S4 B8 MRC stage 2 carried out AT RMCR Yeovil

[forty3]

So a few weeks ago I had an MRC remap on my S4 but carried out by Tom at RMCR in Yeovil.

As I live in Plymouth getting up to Banbury and back in a day was always going to be challenging so, after speaking to Mihnea at MRC, I booked in at RMCR Yeovil for a stage 2 remap.

I've left it a while before posting as I wanted to get a proper feel for how the car performed in all situations.

Nearly every car I've owned has been chipped or mapped and despite forum people saying remapping transforms *Insert car make and model here* I've always been grateful of the extra performance yet a little underwhelmed.

Until now.....

RMCR don't have a rolling road so I had a dyno run carried out at RH Tuning on Plymouth and made 487bhp and 417 ft/lb torque.

This is obviously a cliché but the car feels exactly as it should have from the factory.

It's frighteningly fast (especially through 3rd gear) but is completely predictable. The chassis can cope with the power increase and the avant doesn't feel like a big car through the twisties.

I'm blown away.

If you're closer to the southwest than Banbury I'd happily recommend RMCR. They even gave me a courtesy car while the work was being carried out which was a nice touch. Tom and his dad are both passionate about cars and happy to chat about them.

It's always nice to meet enthusiasts!

 

[Lavis89]

Ohhh fancy taking me out for a spin some time so I can experience it? (cheeky I know, but if you don't ask you don't get!) I'm in Plymouth and just emailed MRC a couple weeks back to get a quote! Think I may have to take this same route, will save a lot of cash in petrol! Didn't even know it was possible so thanks for posting

 

[GarethS4]

Your lucky getting those figures ,that seems to be the sort of figures a stage 2 car is getting ,except mine .my s4 is stage 2 and I'm only getting 409 hp.have been told to get my car serviced and to take it back but that will not make any difference IMO .mrc seems like my next option only I'm a ferry trip away and hundreds of miles drive to Banbury .wiuld love to get mine up to the figures everyone else is getting .im not happy

 

[V6_Man]

Hey buddy, glad to hear it all went well. MRC are very consistent in their numbers. I am sure the more you drive it the more you'll enjoy it


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Gazwould]

Get it right son...

RCMR .

 

[forty3]

Oops!

 

[forty3]

Get it right son...

RCMR .

Oops!

Could a mod please fix my repeated typos.....

 

[Dippy]

This is obviously a cliché but the car feels exactly as it should have from the factory.

Noooooo!
We WANT Audi to make S-cars which have £40K performance but the potential to achieve £60K performance for £1-2K of mods.

Your lucky getting those figures ,that seems to be the sort of figures a stage 2 car is getting ,except mine .my s4 is stage 2 and I'm only getting 409 hp.have been told to get my car serviced and to take it back but that will not make any difference IMO .mrc seems like my next option only I'm a ferry trip away and hundreds of miles drive to Banbury .wiuld love to get mine up to the figures everyone else is getting .im not happy

But it IS worth a ferry trip and drive to Banbury!

 

[forty3]

Ohhh fancy taking me out for a spin some time so I can experience it? (cheeky I know, but if you don't ask you don't get!) I'm in Plymouth and just emailed MRC a couple weeks back to get a quote! Think I may have to take this same route, will save a lot of cash in petrol! Didn't even know it was possible so thanks for posting

Happy to catch up at some point. Drop me a PM and we'll get something sorted.

 

[Blue_Thunder]

Your lucky getting those figures ,that seems to be the sort of figures a stage 2 car is getting ,except mine .my s4 is stage 2 and I'm only getting 409 hp.have been told to get my car serviced and to take it back but that will not make any difference IMO .mrc seems like my next option only I'm a ferry trip away and hundreds of miles drive to Banbury .wiuld love to get mine up to the figures everyone else is getting .im not happy

The 'stages' on the B8 S4 are as ambiguous as anything.

Some people call a supercharger pulley and remap is Stage 2. (Which really, I think it should be)

I believe MRC's 'stage 2' involves a larger crank pulley (allows for more boost than a smaller SC pulley can) and a bigger chargecooler, so they can push the car harder.

Not sure why the crank or dual pulley setups with improved cooling aren't referred to as Stage 3.

