Mobile remap or workshop remap?

A Stage 1 remap is a file written to the engine ECU. The file is developed once, for that engine and software version, and installed many times. Whether it is installed on a driveway in Ashford or on a ramp in Maidstone changes nothing about the file, the tool that writes it or the result. If a workshop and a mobile tuner are installing the same file, and ours are, the car leaves with the same map either way.

So the question is not which gives the better remap. It is what else the car needs on the day, and what the day costs you.

What mobile gives you

Mostly, your time. It is around an hour at your home or your work, with no day off, no courtesy car and no lift to a trading estate and back. For most people that is the whole argument, and it is a good one, because the real price of a workshop remap is the remap plus a day.

The same standard of work. You get a fault scan before and after, the original file kept, a road test, a fully insured engineer and fourteen days to change your mind. None of those need a building.

Usually a lower price too, because there is no premises cost in it. Ours is from £245, quoted on the car.

What a workshop gives you

A rolling road. Printed before and after runs of your own car rather than the catalogue's figures. The figures you see when you enter your registration on this site come from files developed on JF Automotive's 2,000bhp four-wheel-drive dyno in Maidstone, so they are real, but they are the engine's figures, not your car's on that day. If you want the sheet with your registration on it, that is a workshop job.

A ramp. You need one for anything that has to come off the car to be worked on. That means Stage 2 and 3, where hardware is fitted and mapped together, and any physical repair on the AdBlue, DPF or EGR side: a filter full of ash, a valve behind the inlet manifold, a tank, a pump. We do the software delete at your car; the repair, diagnosis included, is a workshop job at JF Automotive.

Custom mapping. For a modified car, an unusual engine, or a car the catalogue has never seen. That takes a calibrator, a dyno and a day rather than a file and an hour.

What neither gives you

A better Stage 1 map. Some workshops imply that a remap done on a dyno is a different, superior product to one done on a driveway. For a standard car it is not. The dyno measures the result of the file, it does not improve the file, and a Stage 1 file developed for your engine is the same file in both places. Where a dyno session does earn its money is in proving the figure to you, which some people want and most do not.

How to choose

If you have a standard car and want a Stage 1, an economy remap, a gearbox remap, or an AdBlue, DPF or EGR delete, go mobile, and put your registration in to see the figures first. If you have a modified car, want Stage 2 or 3 or a printed dyno figure, or the job needs a ramp, go to a workshop, and for us that means JF Automotive in Maidstone. If you enquire with us for the first list and it turns out to be the second, we say so and pass you across, and you are not being passed to a stranger.

The one thing to check about any mobile tuner

Ask where the file comes from. A mobile tuner installing files developed on a dyno by people who tune cars for a living is installing the same product as the workshop. A mobile tuner buying generic files from a website is not. The tell is the same as ever. Ask to see the figures for your car before you book, and if they cannot show you, they do not have them.