Our EA288 2.0tdi 184PS Development thread..

[ABYSS]

we've been asked by a couple of members on how best to route the cables.
*
engine minus the engine cover with the cables installed

I've highlighted the common rail plus boost connections, the yellow indicates part of the factory loom that. I usually route the common rail part of the loom underneath this to secure the cable in place.

 

[snowfree52]

copy of my post in britskoda :

good but can I suggest you turn the box the other way with the plug looking down. like that you'll be able to put some velcro between the box and the airbox. easy to install or take away each time !

 

[arad85]

My CR is routed through the silver heat protector material just above yours. I guessed that the heat protector was probably safer and it certainly keeps it in place. The boost is wired along the back under the air intake plastic. Box is in the same position though

 

[vegnomeat]

I received my "box" this morning from DTUK, it really is a very very simple fit (its not tough enough to be called an installation).

First thoughts from a quick blast to work The car is still very smooth but now pulls very well indeed. Definetly so much quicker and more fun to drive. Will top up the tank this afternoon and check the MPG this coming week.

Regards

veggie

 

[arad85]

The car is still very smooth but now pulls very well indeed. Definetly so much quicker and more fun to drive.

Yup... That's it....

 

[vegnomeat]

The map 4.1 created a few problems, juddering under load and clunky gear changes. Tried 4.0 and the same happened. Now on 3.0 and whilst there isn't any juddering the performance is quite a bit down on map 4. Any suggestions to get the performance back whilst leaving the juddering behind?

Regards

Veggie

 

[arad85]

Think I am seeing the same sort of thing veggie. I wonder if it's the combination of quattro and stronic and may not be seen on the manual cars (I'm still on 4+1 BTW). You could try maps 1 & 2 to see what they are like....

 

[vegnomeat]

I have been out testing map 3 this morning, power/torque seems to come in later, around 3000 rpm, I would love to see a dyno print out of the map 3. Also the fuel economy is terrible on my map 3. Have been advised to try map 1 next. I am pretty sure that it's a combination of s Tronic and the Quattro drive that's causing problems for me. I had an engine management light briefly flick on though.

Will try map 1 and see how I get on.

4.1 gives the most useable power, but also gives the most problems.

Regards

veggie

 

[ABYSS]

Snowfree52 is running map 4 plus 2 or 3 which is far too high .. And not mentioned any issues .. Not sure why the fuel is worse on map 3 as the only difference is that the power starts a little later in the rpm range . I dynod map 3 on plus 1 on our Skoda and the power our virtually the same as map 4 on plus 1 but was even smoother between 3500/4000rpm.

No 2 cars are the same and maybe snow frees car is an odd ball.

Drop me an email once you've tried the other maps, as I'm sure it's something we can resolve

 

[snowfree52]

Hi Andrew !

I'm actually running 3 + 1 since you posted the dyno results. didn't really see a differene with 4+2 I used before except 4+2 had bad fuel economy.

still loving the box !

 

[vegnomeat]

Update, I returned the box to DTUK as it wasn't working on my car (although it never arrived at DTUK and I'm now some £360 out of pocket). The juddering made the car undriveable. Although to be fair DTUK did try and rewrite some aspects of the box to get rid of the juddering/hesitancy, sadly their efforts failed. I now have a box trom TDI Tuning and will be writing a review of both boxes when I get a moment.

For the record I have a 184ps engine with DSG and Quattro drive.

 

[TDI-Tuning]

Update, I returned the box to DTUK as it wasn't working on my car (although it never arrived at DTUK and I'm now some £360 out of pocket). The juddering made the car undriveable. Although to be fair DTUK did try and rewrite some aspects of the box to get rid of the juddering/hesitancy, sadly their efforts failed. I now have a box trom TDI Tuning and will be writing a review of both boxes when I get a moment.

For the record I have a 184ps engine with DSG and Quattro drive.

Hi Vegnomeat,

We're glad to hear you are enjoying your TDI Tuning CRTD2 TWIN Channel tuning box.

We thought you may be interested to see the attached video link which shows us developing our software for the VAG 2.0 TDI 184 with the same DSG transmission as yours. Volkswagen Golf GTD Tuned by TDI Tuning - YouTube

Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions.

