Gearbox Tuning and TCU Remapping in Warwick

Usually not. That shuffling between two gears at low speed is generally the shift points and the gaps between them sitting where the manufacturer put them, which suits a steady road better than a queue on a narrow street. Worth having it checked for actual faults first, but in most cases it is a calibration characteristic rather than something wearing out.

Remapping the transmission control unit, which is the separate piece of software that decides when and how your automatic changes gear. It is distinct from the engine ECU. Changing it does not alter how much power the engine makes, it alters how much of that power the gearbox lets you reach and how quickly it hands it over.

Typically shift points, how quickly a shift is executed, how willing the box is to drop a gear when you ask, how long it holds a ratio before changing, torque converter lockup behaviour, and clamping pressure where the standard setting is marginal for the torque being produced. Which of those are available depends entirely on the particular transmission in your car.

It does not have to. How firm the changes feel is one of the things being set rather than a fixed consequence, so it is adjusted to what you actually want. If your priority is that it stops hunting at low speed without every shift becoming a thump, say so. That is a perfectly normal request and a reasonable outcome.

That is one of the more common reasons people ask. The pause before a downshift when you need to close a gap is set conservatively from the factory. Reducing that hesitation and speeding up the shift itself makes a real difference to how confident the car feels merging or overtaking, without changing anything about the engine.

On an automatic it is usually worth considering. Adding torque leaves the transmission working from assumptions about an engine that no longer exists, so the shift points end up in the wrong place and the clutches may be asked for more than the standard clamping pressure allowed for. It is not automatically necessary, but it is always worth asking about.

Done properly it is generally kinder, because the transmission is matched to the engine it actually has rather than the one it was calibrated for. Done badly, with a generic file and no thought about the specific unit, it is not. That is precisely why it gets written per vehicle with the original saved first, rather than loaded off a shelf.

No. A manual gearbox has no transmission control unit, so there is nothing to map. The engine calibration is the whole job on a manual car and anybody offering you gearbox software for one is selling you something that does not exist. We would rather tell you that immediately than find a way to charge for it.

A good range of modern dual clutch and torque converter automatics, though it genuinely varies by manufacturer and by individual unit. Some are very accessible, others are effectively locked. The only honest answer comes from knowing the exact vehicle and year, so tell us that and you will get a real answer rather than a maybe.

Yes. The original transmission file is read and saved before anything is written, in exactly the same way an engine calibration is. It can go back to how it was whenever you want, which matters for a sale, for handing back a lease, or for any conversation with a dealer who wants a factory file.

Yes. It is a modification to the vehicle and should be declared just like an engine remap. It is a short conversation with most insurers and rarely causes any difficulty. Leaving it undeclared is what creates the problem, and it tends to surface at the worst possible moment rather than a convenient one.

Yes, and on an automatic that is normally the sensible way round, because the two are written to work with each other rather than being bolted together later. It also means one visit instead of two, which matters when we are travelling the twenty two miles over from Lutterworth. Mention both when you ring.