How can I get more HP?

SamTheBro · November 23, 2019

Hello, I own a 2011 Lexus IS200D (150hp).

What mods do you guys recommend to make it faster?

🚗

NemesisUK · November 23, 2019

Remapping will bring the most return for investment.

talaipwros · November 24, 2019

5 hours ago, NemesisUK said:

Remapping will bring the most return for investment.

that will increase insurance a lot though

SamTheBro · November 24, 2019

11 hours ago, talaipwros said:

that will increase insurance a lot though

How would remapping my ECU increase insurance? 🤔

Britprius · November 24, 2019

In the UK any modifications done to improve performance, "and even though's that do not" should be reported to your insurance company. not doing this will invalidate your insurance. Although not a visible alteration in the event of a serious accident claim it is not difficult for the insurer to prove such a modification, and refuse the claim. This in turn leads to prosecution by the police for driving without insurance.
It also makes it very difficult, and expensive to get insurance next time you wish to insure a vehicle. When you take out insurance a question that is always asked is "is the vehicle modified in any way" answering no would be obtaining insurance by deception.

John.

SamTheBro · November 24, 2019

1 hour ago, Britprius said:

In the UK any modifications done to improve performance, "and even though's that do not" should be reported to your insurance company. not doing this will invalidate your insurance. Although not a visible alteration in the event of a serious accident claim it is not difficult for the insurer to prove such a modification, and refuse the claim. This in turn leads to prosecution by the police for driving without insurance.
It also makes it very difficult, and expensive to get insurance next time you wish to insure a vehicle. When you take out insurance a question that is always asked is "is the vehicle modified in any way" answering no would be obtaining insurance by deception.

John.

Thanks for the clarification, here is illegal to do mods, but a remap doesn't bother anyone, if it doesn't make a bunch of smoke of course.

talaipwros · November 24, 2019

2 hours ago, SamTheBro said:

How would remapping my ECU increase insurance? 🤔

They ask you if the vehicle is modified

Britprius · November 24, 2019

1 hour ago, SamTheBro said:

Thanks for the clarification, here is illegal to do mods, but a remap doesn't bother anyone, if it doesn't make a bunch of smoke of course.

It is legal to carry out mods, but you must notify your insurance of the mods.

John.

Linas.P · December 6, 2019

Although, I am not suggesting to lie to insurance.... but how exactly would insurance know the car is mapped? Besides there is nothing legal nor illegal in telling or not telling it to insurance. People needs to understand that this is contractual agreement - there are no law to say you must tell it, it is just arbitrary imposed terms and conditions with which you do agree by signing. That said if they somehow finds out, they can refuse to pay out or could cancel your policy - not on the basis of you braking the law, but on the basis you braking their contract terms.

P.S. That is ignoring the fact it is not exactly easy to map Lexus and even further - that OP would blow that poor diesel engine before he could ever had an accident. Just for reference @SamTheBro you have same revised engine from IS220d which Lexus has specifically down-tuned to avoid endless issues with reliability, these engines are not reliable as they are and you are looking to undo what Lexus have considered as a fix. Not exactly good idea...

If you want more power - get another car even if it is BMW 330d (which can be mapped very succesfully as well).

doog442 · December 7, 2019

18 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Although, I am not suggesting to lie to insurance.... but how exactly would insurance know the car is mapped? Besides there is nothing legal nor illegal in telling or not telling it to insurance. People needs to understand that this is contractual agreement - there are no law to say you must tell it, it is just arbitrary imposed terms and conditions with which you do agree by signing. That said if they somehow finds out, they can refuse to pay out or could cancel your policy - not on the basis of you braking the law, but on the basis you braking their contract terms.

You might want to argue the Fraud Act with the City of London Police

Application Fraud

A policyholder dishonestly misrepresents or fails to disclose material facts in order to lower the insurance premium. This can include non-disclosure of claims history, points on a driving licence, and/or car modifications.

https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/advice-and-support/fraud-and-economic-crime/ifed/Pages/Types-of-insurance-fraud.aspx

NemesisUK · December 7, 2019

18 hours ago, Linas.P said:

but how exactly would insurance know the car is mapped?

