tuning / mods - are they worth the candle?
Discussion
I've just acquired a brand new Audi R8, and am having a whale of a time driving it. However, some research has suggested that I might get 25 BHP boost (ontop of the 420 BHP out of the box), plus "materially enhanced throttle response" from chipping the ECU, and another 25 BHP from replacing the Audi exhaust with a Milltek one (with the added soundtrack of a Boeing 757 on take off). My question is: are the £500 for chipping and £1,900 for the Milltek exhaust upgrade worth the hassle? What about insurace and warranty? Has anyone actually had a good/bad experience with doing anything like this? And what about this Rhino Tuning company who advertised their servie on pistonheads - anyone with good/bad experiences?
I can understand things like remapping to deal with other engine mods, turning up the boost on a turbo car, and aftermarket management on older cars where tuning budgets/technology was limited (eg 90s TVRs with Rover v8s) I've been there and done these, and the cars I've tuned show considerable gains, at the expense of warranty, engine life expectancy and perhaps not meeting the original type approval engine emissions regs (which the car only has to meet when new anyway)
The remap on my Scoob totally transformed it - much more responsive low down, better spool of the turbo etc this most likely couldn't be done by Subaru, as the car wouldn't pass type approval due to excessive richness of mixture - so an "easy" gain, but only on a turbo car.
I'll leave the TVR out of this, due to excessive engine mods. Suffice to say the aftermarket ECU resulted in very little gain in power on it's own, due to other limits in the engine & ancilliaries. However, the throttle response and general tractability of the car was somewhat improved. Add in the other mods, and the car becomes a monster as TVR intended, but seemingly couldn't justify the expense to do it.
Insurance is interesting. My current Scoob insurers aren't interested loading the policy, as long as I have given them my mod list. The TVR insurer loaded the policy by something like £10 for the management changes.
Neither of my cars has a warranty, and neither is serviced by anyone other than me, but I would expect that if Audi don't sanction the remap and find out about it, then the warranty would be void if there's an engine problem. The exhaust probably falls into this catagory too, but they'd be being far more bloody minded about it if they didn't pay up. (as long as you're not claiming for the exhaust!!)
Audi spent a fair bit of money & time tuning the R8 engine, presumably with the aim of making a spectacular sports car. The fuel air mixture needs to be tightly controlled to protect the cats and make sure they work properly to meet even MOT style emissions tests (unless they are being removed) and I don't think that a modern management system (with fly-by-wire throttle and possibly ion sensing ignition) would show much gain from tuning the feedback loop of the throttle system or the ignition advance (which, again is a feedback system if it's using ion sensing).
Where exactly are the gains going to come from - specially considering the mappers are working with a fraction of the budget and technology? 25 bhp is a lot to find on a NA car purely from changing the management. I am sure there are some gains to be had, but I suspect they'll be a fair bit smaller than the 5%, else Audi would have found it and it would be there as standard. Of course, I may be assuming the R8 has more technology than it really has???
Assuming the remap plays games with mixture targets (amongst other things), then you're likely to see shorter engine life, exhaust mounted sensor life and shorter cat life. The chances are these will not affect the car until long after you've sold it. I'll choose to assume the mapper won't be daft enough to allow the engine to detonate and destroy itself (the engine managament should protect against this anyway, but no det control system I've seen is 100% perfect)...
That said - it's too damned quiet for my liking, so I'd definitely have the exhaust.
If you do go for the remap, make sure you have a before and after rolling road test (on the same day on the same dyno - not that I'm at all cynical
)
Sorry - it's turned in to a bit of a ramble...
The remap on my Scoob totally transformed it - much more responsive low down, better spool of the turbo etc this most likely couldn't be done by Subaru, as the car wouldn't pass type approval due to excessive richness of mixture - so an "easy" gain, but only on a turbo car.
I'll leave the TVR out of this, due to excessive engine mods. Suffice to say the aftermarket ECU resulted in very little gain in power on it's own, due to other limits in the engine & ancilliaries. However, the throttle response and general tractability of the car was somewhat improved. Add in the other mods, and the car becomes a monster as TVR intended, but seemingly couldn't justify the expense to do it.
Insurance is interesting. My current Scoob insurers aren't interested loading the policy, as long as I have given them my mod list. The TVR insurer loaded the policy by something like £10 for the management changes.
Neither of my cars has a warranty, and neither is serviced by anyone other than me, but I would expect that if Audi don't sanction the remap and find out about it, then the warranty would be void if there's an engine problem. The exhaust probably falls into this catagory too, but they'd be being far more bloody minded about it if they didn't pay up. (as long as you're not claiming for the exhaust!!)
