ecu reprograming question

[lilcrash]

$666 is perfectly reasonable. i would be happy to go that route. bluefin isnt available for my car and im currently discussing stuff with jmac as he looks to be a completely reasonable person and has a good business. but when you have places like ..... and ..... (edited to save problems) that charge people 2 or 3 times the price of somewhere else for the same product or you pay them for something that after 3 years atill hasnt come, it just ruins the modificaton scene for alot of people who dont have a money tree growing in their back yard.

[Jmac]

I'd happily do a tune myself if I had access to a wideband o2 sensor, dyno & a truckload of time to experiment. But I have none of that & was happy to pay ~$666 to import a Bluefin device & "push a button".

Sometimes you just have to shell out the money & enjoy the experience.

Hate to say you wont be able to buy the Bluefin from the UK now, ive mentioned this before, if you enquire with the UK you will be directed to the Aus website and find one of our peeps on there. This has been agreed with our head honcho and us dealers and of course HQ in the UK. This will be running for 3 months and the UK is going to monitor it, all to do with sales really. You will pay around $80-$90 more for the unit here. As mentioned before there is a couple of vendors not on our dealer list selling units and nothing wrong with that whatsoever, but no warranty will be covered with us in Aus. you will have to liase then with UK. If any units bought in Aus then we will cover any problems, in the unlikely event mind you.
Cheers
Jmac

[Blitzen]

I don't expect numbers just a simple yes or no would be sufficient. I personally would disregard my previous outburst if I knew that the dealers were getting a worse price then an identical supplier in a different country. Our dollar is going to stay above Americas for quite a while I imagine so provided the American suppliers are willing to ship and it's in their best interest to ship to us if they want to make sales, I'm happy to wait a week or 2 for a product that's less then half the price.

Maybe while you are at it you could ask BMW why the M3 is $58,000 in the USA and $156,000 over here, or why a I can buy a pair of Belleville combat boots for $100 over in the USA, but they are $300 over here... It will be the exact same reason why the tune is cheaper in the USA... Look at the population and market size in the USA compared to Australia... It took me ages to realise that, but it doesn't make me any less bitter about it. At the end of the day, basically everything about living in Australia is a blatant ripoff, and almost anything can be bought cheaper overseas.

[BI65ND]

If you're looking for good cheap mods you're probably in the wrong car. If you don't spend the money in these cars then you run into problems real quick. Theyre not like Jap cars where you can just chuck on an ebay exhaust and a boost tee. I've learnt that things in these cars need to be done properly, or you might as well not even bother.
Also there are big differences with the US/UK models and ours, there are several different engines - pretty sure none of the US models had an AGU. Even things like the intake and intercooler setups differ, so manufacturers have to factor in these different setups, and being in Australia there is a lot smaller market than over in the US and UK.

[brad]

Hate to say you wont be able to buy the Bluefin from the UK now, ive mentioned this before, if you enquire with the UK you will be directed to the Aus website and find one of our peeps on there. This has been agreed with our head honcho and us dealers and of course HQ in the UK. This will be running for 3 months and the UK is going to monitor it, all to do with sales really. You will pay around $80-$90 more for the unit here. As mentioned before there is a couple of vendors not on our dealer list selling units and nothing wrong with that whatsoever, but no warranty will be covered with us in Aus. you will have to liase then with UK. If any units bought in Aus then we will cover any problems, in the unlikely event mind you.
Cheers
Jmac

For <$100 then fair enough. I think when I bought mine there was $300-$400 difference & I was willing to take the punt with warranty.

So are you saying that Bluefin sells for ~$750 in Aus (I think they are about $640 shipped from the UK at the moment, about $700 from Superchips?).

To the OP: Different tuners charge different dollars. To be honest, the VW remaps are all pretty reasonable if you compare them with what Subaru tuners were asking a few years back.
I don't think the Bluefin gives you as much power as some of the other tunes but bang for buck is great and it isn't pushing the bleeding edge.
If I didn't want the convenience of being able to load/unload my tune at will I would have gone GIAC as they have an awesome low-grunt map for my car.
In a few years when my kids start learning to drive, an APR tune will be ideal as I can switch it on/off without any hassles.

Keep in mind that different remaps deliver their power in different ways.

[lilcrash]

at this point ignore all performance goals, if someone could recommend a cheap way to get a base tune that actually runs properly it would be appreciated. i have put new coil packs in (service sheet recommened it in 2005 :O) and that has fixed the miss but now it surges from 4000rpm to redline. anyone had any problems like that?

[brad]

I would address the basic running of the car before getting a remap. Can't help with how to do that though. Sugges you get JMac to sort the basics before waving magic wand.

[lilcrash]

I think its the exhaust. Dont understand why the dump is so small :S

[h100vw]

Cat's have been known to block up. That downpipe has been fitted to hundreds of thousands of turbo VWs and Audis. Agreed it will do little to improve power production in a modified car but it's plenty good enough for the majority of the cars that it is fitted to.

Gavin