Topping out at Stage 2+?

[mmmRacer]

Looking forward to your results Jimmedy

I have a Fabia RS with pretty similar modes.

2012 Fabia II VRS Estate - APR stage 2 tune, Custom 2.5" turbo back full stainless exhaust with ceramic coated dump pipe, Harding Performance Cold air intake, Wagner Tuning Competition Intercooler, GFB DV+ diverter valve, Braille B2317RP battery, Eibach pro kit springs, Bilstein B8 shocks, Harding Performance F+R ARB, Super Pro bushes, DBA T2 slotted rotors, EBC Yellow Stuff Pads, Enkei RPF1 17x8 et.35 with 235/40R17 Yokohama AD08R tyres.

So I will be interested in see how my CAVE motor compares to your CTHE motor. On the dyno I was getting 140kw at the wheels. Maybe in the future if we find a good solid turbo upgrade we can go to APR as a group and ask nicely for a tune. But from experience a LSD would be ideal to have first.

[jimmedy]

Basically just after I got the tune done around Feb this year, I noticed that some of the parts had started dropping off the site. So a little bit after that I got into contact with APR Australia trying to chase the Intercooler as at that point that's as far as I wanted to go (but you know how it is with the modifying bug), and they suggested for me to try a few workshops which they had done recent shipments out to.

So I done just that, called a few of them, and got lucky, someone had an Intercooler for a customer that was meant to get it installed over Christmas, but had to pull out for one reason or another.

Then a few weeks ago I decided I wanted to go full stage 2, and was all ready to go with the other brands to complete the upgrade (Milltek exhaust, VWR intake) but thought I'd try the quick call around "just in case". So started phoning some workshops on the east coast just from the APR Dealer list page, and then got lucky again when I came across an unused HP/APR Turbo Back system, and a used (only a few months old) HP/APR CAI!

Just got the call about 2 hours ago, from the delivery guys saying it's being dropped off tomorrow morning!

The Milltek is meant to be an absolute work of art though, so I would have gladly paid for one of those bad boys. The HP exhaust, the official writeup says: "The system incorporates a 200 Cell Metal Catalyst compliant to Euro IV emission standards with a built in heat shield to protect delicate engine bay components from radiant exhaust heat." which I'm not sure if is a standard thing with the other exhausts or not?

Ah! I was sitting on my hands a lot of this year waiting for an APR sale that never came, flipping through the product pages on the website sometimes twice a week then one day, as you said, parts started dropping off the site! HP CAI, IC and exhaust all disappeared in quick succession!

I wrote to HP/APR and got 'discontinued sorry'. The idea of ringing around dealers didn't occur to me til much more recently.

I suddenly got a serious case of FOMO and booked in for my Stage 1 tune and ordered the VWR CAI which was still available. I also took the plunge on the DSG remap.

I thought I'd be doing all this Stage 2 stuff bit by bit over a couple of years actually, but within weeks of my Stage 1, the AU$ dropped 10c in a couple of weeks and I made a few sacrifices and got all the parts locked in at reasonable, if not great prices.

I figure I can drive around with a dumb grin on my face while I pay off this little splurge

[jimmedy]

Looking forward to your results Jimmedy

Wagner Tuning Competition Intercooler

Oooh, you're the only other person I've seen to bring a Wagner into Aus (I'm sure there's more, just haven't seen any).
How do you find it? Not only that, you got the Competition one too. I took a long time to decide on which of their two I should get.
I read about 8,000,000 forum threads of people arguing the relative merits of 'Bar and Plate' vs 'Tube and Fin', but eventually I found this on the Wagner Germany site and picked the 'Competition' one too.



Along with everything else we have picked a very similar parts list, hey?

I haven't tackled brakes yet. I'm outta money thanks to the pile of bits going on the car next week.
I'm tossing up if I just do uprated pads and race fluid, or I go for the Tarox 323mm 6 pot kit. In either case... not until well into 2016.

