Well over the past few months i have been in love with and hated my car more times than i care to remember.
Now its over and i have all the facts, i want to rant about the poor experience i had with PSI tuning.
It all started when i got done by a VR6, its a car i have seen a few times around me and i usually destroy him! I was chatting with him and he had made no changes engine wise!
So i went about logging my car and found it wasnt making boost.
I took it to PDTuning who also logged her, checked all the valves pipes and stuff. (turned my exhaust the correct way around
) Stuck my car on the rollers to return 200bhp, which was 80bhp down on what it should have been. They said i should get a smoke test done but they feel its going to be an issue with the turbo as theres a loud high pitch noise coming from the car thats not normal on boost.
Off i went and got a smoke test done which turned up that i had no obvious holes.
So it was looking to be the turbo, after reading some reviews and having had my suspension and fuel pump fitted by them in the past i decided to take my car to PSI tuning for them to visually check the down pipe side of the turbo for any obvious cracks in the wastegate or anything that was obviously broken on the turbo. I was quotes a possible 3hours labor for this. Booked in Monday morning. So this is where it all went down hill, PSI tuning had my car 3 weeks at this point. I made several calls to them, to the point where i felt a d**k for chasing them. I got promised callback after callback from Andy (the owner) I got promised results tomorrow, the next day the next day.
In the end i actually got worried that something was wrong so i jumped in the mrs car and drove down to stoke unannounced to see what was going on. My car was sat there with the downpipe off induction off and dv off, Speaking to Andy they were waiting to know what i wanted to do now they had tested this and that and decided theres a good chance it was the turbo. I was annoyed because he had spent 5hours on it and said it would be another few hours labor to put it back together, also all the calls i had made and the car was in a state they couldn't continue without my input....
I had been left in the dark and felt they did this on purpose.
AT THIS POINT I MADE SEVERAL OF MY OWN MISTAKES
1. I didnt say anything about only having the car booked in for 3hours max to have the downpipe off.
2. I didnt take the car home there and then.
I discussed with them about going ko4. He offered to do the work but i said that because injectors will be fitted in the process too, i didnt want him to fit everything then i have to drive the car without the correct k04 map. (they dont do revo)
He offered me custom code...i politely declined that
Coming up to pay the bill he then said that he would do the Ko4 conversion and load APR's ko4 map onto the car. Then quoted a pretty reasonable price. Excited and in the moment i forgot the past 2 weeks of being lied to and let down and agree'd.
I would send to him the turbo, injectors and all OEM pipes that were required.
All items delivered on a Tuesday and booked in on the Thursday, i got an email on the Thursday telling me that there seems to be some injectors in the box with the turbo and that its would be another £300 to fit those.....i refer you back the whole reason i was having an APR map. Anyway emails went between me and PSI and in the end they stopped replying. Got a call it was ready for collection on the Saturday. It also had an MOT after ko4 was fitted.
So i went and collected it thinking that its all over and i will just pay the bill and just never return...Oh and apparently i didn't need some of the pipes i had provided...
LITTLE DID I KNOWIt was not over. My first spirited drive resulted in EML light and my car stalling (its dsg)
Any further spirited drives resulted in misfires and just poor performance.
I stuck my head under the car to find no undertray (more on this in a second)
I looked in the box at all the stuff i had been given back, my turbo and injectors and the pipe that was not needed. Turns out that pipe WAS needed, it was the turbo to intercooler pipe that was larger in diameter than the ko3 version. I fitted this myself and this stopped the EML but didnt resolve the missfires.
I emailed them asking where my under tray was...and this was the cherry on the top of the moldy cake. He had the nerve to tell me that the GTI does NOT come with one!!!!!!!
I must be mad them because i have removed it 50times!
At this point i needed my bank balance to recover so the car went in my garage and i drive the C1 for a further 3months.
Yesterday i took my car to Awesome gti for a service and for them to take a look at this map that PSI had loaded. I had this sneaky feeling that because PSI don't actually offer APR any longer that i will have gotten an old map. So the guy came through and said to me that i have the correct map (ko4) but its version 1.1...when i said i had it installed 2 months ago he looked quite shocked, he loaded on version 2.0.
Obviously i was pretty shocked at this point but then i got some news that made me laugh quite randomly and literally out loud. The technician came through and asked me who fitted my suspension, i said PSI he told me that my top mount was fitted upside down causing my spring to have freedom to move, and my bump stop (cant remember the name) was cracked. Obviously the crack could have been due to age but a top mount being fitted upside down, i took my car round nurburgring with incorrectly fitted suspension
So 2 new top mounts and fitting later my pockets are even more lighter!
The drive back from awesome was a delight, i accelerated and guess what, so did my car! No missfires so far!
So in summary
PSI tuning
Poor communication
Book more cars in than they can handle
LIE to customers
Cost me £200 (missing under tray, incorrectly fitted top mount and having to get awesome to update my map)
From what i can tell have only ever done 1 ko4 conversion...mine.
willing to load an outdated map to a car possibly causing damage.
I waited until now to rant because i wanted to make sure my opinion was correct.
I URGE you not to leave your car with them! Despite the loads of good reviews
Some good news PDtuning and Awesome GTI are both company's that i will give my money to all day long due to their EXCELLENT SERVICE.
I have not followed this up with PSI tuning and TBH if i ran a company and someone told me that i had lost a part of their car i wouldn't just forget them.
