How far do you go?
Stage 1, 2 and 3 are not product tiers we invented — they describe how much hardware sits behind the calibration. What follows is what each one actually involves, what it changes about how your car drives, and why the same stage behaves completely differently on a turbocharged engine than on a naturally aspirated one.
A stock map is built for every market at once. We tune it for yours, and keep every safeguard.
A manufacturer ships one calibration to every market. It has to cope with low-grade fuel, high altitude, forty degrees of ambient heat and an owner who never opens the bonnet — and it has to hold a torque figure the gearbox and the warranty were signed off against. The result is an engine running well inside itself, and that gap is where we work.
What we always keep is the engine's own protections. Knock control, thermal derating and limp modes are there for good reason, and leaving them fully live is what lets the power stay reliable for the long run. Every calibration we write is datalogged under load and revised until the numbers hold up — on the fuel you actually put in it.
Three stages, defined by hardware
The number is about how much of the car has been changed to let the map do its work — not how aggressive the map is.
Stage 1
Software only. Factory hardware, fully reversible.Stage 1 is a complete recalibration of the engine control unit on an otherwise standard car. We rewrite boost targets, ignition timing, fuelling, throttle mapping and the torque limiters that sit between the pedal and the engine — and on most modern cars those limiters are doing more to cap the car than the engine ever was. Nothing is bolted on and nothing is removed, so it can be returned to standard at any time.
Stage 2
Bolt-on hardware, matched by a bespoke calibration.Stage 1 takes you as far as the standard hardware allows. Restrictive downpipes raise exhaust backpressure so the turbo works harder for the same boost; the standard intercooler heat-soaks and the ECU eases timing back to stay safe. Stage 2 opens up those bottlenecks and pairs the new parts with a calibration written specifically for them. It is not a bigger number typed into the Stage 1 file — the hardware changes how the engine breathes, and the map is rewritten around it.
If you want to run E85 at this stage, the fuel system becomes part of the conversation. Ethanol needs roughly a third more fuel volume than pump petrol, so on some cars the standard pumps and injectors reach their limit first — where that happens, upgrading them lets the car run the blend safely. We check what your platform's factory fuel system can support before you commit, and let you know exactly what it will take.
Stage 3
Upgraded turbochargers, fuelling and cooling. A built car.Stage 3 is where the standard turbochargers come off — and where it stops being something you buy and becomes a project we build with you. New turbos move the whole powerband, so the fuel system, cooling and often the clutch or gearbox move with them; change one and you have committed to changing the rest. Before any work starts we agree the four things that decide how the build turns out: the power target, the fuel it will run on, the exact hardware, and how you actually intend to use it. Getting those four to work together is what keeps a build strong and dependable, which is why we settle them on paper first.
None of this happens in an afternoon. The car is stripped and assembled, then developed on the dyno across multiple sessions — we make a change, log the engine under load, read what it actually did to knock correction, air-fuel ratio, boost and temperatures, and adjust, then do it again. It is normal for a build to run through a dozen or more revisions before the numbers hold cleanly across the whole rev range, and to come back for more once you have put real miles on it. Think in terms of weeks rather than days, genuine dyno time, and a calibration that keeps being refined after the car has left the workshop.
This is the deep end and we treat it that way. We sign off the figures your hardware and fuel can comfortably support, and we are straight about where that line sits — so when the number you are chasing and the parts you are ready to fit line up, we build it, and where they need adjusting first, you hear it before you spend anything.
The same stage, four very different answers
How an engine makes its air decides how much a calibration can change. This is the part most tuners are vague about, so here it is plainly. The percentages are typical Stage 1 ranges across the platforms we work on — your car will land where it lands, and we will tell you where that is before you book.
Turbocharged
Stage 1: +15–25%The map controls boost — so the map controls almost everything.
A turbocharged engine makes what the ECU tells the turbo to make. Manufacturers set boost conservatively to cover the lowest-grade fuel and the hottest climate any market will see, and to keep torque inside what the warranty and the gearbox were signed off against. Recovering that margin is the single biggest lever in tuning, which is why headline gains on turbo cars look startling next to naturally aspirated ones. It also means the gains are real and repeatable rather than theoretical.
Naturally aspirated
Stage 1: +3–7%No boost to add. What changes is how the engine responds, not how hard it hits.
An NA engine is already breathing everything it can. Without boost to raise there is no large lever, so the work is timing, fuelling, cam timing where variable, throttle mapping, and the limiters — rev limit, speed limit and the torque tables. The honest expectation is a single-digit percentage gain. What you do get is a car that responds immediately, revs further and sounds considerably angrier, with overrun that cracks and spits flame on the downshift. On an NA engine the real numbers always come with a dyno sheet to back them up — and ours do.
Supercharged
Stage 1: +6–12%Between the two — the lever is the pulley, not the wastegate.
A belt-driven blower makes boost as a function of engine speed, so the biggest gains come from a smaller upper pulley or a larger crank pulley working alongside the calibration, plus real attention to charge cooling because these systems heat-soak quickly under sustained load. The delivery stays linear and instant, which is why people like these engines in the first place.
Hybrid and electrified
Varies by platformTwo power sources to coordinate, and a torque budget shared between them.
On hybrid cars the combustion engine is only half the picture. The interesting work is in how the electric motors fill torque below boost threshold and how the system arbitrates between them, which lives in a separate module on most platforms. Gains are real but platform-specific, and the calibration has to respect battery thermal limits as carefully as engine ones.
The map is written for what goes in the tank
Octane is the ceiling on ignition timing and boost. A file written for 99 octane gives its best on 99; run it on 95 and it eases timing back to stay safe, so matching the map to your fuel from the start is what lets you keep every bit of the power. We ask what you run before we write anything, and where it matters we supply more than one map so the car is happy on whatever you can actually buy.
Ethanol blends change the maths again. E85 resists knock far better and cools the charge as it evaporates, which is why it unlocks gains beyond what pump fuel can reach — but it needs roughly a third more fuel volume, so the standard pumps and injectors become the limit before the engine does. That is a hardware conversation, and the best time to have it is before you commit.
What comes with the work
Your stock file, stored
We read and archive the original calibration before we write anything. It stays on file, so the car can go back to standard whenever you want — for a dealer visit, a sale, or because you changed your mind.
Written for your car
Not a generic file for your model. Fuel grade, climate, hardware already fitted, mileage and how you actually use the car all change what we write.
Datalogged and verified
We log the car under load and read what actually happened — knock correction, air-fuel ratio, boost deviation, intake and coolant temperatures — and revise until the numbers hold up.
Factory protections left intact
Knock control, thermal derating and limp modes stay live. Keeping an engine's own safeguards fully working is central to how we calibrate — it is what keeps the power dependable for years.
Support after the flash
If you want anything dialled in differently, or you add hardware later, send us a log. Revisions on the same car are part of the service, not a new invoice.
Honest numbers
Figures on this site are what we have seen on the dyno, corrected and repeatable. We tell you exactly where your platform will land before you book.
Find your car, see the figures
Every model in the garage lists its stock output, what each stage makes and what hardware that stage needs. If your car isn't listed, or you want to talk through where it should end up, our engineers are glad to have that conversation.