Some of you will have read that I planned to tune my T5 using the BSR PPC system which you do yourself.This system sounds ideal as you do it yourself and the cars original settings are stored so it can be returned to original spec anytime.

£500 for 50bhp also seemed reasonable. Bought the system and thoroughly read the instructions before tuning. First it's a professional looking piece of kit with good clear instructions, not knocking that.

Having plugged into my ECU and followed the instructions it did not tune and I had to connect to the internet to download the appropriate upgrade. This didn't surprise me as I figured it would need to send my car's details to it's database to retreive the right codes.Tried again, got the message ECU not responding. Removed the equipment and my car was dead, no power at all.

E mailed the seller ( Elkparts ) who I have to say were brilliant. They put me in touch with a BSR technician later that day. Tech talked me through the process and power came back but still no upgrade, ECU not responding. I then realised I could at least get power back by connecting but not going any further.

The car was then driveable but I had error messages everywhere, was running very rough and SRS warning message saying urgent.The BSR guy called again and I explained the problem. He had me plug in again and then upload to their website. he said they would examine the info and find the fault.

He called back the next day and said the fault had been found and corrected, all I had to do was connect to their site and download the new settings. I did this and he talked me through the procedure again. Got the message ECU not responding followed by " this PPC is not for this car".

I'd now had enough and said I would take my car to have the ECU looked at by an expert as I felt it was nopt safe to drive without airbags etc. He said there was something else I could do, disconnect the battery to reset the ECU. I told him I was concerned that I didn't have the radio code but hew said he could get it for me.

Ever disconnected the battery on an S60?

You can't get to the bloody thing, it has a protective cover screwed in place. I had to go out and buy a socket set, I then disconnected and left for half an hour. Put it back together and went through the procedure again ( getting good at this now ) still ECU not responding.

Enough was enough and I took the car to a garage with appropriate equipment, after half and hour they could see the faults but not clear them. They were great and reccommended another garage where one of the guys was an ECU genius, sort of a hobby with him.

He had more kit than I'd ever seen, he was intrigued by my problem and stayed after hours to wait for me. H had if fixed in 5 mins, major faults on all systems which he then cleared. he said I was lucky the ECU had not fried.

We had a good talk and he said that in his experience cars are never right after being tuned, there's always something not quite right. Manufacturers spend millions of pounds and thousands of hours setting cars up. The T5 is meant to have 250bhp and all the systems can handle it for hundreds of thousands of miles.

The best tuner in the world does not have these resources, nor did they develop the car to begin with.

I am now happy to have my car back in full health, 250bhp is still lots.I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has sucessfully tuned their car using this hardware.

Finally, Elkparts could not have behaved more professionally, I got immediate and relevant advice throughout this process followed by a full refund upon returning the unit. BSR were not quite as good though still competent, bnut there's a limit to how much support you can give over the phone.

By all means tune your car, my advice would be to go to a professional tuning centre. Tuning it yourself sounds too easy, you know what they say " if it sounds too good to be true"

This is my personal experience only and I intend no slur on either Elkparts or BSR.

You know, this has always been my thoughts as well. It always seemed to me that cars are very carefully engineered. And it costs more to build parts that can withstand 350hp, for example, than parts that can handle 250hp. So while things my appear to work great after a tune, there's nothing to make me believe that running certain parts in the drivetrain out of tolerance over time isn't going to cause negative results.

Of course, my impression of most those who tune cars is that they're interested in performance over and above all. Nothing wrong with that, of course, it's their car, but I sometimes think that it might give novices a false sense of security wrt tuning their cars.

I read in the S40 forum awhile backwhere someone had an issue with the ECU not taking the program, but from what I remember once he downloaded the update form BSR it was fine.

You said you got a message that the PPC was not for your car. Was this resolved? Like anything no matter how well made, there's bound to be a faulty one at times and maybe this was one of them.

Form what I undesrtand each one is custom made for each car. No offense, but are you sure it was programmed right for your application?

Hi S60R,
This was not resolved and the unit was returned for a full refund, not including costs incurred at the 2 garages which I agreed to pay.

I don't know if it was programmed correctly for my car, the BSR technician said it was.

All I know after nearly frying my ECU is that I did not want to have them send me another unit and try again. I considered myself fortunate to have the ECU intact.

Just my personal experience and there must be many satisfied customers, I wouldn't be complaining if it had worked.

Point is this - it should not be possible for it to damage your ECU.If it had simply not taken I would have happily agreed to another unit being sent.