Golf R - APR Stage 3 Upgrade

[raybow13]

After a few months of waiting my APR Stage 3 kit arrived a few weeks ago, and after a week of work I finally picked it up yesterday.

In case anyone else is thinking of this upgrade (and you should be ) here are a few impressions from my first few days with the upgrade:

The Kit: The upgrade consisted of:

•Stage 3 Turbo kit - Garrett GTX28xx turbo, new intake manifold and plumbing to suit
•Bigger intercooler
•High & Low pressure fuel pumps
•Full turbo back RSC exhaust
•Runner flap delete
•ECU and DSG software

Power: The power is, as you'd expect, amazing. We haven't put the car on the dyno yet - APR recommended putting a few hundred kms on it first - but the specs say it should be somewhere around 315kW at the flywheel. Keep in mind I came straight from a Stage 1 chip (no hardware) to the full Stage 3 kit so it's a big jump on this car.

The Autopolar boost gauge shows about 30 PSI peak boost.

Performance: First run 0-100kph in 4.1 seconds.

Drivability (Normal Mode): My big worry was that Stage 3 would 'ruin' the car (my wife's words) in much the same way I 'ruined' my Polo (ie made it fast but also very loud, laggy and annoying to drive on the street). Thankfully there was no need to worry at all.

Basically if you keep the car at less than 4000rpm then it's just a Stage 1 tune. You can drive around town quite normally using 3/4 throttle or less and it behaves very much the same as it did before the upgrade - nothing obnoxious, loud or unexpected.

Drivability (Manic Mode): On the other hand, keep it above 4000rpm with a heavy right foot and the car changes character completely. The smooth acceleration to redline and muted exhaust note of the stock car are replaced with a brutal kick in the back and an amplified version of sound you hear when you pull a running creepie crawlie out of the bottom of a swimming pool.

Once you hit the boost level it's easy to keep the car in this zone, and the power delivery will be perfectly suited to the drag strip or race track where you can keep the car on boost.

The bad part is when you want to drive between the two modes - for example when you want to take off quickly from the lights. In this instance you get Dr Jekyll for a few seconds until you reach 4000rpm in 1st, and then Mr Hyde as you jump from about 15 PSI to 30 PSI almost instantly. This means the SS Commodore next to you gains about half a car length before disappearing behind you very rapidly in a cloud of tyre/clutch/exhaust smoke.

Cons: Other than the new bi-polar personality of the car (which is an improvement on the zero personality you get in a stock R) the only real issue so far is with the DSG. The extra power is confusing the DSG - even though it's got the updated APR software it is having a hard time handling the sudden rush of torque when the boost hits, and Launch Control instantly sends the DSG into overheat warning mode.

I suspect some of the issues will be resolved with software tweaks but I was already considering doing a DSG clutch upgrade so will probably go down this path anyway.

A few pics along the way:

Engine out ready to work:


New Turbo installed - Garrett GTX2767R:


Engine back in the car (sorry for the blurry pics - they're great mechanics but not so great photographers )


APR full RSC exhaust:

Congrats on ur upgrades!!
I am also looking into ApR upgrades for my new R
And was curious about where you purchased parts from and for how much?
Especially the turboback exhaust and ecu tune

Thanks

[jamesatfish]

this is serious stuff, good luck on your 3s!!

Thanks! Am certainly hoping to get into the 3s before we hit the Cooma 1000 sprint towards the end of the year.

Congrats on ur upgrades!!
I am also looking into ApR upgrades for my new R
And was curious about where you purchased parts from and for how much?
Especially the turboback exhaust and ecu tune

Thanks

Everything on my car was purchased through Canberra VW Centre who are one of the 2 APR dealers here in the ACT. They supplied the parts and performed the install.

Both CVWC and APR have been very good with discounts off their RRP over the years so if you're buying a few goodies all at once I'd talk to your local APR dealer and see what they can sort out.

[jamesatfish]

Had a shakedown run on the dyno this morning to see how the car was running and to iron out some issues with the fuelling. Looks like we'll need a beefier fuel pump controller as the high pressure fuel pump draws too much current for the standard controller - APR are working on the issue and looks like the fix is simply grabbing a controller out of the TTRS to match the TTRS pump.

