Remap vs. Tuning box

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rhys084

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Hi All.

I've picked up a 2005 C5 allroad with 24,000 miles on the clock and it's in pretty much mint condition. It's a 2.5 TDI Tiptronic and with so few miles i think the engine/gearbox should be able to handle a little more power.

I've always understood that a remap is the best option for cars over a tuning box, however for these engines there seem to be some opinions that suggest otherwise.

What is the general consensus re: remap vs. tuning box and if tuning box is the best option what should I go for?

Many thanks!
 
A remap will beat a tuning box any day, who is saying that a tuning box is better ? Nearly all tuning boxes only do one thing and thats put more fuel in. They can't increase boost pressure to burn the extra fiuel, they can't alter SOI points to increase mpg, tuning boxes are not aware of what else is going on in the engine.
Tuning boxes are a quick easy solution to a problem but are not the best.
The following is from three dyno runs I did on my PD130 Passat a few years ago.
The bottom three lines are the torque grahps , top three are power.
Red is the standard 130 program, dark blue the tuning box, light blue a Custom Code phase 1 remap.
The tuning box was an Alpin digital tuning box and was an expensive piece of kit when new, connected on the injector harness at the back of the engine.
You can see the tuning box gives a good kick in torque at lower RPM but the big advantage with the map was the smothness of the power delivery and this was borne out in the driving experience, also look what happens when you get to 4200 RPM the performance dies because the ECU cuts the fuelling.
With the remap the car pulled really strongly all the way to the red line and was so much quicker as a result. Changing as 4700 rpm means you are running at higher RPM in the next gear and making more power.



Karl.
 
I've read a few stories on forums about remaps on these older style engines causing them to be lumpy and throw up fault codes, etc and that good tuning boxes have proved better. I think adamss24 being one reputable member who subscribes to this.
 
A local fitter does DNA maps so was thinking of one of those.
 
Ive got a decent map on my 155 A6, which is smooth and powerful. I wouldn't recommend a tuning box myself.
 
To be fair tuning boxes have came a long way. I think they still have a bad rep from the days were all they done was tell the brain to add more fuel, which gave you your power. If you look at the likes of DTUK, they are leaps ahead compared to the older tuning boxes. I would say that the remap is still king though as you have the option of a custom remap, which should mean the elimination of any of the lumpyness that you speak of, as its tailored to your vehicle. :thumbsup:
 
As always... "You get what you pay for".

I had a DPT box on my 2.5q, brand new it was £400, I bought it at a year old for £100. It gave a claimed bhp jump to 210 from 180 - I never verified that, but the car was noticeably livelier with a much smoother torque curve, and in addition it gave an easy extra 2 mpg.

If I were paying £400 I'd go for a remap, if a box came up for £100 then I wouldn't think twice about doing that again.
 
Ok so would you agree that a remap taking the car up to 200-210bhp and 35nm extra torque would be pretty safe given the low mileage of the car?
 
rhys084 said:
Ok so would you agree that a remap taking the car up to 200-210bhp and 35nm extra torque would be pretty safe given the low mileage of the car?
Click to expand...

Little bump RE: opinions on getting a 2.5 TDI remapped?
 
quattrojames said:
As always... "You get what you pay for".
If I were paying £400 I'd go for a remap, if a box came up for £100 then I wouldn't think twice about doing that again.
Click to expand...

I would go by that. Good remap is custom to car while box is easy to install and remove if needed for convenience with pretty good results also if bought from reputable brand.
 
Generic remaps are fine on a stock motor, however there are good mappers and bad mappers + modern v6 tdi respond less to mods in the tune due to limitation in pumps... I would only go to a rolling road where they give you a printout with before and after runs...
 
The guy local to me seems good and reputable, but the only issue is he's only got a 2WD rolling road, so can't supply dyno graphs... But said he'd do a test drive with a laptop connected to i'm guessing the OBD port to assess the map.
 
Have you had this done yet?

Iam considering a re-map for my tdi.
Any recommendations in the northwest?
 
