes with all the power running through the front wheels, one of my past cars was a first gen Focus RS which were well-known for their torque steer and pretty horrible in tuned (Superchips + Mongoose Straight Through in my case) guise. I haven't the time or inclination to try a Revo, APR and my custom Hexup map back to back or on the rollers, I'm past all that kind of thing really having owned my own tuning company in the past and having it rule my life, but I've achieved what I wanted from my car, which was to improve a great driver making it truly rapid yet maintaining the versatility and drivability that the Golf GTI Mk 5 is renowned for. Pull throughout the rev-range has been dramatically improved, it sticks my head to the head rest and accelerating from about 70 (on a private road of course!) in 6th feels absolutely fantastic!
I have no ulterior motives or real loyalty to Hexup but they are definitely worth a look in my opinion and I really don't think you'll be disappointed if you take the plunge!
Many thanks to Peter and also Allan and Rob at Revo.