189 kw from a wee chip

[philthy]

Someone spotted it before me!

Thanks Philthy

No worries, was just having a sniff around the APR site for anything new.

[clip]

And just for a little tuning inspiration:

Hmmm, I think I have to do that!

[clip]

The Tig is a pretty good package already, with some outstanding handling characteristics if you want to explore them (it surprised me). So this performance upgrade is just what it's crying out for.

I can't help thinking this is what the car was designed for in the first place.

[Paragon]

I don't know where i got this one from?
Attachment 4367

Thats the ABT Tiguan, another German tuning company.

[Paragon]

x 2

Even though my target is 210-220kw ...... CAI, FMIC & exhaust should get it there ...... on the GTI the exhaust alone is worth 11+kw

What I dont get with the APR gear is that none of the tunes are car specific.
If you were to do the CAI, FMIC, ZORST or even to run larger cams etc would you still get the same APR chip that someone would get with a stockie?

With previous cars that I had tuned, they were all put on a dyno and AFRs were tuned to that car and its mods as we all know that each car is different.

How does plugging in an APR chip without any dyno time work?!? Unless the VW ECU is somehow self learning..

If you were going to do intake and exhaust mods would you get a better and safer result with a Haltech / Wolf 3D and a custom dyno tune? Not to mention probably cheaper too..

[Pullstarter]

Thats the ABT Tiguan, another German tuning company.

Austrian actually, but I'm just being pedantic

The APR chips are actually vehicle specific and dyno tested (at length) in those specific vehicles. None of the other big chip tuners such as Oettinger, GIAC, C2 etc dyno tune every car they chip either. If you're working on an identical car with no mods why would it be any different? I don't quite understand what you're getting at. If you're talking about cars that have other significant mods then yes I would take it upon myself to get it dyno tuned and I think most enthusiast owners would understand that. However, I would say the vast majority of APR customers would not have significant mods on their cars, chiping seems to be the first port of call these days.

[Sharkie]

Every car is unique and no 2 cars will ever return exactly identical power figures, even if identical from the factory. Car manufacturers of mass produced cars produce a generic model specific ECU tune that on average will work well with a specific model and applies to all.

The "mass" tuners work to the same principle.They produce tunes that are generic and on average will produce the same results. A figure such as this 189kw is the average of a number of cars doing many dyno runs. Minor mods such as CAI and FMIC's are handled quite well by the ECU and it can adjust and "learn" to some extent.

Mods such as exhaust, cams, bigger turbos etc will require a retune and APR for instance does one with the exhuast on the GTI. This is still a generic tune and not 100% optimised for each individual car.

You can therefore by some really custom tuning improve on it still. This is however really expensive and requires many many many hours on the dyno. I ran a Haltech on my Mk1 turbo and spent days calibrating it on the dyno at a huge expense. It was great but we only really did Air Fuel and Boost. Not a lot of electronics on a 1800 16V ......

Modern VW (and other) engines has so many parameters to set that I doubt you'd ever get it 100%. For the price advantage, ease and speed of doing it, even though its not totally optimised, I'd go for some thing like the APR chip everyday with the mods I've got planned.

If however, I wanted to go extreme and do cams, big turbo etc I'd go custom tune.

[Paragon]

Thanks for the info. It just seems tho (to me who is very new to VW tuning) that there is a fair difference between a tune for a 190kw car and a 220kw car in terms of fuel maps / timing / boost to get that extra 30kw safely.

The amount of extra fuel to gain that extra 30kw cant be the same amount of fuel to make 190kw, otherwise running that same tune on a car producing only 190kw would be rather rich or the 220kw car running lean.

I will most likely go with the APR product anyway but will also be doing before and after dyno runs to check my air:fuel anyway for peace of mind, I'm just not completely sold on this one tune for all idea, might have to ask the APR boys some questions.

Unless I am not understanding the APR product properly and they would provide a chip with a different tune for those with extra intake/exhaust mods?

[Paragon]

Oops, re-read ur post Sharkie and makes more sense that APR is providing that "Generic" tune for all the cars within one standard deviation of normal. Like I said, just not what I am used to.

Just as a comparison, on previous cars, fully programmable aftermarket ECU approx $1400, 4 hour dyno tune $700. Most standard ECUs can handle CAI, FMIC, exhaust and some extra boost just fine.

I wonder on a Tig whether $2000 worth of bolt on mods run on the stock ECU would get better results than stock everything + $2000 APR chip? Who wants to give it a go

[philthy]

Oops, re-read ur post Sharkie and makes more sense that APR is providing that "Generic" tune for all the cars within one standard deviation of normal. Like I said, just not what I am used to.

Just as a comparison, on previous cars, fully programmable aftermarket ECU approx $1400, 4 hour dyno tune $700. Most standard ECUs can handle CAI, FMIC, exhaust and some extra boost just fine.

I wonder on a Tig whether $2000 worth of bolt on mods run on the stock ECU would get better results than stock everything + $2000 APR chip? Who wants to give it a go

The APR chip is just new software for the standard ECU, has no physical components. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the ECU controls the timing & boost, so bolts ons like exhaust, intake, intercooler etc by themself would have a lot less effect than winding up the boost by 50-100% and playing with the timing?