Steve

Diesel Tuning | Diesel Engine Tuning | TDI Tuning

 

[ABYSS]

Update, I returned the box to DTUK as it wasn't working on my car (although it never arrived at DTUK and I'm now some £360 out of pocket). The juddering made the car undriveable. Although to be fair DTUK did try and rewrite some aspects of the box to get rid of the juddering/hesitancy, sadly their efforts failed. I now have a box trom TDI Tuning and will be writing a review of both boxes when I get a moment.

For the record I have a 184ps engine with DSG and Quattro drive.

Hi Wayne,

Obviously I'm as frustrated as you that the kit didn't work out for you moreso as we have tuned a lot of these DSG equipped 2.0 184s now without issue. We've also had a word with Royal Mail too about this loss as if the kit had landed back with us we could of tested it and you wouldn't be £360 out of pocket, but this is why I'd always recommend using special delivery to send anything of value.

If I'd known you would of been happy with 222ps and 430nm that Tdi tuning have offered you, then I would of suggested turning our kit down to minus 3 which would of given similar gains to theirs rather than our quoted 240ps and 500nm that the CRDT has given other 2.0 184 DSG owners without issue.

Maybe in the case of your particular car and your driving style the additional low down torque was too much for your car, moreso in a high gear at low revs.

ive be just sent you an email Wayne

 

[vegnomeat]

It's not a question of being happy or unhappy with 220 ps and 430 nm, it's a question of what power and torque the DSG gearbox will comfortably be able to use. Another DSG user of the DTUK box on here is having a similar problem that I experienced. The DSG gearbox, I have since discovered has a fixed torque limit, exceed that limit and the gearbox sheds torque. This is what causes the juddering. It's not my car and neither is it my driving style, reduce the torque to below Audi's limit and all is fine now.

Regards

 

[snowfree52]

I've tried what you asked Vegnomeat and my car doesn't do what you're experiencing with yours. foot down in 6th speed at around 1500rpm and it just feels lazy and slow. That's all.

Again, I don't see the point of doing this, This is an auto box with kickdown.

Even with stock torque, doing that often will wear the box.

 

[vegnomeat]

Snow free, it was in the range between 1800 and 2200 RPM that I mentioned to you, this should be perfectly normal for a DSG gearbox to be in top gear and to accelerate without selecting a lower gear. The DSG has a torque limit that prevents damage to the gearbox. The DTUK tuning box would appear to exceed that limit. This is just my personal opinion you understand,

Regards

 

[ABYSS]

We have been looking into this over the last couple of days and we've been able to replicate the issue on a manual 2.0 184 Skoda, again we haven't seen this issue with our own car either.

Anyway we've since tweaked the software and the issue has gone, I'll post results over the next few days.

As most customers can run map 4 without issue, well be adding this new map to position 3 just in case anyone suffers from this low down torque issue.

 

[vegnomeat]

Andrew,

What was the problem? It would appear from your post that it effects the manual cars too?

Regards

 

[desertstorm]

Reading through this seems that you have been experiencing similar problems to what I found when tuning my 1.9 TDI Passat. When pushing the limits of the tune with fuelling and boost I found that if trying to accelerate hard in a high gear from low RPM you would get a vibration through the car. This was more noticeable when the car was trying to accelerate up a hill or when loaded up with several people. Looking at the boost gauge you could see it oscillating after doing some reading and some more testing I determined that the problem was due to turbo surge.

Surge Line | Turbobygarrett

If boost pressure is allowed to go too high with flow volume being low the turbo goes into the surge area of the compressor map. In high gears the boost pressure has time to build to a high enough level with low enough flow to get into the surge area.
What happens is the boost pressure gets so high on the compressor side compared to the exhaust side that the compressor stalls, the boost pressure then drops and the turbo can then accelerate again till the boost pressure gets too high. This all happens very quickly and results in very rapid variations in boost pressure and this is the vibration you feel.
Worst case with this is that you get turbo failure as the shaft connecting the turbine and compressor can snap due to the rapidly altering twisting forces applied to the shaft.
The way around this is either to reduce the amount of boost requested at lower RPM or change your driving style so that you don't labour the engine in a high gear. If you want to accelerate quickly change down and give the engine a chance.
I would suggest that when testing new tunes on these boxes fill the car with people/weight and find a nice hill and try accelerating up it in a high gear with full throttle. If you can do this then you shouldn't have issues.

Karl

 

[ABYSS]

Andrew,

What was the problem? It would appear from your post that it effects the manual cars too?