Audi spent a fair bit of money & time tuning the R8 engine, presumably with the aim of making a spectacular sports car. The fuel air mixture needs to be tightly controlled to protect the cats and make sure they work properly to meet even MOT style emissions tests (unless they are being removed) and I don't think that a modern management system (with fly-by-wire throttle and possibly ion sensing ignition) would show much gain from tuning the feedback loop of the throttle system or the ignition advance (which, again is a feedback system if it's using ion sensing).
Where exactly are the gains going to come from - specially considering the mappers are working with a fraction of the budget and technology? 25 bhp is a lot to find on a NA car purely from changing the management. I am sure there are some gains to be had, but I suspect they'll be a fair bit smaller than the 5%, else Audi would have found it and it would be there as standard. Of course, I may be assuming the R8 has more technology than it really has???
Assuming the remap plays games with mixture targets (amongst other things), then you're likely to see shorter engine life, exhaust mounted sensor life and shorter cat life. The chances are these will not affect the car until long after you've sold it. I'll choose to assume the mapper won't be daft enough to allow the engine to detonate and destroy itself (the engine managament should protect against this anyway, but no det control system I've seen is 100% perfect)...
That said - it's too damned quiet for my liking, so I'd definitely have the exhaust.
If you do go for the remap, make sure you have a before and after rolling road test (on the same day on the same dyno - not that I'm at all cynical
) Sorry - it's turned in to a bit of a ramble...
ernestoteles said:
I've just acquired a brand new Audi R8,
You git ernestoteles said:
I might get 25 BHP boost (ontop of the 420 BHP out of the box), plus "materially enhanced throttle response" from chipping the ECU, and another 25 BHP from replacing the Audi exhaust with a Milltek one (with the added soundtrack of a Boeing 757 on take off)
As someone said above, remaps for NA engines are rarely very exciting. Do you think you'll actually notice another 5% increase in BHP? The throttle response can be altered, but obviously won't make the car any quicker.
ernestoteles said:
My question is: are the £500 for chipping and £1,900 for the Milltek exhaust upgrade worth the hassle?
God only knows what a brand new R8 retails at, so in the scheme of things, an extra couple of grand may be worth it to you. But £1900 sounds a lot for a new exhaust... Unless there's something very clever about it, a lot of places would do a custom stainless steel system for less than half that.ernestoteles said:
What about insurace and warranty? Has anyone actually had a good/bad experience with doing anything like this?
Insurance - tell them. For the extra premium you might have to pay, it's not worth risking them not paying out. Warranty - the remap would probably invalidate the warranty on most of your engine parts, and don't believe the tuning companies that say it's undetectable... An exhaust should only invalidate a few parts of the warranty.
hahaha8 said:
Those graphs are dodgier than the labour party.Lets for a moment exclude the fact that the car is plainly 4wd and yet has not been run in the 4wd mode.
Now, the important thing to look at here is the IT temp at the bottom. The higher this fig, the more correction the dyno adds. It should really be no more than 10 degrees over the ambient (AT) or it cocks the figures up. Note its not the real IT fig, just a little probe you put near the entrance to the air filter box.
If i enter the atmospherics from the first graph into my dyno software, i get roughly 1.03 correction. So its adding 3% correction. Too much, but not too much of a problem in itself. Then we take the second graph. look at the IT.. 87 f
king degrees! Putting that in gets me around 1.12 Correction. Thats 12% added power!!!!!!!! No wonder no one trusts people in this industry!
Vixpy1 said:
hahaha8 said:
Those graphs are dodgier than the labour party.Lets for a moment exclude the fact that the car is plainly 4wd and yet has not been run in the 4wd mode.
Now, the important thing to look at here is the IT temp at the bottom. The higher this fig, the more correction the dyno adds. It should really be no more than 10 degrees over the ambient (AT) or it cocks the figures up. Note its not the real IT fig, just a little probe you put near the entrance to the air filter box.
If i enter the atmospherics from the first graph into my dyno software, i get roughly 1.03 correction. So its adding 3% correction. Too much, but not too much of a problem in itself. Then we take the second graph. look at the IT.. 87 f
king degrees! Putting that in gets me around 1.12 Correction. Thats 12% added power!!!!!!!! No wonder no one trusts people in this industry!
Are you suggesting they may have heated the probe and that it the reading is not reflective of the real IT of the car?
Edited by Kieran XJR on Wednesday 26th March 13:01
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