I've heard of cars with stock pulleys being tuned to 430+bhp, so can understand your disappointment.

 

[V6_Man]

The 'stages' on the B8 S4 are as ambiguous as anything.

Some people call a supercharger pulley and remap is Stage 2. (Which really, I think it should be)

I believe MRC's 'stage 2' involves a larger crank pulley (allows for more boost than a smaller SC pulley can) and a bigger chargecooler, so they can push the car harder.

Not sure why the crank or dual pulley setups with improved cooling aren't referred to as Stage 3.

I've heard of cars with stock pulleys being tuned to 430+bhp, so can understand your disappointment.

MRC Stage 2 does not include bigger chargercooler. With chargercooler, you are looking at 500 - 520hp . Their stage 2 is crank pulley and Hi grip belt, TCU tune, modified airbox and 034 intake pipe.

 

[DieselJake]

I say it's stage 7 now

Different car but I had a bloke (who SUPPOSEDLY tunes cars for a living) say to me he was "surprised with my power output considering it's stage 3" and that put me right off having him touch the car, I see allot of people on this forum/other places saying they're having a "stage 2 map" after "stage 1" with no other modifications too haha baffling.

I'm with @Blue_Thunder on this surely "stage 1" is generally considered just a map, "stage 2" is map and something more (in this case pully) and then all the rest god knows it's all just a load of baloney anyway; usable bhp and torque being added is what matters whatever they want to call it/sell it as.

 

[Dippy]

Agreed. These days stage 1 is ECU remap alone, or with hardware that does not significantly affect power, and then for stage 2 it needs to be hardware that provides a significant power gain. After that the terminology is of little use - the mods need to be listed and justified. If you take a stage 2 B8 S4, then uprating cooling does not increase power itself, just allows that power to be more available. There clearly are cars which are modified to 500+ PS where uprating cooling seems to be necessary and I guess it is reasonable to call these stage 3. The complication comes over how the power hike is implemented. In general the supercharger pulley can be changed to increase the drive ratio from 2.56 to around 2.85. Changing the crank pulley, or using a combination of crank and supercharger ("dual pulley") can increase it up to 3.33 which is the accepted limit of the supercharger. However somewhere between 3.0 and 3.33 that uprated cooling will be necessary.

 

[Cerbera9]

The MRC Stage 2 package seems to be the limit of what can be extracted before the need to take the next step to upgrade the cooling. That said with these cars upgrading the cooling at any stage is alwayd going to be benificial and worthwile.
Bang for buck the MRC Stage 2 package like others that are on offer are pretty good value for the money as modifying these cars further seems to be very expensive for very little gain.

 

[V6_Man]

So, what have we decided we are going to call existing MRC remap as. I need to update my signature to say Stage 3-4 or perhaps 7 as @DieselJake suggested


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[johnny_584]

I say go for stage 7!

 

[Cerbera9]

I think that as suggested
Stage 1 : ECU remap alone, or with hardware that does not significantly affect power
Stage 2 : ECU remap, Intake & Pulley change and usually a gearbox remap on DSG cars
Stage 2+ : As Stage 2 but Dual pulley and/or Ultracharger as these will also then require cooling mods.

 

[arad85]

I always think of stage 3 as being the replacement of the forced induction system with something bigger as it's generally applied to turbo'd cars. This is how I'd classify them for the S4/S5:

• ECU tune (stage 1)
• TCU tune (stage 1.5)
• single pulley/no cooling (stage 2)
• single pulley/cooling (stage 2+)
• dual pulley/no cooling (stage 2.5)
• dual pulley/cooling (stage 2.5+)
• ultracharger (stage 3)

Not sure where I'd put the improved air intake, but that went in AFTER stage 2 but before stage 2.5 for me (APR UK dev car).

In that case, I should probably upgrade my sig to stage 2+...

 

[Cerbera9]

Ideally before you go dual pulley and certainly before you can go to the Ultra charger you need to do one of the bigger jobs and remove the cats and fit test pipes as the standard cats will break up due to the extra heat caused by the increased boost levels

 

[xpoweruk]

Stage 3 would be a bigger blower on the S4 IMO

Anything with a pulley ratio over 3.0 being stage 2+

 

[GarethS4]

Is anyone else totally lost as to what's being talked about here .stage 1,2,2.5,3 lol .i have map,sc pulley,exhaust and filter .all I know is it DOES NOT make anywhere near 460-480 that mrc makes .