Regards

Hi Wayne,

as you know i sent you some tweaked software that didn't solve the issue, we've since had a car running with the boost connection disconnected which cured the issue. This has told us that the issue was boost related, rather than fuel.

When we sent you your 2nd box i tweaked the fuelling and left the boost alone. Ive since tweaked the boost part of the file and the problem has disappeared.

I received a text this morning from our manual skoda driver who has the updated software and he's tried all kinds and can't feel any issues whatsoever. He's gone back to map 4 plus 1 and says it pulls like a train without any low down judders.

from today we will be replacing maps 1/2 and 3 with the revised variants of map 4, but well still be leaving the original map 4 on the kits too as it is only a small minority of kits that have shown any signs of this judder.

 

[ABYSS]

Reading through this seems that you have been experiencing similar problems to what I found when tuning my 1.9 TDI Passat. When pushing the limits of the tune with fuelling and boost I found that if trying to accelerate hard in a high gear from low RPM you would get a vibration through the car. This was more noticeable when the car was trying to accelerate up a hill or when loaded up with several people. Looking at the boost gauge you could see it oscillating after doing some reading and some more testing I determined that the problem was due to turbo surge.

Surge Line | Turbobygarrett

If boost pressure is allowed to go too high with flow volume being low the turbo goes into the surge area of the compressor map. In high gears the boost pressure has time to build to a high enough level with low enough flow to get into the surge area.
What happens is the boost pressure gets so high on the compressor side compared to the exhaust side that the compressor stalls, the boost pressure then drops and the turbo can then accelerate again till the boost pressure gets too high. This all happens very quickly and results in very rapid variations in boost pressure and this is the vibration you feel.
Worst case with this is that you get turbo failure as the shaft connecting the turbine and compressor can snap due to the rapidly altering twisting forces applied to the shaft.
The way around this is either to reduce the amount of boost requested at lower RPM or change your driving style so that you don't labour the engine in a high gear. If you want to accelerate quickly change down and give the engine a chance.
I would suggest that when testing new tunes on these boxes fill the car with people/weight and find a nice hill and try accelerating up it in a high gear with full throttle. If you can do this then you shouldn't have issues.

Karl

Great post Karl,

this is exactly what we've been doing from day one with our Skoda which has never shown any issues whatsoever which has made trying to solve this issue even more difficult.

This is the reason we've invested £1,000's in our own fleet of cars that represent the latest tech from VW both diesel and petrol.

 

[vegnomeat]

Thanks Karl, that makes a lot of sense. So I could have been looking at a new Turbo and at worst a new engine on a three month old car, frightening, and not just for me either. I did notice that the DTE boxes in Germany only increase the BHP (PS) by 21 and the NM by 70. I'm guessing that the TUV approval is only for those figures and not the approximately 240 BHP and over 500NM that the box turns in to over here. DTE Germany also include a 12 month engine warranty (which we don't get here) just in case something happens.

Next time I'm just going to buy a faster car

Regards

Regards

 

[Rob_vRS]

Hi,
I'm the person with the Octavia vRS Andrew is talking about. I had judders with my box on map 4+1. I contacted him about it and he sent me a new box to try. The new box has modified boost curves and has solved my problem. The car is amazing, no judders in the lower revs and very responsive.

Rob

 

[vegnomeat]

Rob,

Thanks for your input, but .... We appear to be doing the testing for DTUK, I want to be able to purchase a product that's been tested to destruction before it's fitted on my £33,000 car. If you are altering parameters on fuelling and boost but don't know what pressure you are asking the pump to produce nor do you know what boost you are asking for, then you shouldn't be attempting to tune cars.

Regards

 

[ABYSS]

Rob,

Thanks for your input, but .... We appear to be doing the testing for DTUK, I want to be able to purchase a product that's been tested to destruction before it's fitted on my £33,000 car. If you are altering parameters on fuelling and boost but don't know what pressure you are asking the pump to produce nor do you know what boost you are asking for, then you shouldn't be attempting to tune cars.


Regards

Wayne

Have you not read this thread?

We've spent hours on the dyno, and even longer in the road so I don't know how you can say the system hasn't been tested.

Unfortunately you have bought a mass produced item and sometimes you find the odd vehicle that works outside the parameters of the majority if others. You and your car fall into this category.

