Gearbox Tuning FAQ’s

We’ve written a brilliant article on gearbox tuning here but in short, NO. You do not NEED your gearbox tuned. However, if you want to get the most out of your tune (especially for most modern vehicles) you might want to consider it.

One of the main benefits of gearbox remapping is that it removes torque limiter restrictions. In layman’s terms, your vehicles gearbox computer, when it leaves the factory, will limit the amount of torque the engine is allowed to produce, leaving you short-changed if you tune the engine.

We always advise a gearbox tune on these vehicles but you’ll still notice a huge difference from a stock car when tuning the ECU, even if you don’t tune the gearbox.

When we remap a gearbox, we change quite a few parameters in the software to change how various components behave.

To give you an idea, these are some of the things we’ll do for most gearboxes:

• Increase torque limiters to unlock more torque & power from the engine
• Raise line pressures
• Increase shift speeds
• Change shiftpoints in various modes
• Change clamp force for more aggressive shifts when wanted
• Apply true manual mode stopping the car from auto upshifting when in manual mode
• Minimize torque converter slip
• and more

The main benefit to tuning the gearbox is increasing torque limiters. We’ve seen first hand on the dyno, improvements of 10+bhp and 30+nm just by tuning the gearbox.

If you have any more questions, read our article here.

We have various options for gearbox tuning depending on the vehicle. 

Almost all cars can have our gearbox tuning module. This improves gear shifts overall but does not increase or remove torque limiters – we typically only advise this solution when we cannot offer a gearbox tune on your vehicle. The gearbox tuning module is an OBD device that changes gearbox parameters and adaptions. You can uninstall this at any point and we supply it with a list of instructions.

For BMW’s only, we can offer XHP’s stage 1-4 gearbox tuning solutions. Whilst we make less money from an XHP gearbox tune, it is the best-of-the-best for BMW’s and we’d always advise to opt for an XHP tune, although they’re a little more expensive than our own in-house tunes. XHP does offer a few more features than our own in-house gearbox tune such as improved launch control and gear display whilst in D.

We have our own in-house gearbox tuning solutions for the most popular cars such as the main German Marques and a few others. These tunes change all of the relevant parameters to give you access to more power and torque whilst improving drivability. 

Whilst a gearbox tune will add a small amount of extra strain to the transmission, all of our tunes are well within the safe parameters of the transmissions capabilities. We would only increase component output to what we deem to be safe as it wouldn’t be beneficial to us or you to push your vehicle to anything beyond that.

It is not in our interest to push your gearbox past its limits. We simply wouldn’t have a business if we blew gearboxes up on a daily basis.

There are a couple of ways for a remap to be detected. The most cost effective and most commonly used method by manufacturers is to check the CVN with diagnostics tools. If an ECU has a different CVN than it should, a manufacturer’s diagnostic tools will be able to detect this.

A remap can also be detected with manipulation DTC’s that appear within various modules in the car.

Some dealer tools can detect that changes have been made to the original software but don’t show exactly what has been done.

With most modern vehicles, our industry-leading remapping software and tools can successfully flash an ECU whilst keeping the original CVN and not throwing any manipulation DTC’s. This means most dealer diagnostic tools would not be able to detect the remap.

That said, a remap is NEVER undetectable. If someone wants to dig deep enough, they will eventually find it.

A good workaround for this which covers most instances is to have the vehicle returned to stock which we are able to do for £60 including VAT.

Depending on the method of tuning for your particular car, we can mitigate the chances of it being detected.

This is always a tough question. The reality is, modifying your vehicle will always affect a manufacturers’ warranty. Whether the manufacturer rejects a warranty claim is down to their discretion.

Bear in mind we can always flash your vehicle to stock for £60 including VAT.