About Maptun
Background
HistoryBackground
Swedish Steel, with a finely honed edge? As you are no doubt aware, Maptun have been tuning Saabs for many a year now, and have developed a reputation as one of the world’s leaders in this field. Fellow tuners marvel at the smoothness of the Maptun cars, the power they deliver, and the amazing reliability that their tunes provide. So, how do they tune a car to these levels without causing major issues for the owner? The simple answer is time. Maptun over the years have developed a complete and total understanding of the Saab engine and chassis, not only the ECU. They know the tolerances of all the major mechanical components, and all of their packages are designed around this knowledge, adding in the additional hardware at the appropriate stage. This kind of knowledge can only be gained from years of design and development, and this gives them is a major advantage over a lot of the mainstream Saab tuners. They are able to work with the hardware in a sympathetic manner, ensuring that they extract the maximum safe power out of every stage of their maps, without jeopardising the longevity of the cars mechanicals. This is one of the reasons why, when you look at a Maptun Dyno Graph, it is so smooth. They completely control the onset of torque, the development of the boost request map, the precise controlling of the ignition timing, the fuelling, the knock map, the warm up map etc to ensure that whilst there is obviously an improvement in the performance of the car, that this performance does not come at a cost to the engine. They understand the “how” and more importantly the “why”. During the years, as and when components have failed during development, they perform extensive Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) to understand more. Here at Neo Brothers we have been working with Maptun directly and indirectly for several years now. We have come to understand their product, and respect the engineering that goes behind its development. Their founding member and chief developer, Mr Fredrik Bengtsson, is a man of few words, letting his solutions do the talking for him, but we managed to corner him for a rare interview, and this is what he had to say:- How did Maptun begin? “Back in 1998 I bought my first Saab, a 9000 Aero. I loved this car, but I wanted it to be faster, so I approached one of the local Swedish tuning houses to improve the performance. When the car was returned to me I was not happy with what had been done. As a qualified Electronics and Computer engineer, I thought “how hard can this be?”. With a friend I developed some software and tweaked my own car. Maptun was born. I then wrote my own software editor that allowed me to tweak directly the Saab Trionic system and Maptun became a commercial business, with my first tune being performed later in 1998 on another Saab 9000 Aero”. How long does it take you to develop Maptun solutions? “This is the most time consuming part of our business. This is made even more so with the advent of a new Trionic Systems from Saab. We spend a great deal of time reverse engineering the software and hardware so we fully understand the engine and how it is controlled. It is only then that we can even start to consider tuning the car. Too many tuning houses just turn the boost up and add more fuel. Here at Maptun we believe in a more structured engineering approach. Saab Trionic Engine Management systems are very powerful. Their inherent safety and constant engine monitoring mean they are often considerably more capable and powerful (in terms of processing power) than dedicated aftermarket tuning and ignition solutions. Rather than fight against the original hardware, we like to work in harmony with it. That way we can ensure total compatibility with the engine and car systems. This is becoming even more important now that most of the cars systems are linked through CAN bus. For the end product this means that we can simply plug the map into the existing ECU, add the required additional hardware if the customer is looking for serious power increases, and then the car leaves with a fully integrated performance solution. You will never see manual boost controllers on a Maptun prepared car, these are lazy and cumbersome and bypass the all too important safety systems of the Trionic Control. Why butcher an excellent engine control and feedback loop with something as primitive as an MBC? With all of this in mind, if we have a new engine to tune, it can take between 6 and 12mths for us to release our first solution. We will not cut corners just to get to market first, but would rather ensure our solution is fully developed and tested before we allow it to retail out to the customers. The Maptuner took over 12mths to fully develop to its current stage, and is still be developed to offer a more comprehensive solution”. You mention that you test your solutions during development. How do you perform these tests? “Again, time is the major factor here. We have invested heavily in the last 5years in our workshop equipment. Once we have developed the software to interface to the car, we then put the car on our test rig, a very nice piece of kit called the rototest. We connect our emulator to the test car and then exercise it fully up and down the power band. We pull data from all sensors and log this over complete engine cycles, from sub-zero temperature operation to 35degC+ ambient. We then tweak our solutions to ensure that they work across the board, using the data gathered from the engine sensors and our own electronic equipment to ensure that we are well within the safety margins of the car and its components. Once we have a solution that we are happy