Remap all the way, but with the tiptronic you cannot go too wild as the V6 180 can easily exceed the torque limits hard coded into the gearbox.
I have a map giving around 220 bhp on my manual allroad which is currently at 216000 miles, the map was done at around 110000 miles. I compared this to a Steinbauer tuning box I ran before & the map is far better. That's not to say the tuning box wasn[t good, but a tailored map blew it away. Boosts earlier, overboosts longer & doesn't decay the boost curve as the revs rise. It flies in comparison, but uses less around 10% fuel when driven sensibly.
 
andyt1967 said:
Remap all the way, but with the tiptronic you cannot go too wild as the V6 180 can easily exceed the torque limits hard coded into the gearbox.
I have a map giving around 220 bhp on my manual allroad which is currently at 216000 miles, the map was done at around 110000 miles. I compared this to a Steinbauer tuning box I ran before & the map is far better. That's not to say the tuning box wasn[t good, but a tailored map blew it away. Boosts earlier, overboosts longer & doesn't decay the boost curve as the revs rise. It flies in comparison, but uses less around 10% fuel when driven sensibly.
Click to expand...

What are these "hard coded" limits?
 
andyt1967 said:
Remap all the way, but with the tiptronic you cannot go too wild as the V6 180 can easily exceed the torque limits hard coded into the gearbox.
I have a map giving around 220 bhp on my manual allroad which is currently at 216000 miles, the map was done at around 110000 miles. I compared this to a Steinbauer tuning box I ran before & the map is far better. That's not to say the tuning box wasn[t good, but a tailored map blew it away. Boosts earlier, overboosts longer & doesn't decay the boost curve as the revs rise. It flies in comparison, but uses less around 10% fuel when driven sensibly.
Click to expand...
What year is your allroad ? 220Bhp with just a remap from stock hardware is a bit far fetched, the stock gt2052v turbo is out of it's efficiency map at 1.6 Bars of boost and you need about 1.9-2 bars of boost to break 220 Bhp ! I ran a 66mm compressor wheel on my a6 in order to get 300 Bhp...that's a whole 14mm larger compressor and a gt25 turbine in order to achieve that + 80% larger nozzles, 4 Bar map sensor, ported heads, lowered CR and much more !

Whilst a good remap will beat a good tuning, i would be aware of any generic maps who promiss the moon ! Seen waay too many maps with just driver wish and boost map increased by 10% and called custom !
 
Hi Adam
It is a late 2002 AKE 180 with an AJP standard replacement turbo on it.
Well to be honest the 220 is a guess as it hasn't been rolling roaded, but it now delivers over 2.0 bar actual from 1800rpm to 4500rpm as logged on Vagcom. The boost peaks at 2.4888 bar actual at 2181rpm before dropping back from overboost. The turbo starts to spool up at 1300rpm where it gives 1.3 bar, and then sustains 2.0 plus all the way to 4500 rpm at a N75 duty cycle of around 50%.
Capture
 
Hi Rhys
My remap guy tells me the auto box has a hard torque limit preset in it. If that limit is exceeded the gearbox ECU puts the engine ECU into limp mode to protect itself. It's one of the main reasons I avoided the auto. (Plus the fact that I love the reduction transfer box on my 6 speed manual box for towing & offroad use.)

Andy...
 
VCDS is adding 1 bar of atmosferic pressure to the one the turbo supplies, so in effect your turbo only produces 1.2 Bar of boost before being limited by fuel/smoke limiters...
 
audi upgrades
Boost

Apologies guys, i added the image from the wrong map. Here is the mapped boost curve for the map. As adam correctly states, once you take the 1 bar atmospheric off the actual boost is 1.4 bar over atmospheric, up from just over 2.0 actual (or 1.0 bar boost) on the standard map, so a 15 to 20% increase in boost reasonably consistently across the range. It's not smoking at that output either. As i say it hasn't been roaded & honestly i don't really care what the top end BHP is as the car is used for towing. The important thing is the difference in torque and driveability. The map is streets ahead of the Steinbauer box i used to run, which in turn was a vast improvemnt over the stock map. So to go back to the original thread, map all the way for me.
 
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