V-max off

Top speed is almost never a mechanical limit: it is a table. The ECU compares the vehicle speed it receives on the CAN bus against a threshold, then acts — torque reduction, fuel cut, RPM limit depending on the engaged gear. The thresholds differ by origin: the German manufacturers' 250 km/h agreement, Japanese 180 km/h limiters, a fleet-imposed cap on a van, a limit tied to a tyre's speed rating.

Removal happens in those tables, not on the speed signal. The difference matters: a file that fakes the transmitted speed shifts the speedometer, the cruise control, the tachograph and every strategy that relies on them. We raise the threshold or neutralise it, and we can equally set it to a precise value — a fleet manager asks for 130 far more often than for infinity. The physical limit stays what the tyres and the chassis allow: that call belongs to the tuner.

Removing a limiter adds neither power nor torque: the vehicle will go as far as its aerodynamic drag and final drive let it, and on many models that stops well short of the hoped-for figure.

The rest is down to the tuner and the driver: the tyres' speed rating becomes the real limit, brakes and suspension were not sized for that pace, and speed limits still apply on public roads. On some platforms part of the cap lives outside the engine ECU — in the gearbox, for instance — and both then have to be handled.