with, we then test the car at maximum power for long durations, much longer than they would ever see on the road or race track. This is to ensure that prolonged performance exposure does not develop any issues with the car. If, during this test, we find a component fails, then this component is sent away for analysis to see if it failed as a result of the performance tuning, or a general manufacturing defect. Either way, we will then modify the map or recommend replacing that component as part of the stage development of the car. We are lucky that Saab engines are so well designed. The standard engines can easily cope with 300BHP without any modification to the hardware. The test is then repeated with the new component in place. This is an iterative process, and we will only sign off on a solution once we are 100% confident that there are no issues. This is not the end of the development however. Nothing tests a solution more than living with it day to day. So, once out of the rototest bay, the solution is then plugged into one of our road cars and used on a daily basis. This is to ensure that the performance upgrade has not affected the driveability of the car. It has to be able to perform as a normal car for day to day use, as well as to be able to light the tyres up on the ¼ mile drag strip or the race / rally circuit.” So, you develop hardware as well to support the software implementation? “Of course, Maptun are about offering a complete solution to our customers. During our early years we found that even though our ECU tunes were working well, the mechanicals sometimes let the customer down on the higher power applications. That is why we now test our solutions thoroughly. If we find a problem, we now develop our own hardware to rectify this. We only select development partners who have a proven track record in their field. We use their expertise and our development equipment to ensure we have the best possible solution to offer in the final package. For example, our gearsets and drive train solutions are developed by Quaife, our braking and suspension solutions developed in conjunction with Neo Brothers. Each component typically takes 6mths minimum to develop, with the gearsets and suspension and brakes taking just over 12mths. Again, we have to ensure that such safety critical components are worthy of the Maptun name. However, price is also a consideration, and where possible we will add value to the brand by creating by creating our own bespoke Maptun solution, but at a price which is accessible for our customers. Watch this space for more Maptun products that will be released soon.” What are you currently working at present and what can we expect from Maptun in the coming 12mths? “We are expanding our development to include the Saab diesel engines. These solutions are nearly complete and should be on the market in the coming months, just the final road testing to finish. In addition to this we are working on expanding the functionality of the Maptuner to include data logging. This will assist us in helping customers fine tune stage 3 and beyond cars, as well as helping diagnose any faults with stage 1 and 2 vehicles. We are developing 400+BHP solutions for T8 cars (9-3 Sport), and continuing work on our 2.8 V6 development. Beyond that? Well, we will have a new range of intercoolers, custom downpipes, new modified hybrid turbo chargers coming very soon. The gearsets are now ready for commercially selling, so expect to see them on the website soon. The suspension systems for the 9-3 are now nearing completion, and are already available for 9-3sport and 9-5 models. We are adding to this a strut brace for most models. These product will all be live in the next 6mths. Beyond that we have already started development of the Maptuner mk2. This will have a new core processor, touch screen interface and many more functions for data logging etc. We predict this should be ready for market in 2012. As you can see, we are very busy!” Ok, just a few more questions to go Fredrik. What is the most powerful car that Maptun have developed? “We developed a 642BHP car (700Nm) in Sweden, based on a 9-5 Aero (2006 model year). It is an unbelievably fast car that is used day to day! It is a real Q car, looking very standard but delivering blistering performance.” What about your own cars, what are you driving at the moment? “I spend most of my time in development chassis cars. I am currently running around in 2, a 9-3 Sport with 400BHP and a 9-3 Turbo X with 340BHP. These are continually being developed with more power and better performance.” What are your plans for the new Saab 9-5? “We have already placed an order for 2 cars to develop on (different engines). Once these arrive it will be a ground up tune as these are completely new cars to our knowledge. Development will hence be slow and steady, but rest assured we will not deliver solutions until we are 100% confident that we have creating something perfect. Suspension, brakes, intercoolers etc, all will be developed alongside our software so we will have the full package ready to release at the same time.” Neo Brothers are the UK Distribution hub and a development partner for Maptun. We carry stock of all major components and have the facilities to map vehicles on site. If you are not local to us then you can use one of our appointed regional Maptun Performance Centres:-
Saabtech Ltd (Stevenage) These centres have been chosen to offer you, the customer, the complete Maptun experience and after market care. Each has full Saab Service facilities and many many years experience, not only of servicing, but also of preparing performance Saabs. If you are putting the best on your car, why settle for less? |
