Fix for Euro 6?

[asta1]

I am not sure that this is in the right section, but it is relevant to bikes as well so...
Anyway, my mother has recently bought a 2015 VW Polo 1.2 petrol and upon having a play with it today I found it extremely gutless, even more so than my old 2004 1.2 corsa which should all else being equal be even worse. Now a lot of this might be due to me being used to a slightly less crappy car and the additional weight of the newer model, but I suspect the Euro 6 Regs are also a major contributing factor.
So, my question is, how much can an aftermarket remap or ECU address this issue? I don't care much about peak power, it is afterall my aged mothers car, but a bit more go below 3000rpm would make it much easier and more enjoyable to drive, especially with 4 of us in it. What would you guys recommend and how much of an improvement can I expect?
Cheers.

[Wafer_Thin_Ham]

It's a 1.2 Polo. If you aged mother wants more go, then buy a bigger engine. (Did you turn off Eco mod? IME this makes a difference and a lot of cars default into this on start up).
____________________
My Flickr

[M.C]

Probably random banter. Just posted this video in another topic, apparently what euro 6 regs did to the 1.2 500.

Modding a 1.2 Polo? I would have thought you'd have to be careful with emission testing come MOT time, although that'll be a couple of years away for your mams polo.

With bikes it seems every model blames poor fueling on emissions, I dunno what the truth's.

Make sure you don't get carried away and end up with this:
https://img10.deviantart.net/c10f/i/2010/240/7/0/volkswagen_polo_euro_style_by_phantondesign-d2xhttv.jpg

[asta1]

lol. I am certainly not going to go that far! Obviously, if you buy a 1.2 engined car it will be a bit crap, but I was just surprised at how much worse the new one was compared to my 10 year old one. I thought performance was supposed to increase over time?

I was thinking more along the lines of a basic remap service or one of these aftermarket ecus as I imagine fuelling is currently rather suboptimal in an attempt to meet the regs. It certainly made a significant difference to my fathers 2.0 turbo diesel freelander and whilst I imagine the gains are more substantial on a bigger, turbo engine, is it still worth a try?

[Wafer_Thin_Ham]

[mrbox]

your not going to notice any difference on a small NA petrol motor with a remap imo
____________________
Current bikes: RE Himalayan, Bandit 12, MZ250ES

[stevo as b4]

[asta1]

Interesting, thanks for that. I wasn't expecting a huge improvement, but if the consensus is that it isn't going to make any noticable different then I will probably give it a miss. Ah well, at least I don't have to drive the thing regularly!

[wristjob]

what is the bin liner streched across the bonet supposed to do?

[Commuter_Tim]

[Ben90]

[stevo as b4]

Will still have soggy poor drivability though, just more go eventually to make up for the Weight of the car.

Back in the 80's you had crap but light and cheap little hatch's, that did competitive mpg to today, but with far less efficient engines. Something like a Citroën AX with a simple cooking 1.4 litre engine went a long way, and you'd need your warm or sporty larger engined equivalents to go as well today.

If a hot hatch had 200bhp it would be totally ballistic, and yet you need nearer 300bhp in a family hatch now to get that kind of silly performance.

But back to the point is that if your making new vehicles now, you have to tailor them to get the best mpg possible for the type and size of engine, for sales performance. And you have to map engines to stay as clean and green as possible all the time, and just about allow it to make the power at the top end, while giving it as little fuel as possible.

You can't improve a modern petrol engine so that it's really noticeable to drive, while keeping to emissions limits. A new engine with no requirement for emissions or fuel efficiency or low NVH levels could be really snappy and responsive if the ECU was configured to power as the only compromise.

They even map race cars lean these days, so that you can get more laps out of every tank of fuel, so you can win races in the pits, not out on track.

Bikes are lucky that they lasted until much more recently with no catalysts fitted or emissions targets.

Back in the days of power commander's being fitted to most EFI bikes, they'd get mapped on the rolling road for the exhaust, induction and engine tuning changes, and all that would be needed was to fill in any holes, or lean areas on the map, and make the throttle response as instant as possible.

Sometimes peak bhp gains wernt massive but drivability was excellent. You can't get that with modern cars or bikes though while staying clean and legal.

[techathy]

[stevo as b4]

Are many new or recent/current ECU's crackable even though?

They are writing in tamper logs now that will detect remaps or re-flashed ECU's, to allow them to invalidate the warranty, because you had a remap and the clutch or DMF failed or if the engine has an issue too.

Many cars that are not very popular tuner/performance cars will probably never have the ECU's cracked to allow maps to be changed. I've got a Motorola designed ECU from the early 90's and that's never been accessible for re-mapping and they've had nearly 25years to try unlocking it.

[techathy]

It’s an absolute mine-field. Some times manufactures seem not to care about securing the maps but log absolutely everything done to the ECU (in a log that's almost impossible to find, let alone read, without the official tools). Other times lock down their ECU as hard as possible meaning you find it almost impossible to see what the OE map is actually doing. Some manufactures will put different security levels on the same ECU depending on the engine, typically ECUs for FI engines get locked down harder than those for N/A engines.

[techathy]