I've also been told this week that since the launch of the 2.0 TDI 184 both Audi and Skoda, infact the whole VAG group have released several software updates for this engine. This could easily be the reason why Rob is having the issue on his 2014 Skoda, and we've not experienced it on our late 2013 car. Again this could explain why you've had issues, and snowfree52 has not.

Our Skoda has had a hard life, and I guarantee it's been driven harder than the majority of other people would drive their car, and as I've said we've had no issues.

We operate a rolling development programme on most of the kits we offer and I don't think you'll find another tuning company anywhere that has explained and shown as much as we have done in this thread and others on various other VAG forums.

Let's not forget that I even emailed you last weekend offering to drive down to see you and your car to see if I could solve this issue, and even offered to leave you with a kit to replace the kit Royal Mail lost.

At the end of the day it's unfortunate that our kit didn't suit your car and your driving style, and I'm sorry that we've let you down.

But rather than resting on our laurels we've taken steps to fix the issue. Am I 100% certain that this issue may not arise again? No I'm not as I've explained above, we're working with a mass produced item and we have a manufacturer who is also continuing to improve it's product.

 

[auroan]

Those running DSG and experiencing juddering really need to back the map off ASAP before you feck the gearbox up terminally. The juddering is the clutches slipping in a very damaging way. Someone mentioned earlier up that it's just the DSG gearbox shedding the extra torque because of a fixed limit.

It's NOT. It's the DSG box clutches failing to deal with the extra torque and slowly destroying themselves.

 

[vegnomeat]

Running out of time now but will update on Monday it's not good.

 

[vegnomeat]

Update, the judder that auroan mentioned in a previous post is what happened to my car, it was a serious judder and I immediately backed off, this is when I decided that the TDUK box wasn't for me. It was too much of a risk to continue using it. I then tried the TDI tuning box that whilst not producing as much power as the DTUK box, it was developed specifically for the DSG equipped 184PS engine which the DTUK box wasn't.

To reply to Andrew, you didn't offer to visit me at my home address and leave a box foc. Once you realised that I had purchased from TDI Tuning you sent an email stating that you would have offered to visit and leave a box, totally different.

As to TUV certified, am I right in my assumption that this certification only covers the actual box and not the parameters that you set/alter?

Further, you are altering fuel pressures and boost pressures without knowing what the original figures are, the maximum figures allowed and what your actual figures request from the ECU. Of course I could be mistaken here and you could publish those figures if you have them.


Regards

 

[ABYSS]

Glad to hear you're sorted, the kit was initially developed on ours manual car where vagcom logs were taken, unfortunately I don't have access to this info as I'm currently on part time leave due to an addition to the family via a very rough pregnancy and even worse delivery.

I have limited time and access to forums at present but didn't want to leave this un replied.

Regarding offering to come down, I'm sure I did mention this in our many emails when I was trying to sort the issue and did mentions time was limited due to the imminent arrival.

Either way you're sorted and that's all that matters to me at this time as other DSG customers are over the moon with the results of our kit on their cars.

 

[Daz Auto]

It appears that the DSG/Stronic 6 speed clutch is rated for up to 450NM of torque. But I can't find any recent information.

The 184ps engine generates 380Nm of torque.

... with the DTUK box - around 470Nm.

... with the TDI tuning box - around 430Nm.

Edit: I just noticed the TDI tuning box for the manual car has 463Nm of torque. Seems they have limited the torque for the DSG/Stronic.

The A6 used a 7 speed Stronic for it's 3.0L TDI 245ps 580Nm engine and a tiptronic box for the 3.0L Biturbo 313ps 650Nm engine. Will be interesting to see what automatic gearbox they use for the 2.0L Biturbo supposed to be in the new Passat. It is estimated to have 500Nm of torque.

Edit 2: doh... I have just watched the TDI tuning video above which - 1m 15sec in - explains about the DSG power and torque limiter.

 

[vegnomeat]

I'm still waiting on answers to my previous post. I'm not holding my breath though,

"As to TUV certified, am I right in my assumption that this certification only covers the actual box and not the parameters that you set/alter?

Further, you are altering fuel pressures and boost pressures without knowing what the original figures are, the maximum figures allowed and what your actual figures request from the ECU. Of course I could be mistaken here and you could publish those figures if you have them."

Regards

 

[ABYSS]

The TUV certificates cover the module and the base files produced by DTE in Germany, infact the base files for the 150/184ps very originally supplied by ourselves back in September last year when we started our R and D.

