Question to guys with a tune

B8 S4
#1

How was your throttle mapping affected (if at all)?
I recently went on the Unitronic 1+ tune and my throttle mapping is really aggressive. Dynamic mode is actually useless for track work 'cause the throttle resolution has degraded that bad. Give it a good 25-33% of the pedal travel, and the car will be at WOT. Lucky the thing is awd, or it would be one hot mess. The worst part is that the ramp from part throttle to max throttle is not linear. It’s not one of those “I press the pedal an inch, and the throttle body opens in kind”. It’s more like, it may be linear for the first inch, and the very next 2mm’s after, it has huge jumps on throttle body actuation. It’s outlandish.

I then started driving around in auto mode to see how that would be like, and for the first little while, it was ok. It was such an improvement over dynamic that I was ok with it. However, I also notice a steep pitch up in throttle actuation when in auto mode. Anything from 0 to 50% pedal travel is linear. Once you get to say, 60% of pedal travel, it will give you 80-100% throttle. It’s sort of like the feeling you get from a flash tuned turbo car. It’s a little bit of an on-off switch feeling.

I’m going to try comfort next, but I’m not holding my breath…

How does everyone else’s tune behave? Seems we got a mix of tunes here…APR, GIAC, Revo.
I want to compare notes. I dislike this so much that I’m considering exercising Unitronic’s 30 day satisfaction guarantee. The amount of new found power is really fun. But the lack of throttle resolution made the car less driveable and precise on the track. That loss of drivability is something I would never pay money for!

#2

Why didn’t you go with APR/GIAC (out of curiosity)? The performance and drivability is well established. The throttle was never an on/off switch when I ran APR on my B8 S4.

#3

No throttle remapping with Revo, that I can tell. Do you have a different intake? That’s usually what does it.

#4

Haven’t you been a member here for a while? and you chose to go with Unitronics? Wow…

Get bent out of shape if you want but that was pretty dumb considering they don’t have an OUNCE of performance proof and you are a member of basically the only true performance driven Audi site.

Modulating throttle input is pretty much the only thing that UNI is good at

#5

Thanks guys for the input.
Euroswagr, no offsense taken.

It was a simple decision for me really.
Unitronic tune is 500+ cheaper than those other tunes, and I had the money back gaurantee AND the dealer is very close to me. So I thought why not? I can simply give it a whirl and see how it goes. As it stands now, I will be flashing it back to stock and getting my $ back.

I wasn’t aware of any negative history around Unitronic. They are well loved around these parts. But the mapping is horrendous. I may have a faster car, but I bet you I do not have faster lap times due to the loss in drivability (unless I stick the thing in comfort mode or something–but then the diff will also be in comfort mode…and that will not do!).

Good to know APR is all good.

#6

Good that you can get your money back.

It is a little perplexing given the wealth of performance know-how on this forum (not meaning to pile on) on the B8/8.5 S4 platform. (I’m not as proficient on other platforms like the B6/7 - but tuners might be decent at one platform and not that viable on another).

But looking positively, it is a good data point to share. :smiley:

#7

only thing is Unitronic or Unitragic, is good at none of them!

#8

Yes, bold choice in tune to say the least… Good news on the money back guarantee… With apr, throttle mapping is much like oem in the 0-40% range. Being dual pulley now, the car is quick to get into boost so anything above 40% throttle input and you will move around what ever needs to be passed lol… Certainly predictable though and not in the slightest uncomfortable to modulate/use in daily driving or spirited driving. So yea switch to apr/giac if you want the car tuned properly

#9

Not that I’m recommending the Uni tune, but is it not something they can write out? And again, not to recommend the EPL tune, but it sounds like Tony is providing support to the guy that had the EPL tune, so why not UNI?

But yeah, dump the UNI tune, both APR and REVO feel like stock pedal actuation to me. Never tried GIAC, I’m sure like the other say they don’t do the imaginary ‘accelerator’ tune.

Plus APR was offering left-foot braking, if that floats your boat. It’s worth a try in some corners to settle the rear.

#10

Update!

Thanks Jspazz for the tip.
I called Unitronic and spoke to John, and he is writing me a custom file without the crazy pedal mapping.
I’m going to have it flashed with the stock pedal mapping and retain the unitronic tune and try it out. They are also giving me an additional 2 weeks to try out the tune to see if I like it with the new changes. That’s pretty good follow up service. I was ready to bail on them and forget about tunes of any kind.

Regarding Uni in general (and yes, I’ll do a search), why do you all hate them?
I really dont understand it, cause there are quite a lot of guys at the track here with Unitronic and like the tunes (mainly the 1.8 and 2.0t guys).

#11

No one hates them, they are just the most unproven tune for your platform and you basically chose them because they are cheap. I’ve seen you make a hundred posts on suspension configurations and adjustments…but you just put a tune on your car that has ZERO performance data??? It’s weird, right?

