Wow what can I say!!
Absolutely blown away with Niki's TIV mapping, and the difference the car is now over what it was..
Bluefin was very aggressive as it turned out, surprisingly so
the turbo was requesting up to in places nearly 1.7 bar, and with the stock fuel pump, fuel pressures were also finding it hard to keep up, and causing a few issues behind the scenes and not feeling as if there was a fault that could be felt from the driver.
The main trait of the Bluefin stage 2 Remap was the Massive Torque spike apon launch, which is very hard to control,so at anytime you wanted a quick getaway,had to be driven gently to get the power down, ok once underway but not ideal.
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Saint steve, on Flickr
I spent the whole day with Nik on the rolling road, watching and learning how mapping is done, and all I can say is he is an absolute gentleman, really knows his oats and you get very quickly the impression that nothing is a problem, and that each fault or issue can be solved if you have the right tools quickly to properly diagnose and setup a car for its own " Customised remap.A very switched on person and not just someone that's good on the tools in the trade.
I was very nervous shall we say about dyno"ing my car on the rollers, after nearly 2 years of avoiding them after being told by another well respected garage, that I may have DSG clutch pack issues and that really put me out of wanting to do this again,with this very same remap.
Nik and Ben were very quick to put my mind at ease, that she was in safe hands, and even before thinking about putting his map on and moving on to the next customer sort of attitude you get from going to a main stream tuner, was NOT gonna happen, and that nothing was gonna go ahead till some basic what I would call baseline checks were done over the car before we got started, VCDS was loaded up to check for errors, and the car was lofted up of the ground to carry out a visual inspection under the car before anything else....
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Saint steve, on Flickr
once everyone was satisfied and errors were noted of excisting issues that were on the car before starting, she was then lowered down and strapped up ready for testing firstly with its stage 2 bluefin map, then with the map off back at standard power, then finally on with Niks own TIV map along with a coupled DSG custom map to suit .
The car firstly ran 315bhp and 362lb ft of torque, which sounds ok, but the mahoosive torque spike was caused by the way Bluefin write their remaps :-(.. Gives you the feeling of all the power and boost, but on the road is hard to put on the road, and also puts a lot of strain on the engine and its components , that with some fettling,could be greatly reduced and still achieve Power without as much stress.
From the graph, you can see that the nasty spike just under 4000rpm is where this spike and the feeling of thrust in your drivers seat, followed by a flatish spot afterwards and then picks up slightly at top end! Which if you think about it, if you nail the throttle after this spike, the car doesn't steam off as quickly as it could, very flat and not as thrilling to drive.Not good for wanting to "pull away from the car Behind" if you follow
Here is a graph of the two Maps, one of RTech's TIV map, and bluefin's Stage 2.
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Saint steve, on Flickr
As you can see the car now is VERY linear on the map, a feeling of almost not having a turbo, but of a uniform Naturally aspirated engine with huge pull and more importantly at ANY stage of pushing on, gives identical pull from 3000rpm to 6000rpm, without any torque spike, and lag aswell. The power is instant, super smooth and by god it's fast.. The DSG remap raised the total power by another 20bhp and the stock clutch clamping pressure was reducing power distribution to the wheels.
To also say, and show that the stresses and strains have been greatly reduced, in the turbo, from squealing its nuts off to nearly 1.7 bar boost, not sits on the TIV map at just 1.3 bar boost and tails to 1.25 boost at top end. The N75 never works harder the 70% and considering I have a low pressure fuel issue currently, the TIV map once loaded and set up within safe parameters , the issue is not causing ANY effects to the car, and all fuel rail pressures are no less then 5 bar off top spec of 110bar on the rail request side of things.
The large torque spike was causing a massive 50bar drop in fuel pressure so the ecu was having to try and correct this to help but since changing the remap, and lowering the requests, this isn't causing any performance loss and now as you can see from the graph, power is still there as before, in fact with the DSG map, another 15bhp was made available and a uniform 300to 325lb ft of torque across the entire rev range which makes for a very quick car , much more quicker in every aspect.Even sounds nicer on the dyno from the exhaust note!! Much more free'er sounding and not struggling to go up the revs.
To say I'm still giggling like a school kid is an understatement , of course there will be those that still doubt Nik at Rtechs techniques , but from me, I'm now enjoying the car more then ever, even driving home, behaving, managed a better mpg aswell, my guess is obviously turbo isn't being working as hard so this may be why, but might be placebo , but who knows..Even the twin take is much more quieter and less Noisey in the cabin, which is even nicer.
Wife had a drive out today and this was her reaction..
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Saint steve, on Flickr
her first words were, oh my god!! It just wants to go and go!!!!
if anyone is thinking should I or shouldn't I... my answer is yes.. You should.
Thankyou again Nik and Ben for doing this for me. Another Very satisfied Customer