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-   -   Kiirus remap: Adding new life to an aging Hyundai Getz (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/technical-stuff/123117-kiirus-remap-adding-new-life-aging-hyundai-getz.html)

Background:
I used to own a Swift VXI petrol with a K&N performance intake, and custom tuned exhaust/headers. I had great fun in that car for almost 6 years. I bought a Skoda Rapid TDI last December. My ownership thread is here: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-d...ml#post2595142, and this link serves as an Index for you to navigate through my thread… Feel free to browse through it.

Back then:
Around the time when I bought my Swift, my friend was looking for a new car as well, at about the same budget. I promptly encouraged him to go in for a Swift 1.3L VXI as it was faster, handled better, was cheaper and more fuel efficient compared to the Hyundai Getz 1.3L. But my friend had other priorities, he preferred a softer suspension setup, and rear seat comfort was important for him too as pretty much everyone in his family is 6ft+. Moreover, he didn't like the way the Swift looked (I was like, what? :Shockked:). So, he went in for the Hyundai Getz 1.3 L petrol, and has been very happy with it for almost 6yrs now.

What happened:
Off late, he felt that the car had lost a little bit of its punch, and had become lethargic to drive which is a pain in today's back-to-back traffic at Bangalore. So, he pinged me last month and said he had a budget of 50k to spruce up his Getz and add new life into it. I suggested that he should first start with a K&N performance intake (fitted at Adiga motors), custom exhaust/headers (designed by Mr.Raj, fitted by Shabbir), and Bosch 4-tip platinum-iridium plugs. These were the exact mods that I had in my Swift, and I loved the benefits they brought. So, he promptly got these mods done over a weekend to his Getz and was happy with the results (the car just had better response)..., but only for a short while. A week or so after these mods, he came back and said he wanted more. So, I suggested he should go in for a remap.

Why I chose Kiirus:
We reviewed various tuners /companies that offered remaps for cars and froze in on Kiirus; especially after reading this article http://www.petes.in/images/swift_autocar.pdf. In that review, the Kiirus remapped car had the best drivability on offer. Though the Kiirus remapped car wasn't the best in the outright sprints from 0-100, it showed significant improvements in in-gear acceleration, which is the indication of better drivability. Moreover, they seemed to have a good number of satisfied customers, had a big list of both naturally aspirated and turbocharged cars that they could tune (vs. others who only do remaps for turbocharged cars, see here .: Kiirus :.) , then they also remap bikes too apparently!, and most importantly, their price was unbeatable. Rs.20000 for a remap is the price at which some tuning boxes are sold, heck it’s cheaper than quite a few expensive tuning boxes, and at least 14~15k cheaper than anybody else's price for a remap. Unbeatable value…

Early discussions:
So, we contacted Abhishek @ Kiirus, only to learn that he's based in Mumbai. Not to worry, he said... as he had already setup relationships with auto shops in Goa, Bangalore, Kolkata and Pune. He quickly setup an appointment with one of his acquainted garages in Bangalore in Jayanagar (he has links with a couple of them around Bangalore) for a Saturday morning, and we were all set for the remap. Abhishek said that after the remap, the car will be more drivable across the rev range, i.e. will develop more torque and power (8~10 BHP more), while also being more fuel efficient (10~15% more). Moreover, he said the rev limit will now be at 7000rpm (stock rev limit is 6000rpm). Sounds brilliant, I thought.

The remap procedure:
We went to the directed garage on that Saturday morning, and they quickly started work on the car. The ECU for the Hyundai Getz is in a compartment under the steering wheel. Along with complex electronic circuitry, there was an EEPROM attached to the board. They neatly extracted the EEPROM out of the board, plugged it into an EEPROM programmer connected to a PC, and extracted the binary file from the ROM. This was emailed to Abhishek who was waiting in his workshop at Mumbai. 15 minutes later, we receive a response from Abhishek with the updated (i.e. remapped and reworked) binary. This was taken to the EEPROM programmer and flash back onto the EEPROM extracted from the ECU. Then, they installed the ROM back onto the ECU board, and put everything back in place. That's it! It was as simple as that. The entire process just took 30 minutes, very quick indeed.