Unitronics has never been at the top of the game in any platform and these ‘guys’ who are happy probably have no clue what they are talking about besides the fact that UNI turned up their boost a little and remapped the throttle.

Don’t keep trying to justify your purchase. You went with them because they were cheap and now you are ok with being a test mule for their tune. I’d personally get my money back and get one of the top 2 tunes…skip APR’s DSG junk though…so Id go GIAC and actually feel good about the purchase.

#12

if ‘the track’ means the road course, well the road course isn’t usually the best place to go to find someone to evaluate the perfoamance beits of an ECU tune. In fact, it’s usually the worst place to go. Track guys talk all day about ‘drivability’ (whatever the fuck that means) and rarely actually line their car up against a benchmark to do an acceleration test and see if it’s even working. That’s weird to me because the entire point of an ECU tune is to add performance.

So as euro said, they’re not ‘hated’…they’re just not respected. They’re really a marginal fringe player. We have to be careful not to write off marginal fringe players, because they sometimes turn into giants in the tuning industry. Everyone starts somewhere, right?

JHM used to be one of those 9 years ago. It was 2 guys jammed in a commercial unit in Norcal that was about the size of a hotel room in Paris. Now they employ a couple dozen people, account for millions of dollars in revenue and produce hands down the fastest cars in every single platform they work on. B67 S4, B7 RS4, B8 S5, B7 2.0T.

How did they do that? Day one, they took their cars to the dragstrip, and proved that their concepts worked. They didn’t need customer butt dyno reviews or guys who say their cars feel faster. They proved it against the toughest benchmark of them all…the dragstrip timeslip. They continue to do it today, and now in many Audi platforms, if you don’t provide a timeslip, you get laughed out of the forum. That is 100% because of JHM. They changed the mindset from using the dyno to sell, to using actual acceleration to sell.

Unitronic is the opposite. They were a fringe player with no proof 8 or 9 years ago, and are the same today. When Unitronic customers line their car up against proven shop customers, they get crushed. By then it’s too late though for the unitronic customer…their money is gone, and they’re now faced with either saying

“You guys were right, I was wrong, Unitronic wasn’t worth it” and moving on…or just disappearing. Most guys just disappear.

#13

Like I mentioned, just because company ‘X’ is good at platform ‘Y’, doesn’t mean they’re the best at all platforms.

There are plenty of examples, EMS with the GTR vs EMS cough EPL with the B8 S4 (3.0V6T) - not sure if they’ve even released anything software yet - admittedly, I haven’t really kept up as much.

APR with the B7 RS4 vs APR with the B8 S4.

Though for what it’s worth, I’m glad that Unitronic is helping you out (they at least, seem to have some semblance of Customer Service).

But if you could, I’d try to benchmark the car before and after (be it 1/4 mile, acceleration testing, and logging - like requested boost vs actual boost and bypass valve %).

#14

If you can find 18 minutes of your time, this video is everything you need to know about tuning. What’s great about this forum is you have two extremes - people like me that want to go fast for 20 minutes, and people like Pete that want to go fast for 11 seconds. It’s a completely different problem to solve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1QpD5vY1u4&feature=youtu.be

#15

Like others have said my APR tune doesn’t have crazy pedal issues, feels good on track

#16

the thing is your acceleration testing proved that REVO isn’t helping you go much faster than stock. That’s the point. So if you’re going ‘fast for 20 minutes’ it’s because you have an Audi S4, not because of your tune. You’re a great example of people who don’t seem to understand acceleration testing, and one of the people nobody should listen to when asking what tune is ‘best’.

Pete’s car would whip the shit out of your car at the road course, same driver. It wouldn’t even be remotely close.

#17

Why don’t we reserve judgement until I get back to the drag strip - at night with 105 octane fuel. The implication is that Pete’s car would have lap 3 as the fastest and would be slower than stock by lap 10.

#18

why…because he doesn’t have a wing and a rollcage? He has cooling, tune, pulley, LW parts.

#19

There’s more variables for a road course. Plus, you’re factoring handling into the equation (when we’re just looking at acceleration).

Plus, there’s the issue of familiarity of the track and how consistent are you on the track. And is there traffic?

Whenever I make improvements to my car, I only benchmark against myself.

On a side note, reviewing my lap times from the last time I was out (I haven’t been out in a while :frowning: ).

On my last 4 laps of the day (on a track that I’ve done a little over 100 laps on), 3 of the laps were 0:00.0X off from each other (i was lucky and able to pass traffic - had to go off the line but didn’t get stuck coming into or exiting corners). The other lap was 2 seconds - because I wait to make a pass and I had a slower corner exit as a result. The other laps had heavy traffic.

#20

Listen to the video man and pay attention to the stuff about heat vs. time. We’re both experts at setting up the car to do different things. His brakes would crack if I drove them. How do I know? Because I cracked those JHM rotors. If he’s making 500 HP in lap 3 he’ll be making 400 HP by lap 10. My car will make 440 HP every lap. That’s the goal.