It's an expensive kit, is the cost justified over other plug in tuning boxes?.
The basic answer is yes. The first point is to say that other manufacturers are charging £600 just for an air filter. This is a product far in advance than that, it is an intelligent tuning device. Compared with other ‘plug in' devices this product ensures that the multiple engine parameters we translate are done so within the safe working tolerance of the engine, rather than just upping the boost level for example. Ecu's today are clever enough to realise that if information being sent to them, via any kind of tuning box, that are outside of safe tolerance levels the ECU will ‘De-Tune' the information that is being sent to it. This means your tuning box will not be performing as stated, without you knowing. Unichip does all of its tuning well within the safe parameters of the engine, which means the engine will never have to detune any of the information sent to it and the Unichip will always allow the engine to perform with stated power figures. Also the kit includes all of the mounting brackets and the map switch of your choice. There are varying prices for Unichip on our website but this is due to the engineering of a reliable and safe solution for each vehicle.
For a more in-depth explanation as to how the kit works, click the below link for our introduction page to the Focus Unichip product in our blog post - Focus ST Mk4.5 Unleashed
Are the power increases you state from a stock engine?
Yes, we have used a totally stock car with no engine modifications and have spent many hours tuning the Unichip to be able to get those increases from a standard car.
Will the kit work once i have fitted my other engine modifications?
Of course. The Unichip is a fully programmable piggy back ECU that allows us to create a bespoke tune to your engine once all of your engine mods have been added. The plug and play kit we sell is for a standard engine where we have refined the tune so that it will work on all standard engines. Once you have installed your engine modifications we are able to put the car on the dyno and give you a fully bespoke tune to your car and the modifications that you have for a charge of £350.
How good is eco mode?
We have not yet done a run on full tank to empty comparison. But the feed back from our first customer has been really positive .He recently had a run all over the country. When they filled up with fuel the range on the car said 390 miles. The run home, which was done in Eco map 3, was 370 miles and when they got home the car said that they had 190 mile range left in fuel.
Is it a safe piece of equipment?
100% or we wouldn't be selling it. In recent competitor tests ( on different cars ) we discovered that the items were not even IP rated, which of course is not a great idea for the engine bay of a car open to the elements. Unichip is hugely popular in the 4x4 community where they make cars practically swim through rivers and the Unichip has proven to be bullet proof
Our claim of this being the first ECU tune for the MK4.5 - is this true?
We would never knowingly claim it was if it wasn't. We are in touch with many engineers from Fords. The ECU on the car has been locked down very securely. There are many companies out there that claim to have an unlock under development, but the feedback we have had from our sources is that this could take years.
Is this removable without trace?
Yes, unlike an engine remap where the remap file is loaded onto the ECU and therefore traceable, the Unichip is a piggy back ecu - where all engine programming is stored on the Unichip ECU which works in partnership with the standard ECU. Once the Unichip ECU is removed the cars standard ECU will never know the Unichip was there and neither will the data logs in the cars ECU. The Unichip can be reinstalled at any point and will provide the same 5 multimap as previously programmed.