If the potential financial lose is great enough the insurers will send an expert to interrogate the ECU and any change in mapping will be discovered.

Do not believe those claims from remap companies that their remaps are undetectable.

Linas.P · December 7, 2019

It is not really surprising, considering that insurance in UK is government backed fraud scheme - therefore in defense they really like to stick fraud to everything, because that reflects on what they do. However, that said police are usually very poor in interpreting the law - don't forget that police is executive brand and not judiciary, so they neither create nor understand the law.

What is legally insurance fraud, is actually when you make false claim e.g. that your car has been stolen, when actually you have sold it to Romanian friend who took it out of the country. That is legally actual fraud, what goes into insurance contract is just contractual terms.

32 minutes ago, NemesisUK said:

If the potential financial lose is great enough the insurers will send an expert to interrogate the ECU and any change in mapping will be discovered.

Do not believe those claims from remap companies that their remaps are undetectable.

Yes, I agree with that, however what you are required to do is to disclose modification you know. It would be easy enough to say you never knew it was mapped and it would hard to prove otherwise. Obviously, if there is massive bench-like wing it would be harder to pretend you didn't know it is modification.

Further, this usually only comes into effect when you are trying to claim damage to the modifications you have not disclosed e.g. gold plated wheels for £30,000. Here you certainly going to get rejection.

I would imagine that it would ever come to effect if somebody could suspect that mods on your car have caused the accident. Which when it comes to ECU mapping is very unlikely.

doog442 · December 7, 2019

45 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

What is legally insurance fraud, is actually when you make false claim e.g. that your car has been stolen, when actually you have sold it to Romanian friend who took it out of the country. That is legally actual fraud, what goes into insurance contract is just contractual terms.

Research the Fraud Act 2006 pop back and then try and educate us. :wink3:

I gave you a link, you ignored it yet still spout the same nonsense.

Linas.P · December 7, 2019

look - I didn't say you should or you shouldn't disclose the modifications. What I am saying is that fear of insurance companies are far overblown and people simply need to be realistic with disclosures.

doog442 · December 7, 2019

Well I'm saying if you've mapped the car you should disclose it. I think this is also the recommended advice on most UK motoring forums and we need to ram that message home to people like you who think you can get away with it.

I was actually in my local BMW dealership last week. I overhead the service guy running through a list of faults on a 1 series and he finally said '.".and its been mapped"..they weren't impressed as clearly this guy was trying to pull a warranty stunt. Had he told his insurance - who knows ?

The issue is that you may be driving like Miss Daisy but if your were involved in a serious accident (even if someone stepped off the pavement in front of you and it wasn't your fault) your car would be seized by the Police, Vehicle examiners would send the ECU off for examination and the hounds of hell would befall you if you hadn't disclosed your modification.

Likewise any Insurance company would send the ECU off as a matter of course.

I absolutely know where you're coming from, however this is a LEXUS forum that clearly has an affiliation with the brand and I for one think we should be encouraging people to do the 'right thing'.

Linas.P · December 7, 2019

Do a right would be to boycott insurance in UK. This is not to say your argument is not correct, but insurance companies are really having too much power and abuses it too much here. My problem is that private capital companies have so much power in UK that they literally are trying to create laws. At the same time government is too lazy to create laws to protect us and we end-up in situation where not the government, but insurance companies decides if you can driver or not.

I agree - pulling mapping card whilst trying to get warranty is stupid thing. This clearly voids it. However as for examining ECU, that not going to make you automatically culpable if the discovers it was mapped.

Linas.P · December 8, 2019

[for admins] sorry for off topic, but it seems related to car modification in sense of insurance implication of it. I would say generally, perhaps people should not look for legal advise in forums, but equally I hate to see people scared of exercising their legal rights against dishonest industry... like insurance. Perhaps good post to think about and research further (preferably with qualified lawyer).

To start with - I do maintain the view that everyone should be always honest in their life, call it "best practice".... that is as long as other side in any relationship is equally honest (something I could not attribute to insurance companies in UK).

