Re: Tuning in Brisbane

[tigger73]

Thanks bud, I'll have a look at that, hadn't heard about Tarmac before. Cheers bud

Tarmac has been around for a while. Also called Spectune with handheld controllers which they use for remote tuning. Ben is generally well respected.

Do you know what vehicle they used for testing Sharkie =

They used Sharkies car!!!!! Back in the days when APR did local development and Harding Performance was the local agent.

Thing that worries me, is the Dyno run.....I think you had your new Coils in when you started playing didn't you? I think you mentioned in one of your posts how two identical motors could be different in some way which is why you'd do the dyne run to check, I just want to get the thing done right so I don't damage anything in the process.....Had a bad experience on my Abarth 500 where it was a flash in and off you go.....I took it off to a dyno for a check and found bad detonation was occurring from about 4500-redline.

All the local tuners should be able to sort this for the grade fuel we get here in Aus. Just don’t use CALTEX 98 and you should be Ok. BP Ultimate is generally accepted as the best 98 fuel on the market especially for tuned cars.

I didn't think Guy was doing APR any more?

Correct APR dumped all their dealers worldwide. Then they realised that nobody was stocking hardware locally so they appointed distributors again (though they called them something different). Basically it destroyed Harding Performance/Guys business overnight and caused a major disruption in the supply chain and APR has not recovered (and probably never will) to the same position that they had 5-7 years ago.

A lot of people that were around at the time vowed not to use APR since how they treated Guy/HP. They awarded him top global dealer and one month later stripped the dealership off him. Pretty low act from a principal business.

I don't have an issue with paying the dollars for quality as I have heard lots of people say the same thing you've said, APR is miles ahead of the pack.....but what I wanted to know is if there was someone cheaper in Brisbane who could do the work (IE doing it for $800 instead of $1200). I'll keep an eye out for the specials that come up, that may be the way to

I wouldn’t say APR are miles ahead anymore. They used to develop they files for local fuels/conditions however they don’t these days.

Most reputable businesses will be able to tune your cars. Or if they can’t they should be good enough to tell you that you’re better off going down the road to someone else.

I don't think the missus is too stressed about the DSG tune, but to be honest, I'd forgotten about that. Does it make a difference? or does it just make it quicker shifts and more efficient?

You’ll get D mode to be slightly more intuitive (and less for achieving best fuel economy) and S mode to be less mental and more easy to drive as a daily for performance. It’ll revert to first gear before you stop and if you stomp on the accelerator it’ll downshift if you need to rather that sticking in 2nd gear and being off-boost.

I’d highly recommend a DSG tune as it improves how the car drives just about as much as a stage 1 ECU tune. If you can find someone that’ll package both up I’d highly recommend it.

Unfortunately APR don’t have tunes for the DQ500 ( or at least they never used to). I’d suggest talking to either RD Technik who I know do both or Spectune to see what they offer. Buying a ECU/DSG package is the cheapest way. Other supplier for DSG software is TVS which Harding Performance distributes. Though you can buy a handheld controller from them direct and install your own DSG software without going through HP which may end up cheaper.


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[Sharkie]

For the few hundred TSI Amarok's out there, the only tuning solution in reality is the APR tune. Like Tigger said, back when Guy was the APR distributor, all tunes released (and for a few like the Amarok developed) here, was specifically calibrated for Australian conditions. Each tune was tested and confirmed to be OK for Australian conditions and specced cars over many many (30+) dyno runs and software updates. THIS NO LONGER HAPPENS!

For that reason, I'd recommend any car after about 2015, not to go to APR ..... tunes are purely canned (internationally sourced and not localised at all). To some extent the same can be said for most of the "well known" tunes out there though. Minimal local calibration takes place as all the tunes are originally coded overseas. A dyno run for a few of those may result in uploaded data to the off-shore tuner which is then updated in the code and uploaded back to your car.

Like I said before, it is uneconomical for these local "tuners" now to run multiple runs on a dyno (and by that I mean in excess of 20) to really fine tune your car from the internationally sourced code. I include ALL of the tuners in this, including HP and Tarmac ..... at best you end up with a very mildly tweaked version of the internationally supplied code. There are many hundreds of fuel, timing and boost maps in a modern ECU to modify and to do it properly takes time and money. Happy to be proved wrong .... but I doubt it.

That said, even with only mild tweaks to the overseas code, the well known tuners all deliver pretty good products and on a post 2015 VAG car, you'd be OK with any of them. Some are obviously still better than others due to the international resources behind the tunes, so look out for that.

I have OEM+ from HP on the 110TSI and it is pretty good and will put it on the R as well when the specials roll around at the end of the year .... My Mustang has a tune from a well known local tuner too, makes over 360kw which I'm happy with but it took me clarifying that it had a larger throttle-body on it to explain the "unexpectedly high intake air flow" to the tuner who was tuning the car on the dyno ( in reality only "modifying" the internationally sourced tune) to get the best result.