Why customize your existing ECU firmware?
I was curious to understand why the firmware was first extracted from the ECU, and why the same firmware was modified. Why not a generic have remap file (i.e. firmware) for every car stored in a central location, and just flash it onto the customer's car when they walk in? Well, apparently your ECU firmware maintains your car's identity, the Vehicle Identification Number and possibly info about other electronic components hooked up to it - think of it as sort of how you pair Bluetooth devices who will understand only each other and no other device once paired. ECU firmware ROMs (or wherever the firmware is stored in flash memory) apparently cannot be swapped across vehicles (even if it’s the same make/model) due to this reason. If you do, the car wouldn't even start as data in the firmware won't match what it sees connected to it. Hence, every single vehicle has to have its own stock firmware extracted and tweaked manually, thereby all the vehicle/component specific info is retained, and only fuelling, turbo boost (if your car is turbocharged), injector timing, ignition timing, etc. is tweaked, saved, and re-flashed back onto your car's ECU.

The benefits:
Now, I know this Getz very well, I've clocked many miles in this car (my friend works with me) as we used to carpool each other’s cars every other week... so I knew that this Getz did not like to be revved anywhere close to the redline. In stock mode, there used to be reasonable torque at the low end of the rev range, but it outright lacked mid-range punch and just never liked it anywhere at the top of the rev range (post 4500rpm). So, now that the remap was in place, I had no idea what to expect. I sat behind the wheel and fired her up after the remap. There was no difference in the idle thrum, it felt the same. I then eased it out of the garage and gave it a good blip of throttle, and to my surprise the revs built up quite freely without any of the stubbornness that I knew this car used to have. It also felt silky smooth. I gave it some more throttle (I’m still in neutral), the rev meter just kissed 6000rpm, and the exhaust emitted a throaty, juicy roar. Wow, this felt good already. So, I slotted it into first gear, got onto the main road in traffic and started working the gears. I felt an immediate increase in throttle response, and in the way the car pulled from 1500 rpm. The car used to be previously quite flat around this region (just above idle), and only responded well between 2000~3500 rpm, but now after the remap, it was completely different. There was a lot of usable torque very early in the rev range and this continued well till 4500rpm. The entire range was much more usable, much more drivable, and just much more fun! This wasn’t a dull Hyundai anymore.

After 4500rpm, the exhaust switches to a completely different intoxicating note altogether (remember this car has a custom tuned exhaust) right till 7000rpm - man, it screamed like a banshee. This was the kind of noise I used to get in my Stage1 Swift, and never expected a Getz to be able to compete in the same league. It was brilliant, and was actually fun. I also found that due to the extra torque at your disposal very early in the rev range, I could use 2nd wherever I previously needed 1st gear before (negotiating speed breakers, moving few forward inches in back-to-back slow traffic, etc.). And I also found that once you got the car going and kept it happy in its rev range, there was hardly any drop in power as you shifted to the next gear, it just kept the momentum going. I was very impressed, especially considering this was a really slow car before, and was never fun. It now felt completely different, was absolutely perfect for the city.

Fuel consumption:
The remap was done was a month ago. Over the next month, my friend and I also carefully monitored fuel consumption figures. To our surprise, we now get 11~11.5 KMPL in the city with the AC on (we used to only get 9~9.5kmpl previously in Bangalore’s traffic), and 11~11.5kmpl was all the more impressive considering that we were giving it generous amounts of throttle all along to enjoy its new found responsiveness. And note, I was using the full-tank to full-tank method only to measure fuel consumption, nothing else.


Game, set, match! 20k well spent...


