Good for him… My bet is it was a revo tune… Pretty shitty he won’t share… Cool pics of the motor…
http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?6087109-Finally-time-for-my-story.-The-bad-and-the-ugly.
What a shitty deal.
Ouch…
kinda creppy AOA searches forums for info like that. its cool it worked in his favor, but if I ever have a car thats under warranty I think I’ll be careful to not post identifying details of the car.
BMW has been doing it for a while. It wouldn’t surprise me if guys like Flying Tomatoes were/are active forum members while doing their daily duties at the headquarters. They have meets at the headquarters near Sterling VA at random times too.
we’ve seen forum members contacting Audi corporate offices and ratting people out for modding cars, posting about Audi etc.
Lots of rats.
Flying Homotoes is in Allentown Pennsylvania, so not likely anything to do with Audi, however his personality is definitely the rat type.
There are all kinds of people in this world so it doesn’t surprise me that people would tattle to Audi corporate about modified cars.
There was a newbie technician training center called the Audi Academy in Allentown PA for years. When I went through the training they had moved the training center to Exton PA in the UTI building. Flying Tomatoes has in his signature that he is a former Audi corporate so he could have been anything from a secretary to a real high up the food chain executive. Really it doesn’t matter anyways but I am just providing some background information. Now that I think about it the current Audi technical field manager/field engineer lives in PA near Allentown too. Maybe I should ask him if he knows about Flying Tomatoes.
he’s pretty young. Probably 35 years old or something.
Must be reasonably young if he likes pokey wheels at lame ass offset.
I find the fact that it might have been related to the fact that he didnt let the car warm up ridiculous and hilarious. I am not doubting that it is fact, I just find it crazy that inadvertently pressing the gas too hard after startup could cause $16K in damage. Any tune that doesn’t retain the factory safeguards to prevent this type of situation should not be sold to the public.
Read further and see that Audi of America stepped in with a new engine! That is shocking. They score MAJOR points in my books with this move.
And I was wrong GIAC tune… Maybe they should work on tuning and not lying about results…
Wow - bad business decision on GIAC’s part. This guy was willing to keep everything quiet. Purchasing his ECU would have seemed like a no-brainer to me. Not saying that the tune caused this - but just doesn’t seem worth the inevitable negative forum publicity now that it’s out in the open.
Think about how much bigger this is. Audi of America is reading that thread. Now audi of America knows giac wss the tune. Thats an even bigger issue now imho. We might not ever know what giacs side of the story is… jist a bad move would have made more sence for them to by the ecu.
Agreed, but this car is so so so mildly tuned from the factory… Either the motor had a inherent defect or the tune caused it but will probably never know… Yet another reason for data logging IMO…
Ya good points Chris and Prime. I think GIAC will now find it necessary to respond. Reputation in this business is everything.
I agree. In giacs defence I doubt the tune blew up the motor…we didn’t really see enough pictures nothing looked messed up. Turbo looked clean…prime is right we really will never know…I think giac might not have really been thinking of the impact. It looks real bad for giac when Audi of America is giving this guy a motor and giac wont even give the guy his money back…audi of America for the super win…I dont intekd on blowing my car up and im well out of warranty. This action by audi makes me feel better abo8t owning am audi… not so sure how some of the giac guys might feel.
Deffo poor show by GIAC. especially since Audi stepped up knowing the engine was tuned.
I would be very interested in how GIAC sees this. I’d love to hear their side.
I’m still shocked about AOA finding this thread and responding. Wow.
I interpreted that differently. I thought he was referring to his car being the former “Audi Corporate, Show DisplayCar.” Not he himself. Something tells me he is not an Audi employee or ever was in any capacity. I could be wrong though.