The files have since been developed since then, firstly whilst developing the software with Shark (at this time VCDs logs were taken whilst our manual Skoda was on the dyno) and secondly after feedback from customers after several thousand miles of "on road use"

We created various files ranging from 205bhp upto 226bhp which was then re dynod at another dyno and showed the 237ps which is published in our site.

As for the specific data as I'm sure be mentioned earlier in this thread I don't have access to this as the logs are all with Shark but we are planning to revisit shark in the coming weeks with the Skoda and the S1

 

[snowfree52]

via OBD I got 1,5 bar max from the boost sensor

 

[vegnomeat]

But is the reading of 1.5 bar max what the ECU thinks is being requested or the actual reading? Think about it.
I'm pretty sure that DTUK have no idea what they are altering, what the original parameters are and what the finished parameters are. To say that they are writing maps is pure BS. They are simply moving points on a graph that relates to voltage, up or down and start here and finish here. They aren't even linked to RPM. It's just a box that alters resistance plus or minus. No TUV certificate as advertised on their web site and just a lot of bluff and bluster.

 

[ABYSS]

But is the reading of 1.5 bar max what the ECU thinks is being requested or the actual reading? Think about it.
I'm pretty sure that DTUK have no idea what they are altering, what the original parameters are and what the finished parameters are. To say that they are writing maps is pure BS. They are simply moving points on a graph that relates to voltage, up or down and start here and finish here. They aren't even linked to RPM. It's just a box that alters resistance plus or minus. No TUV certificate as advertised on their web site and just a lot of bluff and bluster.

Pretty bold statement you've made there, but don't worry I'll take great pleasure in proving that you know nothing about our business and what we actually do. A lot of things are kept out of the public domain for commercial reasons, but I can disclose a couple of things for you later today.

The kit that our customers receive in reality is a bit like a slave from the main programming/diagnostic module we use to read various values (all voltages) from various sensors on the engine. This gives us a starting point, so we do know where we are starting from and we do know exactly what we're changing..

Once the initial R and D has been concluded it is a case as I have mentioned before of continued improvement, factor in software changes from manufactures and the fact that were dealing with a mass produced item and there is an element of trial and error involved.

I'll post a screen shot of the diagnostics tool we use for reading values before, during or after.

although two screen shots don't prove anything, i don't have the time at present to create a video showing it in operation, As previously mentioned I'm on part time maternity leave due to a new baby.

and a tuv certificate (the only one i have access to via dropbox at present) for the new S3.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/itgjrdng90b312b/14-TAKT-0429_s3_tuv.pdf

 

[vegnomeat]

There are a few people on this link who I'm sure would like their questions answered too

DTUK tuning box - Page 2 - A5_OC

Reading the TUV above it would appear that 348 BHP is the maximum for TUV approval for the S3, this would make your current S3 box unapproved, from the DTE site only their lower figures for the tuning box qualify for TUV approval, any that you have altered aren't approved. Of course I will eat my words if you do have approval at your figures, I won't hold my breath though.

 

[ABYSS]

There are a few people on this link who I'm sure would like their questions answered too

DTUK tuning box - Page 2 - A5_OC

Reading the TUV above it would appear that 348 BHP is the maximum for TUV approval for the S3, this would make your current S3 box unapproved, from the DTE site only their lower figures for the tuning box qualify for TUV approval, any that you have altered aren't approved. Of course I will eat my words if you do have approval at your figures, I won't hold my breath though.

353ps is 348bhp, and our figures match those of DTE

 

[ABYSS]

It's about time I introduced Trevor to you all.

Trevor has been in the pipeline for a while and will be officially launched later this month, but is currently available for any A3 8v with the latest 150/184ps TDis

Well post more details at a later date, but basically this new updated system comes with 3 programmes rather than 4, and has a push button keypad to make any adjustments.

We did conduct some dyno tests last Saturday when it was rather warm..

The CRDT produced 229bhp and 499nm, several minutes later "Trevor" produced 239bhp and 515nm using the same software.

We've been testing this kit for a while and have several 184 owners running this kit and the feedback has all been positive.

As previously mentioned, this kit is now available to members of the forum but not on general release til later this month.

 

[snowfree52]

How much mate?

 

[ABYSS]

How much mate?

Drop me an email Stephane