Can they remap my Skoda Rapid TDI? please:
So, I called Abhishek recently and said we're very happy with the results, and asked him about what he can do to my Skoda Rapid TDI. Well, co-incidentally, he owns a Vento TDI (basically the same engine & ECU), and he's been trying hard to figure out how to crack the ECU. He said that for all the newer cars across manufacturers, ECU remaps are done through the ODB-II diagnostic port (no more manual EEPROM removal and flashing). The Bosch / EDC 16 & 17 processor based ECUs in the Lauras, Fiats, Hyundais, etc. were all very easily cracked and programmable. However, the Vento/Rapid TDIs featured a Siemens-Continental ECU that nobody in the world has apparently been able to decipher. It’s easy enough to read from the ECU, and you could also makes changes and upload the remap back, but it doesn't stick because there are CRC errors due to mismatches in the RSA encryption enabled dual-password protection that our Vento/Rapid ECUs have. I double checked, and it’s true, there are hardly 1 or 2 firms in the world that claim to have a reliable remap for this VW group's 1.6 TDI engine used in many Skoda/VW/Seat/Audi cars worldwide.

However Abhishek believes he's extremely close to cracking the code and figuring out how to maintain CRC checks and reliably comply with the complicated dual-password protection. His said that his team comprises of world class tuners + software engineers, and together, might even have a remap out as early as 2 weeks from now. He’s apparently testing a promising remap/flash method on a couple of Ventos as we speak. Now, I'm getting really excited...

Neat review, thanks for sharing!

If the car lost its punch only recently ("of late"), then it's a wear & tear issue of some components. A remap isn't necessarily the solution. Or is it that your friend felt, by current standards, the car is slow?

Honestly, these are useless and do nothing to improve the performance of a car.

Damn convenient. Can't beat the ease of modification if you're in and out in 30 minutes, and the process is handled smoothly.

Nice to hear that a Kiirus remap is working, especially the fact that driveability has improved. Some folk tend to focus only on the power at the top end when, the fact is, they spend 2% of their driving time over 5,000 rpm.

It would have been awesome if you'd taken the Getz for a pre / post remap dyno run. Bangalore has a publicly accessible dyno.

Sorry, but I find it hard to believe that a remap could increase power, as well as fuel consumption by 20%. Please continue monitoring fuel economy over a month or two and update us.

This is exactly the way I would like to have it done, instead of using any third-party piggy-back ECUs which simply intercepts and alters the readings. This way, all the parameters involved are altered, making the changes more reliable.

Enjoy the ride!

If you can increase the power and fuel efficiency at the same time, I wonder why Getz wasn't already there right from the outset from the manufacturer given the resources a giant company like Hyundai has. There has to be something that gives.

Most manufacturers keep their engines detuned to as little as 50% of its capability. The reason would be to be in par with the emission norms, technical safety reasons - more output means more strain, wear & tear, so the components of the engine need to be more rugged, and here the manufacturers are trying to keep the costs low.

Further, more power would mean more strain on the other parts of the body as well, for which its not designed for.

I guess the thread title should Getz P (Petrol) since all would expect you did it on a CRDi one :)

Good review and thanks for sharing.

@ GTO, he gets mileage coz he now gets into higher gears earlier?

The latter, maybe after driving my Rapid :D

W.r.t the 4-spoke Bosch spark plugs you're referring to, quite possibly so, but I do like them because they have a fixed gap adjustment for lifetime that never changes. I hate it when mechanics uses the thickness of a blade, thin screwdriver, visiting card, and what not - as the yardstick to measure spark plug gaps

Rightly said, I couldn't agree more. In fact, Abhishek never stressed on how much more torque or power I would make until I asked him. The only thing he always spoke about was drivability. This trait is observed in the Autocar review of modded swifts too. Kiirus was the only remapped car (others were with tuning boxes), and though it would've been easy to extract more out of the Swift VDI via the remap than what a tuning box would, it was more optimized with a focus on drivability than 0-100 sprints, max bhp, etc. The Kirrus remapped car had the fastest in-gear acceleration times.

