Hey Guys -
I hope you’re all having a good Fourth. We had a super busy week with the 3 liter and it’s taken me a few days off to recover from all the tuning, logging, and tuning and logging. I did want to keep you guys updated about what we’ve done so far though.
As you can see from the video posted in the head to head thread, the JHM tune on motorsports916’s car has made some noticeable power gains over stock. In addition to that, the car that our calibrator has picked up was finally delivered and his car has seen the benefits of the tune as well.
We’ve learned a few things hardware wise too:
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COILPACKS: In order to get the most power out of this car you’ll need to make sure that your coilpacks are updated to the latest Audi revision (done for free at your dealer). Our tune makes a lot more torque over the stock tune by using the ignition system much more effectively. Along the same lines, you’ll want to make sure you’re at least running the OEM specified spark plug, if not something better. We’re still trying to find out whether or not plugs we run on the 4.2s will be a good match for the 3.0.
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CATALYTIC CONVERTERS: I know a lot of you have already come to this conclusion, but we’ve found that the cats on this exhaust system are a major limiting factor. Due to the fact that we’re flowing a lot more air with this new tune the stock cats heat up a lot faster and starts to hamper the car’s performance. However, we’re building our tune so it will adapt UP. Motorsports916’s car still has the cats on and it is definitely moving out faster than stock. However, we’re confident that once we upgrade his exhaust system by either gutting the cats from his stock pipes or fabricating new downpipes, his car will perform that much better from the upgrade. This will be the same for anyone with a stock exhaust system: you’ll see solid gains with our tune on stock exhaust and then once you begin to upgrade, the tune will be able to grow with you.
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AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSIONS: Finally, those of you with automatic transmissions will want to seriously consider getting our transmission tune when you purchase the ECU tune. We were able to make solid power without a TCU tune but once we added the TCU tuning to the ECU tuning it really allowed us to use the new found power better. The TCU tune basically allows us to open up the torque converter a little bit more. This puts the power to the transmission and then to the ground sooner in the RPM band. Additionally, the things Kurt can do to the up-shifts on the Tiptronic Transmission Tuning is just awesome. The car is snappy. The shifts are noticeably faster making the car a lot more fun.
Overall, we’re not satisfied with where the tune is at right now as a final product. Even though we’ve seen solid gains, we still believe that we can do more. That being said, we feel like version 8 as we have it right now is solid enough to put in on a few cars as a “3 Liter Beta Tune”. This will enable us to get some feedback from you guys and allow us to continue making progress on the tune while implementing user suggestions as needed.
Thanks for “tuning” in. We’ll continue to keep you posted! Thanks for the support, audirevolution.net.