Sorry not been on the site for a while.
In a word WOW!!!!
Simon from emaps is a top bloke, I would highly recommend him as he gave me the comfort that he knew what he was doing to my £60k beast and that the updates were not going to harm my car. For example he said that he does not touch the boost pressure on the turbos as BMW run quite a high boost pressure from stock and that increasing it would impact on turbo reliability. He also said that the remap would take the car to 350-360 bhp and that he did not think that it was safe going any higher. Again he told me that he takes the torque to circa 700nm as the gearbox on the X5 is engineered to take 700nm as a maximum.
He turned up on time with his laptop and downloaded the standard software just in case I need the car set back to the manufacturer settings (no chance!). We then went out for a test run with the laptop plugged in and he took some readings of various settings, mainly the lambar reading. Im not too technical but he did explain what this meant at the time, something to do with the amount of fuel the car gets I think...
He then loaded the new software and I asked him to reset the gearbox as it had "learnt" my driving style and the shifts were a little jerky. The whole process took about 1.5 hours.
We then took the car back out with the laptop plugged in to test the difference and again take readings. Simon was first to drive and I could tell the difference in performance from the passenger seat!! Once he had finished his readings and was happy he handed the car over to me to test.
The car feels like a totally new beast!! Whereas it would bog down previously before the power came in I am now getting instant response, even under light throttle (not sure if this second improvement is the gearbox reset or the remap). The car feels half a tonne lighter and is unbelievably quick, I used to always use the sport setting on the gearbox previously as I used to get annoyed with the lag so would force it to change down to get the response that I wanted. I now rarely touch the sport mode such is the change in performance, sport mode is almost frightening as you just have so much power on tap due to it holding the gear and revs!! On the motorway a slight prod of the right foot will take you from cruising speeds to the type of speed you will get locked up for very quickly. Kick down from standstill is awsome, the look on the faces of people in so called "sportcars" when they can't shift me off their tail is priceless ;-).
Both my brother and brother in law have driven the car before and after the remap and both were just blown away by the improvement that it made, it makes a 2.5 tonne car seriously quick. I would like to drive a 335d with this remap as it can't be far off the performance of an M3, what do you rekon cforehead?
Simon did not promise me any gains in fuel economy due to the size of the engine however I am seeing a slight benefit around town and probably a 2-3 mpg benefit on a long run. This may be down to the fact that I am not pushing the car as hard as I used to in order to get it up to speed.
I was very dubious about getting my car remapped because of the value of the car and as a result took over a year to take the plunge. I regret not doing it sooner, honestly if you are thinking about it just go for it! Just make sure you use one of the recommended tuners as there are a lot of people out there remapping cars at the moment, so go for one with lots of customer feedback on these forums. I only have experience of Simon at emaps and would not hesitate in recommeding him.
The only downside is that that BMW have now locked out their ECU's and therefore Simon is unable to remap cars from 2010 onwards. Hopefully they will crack the code soon as my wifes new 1 series F20 5 door arrives in a few months time and I would love to get this remapped...
