Which gearboxes do you tune?
VW/Audi DSG (DQ200 7-speed, DQ250 6-speed, DQ381/500 7-speed), Porsche PDK, BMW DCT (M2/M3/M4), ZF 6HP and 8HP (BMW, Range Rover, Jaguar), Mercedes 7G-Tronic and 9G-Tronic, Ford Powershift. Others by request.
Why tune the gearbox as well as the engine?
Because factory gearbox torque limits are often the true bottleneck. A Stage 2 engine map can make more torque than a stock TCU will allow the box to deliver — the gearbox will clutch-slip or de-torque under load. A matched TCU calibration lets you use every last Nm.
Is a TCU remap safe?
Yes when calibrated correctly. We stay within the mechanical hardware limits of your specific gearbox — that's why we won't do a Stage 3 TCU on a stock DQ250 with a poverty-spec clutch pack. We tell you honestly what your box can and can't handle.
How a TCU remap actually works
The transmission control unit decides when to shift, how fast, how hard the clutches clamp and how much torque it will accept from the engine before it intervenes. From the factory those maps are tuned for comfort, emissions and a one-size-fits-all warranty — deliberately soft shifts, early upshifts, lazy kickdown and a torque ceiling set well below what the hardware can take. A TCU calibration rewrites those tables: quicker, firmer shifts, higher clamping pressure to stop slip under load, sharper kickdown, later or driver-led upshifts in Sport, and a raised torque limit so the box lets your engine map through. It's written to your exact gearbox code and software version, then checked on a logged drive.
Gearbox Tuning across Nottingham
Nottingham drivers spend a lot of time crawling the ring road and then opening up on the A52 or M1 — exactly the mix a well-written Stage 1 map improves. We see huge numbers of 2.0 TDI Golfs, 320ds and Transit Customs around NG postcodes, so the calibrations we write for them are refined over hundreds of local data-logs rather than pulled from a generic file database. Tradespeople in Bulwell and Clifton book us for van torque; commuters in Mapperley and Arnold want smoother mid-range for the hills; and enthusiasts in Wollaton and West Bridgford want Stage 2 files with proper before/after logging.