When it comes to Fraud Act 2006 it has to be further interpreted and backed by case law. First of all, we need to understand that there are separate acts which specifically governs insurance contract law and Fraud Act 2006 may be altogether not applicable when it comes to motor insurance. Particularly, for the cases of insurance you are better of looking at following:

The Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999
Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 2010
Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 - (CIDRA)
Consumer Rights Act 2015

It is as well important to follow the acts in sequence, because later acts often amends and replaces the articles in previous acts. If we want to look into Fraud Act 2006 in isolation I believe the key article for our discussion is article 3 below:

"(3)Fraud by failing to disclose information
A person is in breach of this section if he—
(a)dishonestly fails to disclose to another person information which he is under a legal duty to disclose, and
(b)intends, by failing to disclose the information—
(i)to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii)to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss."

First thing to ask here is to establish what you have to disclose to insurance "under a legal duty". This is covered in CIDRA 2012 and insurance disclosures are merely pre-contractual obligations and not a legal duty to disclose. So here straight away the argument falls apart. The questions which comes into your insurance quote are just totally made-up list of wishes insurance provider wants to know about you. They do state that "under contract terms" your contract will become invalid if you fail to disclose, but that is it - no other legal obligation. In fact this statement itself could be argued based on both Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 2010 and Consumer Rights Act 2015 where they states that failure to disclose does not necessarily void the contract as long as disclosure was made in "good-faith"... which itself if very difficult to prove or disprove.

The next section which seems to apply for services is following:

"(11) Obtaining services dishonestly
(1)A person is guilty of an offence under this section if he obtains services for himself or another—
(a)by a dishonest act, and
(b)in breach of subsection (2).
(2)A person obtains services in breach of this subsection if—
(a)they are made available on the basis that payment has been, is being or will be made for or in respect of them,
(b)he obtains them without any payment having been made for or in respect of them or without payment having been made in full, and
(c)when he obtains them, he knows—
(i)that they are being made available on the basis described in paragraph (a), or
(ii)that they might be,but intends that payment will not be made, or will not be made in full.

Ok - so here you need to follow the logic of the articles. First of all consider article (3) and whenever you were or were not under legal obligation and then subsections (2) of article (11). At first it seems to indicate that if you have obtained the services by dishonest act you are guilty of fraud. Not disclosing modification to your car which you were specifically asked to disclose seems like dishonest act, however alone that is not fraud, because act clearly states that conditions in subsection 2 must be met and as already established you were not under legal obligation to disclose anyway. Subsection 2 then relates to the payment for the services - in short this limits meaning of fraud in cases where you dishonestly promise to pay for something conditionally, knowing you will not be paying, or will not be paying in full.

To illustrate that in examples:

buying the car for £4000, paying £2500 when picking it up and promising to pay remaining balance later, but failing to do so - that is fraud. Or giving expired cheque or cheque to closed account which then fails to clear. Here you were under legal obligation to pay what was agreed and you have dishonestly promised to do so but failed - Fraudster!
buying the a classic car promising that you will be restoring it when asked by seller and then simply scrapping it for metal would not be fraud - yes you have been dishonest, but that is not fraud. First of all, seller has no legal power to ask you what you will do with car when it is in your possession and you have no legal duty to answer. Straight away it is not fraud! Yes you have lied to seller, but you have paid the seller in full - dishonest? Maybe... but not fraudster.

It would be ludicrous if it would be legally binding to disclose to insurance how many kids you have, what is your marital status or what is your profession. Yes legally and contractually they are not forbidden to ask (I think they should be!), but equally you not forbidden not to answer them - provided you understand your contract will be invalidated if proven wrong later.

NOTE - as any act this needs to backed by case law in court. It seems that case law in such cases enforces my statement of non-disclosures not being illegal, but I cannot pretend to have looked to all case law - this is just not something I would like to spend 3 month studying without getting paid. If you want to find more information on the topic here is good article from Charted Insurance Institute :

https://www.cii.co.uk/fact-files/law-and-regulation/recent-developments-in-insurance-contract-law/

NOTE 2 - I maintain that police does not know **** about the law and just slaps random acts which seems to sound similar. They are not trained to be legal experts and should not pretend they know what they talking about.

NOTE 3 - although I have degree in law, I am not in any shape or form expert of insurance contract law - it is kind of specific area. And overall I am not practicing lawyer, so my judgement is just as good as anyone reading articles on the internet.