 

[DieselJake]

Is anyone else totally lost as to what's being talked about here .stage 1,2,2.5,3 lol .i have map,sc pulley,exhaust and filter .all I know is it DOES NOT make anywhere near 460-480 that mrc makes .

Think allot of this is down to different dyno's, some are very optimistic and some are very realistic, any print out of yours/idea what dyno it was on?

 

[V6_Man]

Is anyone else totally lost as to what's being talked about here .stage 1,2,2.5,3 lol .i have map,sc pulley,exhaust and filter .all I know is it DOES NOT make anywhere near 460-480 that mrc makes .

Also, and in addition to what @DieselJake asked, did you do any test runs as well and find out what trap speeds car is doing, e.g. 0-60, 2nd through 3rd gear pulls say between 2k-3k rpm to redline in both gears and it will give you a good indication of what the car is doing.

You'd need VCDS to get these numbers but could also use Torque Pro and OBD Fusion (depending on what phone you have) as they both have custom PIDs to do data logging.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Dippy]

Irrespective of dyno differences there are essentially 6 factors to increasing the power in these engines:
1) Removing the bypass - this is what a stage 1 remap is in basic form - allowing the engine to use full boost from the supercharger rather than leaking it once the pressure reaches a threshold.
2) The quality of the remap. In addition to bypass there are changes that can be done to fuelling and timing to tweak extra performance. There is no doubt in my mind that some tuners do this better than others.
3) Pulley ratio - boost is related to this (I avoid using the word "proportional"), so after removing the bypass, increasing the pulley ratio will increase boost, and as we have seen there is a range of pulley ratios available on the tuning market.
4) Airflow - it is clear that the OE filter and intake pipe are restrictive and so certainly beyond stage 1 power will be limited if improvements are not made. Beyond that we know that the TB is restrictive and hence APR's Ultracharger is an option. iABED is also working on a TB upgrade.
5) Fuel octane - the best UK results have been with 99RON. Figures will be lower with 97RON and even lower with 95RON. Also based on the experience of tuners such as MRC, some brands of fuel give worse results than others.
6) TCU remap. For both B8 and B8.5 s-tronic gearbox cars the redline needs to be raised to get the best peak power. Unlike most turbo cars the power from this engine does not tail off before the OE redline.
*) As noted, uprating cooling itself does not increase power, it reduces the chance of the ECU retarding performance due to overheating.

The peak figures of around 480PS and 580Nm that MRC get consistently, require the following:
a) Pulley ratio of approx 3.0
b) Uprated air intake (free-flow filter and pipe, and an extra hole in the airbox)
c) Stage 2 custom ECU remap
d) TCU remap
e) 99RON fuel

 

[Chop.]

Doesn't matter what stage we decide to call it at the end of the day the company selling the package sells it as that want it named and anything other than that is just made up

 

[Bobby rs6-r]

So a few weeks ago I had an MRC remap on my S4 but carried out by Tom at RMCR in Yeovil.

As I live in Plymouth getting up to Banbury and back in a day was always going to be challenging so, after speaking to Mihnea at MRC, I booked in at RMCR Yeovil for a stage 2 remap.

I've left it a while before posting as I wanted to get a proper feel for how the car performed in all situations.

Nearly every car I've owned has been chipped or mapped and despite forum people saying remapping transforms *Insert car make and model here* I've always been grateful of the extra performance yet a little underwhelmed.

Until now.....

RMCR don't have a rolling road so I had a dyno run carried out at RH Tuning on Plymouth and made 487bhp and 417 ft/lb torque.

This is obviously a cliché but the car feels exactly as it should have from the factory.

It's frighteningly fast (especially through 3rd gear) but is completely predictable. The chassis can cope with the power increase and the avant doesn't feel like a big car through the twisties.

I'm blown away.

If you're closer to the southwest than Banbury I'd happily recommend RMCR. They even gave me a courtesy car while the work was being carried out which was a nice touch. Tom and his dad are both passionate about cars and happy to chat about them.

It's always nice to meet enthusiasts!

Had mine done last month by CM.tuning in Morley.
Such nice cars to tune