jord79
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- Jul 26, 2015
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- West Yorkshire
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- 2016 Mustang GT
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I've been considering a mild performance upgrade for some time, so over Easter I decided to take advantage of the £50 reduction of the iMap from Dreamscience and thought I'd share my findings here for anyone else who might be considering a similar move.
I thought that this particular unit would be a good starting point (having never had a car remapped before) as it gave me the flexibility to revert to stock if I didn't like it and also have a device that would support custom tunes in the future if I wanted to take it further. The price point was also a big factor along with the provenance of SCT who's tune the Dreamscience one is based on.
I did enquire about the Ford Performance Stage 1 tune. The extra 40 lbs/ft torque at 1400rpm seemed very appealing for Daily driving, but it had to be installed at a service centre and, as I understand, would not be supplied with the necessary hardware or software for the end user to swap tunes at will.
The Dreamscience also seemed to offer the best peak gains out of the other options for a canned tune.
Once I got the handset, I had to borrow a Windows laptop as I only have a Mac, so it to a bit of doing to get it going, but the flashing procedure only takes about 20 minutes once the device is set up.
Install was simple and results were noticeable right away although I wouldn't consider it quite a 'night and day' difference over the stock map.
Having an auto, the most noticeable difference was the shift points, at least from 1st to 2nd which, under normal driving conditions doesn't happen until almost 2.5k revs. Doesn't sound unreasonable but, coupled with the increased line pressure it means quite a hard shift after moving off or leaving a junction. The shift point is similar to the standard Sport+ setting. After that, it shifts through the other gears quite quickly when driving normally. For me, this isn't ideal, but I think this can be tweaked using the device itself when flashing thanks to line pressure and WOT shift adjustments. However, this would take a lot of trial and error to get it right for your personal preferences given it only seems to be adjustable at the time of overriding the current map - so potentially this could take a days worth of testing.
Under 'spirited' driving, the differences in the tune over the stock map become more apparent and gave me the extra performance I was looking for, with all the shift points seeming timely to keep the motor in it's power band.
Selecting Sport+ makes the vehicles response even more evident, but that would be a setting I would want to use very sparingly on the road. While it certainly makes the drive much more lively, the downshifts are a little too aggressive. Even when lifting off to allow the car to decelerate naturally, the shift from 3rd to 2nd will make the rear wheels break traction monetarily which is neither useful or pleasant. - something that seems to be similar to the experience of driving the MY18 A10 in Sport+.
Obviously in a manual car, these issues wouldn't be an issue at all as it would be controlled via driver input, and to an extent this can be the case with the auto in Sport mode using the paddle shift feature - but I don't want to drive the car on the paddles all the time - I would've gone for the manual if I wanted to have constant control over the gears.
In conclusion, I would almost certainly recommend the device to anyone serious about trying out a remap for the first time, however, I would also say to anyone wanting to try this with an auto to think carefully about what they want out of a tune and what they use the car for.
Ive reverted to stock for now (as recommended by Dreamscience whenever the car is going to the dealership workshop) but I will re flash soon after with some adjustments to the settings.
I'm not ready to go down the custom tune route just yet, but I will be seeking advice from Dreamscience or SCT about adjusting the settings to perhaps suit my driving habits and preferences better.
Hope this is of use to someone.
I thought that this particular unit would be a good starting point (having never had a car remapped before) as it gave me the flexibility to revert to stock if I didn't like it and also have a device that would support custom tunes in the future if I wanted to take it further. The price point was also a big factor along with the provenance of SCT who's tune the Dreamscience one is based on.
I did enquire about the Ford Performance Stage 1 tune. The extra 40 lbs/ft torque at 1400rpm seemed very appealing for Daily driving, but it had to be installed at a service centre and, as I understand, would not be supplied with the necessary hardware or software for the end user to swap tunes at will.
The Dreamscience also seemed to offer the best peak gains out of the other options for a canned tune.
Once I got the handset, I had to borrow a Windows laptop as I only have a Mac, so it to a bit of doing to get it going, but the flashing procedure only takes about 20 minutes once the device is set up.
Install was simple and results were noticeable right away although I wouldn't consider it quite a 'night and day' difference over the stock map.
Having an auto, the most noticeable difference was the shift points, at least from 1st to 2nd which, under normal driving conditions doesn't happen until almost 2.5k revs. Doesn't sound unreasonable but, coupled with the increased line pressure it means quite a hard shift after moving off or leaving a junction. The shift point is similar to the standard Sport+ setting. After that, it shifts through the other gears quite quickly when driving normally. For me, this isn't ideal, but I think this can be tweaked using the device itself when flashing thanks to line pressure and WOT shift adjustments. However, this would take a lot of trial and error to get it right for your personal preferences given it only seems to be adjustable at the time of overriding the current map - so potentially this could take a days worth of testing.
Under 'spirited' driving, the differences in the tune over the stock map become more apparent and gave me the extra performance I was looking for, with all the shift points seeming timely to keep the motor in it's power band.
Selecting Sport+ makes the vehicles response even more evident, but that would be a setting I would want to use very sparingly on the road. While it certainly makes the drive much more lively, the downshifts are a little too aggressive. Even when lifting off to allow the car to decelerate naturally, the shift from 3rd to 2nd will make the rear wheels break traction monetarily which is neither useful or pleasant. - something that seems to be similar to the experience of driving the MY18 A10 in Sport+.
Obviously in a manual car, these issues wouldn't be an issue at all as it would be controlled via driver input, and to an extent this can be the case with the auto in Sport mode using the paddle shift feature - but I don't want to drive the car on the paddles all the time - I would've gone for the manual if I wanted to have constant control over the gears.
In conclusion, I would almost certainly recommend the device to anyone serious about trying out a remap for the first time, however, I would also say to anyone wanting to try this with an auto to think carefully about what they want out of a tune and what they use the car for.
Ive reverted to stock for now (as recommended by Dreamscience whenever the car is going to the dealership workshop) but I will re flash soon after with some adjustments to the settings.
I'm not ready to go down the custom tune route just yet, but I will be seeking advice from Dreamscience or SCT about adjusting the settings to perhaps suit my driving habits and preferences better.
Hope this is of use to someone.
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