True, I did that at Red Rooster when I fitted the RD Dieseltronic box to my Rapid TDI, but we unfortunately didn't have the time to do it for my friend's Getz this time.

We will continue to, but its consistent. I think fuel economy improved because:
- there is extra usable torque earlier in the rev range, so we don't need to rev as high as before to get a move on. Even if we do rev, it feels free and smooth and not strained
- we shift to higher gears earlier than we used to before

Also, I don't believe I've said that this is now a blazingly fast car. I think it is now what it should have been in the first place. My Swift 1.3 (stock ECU) with an intake and exhaust mod always revved freely, hit 180kph quick enough and always gave me a constant 11.5 kmpl in the city with the AC on, despite making 5~6 BHP over the Getz.

This Getz Petrol after the remap revs freely now, and gives 11.5 kmpl in the city as well, while making about the same or a little more torque & power than what a Swift 1.3 Petrol does. That's how I'm looking at it.

Ha ha, yeah. Maybe GTO could help append the title with 'Petol' at the end. Agree with your comment about moving to higher gears earlier.

I also had similar thoughts on reading this. I was also reading another post the other day about BHPian satya180 remapping a Swift VDi. Reading these leads me to believe, if the results of the remap are so fantastic, with increase in power, driveability as well as FE, then why don't the manufacturers do it themselves? It would make real good sense if it came that way from the factory itself, and would also benefit the buyer in the sense that there would be lesser issues to deal with, as well as being able to retain the warranty.

Thus, are these remaps really as good as they are told to be? If the answer is yes, then the entire issue is a little confusing. Can someone throw some more light on this matter?

Note:
Every single electronic and mechanical component is built with headroom to account for external factors, and the component life itself.



Take an electronic computing processor example which is meant to run stable at a particular clock frequency at a determined core voltage across a wide range of temperatures (even extremes). If you take a hypothetical real world example of an Intel Core i5 CPU with a nominal core voltage of 1.25V designed to run at 3.0 GHz (even at its Tj-Max temperatures of 105 degrees) with the stock Intel CPU cooler, this in essence means that the CPU can run at the most extreme of extreme scenarios at its rated clocks - i.e. even in the middle of the Sahara desert, with the 4 or more of its CPU cores kissing 100 degrees+ under full load, even with the stock cooler in a mildly compromised state .

What happens if you install the same CPU in a brilliant chassis with awesome airflow in your room? It'll barely be hitting 60 degrees+ at full load. Now, can you push it higher? Of course, this is what overclocking is. You'll easily be able to take this 3.0GHz CPU to 3.6GHz at stock voltages itself (much higher if you can overvolt the core with better custom cooling on the CPU). The question is - if the CPU can run 24/7, stable at 3.6GHz, why didn't Intel sell it as 3.6GHz? Because everyone needs to account for headroom, give a little space for extreme external factors to go wrong…. and to also account for the life of the product...

Ok, I don't know if you can relate to the above example, but it’s similar when you take mechanical components too. There's a lot of headroom built into our engine components to especially account for bad or adulterated fuel, to account for engines running at higher than normal temperatures due to higher ambient temperatures or due to minor coolant / radiator issues. Quality of coolant, brake fluids, engine and gearbox oils used across the globe aren’t always top notch, neither are they the same make. Also account for negligent owners driving their cars well beyond the scheduled service durations. Also account for tolerances that manufacturers keep due to machining variations from component to component (note that no 2 engines are ever the same) - and of course consider the overall life of the engine itself.

