Rica 280

[bish789]

Finally bit the bullet and booked my beast into VT for the 280 upgrade.

Adam says it will make a big difference, so I can't wait to drive her home.

Will let you know the difference as soon as she's done.

Next Monday is the big day.

Best thing is the wife is paying.

[Bracer]

Nice one mate

Will be interesting to here your thoughts and are you local to any of the other members with a full blown Rica as a head to head test would be very interesting to see

[Mrsmopp]

Nice one Bish!! Let us know what you think!

x

[glock19]

Read from other post that the 300 bhp unit is about 500 pounds ? TME (Sweden) offers the 280 bhp/400Nm unit for about (after conversion) 350 pounds. However they state very clearly that they are not supporting the UK market because their units were stolen there. What are the main differences between the two ? TME uses a docking hardware and just reflash the EPROM/EEPROM on the ECU. Does RICA do that or is it an IC change ?

[volvotuning]

I think you can pretty much disregard what it says on that web site because it appears that there are a lot of descrepancies between MTE (the people who write the TME software) and TME.

Adam.

[glock19]

Adam,
Can you brief me a little on the series of RICA mods ? My present ECU ends with ... 203 074. I'm not too keen on the piggy back units (eg SAM) but if you have direct plug/play units. I would go for it. Do you accept credit cards ?

Any dealers in the Asia Pacific region ? How many units/year does it take for an installer to sell in order to qualify as an agent for RICA?

[Bracer]

Adam,
Can you brief me a little on the series of RICA mods ? My present ECU ends with ... 203 074. I'm not too keen on the piggy back units (eg SAM) but if you have direct plug/play units. I would go for it. Do you accept credit cards ?

Any dealers in the Asia Pacific region ? How many units/year does it take for an installer to sell in order to qualify as an agent for RICA?

SAM Ecu's are not a piggy back unit, its a remapped eprom chip as is Rica !

[glock19]

Ooppss, bobo here. Seems that I got the wrong info from some Singaporeans...

[Bracer]

Not to worry, you know now

[glock19]

Where does RICA actually originated from ? From the ChipTuning site, it mentioned that they (you) are the AUTHORISED UK DEALER. Meaning, you don't develop the system ? I noticed that RICA would suit a range of cars and that means, you have the complete pre-tested and pre-mapped ECU ready. Do you still need to dyno the vehicles after that, even though the improvement has been recorded ?

I know you also perfrom custom re-mapping, and that's where the dyno comes in but how often is that practised and at what extra cost ? Wouldn't the re-mapped ECU contain some threshold/tolerances to cater for later add-ons (Exhaust/Hi-flow fitlers/etc) after the upgrade ? Sorry that this is so long winded because since I'm not in the UK and once I get the 280/304, I might later do something and must I then sent the ECU again ?

Adam, I'll PM you something for the weekend.

[bish789]

Well what can I say.

The car is like a new one. It pulls and pulls, acceleration fantastic, gets more boost, like a formula one car (not quite but to me it is).

Its as if its had an engine transplant.

Took it easy at first on way home from VT, then started burying the throttle on the motorway, and whoosh, bye bye suckers.

Mr. new Silver BMW in burberry cap with angel eye headlights, oh dear you've disappeared in my mirrors, maybe that'll teach you to stick up my bum and try and threaten me. This happened several times with different drivers, all with same effect, bye bye, and watch those jaws drop.

GO AND GET IT DONE, YOU WILL LOVE IT. RING VT NOW AND BOOK IT IN

[volvotuning]

Where does RICA actually originated from ? From the ChipTuning site, it mentioned that they (you) are the AUTHORISED UK DEALER. Meaning, you don't develop the system ? I noticed that RICA would suit a range of cars and that means, you have the complete pre-tested and pre-mapped ECU ready. Do you still need to dyno the vehicles after that, even though the improvement has been recorded ?

I know you also perfrom custom re-mapping, and that's where the dyno comes in but how often is that practised and at what extra cost ? Wouldn't the re-mapped ECU contain some threshold/tolerances to cater for later add-ons (Exhaust/Hi-flow fitlers/etc) after the upgrade ? Sorry that this is so long winded because since I'm not in the UK and once I get the 280/304, I might later do something and must I then sent the ECU again ?

Adam, I'll PM you something for the weekend.

RICA Engineering is a Dutch company, specialising in engine software remapping. Their specialist make is Volvo in terms of road cars, but they also do a lot of Porsche and BMW tuning for many racing teams in Europe. We (Chip Tuning Ltd) are the UK representatives for RICA. This means that we resell and co-develop upgrades for the UK market. For example, the Volvo 850 280 bhp RICA upgrade was developed for the UK market by us, with RICA.

For off-the-shelf maps, you don't need to dyno test, except to see what the car does before and after. The dyno is used for a) custom tuning, b) diagnostics, c) before and after tests, d) dyno days, e) development work.

Custom mapping is not required for filter change and exhaust change. It IS needed for turbo changes and injector changes.

Adam.