DASTEK-Unichip is celebrating 30 years of being a market and technology leader in the field of optimized tuning of vehicles in 2023! From a rich history, proudly developed in South Africa in the early 90’s, they have grown in leaps and bounds to become a leader in the field. Apart from being the tuning tool of choice for professional tuners, it has also developed into a fleet protection and anti-theft device. The Unichip is the world’s first and original piggyback computer that has been in ongoing development for 30 years. DASTEK started with normally aspirated petrol engines, something that to this day cannot be done by most chip/tuning companies.
Modern day turbo petrol and turbo diesel engines have one item that can easily be manipulated to improve power. Most other chips are not fully programmable and cannot be optimally adjusted whilst the engine is running and being monitored. Mostly it will only influence the one item that gives a good power increase but not the other signals that truly fine-tunes the engine. Typically it will offset the boost/fuel signal by a 10% margin across the entire map from idle to red line.
Software mapping/flashing is widely advertised as the new/modern way to tune your vehicle but it’s been around for a long time. A major drawback is the fact that in most cases, the vehicle’s engine cannot be tuned whilst running on a dynamometer like the live-tuneable Unichip piggyback. A generic map coming from some country with very different fuel quality and conditions could probably work well on a new vehicle but could spell disaster when wear and tear has taken its toll on the vehicle or the conditions are extreme.
The term “tuner” used earlier, which requires loading a generic map on an ECU is not tuning, nor is the person doing it a tuner, he is a “map loader”. The same with a person that plugs a chip into a vehicle, he is a chip fitter. A tuner is a skilled artisan who can optimally adjust a vehicle using a tuning tool like the Unichip to optimally adjust the settings whilst keeping the prevailing conditions and fuel quality in mind.
Doing a before and after run on a dynamometer is not dyno-tuning, it’s only measuring. Live tuning on a dynamometer is a process where the abovementioned “before run” is done to get the power output, then the vehicle is tuned using the Unichip whilst a multiple of parameters are monitored and road conditions are simulated. Only once the full rpm and load range have been mapped, will the after run be done as a final “approval” that the tuning has a good result.
Under current development are tuning solutions for the new 300 Series Toyota Land Cruisers, both petrol and diesel as well as the new Navara Pro-4X, the new Isuzu 1.9 and 3.0 (including the MU-X), the latest Jimny and new Swift 1.4T models.
For info about the Unichip go to www.unichip.com and for the fleet protection cousin go to www.dastekivm.co.za
