Harry Nicholas, Marketing Manager at Racelogic, tests Superchips’s Bluefin on a runway with his BMW 330cd, using Video VBOX to see what performance the remap achieves.
Harry's BMW 330cd ready for the 'before and after' test on the runway near Racelogic
We’re lucky to have an airstrip just a mile or two from the Racelogic Buckingham HQ. We use it to test our GPS and video data-loggers, and we can screech around without endangering anyone on the public road. It’s also where I tried out the effects of a Bluefin, the engine remap device from fellow Buckingham based company Superchips.
Bluefin, the remap device from Superchips
Bluefin simply plugs into the car’s diagnostic port to upload the remap, and automatically saves the stock settings to easily switch back if necessary. It would be tested using the new live performance figures feature included in Video VBOX, which overlays the performance figures of your choice from the GPS data live on the multi camera video.
Video VBOX Lite, the GPS data-logger and multi camera in car video system with graphical overlay from Racelogic
We chose to display times for 0-60, 50-70, and 0-100mph.
Video VBOX screenshot showing the live performance results
Seeing the performance figures promised in the graph below, I willingly used my BMW 330cd for the test. Superchips say that the bluefin remap will increase my 3-litre turbo diesel engine’s power from 204bhp to 250bhp, with the largest gain coming from the torque, which increases from 406Nm to 500Nm.
The power and torque increases promised by bluefin for my 330cd
For the acceleration test I turned the traction control half off, set the auto steptronic box to sport mode, held the footbrake with my left foot and increased the revs to 2000 with my right before launching. On the three ‘before’ runs the car achieved a consistent 0-60 in 7 seconds, and 50-70 in 4 seconds. However the (only 600m!) runway ran out as I reached 92mph so I wasn’t able to record a 0-100.
I then plugged the bluefin into the OBD diagnostic port in the right foot-well. It was a case of simply following the onscreen instructions and waiting a few minutes for the remap to upload.
Aside from a more responsive throttle I didn’t notice much until about 2000rpm, as the power curve chart above suggests. After 2000rpm the increase in acceleration and power was much more progressive than before.
Before and after results as shown from Video VBOX for the acceleration tests after uploading the bluefin remap
As you can see in the Video VBOX footage below, the ‘after’ acceleration run achieved 0-60 in 6.6 seconds, with 50-70 mph taking only 3.4 seconds. Whilst it didn’t make 100mph, it did come tantalisingly close (98mph) on the short runway, and may have made it had I not ‘chickened out’ towards the end of the tarmac!
Friday, 09 July 2010 13:31 | 
We’re lucky to have an airstrip just a mile or two from the Racelogic Buckingham HQ. We use it to test our GPS and video data-loggers, and we can screech around without endangering anyone on the public road. It’s also where I tried out the effects of a Bluefin, the engine remap device from fellow Buckingham based company Superchips.