[spare]

2012 Fabia II VRS Estate - APR stage 2 tune, Custom 2.5" turbo back full stainless exhaust with ceramic coated dump pipe, Harding Performance Cold air intake, Wagner Tuning Competition Intercooler, GFB DV+ diverter valve, Braille B2317RP battery, Eibach pro kit springs, Bilstein B8 shocks, Harding Performance F+R ARB, Super Pro bushes, DBA T2 slotted rotors, EBC Yellow Stuff Pads, Enkei RPF1 17x8 et.35 with 235/40R17 Yokohama AD08R tyres.


So I will be interested in see how my CAVE motor compares to your CTHE motor. On the dyno I was getting 140kw at the wheels. Maybe in the future if we find a good solid turbo upgrade we can go to APR as a group and ask nicely for a tune. But from experience a LSD would be ideal to have first.

mmmRacer, your car sounds like quite the potent little beast! What's your thoughts on the GFB DV+?

I suddenly got a serious case of FOMO and booked in for my Stage 1 tune and ordered the VWR CAI which was still available. I also took the plunge on the DSG remap.

While on the topic of all possible upgrades, how do you find the DSG Tune?
It's something I've contemplated for ages, but just finding hard to part the cash with at this stage.

[spare]

Back when APR carried a lot more kit for these engines, they had some more dyno graphs and general info on the respective product pages.

[mmmRacer]

Along with everything else we have picked a very similar parts list, hey?

I haven't tackled brakes yet. I'm outta money thanks to the pile of bits going on the car next week.
I'm tossing up if I just do uprated pads and race fluid, or I go for the Tarox 323mm 6 pot kit. In either case... not until well into 2016.

Yep spent alot of time online reading different builds from overseas but like you I found myself looking at it from a more Australian prosective. Wagner intercooler and GFB diverter + have been on the car for over a year now and have fix the overboost issue I would get at 160km/h changing from 4th to 5th at Wakefield.

In regards to brakes, pads and race fluid are not enough for any serious motorsport. After a day at the track my brakes would rubbish. Even had a pad disintegrate off the backing after repeated heavy use. As for the next upgrade, planning on fitting some Porsche Cayman calipers with adaptor kit from the UK.

[mmmRacer]

mmmRacer, your car sounds like quite the potent little beast! What's your thoughts on the GFB DV+?



While on the topic of all possible upgrades, how do you find the DSG Tune?
It's something I've contemplated for ages, but just finding hard to part the cash with at this stage.

The GFB diverter + is a must have for any car with a stage 1 or 2 tune. It just makes the throttle much more responsive.

I too am curious about the DSG tune.

[spare]

The GFB diverter + is a must have for any car with a stage 1 or 2 tune. It just makes the throttle much more responsive.
.

Very interesting regarding the GFB DV+.

I read a thread elsewhere (have the link here, but not sure if there's rules on pasting URL's from other VW forums?) where there was a post quoted from GFB themselves that says that, in short, if you have a fully functioning stock DV this mod offers no real advantage.

"Now, performance gains – the DV+ can’t offer any more than the turbo is providing. This means if your factory diverter is ok, you’re not going to see any massive boost gains.""We’ll never claim a power gain over a perfectly functioning factory diverter valve, that’s just not true."

[mmmRacer]

The better responsiveness comes from when you modulating the throttle while on boost. It does not add any power.

[The_Hawk]

The better responsiveness comes from when you modulating the throttle while on boost. It does not add any power.

Are you running the spring and does it give you any fault codes?

[mmmRacer]

Used to get fault codes with stage 1 and it would go into limp mode. So would have to turn the motor off to reset. Then fitted gfb diverter + and no more fault codes. Now stage 2 and still fine.

Spring will need to double check.

[jimmedy]

Wagner intercooler and GFB diverter + have been on the car for over a year now and have fix the overboost issue I would get at 160km/h changing from 4th to 5th at Wakefield.

In regards to brakes, pads and race fluid are not enough for any serious motorsport. After a day at the track my brakes would rubbish. Even had a pad disintegrate off the backing after repeated heavy use. As for the next upgrade, planning on fitting some Porsche Cayman calipers with adaptor kit from the UK.

