Follow Us on Twitter
Like Us on Facebook
Sign In
Create Account
View GarageSo here is a question that may start a riot and with Wayne in this topic it could be fun, if it's already been done to death please tell me to piss off
.
I really want to map the RS3, everyone says APR but..... With APR being an American company what's their real life experience of English fuel and tuning ability to deal with the difference? I, in no way doubt their tuning prowess and capabilities I am just curious as to how they get round this issue. Do they road test their maps in the country of sale using the available fuel to the customer and in real time conditions before sent into the public domain ect?
Are APR maps a full remap of the complete suck, squeeze, bang, blow procedure, ie increased valve timing to compensate for the increase in fuel pressure, inlet pressure, exhaust pressure and EGT's or is it a case of, up the turbo pressure and increase the fuel as we see so many times with tuning box's and 'remaps'. So many times you hear of complete head failure due to an increase in fuel and boost?
I would also include Revo and any other on the day remapers into this, as a company that can remap cars on the day of a show by a simple flash of the ECU with no on road/RR testing or driving results to me seems foreign coming from a background of remap road test, pull over and tweak, drive and continue until both parties (tuner and customer) are happy with the end result. Spending £850 for a simple ECU flash is out of the question for me until somebody can tell me otherwise . The problem is every car is different.
Which then leads onto the question. With an English based Audi specialist tuner like MRC who have years of experience on home ground, with great results (from what I can see) on their own maps be a much better choice?
They have their own map that is then tweaked and refined as a RR takes place and the car doesn't leave until they are happy with it (from what I can gather). Simply just doing a RR before and after tells no truths about the behaviour of the map, just the figures achieved?
There are pages on here on the merits of which map and ultimately it is your choice. I would suggest most on here went for APR as they have a UK wide franchise dealer network should anything go wrong and the results they have produced have been pretty much consistent across each application with optimum bhp and torque curve characteristics rather than just headline figures and have been good enough to make themselves open to communicating with the forum's members on here. Granted their communication could be improved but it is far better than what some have received from some of the tuners you have named, i.e. you don't here from them at all when you contact them. I would also say that given the number of UK APR tuned RS3's and TT-RS's they probably have the largest number of tuned 2.5 5cyl cars to their credit.
Whilst every car is different and I can advocate that on my own car and what it produced on an independent rolling road, like your OEM map the parameters can be set to a universal standard which will achieve best results and APR is like that as with MTM, REVO, ABT etc. I would query exactly how much more gain you would get from your car being individually tuned. Having done that on a B6 S4 with Revo back in 2005 when Mitch still worked there and they had a decent reputation, after they spent 8 hours tweaking their stock program and an independent rolling road I got 5bhp more and a 2% torque curve gain on a car that eventually did 385bhp. Would I feel the difference, I doubt it.
APR did or perhaps still do have a UK operation and their stock US map was adjusted for the EU spec ECU's emissions and fuelling. Also the Bosch ME9 ECU's are learning in nature so part of mapping them is removing their restrictors to allow them to modulate fuelling, intake pressure / temperature, timing, etc. to how you drive. For booker, the maps can be remarkably different depending on boost pressure used, fuelling timing etc. etc. so whilst the curves look similar how they arrive at the figures can be very different. Then throw in the debate on rolling roads and the wild differences you can have between them.
Ultimately JThornley you have choice and if you believe MRC are the solution for you then sincerely good luck to you for using them. The prospect of flat bedding my car from Newcastle to Banbury every time I had to have the map removed for warranty work or there was a fault was not palatable and the old adage is that appearances can sometimes be deceptive.
Just one of many MRC related stories I could give you; carbon cleaning and remaps on B7 RS4's was and probably still is a heated topic so one day a friend and I tested the theory out where he had a B7 RS4 saloon that with 30k miles on the clock that had been carbon cleaned and an MRC stage 1 remap with a Tubi exhaust fitted and I has a stock RS4 Avant with 55k miles on the clock that had not been touched except a cat back exhaust. Both of us had on the gauge half a tank of V-power, both recently serviced within 1k miles of the test. We did 4 rolling runs, 2 each way on a deserted dual carriageway in third gear from 1500rpm in third through the 8500rpm in 4th and on each run we were neck and neck bar a couple of cm's if one of us got a slight jump on the other at the start. Yet on MRC's dyno my friend's RS4 seemingly had 50bhp more than mine and more torque as well. Go figure.
I'm not knocking MRC because they are one of the few V.A.G. tuners out there that have been going as long as they have and they do know their stuff but they are not peerless and are still ultimately a business selling products for money.
Edited by P_G, 04 June 2015 - 09:12 AM.
Back to top
