So how much horsepower does the ECU flash make on the Can-Am Defender HD10 engine? We here at Vivid Racing and VR Tuned love testing others products to show how they really perform and how we can improve them. This particular Can-Am Defender was just tuned with a competitors flash. With 72HP stock on the 976cc Rotax engine, we wanted to see what the rear wheel horsepower was on our dyno and if we could improve it. CVT transmissions usually have a 30% drivetrain loss when we run cars on our Mustang all wheel drive dyno with 91 octane. If stock horsepower is 72, than crank horsepower is roughly 51 rwhp. Doing back to back testing, we saw the competitor put down peak horsepower of 54 rwhp. This is only about a 6 bhp gain over stock. However if you look at the dyno graph curve on our site (view below), you can see how the power drops off tremendously. So the larger gains are really further in the RPM range rather than peak horsepower. Along with a higher rev limiter and speed limiter, its a nice tune over stock.
We wanted to see how we could improve it. So after letting the vehicle cool down, we flashed our new ECU tune to the car. With changes to the timing and fuel maps, we only gained 1 rwhp more at the peak but had a larger gain of nearly 4 rwhp at the top of our test doing 60mph. We consistently had a 2 rwhp gain throughout the curve. Going past our mph end test, we were able to do 70mph and reach almost 8000rpm as shown in the video. Other features of the flash are the ability to start in any gear, much better throttle response, and improved use of L gear.
Check out how to flash the ECU, view our Dyno Sheets, and order your Can-Am Defender ECU Tune Here – https://www.vividracing.com/tuned-ecu-flash-canam-defender-hd10-dps-p-152476556.html
Vehicle factory specs https://www.atv.com/specs/can-am/utility-utv/2018/defender/hd10.html
Flashing the ECU with VR Tuned through the Port
Removing the ECU to be Bench Flashed
