Picked the car up on Friday and took it to VAST this morning.

Nice guys, good price and attentive. They checked the car out before putting the tune in, test drove it, etc.

The tune for sure makes a lot more power. I needa week or so of driving before I can really say how it is driveability wise. My initial impression is, and this may not be a big deal for some, the boost comes on too hard. It makes the car a bit jerky but with some time behind the wheel I'm sure I'll smooth it out a bit. Since the boost comes on so fast and is so readily available cruising on the freeway in 6th at 75mph just a slight tip in will send you into the 90's easily.

I suspect this fact will decrease my fuel mileage, there is so much torque, and with it goes fuel, at light tip in I'll have to start using the cruise more.

The extra torque and urgency upsets the car chassis wise but thats something I need to address myself.

I might talk to them about maybe smoothing out the pedal curve and see if it can be lightened up a bit.

I have no other tunes to compare it to, those with 6 speeds find similar things? I suspect with an auto this kind of stuff would not show up as much.

I also think doing the DP's will help, make the turbo more linear when it comes on.

Pretty happy overall for 40 minutes worth of work.

 

if you dont mind me asking, what did they charge you for the tune? and what all did it include? (just a single program, or do they use any sort of a switch between diff maps or possibly back to a stock map?)

 

$530 installed.

$500 for the tune, $30 for new hose clamp, pressure test, checked both of my DV's and some other things.

Single program, 93 octane....thats all I cared about really.

 

My GIAC chip is relatively docile until I hit 3500 rpm, then it takes off. Around town, I accelerate conservatively so there is no difference between chipped and not chipped. I have not accelerated hard off the line (in 1st) because it hits redline so quickly.

As you said, cruising at 75 (about 2800-3000 rpm), just hitting the gas hard in 6th results in fast acceleration north of 90. I usually don't bother downshifting because the time it takes to downshift is offset by the slight amount of time it takes the rpms to climb from 3000 to 3500+ in 6th.

However, I have dropped it from 6th to 4th at 70 and floored it and it gets to 100 very very quickly and soon after to 120. Then I upshift and continue. Before chipping it would hit the governed 133 mph in 5th. Now it goes by that. I think the last time I ran it to 150 I upshifted at about 140 to 6th. I may have been better off leaving it in 5th. There's not a lot of safe places to experiment around here.

 

See mine is not docile at all in the low end, I don't have a gauge but I'm seeing a ton of torque down low.

With any change the first thing it does is show the deficiencies elsewhere in the car. That is now the chassis setup. Its a soft ride to start with but nowafter a few 2nd gear maneuvers in traffic I need to tighten it up.

The rocking back and forth is driving me nuts. I need to change pads too, they have a near stop bite that is annoying. If you ever drove an early G35 at about 3-4mph no matter the pedal pressure the car would just STOP, thats whats happening with mine.

What the car REALLY needs is about 30-40 more ft lbs of torque and 3.73 gears

4.11's are a bit too much for the torque, especially in 1st gear.

 

I have a V8 n/a car and what I noticed about the tune is that the car gets transformed. you need to relearn the car and how it drives and responds. you are driving the car like it is stock. Give it a week or so and you will realize you don't need to give the car as much throttle as you may have. Once you re learn the car it just gets better and better

 

Congrats. so based on your story and the drastic change post tune, I am guessing you drive a 2.7T? if so yeah the chip adds a lot of Hp and even more TQ, the GIAC and VAST tunes are known to be more aggressive than APR who remains more driveable, very linear power... But wiht that much torque... it's gonna pull!
As for the chassis, it can take the power but you'll find that a set of HSport sway bars will help dramatically with roll and dive, it also becomes more direct in turns... Then an aftermarket snub mount will help reduce engine rocking under acceleration
Good luck and enjoy the ride

 

Yep after a few days with it I've been much more subtle with the throttle. I still think that tuning the pedal a bit would give the same performance and a bit more driveability. My guess is these companies do not do a lot with driveability tuning. Pedal tuning with ETC can be tricky but I bet this could be addressed and make the car smoother to drive. It would also help gas mileage. Right now its so easy to get into the boost even when not needed with light throttle application. Figure in that for a specific position in the throttle you used to make 2-3lbs of boost now your making 5-6lbs at the same position, there goes a good 20-30 percent of fuel economy for around town.

We had done a bunch of pedal and driveability tuning on some of my previous cars. If the other programs out there are more subtle but come on later then they took the easier way out of delaying boost instead of ramping up the curve and making it smooth.

I'm pretty happy with it. Snub mount is coming, as is a new shifter...suspension I'm working on. It is absolutely insane the prices for sway bars for this car...so I'm trying to find one used.

 

I would drive it for another week or so. like I said it took me a week or so to get used to the new power and the curve of it. If you want it tamed down the guys at vast have been cool with me about revisions Im sure they would do the same with you.

 

I'm going to get their DP eventually so I'll talk to them about it then.

They seemed to be a good group and easy to work with.