Lol, I've only been past 160 a couple of times, in places where, while I decided it was 'safe' to do so, Mr Plod would still beg to differ.
Serious motorsport isn't really on the agenda, but, for anyone familiar with some of the 'fun' roads around ACT and this area of NSW - Clyde Mountain, Brown Mountain, Jamberoo Mountain, Kangaroo Valley Road, Mountain Creek Road, Alpine Way between Thredbo and Khancoban... etc.... I just want enough stopping power to avoid serious fade and pull me up quickly at the blind corners where you can't risk taking the line you'd like to.

So I was looking at Tarox in a kit, just on the basis I don't have to mix and match parts and they're rated to work with the existing master cylinder.

I too am curious about the DSG tune.

It is a lot of money. I think because it gets a low volume of customers and the units that connect to the DSG to actually achieve the software download/upload are like $9000 each or something and there's about 3 that they express post around the country to APR dealers based on customers booking a DSG remap. They all 'belong' to HP HQ in Brisbane.
So a lot of the cost to customers is paying off their R&D and their overheads, and sometimes that's just the way things go with low volume products.

Aside from the money though it seems to do what it claims. There's things that are noticeable and things you have to take their word on. It makes 'D' more useable and you get back the use of first gear. Before my remap the DSG would shift into 2nd sometimes at only 8-10kph. First was barely any use except for sitting at the red lights. Now 1st holds til the high teens in casual driving and into the 20's when launching harder. ESC plays a part though, because if you really put the boot in to the point your wheels want to spin, I think ESC is still trumping the DSG and puts you into 2nd before you are anywhere near the risk of revving out. These are just casual observations, I guess I could find a quiet bit of road and do some more methodical testing of shift points and behaviours at different throttle, ESC on vs off.

Sport mode (in the Audi, not sure if we're starting from the same base?) is actually brought down a little. Sport mode really would rev the sh*t out of your engine when driven hard. It's actually made slightly *less* aggressive.
Despite Sport mode now being better, D is so good now, that I use Sport a lot less than I used to.

Other claims are that the torque limiter is lifted - this I can vouch for and this actually turned out to be where I found the most 'value' - I drove around for a couple of days with just Stage 1 tune while my DSG file was downloaded from my car and emailed away for the guys in Brisbane to tune but not yet re-uploaded.
Under WOT from low speed the sensation was that the DSG was holding the car back. The engine had more to give but it couldn't get down to the road. I describe it as 'squirmy'. The feeling was a bit like the way torque steer feels but not left to right, but almost like the car was 'pulsing' as the power from the engine kept bumping against the torque limiter, dropping back and hitting it again. When I say pulsing I mean quite rapidly. It was just an odd feeling coming through the steering wheel and pedals when accelerating hard from low speed. It didn't feel dangerous but it didn't feel great and I suspect over weeks/months it wouldn't be good for the box.

DSG tune went on and that entire hard-to-explain sensation disappeared. Now the car just takes off with the pedal buried in the wall.

The last claim is improved clutch clamping to protect the box a bit during launches. I can't really feel that going on but I'm taking their word for it and it gives me a bit of peace of mind in a tuned car.

The better responsiveness comes from when you modulating the throttle while on boost. It does not add any power.

That's my understanding too. It doesn't *add* to your total power, but retains boost pressure which keeps you in your power band more effectively.

[spare]

That was a really good and informative review on the DSG tune, thanks Jimmedy!

Might have to look into it down the line as a kind of last hurrah.

[mmmRacer]

Thanks for the DSG review Jimmedy. I have a bit of a problem at present accelerating out of tight corners on the track. Sometimes the car will cut the power for a second or 2 before it gets full power/torque and starts pulling hard again. Paul from MullerHaus had been suggesting to me that I should be looking at a DSG tune next and now I can see a bit more clearly why. So may be a toss of the coin to see if it is the brakes or DSG tune gets done next.

As for a top speed I will be down a Cooma next month to bet The_Hawk's best....hahaha. It should give everyone a good idea of where a tuned twincharger stands against some tuned Golf R's. Highest speed so far is 195km/h down the straight at SMP.

[The_Hawk]

mmmRacer, I had issues with powercuts which I put down to the traction control kicking in.

I don't know about the Fabia, but in the Golf if you have the later ABS module it's possible to code out the EPS/ESC. Check out this old thread:

http://www.vwwatercooled.com/forums/f20/apr-tuned-vehicles-question-you-81247.html