Let's take a 100HP turbocharged engine for example that a manufacturer estimates will last for 200000kms, as long as regular service schedules are maintained. If you say remap it to 130HP (which you can as there is headroom to do so), you’d better be prepared for the following:
- Carry out regular checks yourself to ensure fluids (coolant, brake, and engine oils) levels are always spot on; and that your radiator fan is always functional
- Go the extra mile to ensure the fluids you use are of the best specifications (or above min. spec) for your engine, no compromises
- Use good fuel from a well-known fuel pump
- Drive diligently, know the limits of the engine, know where it’s making its usable torque and HP. It’s useless to rev to the redline all the time in each gear
- The engine is undergoing higher stress than its 'normal' routine. Be prepared for unexpected failures, though note that experienced tuners set their remaps well within the max limits of the engine
- Again, due to the extra stress, be prepared to sacrifice engine life. Your engine components that may last for 2 lakh kms may show failures earlier at 1 lakh or so (just an example, may not happen either)
- Wear and tear parts will take a hit for sure. Typically manufacturers don't have the turbo spooling on full song before 1500rpm in order to prolong the life of the clutch; with remaps you can configure to hit your boost earlier, but your clutch will take a beating

Now, if you ask what they do in the reamp:
The principles are always the same, pump in more fuel, pump in more air (i.e. boost turbo if you have one), change injector and ignition timing to match the higher combustion pressures in the cylinders

If you ask why sometimes remaps give you higher fuel efficiency:
If you have more usable torque earlier in the rev range, you tend to use lesser throttle input, and you'll shift gears earlier than before. Again, this assumes a typical everyday relaxed driving cycle in the city. Under normal conditions, it is therefore potentially possible to see fuel efficiency gains (not always). But then, if you're revving hard and driving your car hard, you will obviously see worse fuel efficiency figures than your stock map as your engine will guzzle more to go faster.

Hope this helps!

I just checked on the Kiirus FB page, and they have deals going on this month for remaps (few car models only, you'll have to ship them your ECU). See here: DEALS : Following... | Facebook

But what I'm most pumped about this this: :thumbs up 1.6 TDI Vento /... | Facebook
Yuhooo! can't wait for the remap! :D

@ kryptonite - Spot on! This is THE thread that I was wanting to see. clap:
What all you have mentioned about your friend's Getz - same applies with mine too. I have a well maintained Getz Petrol 1.3L for 5 years now with regular servicing and checkups. No issues at all till date. It's been an amazing car. As you have noted, it lacks torque in the low and mid range which is frustrating at times. From your post I think it would be worthwhile to go ahead and try this with my car.

If I would want to go in for this, do you feel I should get all the mods that you had suggested earlier to your friend done? or I can directly go in for ECU remap?.

Total novice in this area so I am sure more queries would follow suit. Will PM you if you don't mind. Will be helpful. :)
Now with all the mods done I am sure your friend is enjoying this every bit and am keenly looking forward to know more about his experience.

Go in for the remap buddy! This makes a significant difference and is worth the money spent. The cold air intake and exhaust will help, but the gains together are minimal at best, and isn't the best bang for the buck. After the remap, perhaps you could add in a stock-replacement K&N filter to help the engine breathe better.

Thanks for a neat review of the REMAP kryptonite !

I have a pre-owned GETZ ' 05 GVS and was looking for ways to improve Performance. I hope a Remap would help and certainly think of it. I only hope I can find a garage to get this done in Mangalore.

Hi, any update on how the car has been performing? Thanks

Kryptonite:

Please let us know how the Getz is fairing on all fronts now (driveability, mileage etc). I am too having a Getz Petrol 1.3 (7 years and counting). I have done similar mods to my Getz with cold air intake from GreenCotton, free flow from Automech, NGK Irridium plugs. I am in two minds if I need to continue using the Getz or go for an exchange. If I go for the remap I can may be reduce the itch to change for the next year or so.

After the cold air intake and free flow, the low end torque has increased but it is still far from free-revving. It seems to hit a spot half way during acceleration from where it is not unwilling to accelerate freely further. After some struggle though it accelerates further but it becomes too coarse and unrefined. From your post looks like the throttle response does increase after the remap. So if your friends Getz is running fine now without any issues, may be I can take the step to go for the remap and see if it makes the car more fun to drive.

Thanks.