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Dreamscience iMap review

jord79

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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.
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Myweepony

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Thanks for that. All useful info.

What fuel are you using? Super or normal?

Cheers :cheers:
 

Avalyn

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Hmmm sounds as though you're not quite 100% sold on it

I've been considering the iMap myself as a simple solution as I can't be bothered going down the custom tune route (although I know the end product would be 'better').

Can I ask, if you try not to think about how it has affected your shift points/gear changes how does it feel ?

By that I mean, if you were in 2nd gear or 3rd and in manual control and applied power smoothly from low revs would you say that there has been an appreciable improvement in performance?

I've no complaints about the 5.0 once it's wound up (and it's a pleasure to do so) but what does it feel like under 2.5k-3k revs? Standard or would you say there's a bit more grunt? Definitely noticeable or just a small increase you'd be hard to tell if you went from mapped/unmapped?

Ta :D
 

Gibbo205

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Why would you go iMap out of interest when you can get a USA X4 and a USA tune for $200-$300 and have it completely customised to drive how you want to drive and perfected for your fuel type and maximum power.

Lets remember Palm Beach got my car to 460HP (dyno proven) and 113mph terminal speed with just their tune, no other modifications.

I've had the SCT canned tune, as above its a dramatic improvement over stock, but in comparison it made 440HP and had me crossing the line at 110mph.

We all spend money to go faster, intakes, exhaust, yet they won't gain you another 2-3mph in quarter mile or 10-20HP a proper good custom tune can.

I went with Palm Beach as I had throttle pedal sensitivity issues with other tuners (SCT not so bad here, but Lund was like an on/off switch) and as such I had them write me a tune from ground up that used factory global DBW setting, factory throttle maps. All they changed was cam, spark, fuelling, vct to gain maximum safe power and torque. As such the car drove like factory just faster, thats the benefit of a custom tune you can have it adapted perfectly to your needs and speak 1:1 with your tuner.

I found Palm Beach Tricky Trevor the best out there, I tried Lund, JDM, SCT, AED and Palm Beach Dyno gave me hands down the best NA tune on my car, it drove the best, it made the best power and it was only $200. :)
 
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jord79

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By that I mean, if you were in 2nd gear or 3rd and in manual control and applied power smoothly from low revs would you say that there has been an appreciable improvement in performance?

I've no complaints about the 5.0 once it's wound up (and it's a pleasure to do so) but what does it feel like under 2.5k-3k revs? Standard or would you say there's a bit more grunt? Definitely noticeable or just a small increase you'd be hard to tell if you went from mapped/unmapped?

Ta :D
There is definitely a notable increase in performance under the conditions you describe. I did first notice it when I put the tune on but having returned to stock you can definitely feel the the difference. like you say it lacks the punch low down. I don't know how much of that is down to a power increase or it might be more to do with throttle response - though I do think I read somewhere that the tune didn't alter the stock throttle response?
 

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jord79

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Why would you go iMap out of interest when you can get a USA X4 and a USA tune for $200-$300 and have it completely customised to drive how you want to drive and perfected for your fuel type and maximum power.
I didn't think I could get the SCT X4 tuner AND a custom tune for that price! I'd also picked up somewhere that there could be an issue marrying an SCT handset to a UK car?

Also, not owning a Windows PC means that extracting data logs and uploading tweaked files would be a BIT more hassle (i.e. I'd have to keep borrowing a laptop from someone!)

As the only other mod I have on my car is an axle back exhaust (which I'm probably going to change agin soon) I'm assuming that a canned tune based on a stock vehicle would give me pretty much as much power as I could get with my set up?
 

hinch

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Why would you go iMap out of interest when you can get a USA X4 and a USA tune for $200-$300 and have it completely customised to drive how you want to drive and perfected for your fuel type and maximum power.
i'd love to know where you get these prices from as they're never anywhere to be seen. hell you sold your x4 for what £250 that's already $350 then the tune ontop..... so more like $600 inc a tune. thats on a 2nd hand x4 a brand new one + tune is pushing 800-900 dollars ish all in

while the dreamscience canned tune is crap its considerably cheaper than the alternatives.
 

v8hgt

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One benefit of the imap is if you purchased the car from Evans halshaw they will maintain the warranty.
 

Gibbo205

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i'd love to know where you get these prices from as they're never anywhere to be seen. hell you sold your x4 for what £250 that's already $350 then the tune ontop..... so more like $600 inc a tune. thats on a 2nd hand x4 a brand new one + tune is pushing 800-900 dollars ish all in

while the dreamscience canned tune is crap its considerably cheaper than the alternatives.
Got my X4 used for £275, tune was $200, so £420 all in. An iMap is £350, so to me the custom tuning is worth the extra £70.

The extra cost for me was I pretty much tried every tuner due to various issues before finding a tuner who could get me the results I wanted.
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