Despite that, and the dyno operator backing off as the car leaned out a bit too much for his comfort, the R pulled a nice 262.5kW at all 4 wheels.

The dip in the graph is the DSG trying to sort out the additional power as the boost comes on strong - will be interesting to see if that still happens once we upgrade the clutch packs. You do get a brief but noticeable 'pause' in acceleration on the road so it makes sense to see this correlation on the dyno graph.

For comparison on the same dyno we pulled 188.5kW with just the Stage 1 tune, so a net gain of 74kW at the wheels.

[Deadpool]

What's with the massive dip?

Epic gains though!

[jamesatfish]

What's with the massive dip?

Originally I thought it was the DSG dropping torque as a way to prevent clutch slippage, but turns out it's the ESP cutting power for a moment when the turbo hits peak boost. At that point the boost jumps from ~20psi to around 30psi almost instantly which I guess might seem to the ESP sensors like the wheels have dropped onto a surface with much lower grip, hence the ESP pulls back the power for just a moment.

There are a few little things left to sort out so the next time the car goes on the dyno we'll do some runs with ESP disabled (by fuse) to confirm the hypothesis.

[Deadpool]

Originally I thought it was the DSG dropping torque as a way to prevent clutch slippage, but turns out it's the ESP cutting power for a moment when the turbo hits peak boost. At that point the boost jumps from ~20psi to around 30psi almost instantly which I guess might seem to the ESP sensors like the wheels have dropped onto a surface with much lower grip, hence the ESP pulls back the power for just a moment.

There are a few little things left to sort out so the next time the car goes on the dyno we'll do some runs with ESP disabled (by fuse) to confirm the hypothesis.

Ahh yes, I've heard heaps of things on Vortex about pre-MY12 not being able to full defeat the ESP. Also, jesus 30PSI! That's insanely high.

[Pullstarter]

Awesome result James, be sure to let us know how the car goes reliability wise. Modding a car that heavily kind of scares of me a bit lol. But I must say the results are the nuts!

[jamesatfish]

Awesome result James, be sure to let us know how the car goes reliability wise. Modding a car that heavily kind of scares of me a bit lol. But I must say the results are the nuts!

Will certainly report back on the long-term reliability of the car once all the teething problems are sorted.

It's my daily driver so I don't want a car that's anything other than bulletproof - the clutch upgrade is a certainty and I'm prepared to go to a Stage 4 built motor if there are any reliability concerns with the engine internals, but at this point I can't see that being needed unless I can't shake the itch for more power...

[jubei]

good luck james, hope the issues are sorted soon.i hate that feeling in ur gut when somethings not right with the car.

[jamesatfish]

I took advantage of HPA Motorsport's sale and picked up a Gen 4 Competition Haldex controller to replace the stock unit, and installed it last night. Woke up this morning to overcast skies and wet roads so the perfect opportunity to test it out.

I have now decided this should be a mandatory part of any Stage 3 / big turbo build for the Golf R.

With only limited testing to and from work today, it seems the 'lag' in acceleration that I had previously described has all but disappeared. Where I had been getting a slight pause in acceleration at the moment the engine hit peak boost there is now only strong acceleration through the rev band - so I'm assuming that the previous behaviour was in part the result of the Haldex controller making changes to the torque split when the sudden spike in power overwhelms the front wheels.

With the competition controller the rear wheels are sent power far earlier in the rev band and that lag I'd been experiencing seems to be gone.


The dyno graphs stolen from the HPA website explain things more clearly:

Stock Controller
The lag I was trying to describe seems to occur around 3500rpm - the same point where the stock controller seems to increase the amount of torque being sent to the rear wheels. Note the gap at that point between the power being sent to the front versus the back wheels.




Competition Controller
With the competition controller the front/rear split is pretty much constant all through the rev band, so there's no lag caused by the controller changing the torque split when the engine hits peak boost.




All in all I'd strongly recommend the upgraded controller to anyone looking at a big turbo upgrade for their R.